While they weren’t too far up the Huss’tra yet, the view was still quite nice, some of the industrial buildings still towering over them while others had fallen away, leaving an ocean of rising and falling stone and metal. In the distance, closer to the southeastern border, plumes of smoke could occasionally be seen rising into the air, guided by a pollution control system that had been gifted to Seer’ik’tine a generation or two earlier as some sort of
goodwill gesture
from Baalphoria.
Emilia had never been able to get the full story out of anyone, but from what she had gotten, it seemed like there had been an incident with a family from the Sub-50s getting too pushy in their networking. It didn’t seem like they had done anything illegal; rather, they had just been too forceful, and in a nation with significant overlap between their captains of industry and their diplomats, stepping on the toes of the former hadn’t gone over well with the latter.
Technically,
bribery in all but name through the giving of gifts wasn’t illegal in either Baalphoria or Seer’ik’tine, but it definitely wasn’t encouraged—seriously, there had been a multi-hour discussion over whether her being allowed to train with the Blood Rain General was a
gift
from Baalphoria to Dion given the man’s formal request that he be allowed to include her in Hurinren’s classes. The fact that she had already been sneaking in and it was simply him formalizing things? Didn’t matter. The fact that she was exceptionally annoying and
gifting
her to someone was tantamount to giving them a pet they didn’t want but were now responsible for keeping alive and out of trouble? Yeah, that hadn’t mattered either.
So, yeah, the pollution control system being gifted to Seer’ik’tine was a big thing, and whatever incident had caused the Baalphorian government to risk the blowback must have been big as well. Too bad no one was talking.
That sort of gossip was fucking gold in their coren’taz; a slow add up of information they would all be able to use one day to get their way. Was it weird for a bunch of kids connected to diplomats and other government officials, military leaders, captains of industry and so on to share information that could potentially harm their nation with one another? A bit, but officially, they had an understanding that they would only ever use what they learned in very specific circumstances.
Against their own bitchy government and uppity members of society? Perfectly fine.
With the majority approval of their coren’taz? Acceptable.
Against any nation who hadn’t had the sense to let their kids join their coren’taz? Absolutely, especially given most of those nations were fucking idiots. Sure, there were a few who weren’t as tied into the diplomatic scene they all frequented—Falrion and The Atrium only every sent adults, while Mitine Dyn and Chinsata were not welcome anywhere near it—but there were a few who had just straight-up fucked up the opportunity for their kids to join.
It wasn’t even like they were all friends, or anything! As much as the bitchy little Norvellian prince and her had animosity between them and had been avoiding each other for nearly twenty years, he was still part of their group and friends with a few members. Hurinren was a member, and he hated practically everyone—at least, that’s what he claimed. Emilia wasn’t convinced he just didn’t moderately dislike the majority of them, his permanent frown and introverted nature making it seem like hatred. There was also the whole… playing up of his personality for various reasons, but that was a whole other thing.
So no, it wasn’t like anyone but the creepy non-dev fucker from Jinkai had ever been forcibly ejected from their coren’taz, although, admittedly, Halen hadn’t been offered a place in it solely because of her, and should she offer him a place, if he was going to keep trying to be a reasonable person?
The point was, it took a lot for a nation to actively piss off their coren’taz enough that they wouldn’t give a shit about using whatever information they gathered to make them suffer. Even her own legal issues weren’t enough for any of them to throw around the idea of using anything they knew to have the charges dropped—it just wasn’t important enough. The shit they knew was meant to be used once they were older or some incident occurred where sharing what they knew with those in power would be useful for the greater good. That was the strange thing about coren’taz: they were so ubiquitously accepted by the older generations of power and diplomacy as a rite of passage for their children that none of them would dare demand even a shred of their shared knowledge from them. To demand knowledge, to share without cause—those were things that got nations banned from joining another coren’taz for a few generations.
There were a few Free Nations, a few companies as well, who had been banned for such reasons. Coren’taz were so powerful—able to move armies and mountains, if necessary—that most nations weren’t stupid enough to risk such fallout.
What a few Free Nations and companies had done, though? Ban their children from joining.
So weird. What sort of government or company turns done the opportunity to become part of something so powerful?
Freaks like Ovin and The Dunnery of Rwun, that’s who.
Oh well, it didn’t matter much. The southwestern Free Colonies weren’t the most involved in the affairs of their northern neighbours, only attending the occasional event, and generally only sending adults anyways.
Still, it was a little sad; the Princess of Ovin had been so sweet the few times they had met, her eyes sad as she was held back from going along with their group by the nanny who had apparently raised her because her parents never had time for her.
Maybe, one day, they would meet again. After she became queen, perhaps. Would she still be a sweetheart then? Or would ruling do what happened to so many people, and turn her sour and rigid?
In the end, that was perhaps one of the more important reasons coren’taz were so encouraged: they were a balancing act, a group of children who were powerful and connected and able to hold one another to account. It didn’t always work, as the conflicts perpetually rising between various nations proved, but at the same time, it worked far more often than the public knew.
Everyone within a coren’taz was supposed to realize that some things were stupid enough that they could and should be stopped by friendship and threats. Information was power; if they were set on holding on to a ridiculous grudge that would lead only to needless death and destruction, they all understood that the knowledge they had shared during the innocence of their youth may be turned against them. At the same time, other things were so important that everyone understood nothing would be capable of stymieing a future conflict.
It was, unfortunately, inevitable that eventually all coren’taz shattered. Sides would be chosen in a conflict, lifelong friendship and associations broken by wars of blood and intelligence. Sometimes, coren’taz would fully reform once conflicts had fallen, members once more finding connection through their shared childhoods; more often they wouldn’t, especially given how many nations didn’t run on royalty or inherited power.
As much as Emilia herself was the child of one of the most influential men in Baalphoria, it wasn’t like she would take his position or anything. If anything, the fact that she had spent so much of her life pissing off various government officials and dragging their most powerful children into trouble made her a terrible person for the role; too many grudges. One day, someone else would take her father’s place—probably his assistant, although Emilia had serious doubts as to how someone who had raised a girl like Polianna Zernestra could manage to be a good diplomat—and as much as Wilfred Zernestra had travelled the continent with her father for decades, she wasn’t connected to any member of her own generation’s coren’taz in a meaningful way.
In the same way, neither their current president, nor whoever would eventually take his place, had those connections. That was, unfortunately, probably part of why their nation had such a terrible reputation for starting wars: the highest members of their government had little attachment to their foreign counterparts, and as much as she had seen President Daymark interact with foreign dignitaries in a friendly way, it was nothing compared to the friendships she had witnessed between members of older coren’taz.
Being a democracy was great and all, but it did keep Baalphoria apart from the numerous Free Colonies that operated on inherited power or had ways of choosing future leaders in childhood, the way Seer’ik’tine and the Northern Tribes did. They existed separate, and most Baalphorians thought that was a good thing.
Emilia wasn’t so quite so sure, even if she wasn’t about to go around calling for a hereditary form of governance or anything. It was just an awareness of an issue that, one day, might leave their nation standing alone, the connections they needed to keep themselves safe from some war or another nowhere to be found—and if she and many of her friends fucked off to the Free Colonies in the wake of her impending guilty verdict? Well, what little loyalty the coren’taz had to her and the few friends she had brought into it would leave with them.
It was an odd position to be in—to have power and yet none, to have both significant value and none at all. In the end, if they did flee to a Free Colony, it wouldn’t be her coren’taz giving her shelter, it would be Dion—strong enough to not give a shit about Baalphoria—or some Free Colony that wanted her and her friends more for the power they brought as sub-30s. The fact that she was connected to the coren’taz was just icing, meaningful and yet so totally not; if she left Baalphoria, she wouldn’t be kicked out of it, but at the same time, continuing to include her publicly would be an implicit support of her avoiding Baalphoria’s punishment and taking their most powerful young adults with her.
“That is a
very
serious look,” Halen noted from his position leaning against the windowsill next to her. They weren’t touching, but the space between their bare arms was so scant that Emilia could feel the heat rolling off him, knew that if she shifted just millimetres, they would be pressed together. “Were you even listening to me?”
“No,” Emilia replied, letting her Censor play back the record of what her former classmate had been saying to her—a response to her question of whether he had given up on convincing Olivier to update her program or not.
Halen, perfectly used to her and half of the other low-devs in their class—including himself—not listening and instead relying on her function to catalogue conversations occurring around them for playback if they actually needed to contribute, said nothing for the seconds it took for her to replay his words.
In summary: no, he wasn’t giving up, but he also didn’t think he was likely to change Olivier’s mind. The man was attached to the function like it was his fucking comfort blanket, and unless it stopped working or started massively glitching out, it was unlikely he would ever update it.
Fuck.
“Any suggestions?” she asked, noting the way Halen had cast a net of privacy around them.
Good thing one of them had that sort of sense—Emilia might very well have had this conversation while Olivier’s copy of her stupid function was cataloguing it all for him to go over once he was done telling off one of his students for drinking water so quickly they had vomited it up. Gross. Hopefully the man had a skill to clean that up; Emilia had one, but even water vomit was gross. All acid and stomach scent… scent that wasn’t getting to them because Halen had also activated a skill to keep them safe from that as well.
Seriously, how little attention had she been paying while she contemplated how, despite being a core member of their coren’taz, her membership was quickly becoming meaningless? Even now, it meant little. If she was found guilty? All but meaningless, and even if she wasn’t, once her father retired? Yeah, her being a part of it was going to become absolutely meaningless then, unless The Black Knot wanted to use what she knew to exert pressure onto the government for something, and even they could only do so much.
Halen gave a pained hum she was all too familiar with: the hum of someone who both didn’t like the answer they had to give and knew the person they were giving it to wouldn’t like it either. “Tell him the truth?”
Emilia’s head lolled back as she groaned, Halen continuing on with his spiel that Olivier seemed like a pretty good guy, and if she just told him the truth—namely that she had been a stupid teenager and immediately regretted what she’d done—he probably wouldn’t hold it against her.
“Maybe,” he added, refusing to look her way as she glared at his darkening cheeks. It took a lot of Halen to blush, his dark skin usually doing a great job of eating the heat. The fact that he was blushing now? Yeah, he knew perfectly well how much work that
maybe
was doing.
Fuck.
“You just gonna wander around saying
fuck
for the rest of the trip?” he asked, laughing when it was her turn to blush and admit she hadn’t meant to say any of them out loud. “Inside thoughts coming out? Fuck, you are so overthinking this.”
“Says the man who said
maybe
knowing there’s a good chance the man kills me or calls my daddy to come get me!”
“Do you still call your father
daddy?
”
“Shut up,” Emilia grumbled, turning and shattering Halen’s privacy skill as he laughed, although, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t find any of the animosity she expected in it. More… Halen was just amused—teasing in a way she would expect from any of her friends. Someone having fun at her expense, yes, but not in a way that hurt; rather, in a way that begged to be returned in kind.
“You know,”
Emilia laughed into an audio message she forced into Halen’s mind through a virus she had slipped in when sharing her annotations system with him,
“maybe I should stop calling my father daddy. After all, I’ve heard it’s fun to call men ‘daddy’ in bed~”
If she threw a little more sultry energy into the message than necessary, well, that was between her and a suddenly quiet Halen’s once more blushing cheeks.
Arc 9 | Chapter 314: Power/less
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