Secret Affairs Of Four Houses Fighting Against Vagrants From Ayavazashi

T Man E.

Description

Lord Eli Ev needs to cooperate with a demon from a hostile world, Ayavazashi, to find who targets him. Politicking and betraying themselves four lords of Uwa uncover their dirty secrets. Then they realise that the greatest evil lurks just nearby and they have created it.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528976480
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Secret Affairs Of Four Houses Fighting Against Vagrants From Ayavazashi
E. T. Man
Austin Macauley Publishers
2023-01-06
Secret Affairs Of Four Houses Fighting Against Vagrants From Ayavazashi About the Author Copyright Information © Acknowledgement
About the Author
E.T. Man loves Asian cuisine and works as a translator. He has three cats and too many succulents.
Copyright Information ©
E.T. Man 2023
The right of E.T. Man to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528976466 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528976480 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2023
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
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Acknowledgement
Thank you, Iza and Mr P.
Clouds passed over the stars which reflected in rice paddies where stalks were already shooting up. Small cottages with smoke billowing from the chimneys clustered near the forest. Peasants were weeding vegetable patches looking curiously at the mansion. Children sneaked up the hills to see the garden where they could not play.
Guards shooed them away but tried to hear voices coming from the house. All buildings were renovated for this evening and new plants planted to make the garden look richer.
However, guards heard only steps and hushed voices. They did not see the main hall illuminated with lanterns which outlined servants moving between the kitchen and hall. They were followed by scents of food and smells of magnolias and tea trees.
Servants bustled noiselessly, invisible to the guests whereas maids pretended to feed carps and told rumours about exotic guests who arrived from all prefectures and beyond Uwa.
Soldiers watching over the garden peeked into the main hall which the guests tried to keep open to let in fresh air. With so many people inside, it became stuffy. Arion Magni shouted at the servants to leave doors open, drowning protests of the captain who did not want his men to watch the wedding party. Magni spoke in a booming voice because he forgot he was not in his fortress.
He ruled Ice-Land, the biggest and snow-capped prefecture of Uwa. It was an icebound vastness with mountains and dense pine forests. Winter retired only for four months when everyone moved to the farms to make the most of summer. Even soldiers helped plant and harvest but land for farming was sparse and too barren. In autumn, people left summer cottages and returned to underground tunnels they shared with livestock. They dug houses inside hills and covered roofs with grass to keep themselves warm.
His prefecture was surrounded by myriads of islands, often no bigger than a rock, scattered across the coast. Some belonged to free tribes, others were home to pirates or smugglers but all of them bound by eternal ice. Except for Arion nobody was interested in those lands and the news about his new conquests alarmed all Uwa because nobody believed he fought against smugglers but rather trained his soldiers there.
Everyone was sure his greed would never be satiated and he wanted to attack the neighbours’ lands.
He was also said to stop at nothing to get a woman he fancied. He seemed to be a loud yet toothless wolf who enjoyed only drink and food but it was a mask. Arion was well-versed in politics and etiquette while his plans were thoroughly devised. Everyone thought that he was the mightiest warrior in Uwa and could be defeated probably only by Atilla Sigurdsson.
But this night Arion Magni just lounged on pillows telling lewd jokes in a loud voice which invaded corners and expelled shadows. It was this power-greedy daredevil that children from the village wanted to see most to make sure he was as dangerous as Ryu people said.
Maids, meantime, tried to look at Euklid Eudes of Wine Prefecture, but soldiers laughed that Healani, his bodyguard, would kill them if they did.
Most of the time, he was sipping wine in Leontium Gardens accompanied by researchers who kept asking him to fund their machines which would fly to the stars. When cornered he arranged confrontation with academics who rejected all ideas and spared him trouble.
He looked delicate; his face almost ephemeral because locks softened his facial features. The wide arms, proportional body and long fingers made him a handsome man but without a doubt no warrior.
His obsession was the Hanging Gardens of Leontium which he, along with hordes of gardeners, tended day and night. They were the greatest miracle of Uwa, the wonder of engineering and architecture of his ancestors who shaped hills into terraces and suspended bridges between them.
After he inherited the House of Wine, academies and art flourished while the aqueducts got rebuilt. But he did not like talking about it and instead Euklid droned about chipped stairs and statues. The only ones who loved his stories were artists he invited to his Gardens.
If they showed enough enthusiasm, they performed in the amphitheatre outside Leontium, the most esteemed place in Uwa. Healani could never get used to those performances so she attended them with a sour face even though the actors would never attack the man who was the source of their income. Nevertheless, every month she listened to men in gowns thunder about the end of the world.
Among blue-eyed people of Wine Prefecture, her olive skin and dark hair made her conspicuous. Many believed that she was beautiful, however, too exotic to be appreciated by local people. Artists asked her for a permission to sculpt or draw her but she refused so harshly that they never talked to her again.
She made Euklid immune to poisons, extended a net of spies and inspected all servants. She wished he asked her to be his lover because she would never reject him. If it was any other man, she would simply sleep with him but in that case, guilt tied her hands. To be with him she committed the worst crime so to punish herself she kept Euklid at bay.
This evening, she kept close enough to brush against his arms. She watched Leathan Than of Cuithin who ogled them with venom. As her former lord, he might demand her head because he never forgave betrayals and she was the worst traitor.
Leathan did not pretend to enjoy the evening or the wedding and came to Ryu no Ken only because his brother and cousin did. He hardly drank but watched everyone as if seeking a signal for the attack.
Out of three Thans, he was the most hated one. It was he who governed their prefecture because Afan, his older brother, spent too much time with the dead. As the informal head of Cuithin, Leathan was burdened with a taxing task.
Cuithin people were unruly and thought to know better while he believed that only tough principles kept the prefecture together. The Thans had been chosen to rule Cuithin over sixty years earlier but now other clans wished to elect a new family. After Eli Ev came to power, some families started questioning Afan and Leathan’s decisions.
Many said that they were financed by those who found domestic turmoil in Cuithin useful and Leathan believed they were paid by Ryu no Ken. He had never confirmed it, however, it was enough to fuel his hatred for Captain Eli.
With Arion Magni and Eli Ev at his borders, Leathan spent days and nights planning to empower his prefecture and unite people who refused to be united. The Than’s distilleries brought the greatest revenues but to have enough money he also demanded contribution from other families. Yet even the smallest repair ended in accusations if Afan was not present and once he hid in the caves, he returned after weeks.
But that evening they were all sitting in the Great Chamber, a simple yet spacious room which separated the front and back gardens. It was built later than the mansion and added across the northern part of the building which shaped the house into a ‘L’ letter.
The ceiling was supported by pillars with protective mantras etched in gold. Mats were replaced for the new ones and emitted the scent of grass, screened by soy sauce.
In the middle of the hall, surrounded by red lanterns and dressed in traditional clothes, the heads of Four Houses were celebrating. They were not used to sitting on the floor so they were given pillows to ease their backs. A low table stood in front of every person, full of teacups and glasses of wine. Only the tables of Atilla and Arion were cleared as they began playing chess, a game Magni brought from his prefecture.
Eli Ev tried not to think of the pressure in his stomach so instead he watched his guests who this time did not look at him with suspicion. He wanted to believe that after this evening they would stop plotting against him.
He feared that somebody might decide that the new world known as Ayavazashi was not as dangerous as he wanted them to believe. At one point somebody might turn against a neighbour because weapon from Ayavazashi was far more advanced. And such a war would be more cruel than the War of Three Houses and far more dramatic than the battle of Nanguchi.
He convinced other Houses to follow his steps and be rid of Ayavazashi people who sneaked into Uwa. Eli hoped that openings between both worlds did not appear in other p