Askai hand's fisted tightly on his side and he slammed it on the laminated wooden table, its legs creaking under the sudden force. He wanted that sound to drown out the voices in his head, the words that kept reverberating in his ears.
"...Patrice Regale and I share the same dream…."
"....I want to see the West burn..."
".....Those rats deserve nothing…. "
He knew Vance hated West and he was behind the recent raids but even in his worst nightmares he could not imagine this.
He was the Lucifer to their hell - forging the fires in which they all burned for these many years. Bren had only heard stories but Askai had lived that bloody spectacle.
Docks - they were the key to West's survival. Nothing grew in that land and there were no resources to mine. No respectable man would dare to cross the borders to avail any services offered by the West nor any merchant dared to assume that contacts will be upheld here.
West only dealt in flesh, weapons and drugs.
Everything of necessity in those days was smuggled through the docks which was ruled by cartels.
Magi was their undisputed leader who held the lifeline of West in his hands. His ego had inflated to an extent that he seemed to have come in conflict with the East. Askai didn't know what exactly went down but if Docks were the target all along, it must have been something really awful.
It was not the massacres but the way they were carried out - it could strike fear in the coldest of hearts. Every cartel was tortured before it was wiped out. It was a naked dance of pain and death. Some had their genitals severed and then left hanging to bleed to death. Others were boiled alive like crabs. The stakes where their bodies were left to starve and rot still carried their stench.
Was his Vance really capable of such heinous cruelties?
What had they done to him?
Askai had no answer again, just a lot more questions.
However his priorities now were clear. If they were indeed going for a war again, he would make a deal with the devil himself to get his brothers out.
Task was to find the devil.
"You said Vance is the heir to the East Guards? So who is leading them now? Kevin?" If the conversations behind the screen were any indication, Patrice Regale was clearly not leading.
Brendon clicked his tongue.
"Kevin was Patrice's first choice but apparently the two fell out over something in the past. We should be thankful for this divine intervention or that hot-headed son of his would have nuked us or something." Brendon chuckled and looked up at Askai. "He is Salvor Regale, the Older brother of Kevin Regale."
The name settled heavily in the room.
Another Regale. Another shadow behind the throne.
Askai leaned back slowly, the weight of it pressing down on his chest. One devil, or many—it hardly mattered anymore. The board was bigger than he had imagined, the pieces sharper.
And Jordan was somewhere in the middle of it.
Brendon must have read his thoughts again.
"Salvor is - " Brendon began.
"A close confidante of Moraine, I know." Askai finished for him. Brendon gave him a mildly surprised look but Askai ignored him. He had surmised that much from the conversation he had snooped on earlier at Vance's place. Every move of Salvor- the current leadership of East Guards was balancing Moraine's interest in the West.
East Guard wiped out Qurais but Moraine landed a huge chunk of his territory without even lifting a finger. This could be no coincidence.
However something else demanded his attention.
"How much faith do they have in each other though? Salvor wasn't in the picture when I had left Moraine. Was he?" He enquired and Brendon stretched back into the chair, as if thinking hard.
"Actually, he had always been in the picture, we just didn't know. Moraine and Salvor go way back but the two kept it quite a secret. One reason is obvious - Patrice Regale. Another - I once heard it from Moraine, mention of a mysterious man, who somehow had made West quite dear to Salvor. Moraine respects his reasons and in turn Salvor extends his full support to Moraine. Their alliance had only recently come to light and hence the return of Vance Regale, they say. Vance might have killed Moraine too, back during those uprising at Docks but even though Vance had the reign of East Guards at that moment, Salvor still had many fierce loyalists in the rank. They somehow protected Moraine. That's how he also lived through the assasination attempts three years later. They have some connection but they never speak of it. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?"
Brendon threw the question back at Askai, quite pleased with the wealth of intel he had gathered in his short time he had spent in those corridors but the sound of the mere word connection brought some memories back to Askai that he had been pushing to the back of his mind until now.
There were many mysterious connections East and the West never spoke of. One, Vance had talked about, believing Askai to be his confidant. Should he just spew out the story before Bren in the hope of joining the dots? He had betrayed him anyway by jumping out of that window when all Vance wanted was to protect him from the war going outside. Askai did not want any part of that shit either. He was done.
Then why couldn't he just stay? Why was he repeating that same script over and over again? Why couldn't he just tell him that he was one of those who were born in the West and still worthy of redemption? Not everyone one of us was like his mother.
Instead, he sat here, wondering, if what he had was just another piece of information to sell or was it a lover's secret he would give his life to guard.
"You have something to say?" Brendon asked as Askai sat there frozen, lost in his own thoughts.
"No" He replied, with a weary sigh, "I was just wondering what kind of relationship the uncle and nephew have. Salvor must want him dead." The thought alone caused Askai to despise the man, even though Vance was the devil who had destroyed their lives.
"You wish, things were so easy to comprehend!" Brendon scoffed, "Salvor loves him and so does Kevin. One of the reason, Diana and I are so scared to tell Moraine the truth! He would go after that Prince of hell and would lose his only allies in the East."
That gave Askai a pause.
Vance clearly despised Salvor. He called him a useless scion of Old Regale or something like that. He even did not want to talk about his own father. Somehow both Regale brothers were still protecting Vance.
What the hell went down in the Regale family?!
Everything was giving Askai a headache.
"I need a way out, Bren. Somehow I can't see any." Askai whispered. He had drunk a lot last night and had woken in the wee hours of the morning. He had been on the run since then and had only paused when he reached Middle Nolan, at Brendon's doorsteps.
Not he felt all of that catching up to him.
"Catch some sleep, Askai. I have to go report to Moraine but we will talk when I come back. Don't attempt anything ingenuous until then. Things have changed a lot since you left."