Chapter Text
Nandor the Relentless stood before his Empress in the throne room of the Temple of Blood Devourers, the most ancient and grand seat of power in all of the Unholy Revenant Empire of Daptes, and tried to figure out the best way of explaining to her that she had made a terrible mistake.
Nandor shifted on his feet, his armor creaking with the motion. The crevasses of his plate maille were still soiled with the dirt and blood of the human kingdom that he had so recently returned from invading. Seeing as this newly completed campaign had been waged at the direct orders of the Empress, Nandor had expected it to be the focus of their conference. That was how it usually went. Nandor would come back to the capital from a successful invasion and meet with the Empress immediately upon his arrival. He would give a perfunctory report of the campaign’s difficulties and successes, list the number of prisoners claimed and any other major prizes of war plundered, receive a word or two of appreciation from her Unholiness, be dismissed, put his helmet back on, and go home. The next time the Empire needed a fresh supply of victims, or just wished a people to be subjugated to its will, she would call upon him, and he would go.
He had never been involved in the politics of it, the questioning and explaining of who-are-we-slaughtering and why-they-are-to-be-slaughtered. He had doubts that there was any citizen of their Unholy Empire who could directly question Empress Tilda’s judgement without getting their head cut off. Even if there was such a vampire, it would not be Nandor. He was conqueror of thousands and High Commander of the Imperial Army, but he was not a vampire of finesse or subtlety of word. This was one of many reasons why he typically avoided involvement in the politics of the Empire. This was also one of many reasons why he was quite certain her Unholiness had made the worst possible decision in assigning him to this duty. He rubbed the cheek piece of his helmet with the pad of his thumb and chanced a glance upwards at where the Empress perched upon her throne. She wore a pleased grin upon her face as she awaited his reaction to the news of his newest assignment.
Nandor decided that to explicitly express doubts about his Empress’ reasoning would not be a good move on his part. But he had to say something. Ultimately, after seconds of contemplation that felt more like hours, he managed to verbalize an only somewhat strangled reply.
“Me?”
"Indeed!" Empress Tilda decreed, raising her gloved hands into the air in a dramatic flourish. "It is you, Nandor the Relentless, on whom this unprecedented honor will be bestowed. You who will further the imperial reach and glorious legacy of our grand and undying Empire through this bold new alliance.”
"Great," Nandor said, not feeling at all that the situation described was in any way shape or form ‘great.’
“Now, I know this might take some adjustment,” Empress Tilda allowed, “given you are used to the old fashioned way of doing things. But this is what the Empire needs. I’ve spoken extensively with my council and the diplomatic court, and this is our best way forward if we want to deal with the human problem. We’ve known that for a while now. What we hadn’t known was who we should entrust to carry out such an assignment.”
“Right,” Nandor said. “And, just so I am understanding, how is it that I was chosen as the ideal candidate for a political marriage, again?"
“Well there were many reasons, of course, but I suppose the biggest draw was your reputation among humans. You have quite the reputation among the humans, you know.”
"Because they are afraid of me, yes, I do know that," Nandor replied. “Yet… I would have thought such a thing would make me undesirable as a candidate for the making of the diplomacy to the humans.” Nandor clung to a faint hope that perhaps, by him saying these words aloud, the Empress might suddenly realize how preposterous the whole idea was and retract her decision. But instead her grin magnified, and she spread her arms as if beckoning for an embrace.
“Ah, but, you see, that is exactly your appeal.”
“My appeal to the humans... is that I am undesirable,” Nandor clarified, feeling that his fingernails were scrambling at the cliff’s edge of reason.
“It’s the appeal to us, Nandor.” Empress Tilda returned her hands to her lap. “You see, I’ll bet you’re thinking what we’d been thinking. You’re thinking ‘why not get someone who’s, you know, pathetic. An energy vampire, maybe. A candidate that the humans would find more palatable.’ We thought that too. But then the possibility was raised by our new chief negotiator that the optic of selecting a more harmless candidate was bad. I used that right, didn't I? Optic?” she asked aside to her chief advisor, Viago, who stood next to her throne and nodded in fawning affirmation.
“Stavros the Clever is no longer chief negotiator?” Nandor asked, not having heard this news yet. He also had not heard what an optic was, but he was hoping perhaps he wouldn’t need to know that part.
“Oh no, it’s that wunderkid Simon the Devious now,” Empress Tilda affirmed. “He’s quite good, you know. No one else had thought about the optic.”
It was increasingly sounding as if Nandor was going to be forced to learn what optic was. Some new version of coptic? The humans were always inventing all these damned languages all the time.
“You see, Nandor,” her Unholiness continued, “making a move like that, choosing someone pathetic, would be too much of an obvious compromise on our side. Make us look too eager, you know, like some kind of capeless tart. Bring up the idea that we’re stooping to forming an alliance with mortals because we have to, that they’ve got us on the ropes or something.” She shuddered at the thought. “He pointed out that if we made the humans instead accept a vampire that no human in their right mind would agree to be in the same room with, nonetheless marry, it would make it obvious to everyone that we are the true seat of power in the alliance. Less marriage of equals, more human sacrifice.”
“It’s called a flex,” Viago contributed, leaning forward with an expression of delight. “Simon invented it.” Nandor would have to remember to kill Simon the Devious at some point. He did not have a pen and paper with which to make the note, so he focused on the thought very hard in the hopes of making it stick. To Murder: Simon the Devious. “We did worry for a while that it wouldn’t work, but it went much better than we’d even dared to hope.”
“Yes, you were our starting point, you know,” Empress Tilda added. “They were supposed to negotiate us down. Can you believe that, Nandor? That they didn’t negotiate us down from you?”
“Wow,” Nandor said, making a note to kill the human ambassador as well. Maybe he could get Simon the Devious and Human the Ambassador in the same room under the pretext of negotiations and then set it on fire. The damage had already been done, so it would be cold comfort, but it might cheer him a bit to hear their dying screams of anguish.
“We had thrown around the idea of assigning you to act as the human’s bodyguard anyway-- you among our citizens have the most victories in battle against our own kind and thus would be most capable of defending the human against assassination attempts-- so it worked out very well. A two-in-one.”
“Assassination attempts?” Nandor echoed. The Empress’ face fell slightly, her glib cheer dissipating.
“The idea of our Empire entering into an alliance, even so much as a truce, with a human kingdom is not universally popular. There are vampires who would wish to thwart our efforts.”
“I... suppose they might ask, why should we not simply invade these humans and crush them under the might of our heel?” Nandor asked in what he hoped was a casual tone of innocent curiosity.
“They do ask that,” Empress Tilda said. Her mouth curved back upwards into an affable smile but her dark golden eyes sharpened, as if pinning Nandor down like a specimen to paper. “And I say to them that we have tried invading these particular humans for centuries now. They have been remarkably resilient, and it’s not just because of those pesky waterways. They have an entire family’s worth of Van Helsing’s heirs.”
“One of them killed Carol, you know,” Viago interjected. “One singular slayer did, that is. Just one guy, all alone. Killed Carol. One guy.”
“Right, they did.” The Empress nodded to Viago before turning back to Nandor and gesturing to Viago as if to say ‘you see?’.
“You have not sent me to invade them,” Nandor observed.
“They killed Carol, Nandor,” the Empress said, raising her brow in a befittingly imperious manner. “Carol the Slayersbane.”
“You were off on a more important campaign anyway,” Viago noted with a delicate tilt of his hand by the wrist. “Didn’t want to bother you.”
“Yes, and now you are back. You are back, and we’ve already started to arrange it, and the diplomatic court is quite excited about the whole thing. Especially to have you as our representative. What say you, then, Nandor? Do you accept your duty as vassal of the Empire?”
Nandor really really really would rather not. But even if he would not suffer ire for turning down the appointment (and he certainly would), he likely would still be stuck as bodyguard to the human anyway. And if he was not, if they gave the assignment to another vampire, that vampire could end up letting the human be killed, or worse yet succumb to bloodlust and kill them themselves. He imagined that such a thing could prove a diplomatic embarrassment, and should such a thing weaken the Empire’s image among the other revenant nations Nandor could end up having to deal with it anyway.
“It’s fine, I guess,” he said.
“Then it's settled,” the Empress decreed, clapping her hands together. “And really,” she added, leaning forward with a grin, “there’s no need to look so sour, Nandor. This is basically a little vacation for you. All you have to do is sign a few papers, go through a ceremony, and keep the human alive for its natural lifespan. How long could it live anyway? A hundred years? Two hundred at most, surely.” She looked aside at Viago for confirmation.
“Two hundred at most, I am certain, your Unholiness,” he assured her.
“Right. It’ll be over before you know it,” she said cheerfully. “And in the meanwhile, you get a cute little human pet to show off at parties. A scrumptious little virgin too, if Simon can swing it for you.”
The prospect of virgin blood made Nandor’s mouth go dry. He swallowed with some difficulty.
“Is it really so wise to have Simon ask for a virgin, given the human is already going to be a target?” And given I am going to be expected to resist draining him dry? He added in the privacy of his mind.
“Well, you’ll be marrying it, so it won’t be a virgin for long,” her Unholiness pointed out. She and Viago shared a glance and a chuckle which Nandor distinctly did not participate in. Now he would be expected to have sex with the human, as well as keep it alive?
“Right, well… If there’s nothing else my Empress Requires of me…” Nandor began, thinking that he would like very much to go home and cut some furniture into pieces with a sword now.
“Oh, yes of course, you are dismissed.”
Nandor bowed, replaced his helmet and turned to leave.
“Before you go, Nandor,” Empress Tilda called, halting him in his tracks, “you should know that Nadja and Laszlo live in your house now.”
“Understood,” Nandor replied reflexively, preoccupied in thoughts of tempered steel and hardwood splinters, before registering her words and spinning back around. “Wait, what?”