The Coup
When every preparation was finished, I requested an audience with the Grand Elder. I needed her leave to march the troops who would back Marcella into Medellin.
Humans were cunning, and they were stupid. The limit of a short-lived race, I suppose. That was the thought that crossed Grand Elder Ariella's mind as she looked at the Empire's diplomat, Allan Madoff.
Only days ago she had admired him in secret. He was, after all, the very man who had made that blessed substance called heroin. This time, though, Allan Madoff had finally shown how shallow he was.
"Grand Elder. I have been turning the matter over rather carefully."
"Heroin?"
"Yes. Heroin. What would you say to my building a workshop in Medellin and making the drug here? A magic circle would do well enough, of course, and it would be perfectly acceptable to choose some clever elf and name them distributor. But..."
"You think that would be slower than making it in Medellin itself."
"As expected of the Grand Elder."
Allan Madoff's proposal to raise a workshop in the city was, frankly, an insolent notion. A human, asking to plant a foothold in the domain of the World Tree?
He had already spent a fortnight in Medellin, true, but only so the heroin question might be discussed. Taking up residence was another matter entirely. At first the Grand Elder meant to rebuke him for it. Then she thought again.
Come to think of it, what harm is there?
Drawing a heroin works into the city would profit her as well.
Swift distribution? That, too, she would welcome. Every time the stores ran down she felt as if her chest were being torn open. Watching the young ones collect their share, she was sometimes struck by the injustice of it. If the drug were made here, that particular suffering would end.
And there was another advantage.
Do it that way, and the method of making heroin falls into our hands as well...!
If Allan manufactured the drug in the very heart of Medellin, the process would come to them of its own accord. No need to threaten anyone. No need to buy anyone off. There was no drug a human could make that an elf could not.
Ten years, at the outside? Twenty?
Then we stop paying humans a fortune for heroin to smoke...! We make a finer batch ourselves, and we enjoy it.
She had been fretting over the cost as it was. Never had there been a windfall like this one.
Of course she must not let it show. Belatedly, the Grand Elder composed her face.
"Allan Madoff. What is your true aim, springing a proposal like this on me? Was your goal not to pile up diplomatic merits and return to the Empire? I fail to see why you would invent a pretext for continuing to visit Medellin."
"Ha ha. As to that."
"Speak plainly, human."
"How shall I put it. I could not quite explain it if I tried, and yet it has seemed to me that remaining in Medellin a little longer would not be disagreeable. The elders desire heroin; might our interests not be brought into line? Ha ha ha."
What sort of answer was that? And why did he keep laughing?
Ah. So that's it.
Watching the way he carried himself, she could guess the reason. He wanted, most likely, to become an ambassador resident in Medellin, with heroin for his excuse. It would be a far more glorious life than that of some petty imperial official. Perhaps he even had the presumption to want an elf for a mate.
Greed of this peculiarly human sort was worth using.
"Very well, Allan Madoff. What is it you mean to do?"
"If a manufacturing facility is to be built, the Empire's technicians and laborers must enter Medellin. I would ask the Grand Elder to permit it. The personnel are already waiting at the border."
"A truly insolent demand."
"If you refuse permission, the distribution of heroin will be... impeded."
"You mean you will not sell? I know now that you covet wealth. I did not, at first."
Allan Madoff could not go on, as if she had seen straight through him.
Having seized the advantage, the Grand Elder named her price without shame: five kilograms of heroin, in exchange for allowing humans through.
After a fierce haggle she let him beat her down to four. Even so, she had been promised heroin for nothing.
This is what negotiation is.
Give as little as you can. Take as much as you can.
By way of encouraging herself, Grand Elder Ariella drew on the heroin again.
Languor, and with it a flood of rapture. She wanted to do nothing at all, and at the same time she felt she could do anything. This was the greatness of heroin — to bestow ease and confidence and thrill and leisure all at once. A thing especially suited to the Grand Elder, leader of the elves.
The day I smoke it free of charge will come soon enough, won't it...?
Smiling with satisfaction, she summoned the elders and laid a motion before them: the entry of humans, for the installation of a heroin manufacturing facility. Seven of the elders were absent, drunk on heroin perhaps, but she simply went ahead.
"Four whole kilograms, and you got them free? That's wonderful, but while we're at it—!"
"No, no. We mustn't get too greedy. The Grand Elder handled the bargaining so flexibly, right along the proper line. We won't have to worry about the heroin running out. No need to restrict the young elves, either."
"...The young ones scare me. We can't cut them off."
"Wouldn't heroin made in Medellin taste even better?"
A matter of admitting humans by the hundred into Medellin. Two months ago it would have been difficult even to conceive; now every one of them welcomed it.
A few of the elders ventured that they ought to remain on their guard regardless, but that, too, was soon settled, for Marcella, the warrior who stood for the Great Forest, stepped forward.
"I will serve as their guide. While the humans are on their way to Medellin, I will watch them without rest and lead them, so they attempt nothing they should not."
If Marcella herself — warier of humankind than anyone in Medellin — would take the duty, then they could be at ease.
The council grew bright with excitement and waited for the humans to come, already longing for the day they would smoke heroin of Medellin's own making.
At last, the day to act.
So this moment has come after all.
Before Marcella stood the force the Emperor of the Britannia Empire had dispatched in haste. A hundred and fifty, give or take — the very personnel that human, Allan Madoff, had brought into the Great Forest by feeding the Grand Elder the lie that he meant to establish a heroin manufacturing facility.
Even by Marcella's measure they were elites of no small order. At their head was Viscount Grant, the man who had crossed blades with her some four years past, one of the Empire's Sword Masters. She had held the upper hand when they fought, and yet she had never quite managed to take his neck; in the end she had let him leave alive.
Nor had he come alone. He led fighters of the highest caliber: knights of the Imperial Escort Knights, army officers said to be charged with special reconnaissance, and court mages of considerable skill besides.
So the Empire has committed itself.
To think a force of that weight had to be let into Medellin. The few elves who followed her wore heavy faces of their own. Had she still been the woman she once was, she could not even have imagined it. No — this was not the hour to be reckoning such things.
In truth, Marcella was not the only one strung tight. Set before the finest fighter in the Great Forest, the imperial soldiers were tense as well, and for a time the standoff simply hung there, awkward and unbroken.
"Move, humans. From this moment, you follow my command."
"Great Warrior — if I may."
"You mean to ask whether this is a trap? I am sorry to say that more than half the warriors who once stood with me against the Empire are lost to heroin. They are probably smoking it even now. You need only help me take Medellin. That was the agreement, was it not?"
"We came under those orders, of course. ...Then Allan truly did it."
Viscount Grant's face was a complicated thing, and he had the look of a soldier through and through. Was he tense because the operation mattered so much? Or did it mean that, even from the Empire's side, all of this had moved too fast? It was the moment a thought occurred to her: perhaps Allan Madoff was no mere diplomat who also happened to be a man of business, but a power of a far sterner kind.
Either way, there is no turning back now.
Marcella led the imperial troops toward Medellin. She did not simply hack a road straight across the Great Forest with humans at her back. The wood was so immense that even she could not claim, with any confidence, to know its lay; by the magic circles set at the principal points, she shifted them swiftly from place to place.
An escort. A guide. Or a collaborator walking the enemy in. Whichever name one chose, it fit — and the work was an ugly one.
When they met elves who lived beyond Medellin, she went so far as to soothe them.
"You may rest easy. These humans entered with the Grand Elder's permission. There will be no more strife with the Empire, so you may sheathe your blades."
"So that was it? If Lady Marcella says so, it must be true."
Innocent elves, without so much as a shadow of doubt. Guilt rose in her, and with it a new purpose.
These ones, at least, I have to protect.
The elves not yet stained by heroin — slight in blood and in gift, and yet, if one counted only heads, far more numerous than the rest. Ordinary elves. She had to keep them.
It would not be easy. There were the terms to be set with the Empire, and the resentment of her own people, and Allan Madoff, consul of the Empire, who by now would have his board laid in Medellin. Of the three, the last worried her most.
Even so, I have to see it through. Even if my name is left in the histories as a shameless disgrace.
Almost before she noticed, she had reached a small sawmill near Medellin. Allan Madoff was there to meet her.
"Marcella. If we strike now, it'll serve."
"No. If we mean to keep the fighting small, we move with care."
"I've already looked. Every guardian on Medellin's watch is an addict. And I've gathered the elder council in one place. I committed a small discourtesy on purpose, then called them all together on the excuse that I meant to apologize."
Marcella said nothing.
"Right about now, they'll be expecting free heroin, and pipes."
While she herself had been guiding the imperial army, Allan Madoff had gathered the leadership where they might be swept away in a moment. A frightening man. As if he meant to take a hand in what was about to unfold, he had even come armed with a bludgeon.
"Good. Let's be done with it."
And then the host Marcella led passed into Medellin. The elf guardians on duty, each of them fresh from a pull of heroin, stared at the sight with empty eyes.