Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 569

Chapter 569: How to build a crown(1)
Lord Blake lounged in the governor’s chair , or what once had been , once polished by Imperial silk, now worn smooth by salt‑sprayed coats of Free‑Isle raiders.

Around him the conquered chamber was remade in his honor, with the banners of his house pinned to the walls along with a shattered eagle standard propped like a trophy beside the hearth. He had stormed this room two years ago, axe in hand, boots striking on the tiles. Tonight, he sat unarmed, yet the air still crackled as if the battle had never ended.

His guests downstairs parted and clamored for glory as if they had not come out just months ago of the proudest moments of their lives, for now.

Blake closed his eyes a moment and inhaled. The breeze carried tar and kelp, distant gull‑cries, and the rolling thunder of surf against Harmway’s cliffs. It smelled of unruled water, of prize holds bursting with silver, of shackles flung from wrists. Freedom had a fragrance, he decided—cool and metallic, sweeter than any perfume poured in Imperial courts.

Three years. In that flicker of time he had coaxed a fractious council that was the Call into a single blade. He had broken the ancient Sea‑Break Treaty with a toast , then hurled his ships at the “oil‑fuckers” of the mainland until their coastal watchtowers burned like beacons for every pirate soul. He had seized Harmway—keystone of the straits—and when the Empire’s proud armada surged to reclaim it, he ground their galleons against reef and fire, sending them to feed the crabs.

Glorious years, yes—but Blake felt them like merely the opening chords of a storm‑song. His heart still beat in half‑frenzied tempo, a drum that refused to slow. He craved thunder on a scale that would make ancestors whisper in their barrows.

Let lesser captains rob merchants and brag in taverns; he would unravel empires. Rome­lia had been one giant—wounded, not slain—and across the horizon loomed another, fat with trade and arrogant with peace, crumbling on its own strength . He would gut it, spill its wealth into the sea, and crown the Free Isles kings of every tide.

His hand drifted to the small silver amulet at his throat—the burning sun glyph the Azanian witch had pressed into his palm, the night after that glorious victory .

Her dusky voice still echoed: Light the world red, and the Great Sun will lift you higher than any throne,she did not speak much of their tongue, and yet that phrase was said as clear as the sun in the sky.

He did not trust sorcery, and would never fall victim to it , it was he who would use it, not the other way around.

Blake opened his eyes.

Tonight he would feast, toast fallen foes, and chart the first stroke of a war no map yet dared imagine. Tomorrow, smoke would rise on a new horizon for a feat that would unite the Free Captain in one great raiding,

With a sigh, Blake turned from the window’s pale glow and faced the witch who lingered in the shadows near his bed. In the half‑light her bent frame looked carved from driftwood, her skin more creased than the leather charts on his desk.

She did not know a word of his tongue; the speech between them passed through the lips of Blake’s own bed‑slave, a lithe girl seated at the witch’s elbow—eyes lowered, voice steady.

Blake’s stare was hard as flint. “Tell her I want certainty,” he said, the girl translating each syllable into the liquid vowels of the distant Azanian coast.

The witch’s thin mouth cracked into something between a grin and a wound. She rasped a reply; the girl rendered it softly: “She is sure of what she saw, my lord. The signs spoke clearly, and she has not erred.”

Blake folded his arms, saying nothing, yet his eyes burned with the hunger of a boy waiting for a fireside tale. The witch began, her voice a dry hiss, every phrase echoed a heartbeat later in the girl’s gentle cadence.

“I saw flames,” the slave translated, “rising like crimson serpents through a vast palace of white stone. Thousands screamed beneath marble towers as banners curled into ash. Amid the pyre lay a broken crown—gold split, jewels spilled like tears.”

The old crone’s hands painted the vision in the air; the girl’s hushed words followed the trembling fingers.

“A lone figure climbed the ruin,” she continued, “a man bearing a torch brighter than noon. He thrust the flame into the heart of the wreckage, and fire devoured throne and throne‑room alike. Columns groaned; statues wept molten faces.”

Blake’s breath slowed, every detail striking sparks in his mind.

“When the night was spent,” the witch went on, “and the sun bled across the sky, only embers remained—but atop that blackened mount gleamed a new crown, wrought in iron lines red as fresh blood, glowing where the shattered circlet once lay.”

The translation ended, but the tent seemed to hold the words aloft, flickering like candlefire. Blake’s pulse thundered in his ears. A palace in flames, a crown broken, a new diadem born in blood‑bright iron—these images coiled around his ambition, fusing prophecy with desire.

He did not speak at once. Instead he watched the witch’s eyes, twin coals reflecting the blaze she had foretold, and felt the story kindle something fierce and eager in his chest. Like a boy before a roaring hearth.

The witch’s cracked lips moved again, her words drifting through the slave’s soft translation like embers on wind.

“She says the crown of Azania will break in your hands. And on its ruins a greater circlet will rise—one fit for a greater king. The one who shall rule all water.”

The phrase hung in the air, thick as incense.

A king.

Blake felt the words strike something deep and unsteady inside him—a chord he had never dared pluck. His people had spurned crowns for centuries, priding themselves on freedom, on no master above the mast. To dream of kingship had once felt impossible, even treacherous: a chain forged of gold instead of iron.

Yet the witch had never erred. Every omen she’d whispered these past two years had flowered into brutal truth—winds, tides, victories. Why would she falter now?

He clenched his fists behind his back, hiding the tremor in his fingers. A crown—bright, heavy, absolute—danced in his mind’s eye, equal parts promise and peril. Could a man who called himself free dare to wear such a weight? Could he bend pirate fleets and wild captains into a kingdom without breaking the very spirit that made them powerful?

The answer was no, but breaking a spirit for a crown was too low of a price to pay

In the hush that followed the prophecy, Blake’s jaw tightened. The witch watched him with sightless knowing, the slave with timid patience. The sea wind rattled the window again, as if urging an answer.

Still in that moment, beneath all the swagger and storm‑born glory, a flicker of doubt whispered through Blake’s heart—small, but sharp as a dagger’s kiss.

His voice cut through, roughened by equal parts intrigue and irritation. “Months ago,” he reminded the witch, “I spoke of taking Azania to kill that woman you so despise. You dismissed it—said neither you nor your Great Sun desired such a venture.”

The slave translated; the hag answered with a brittle hiss that cracked like dry reeds. Through the girl’s careful tongue it became: “Then, I did not care. The Great Sun spoke of other matters. Now He commands otherwise, and I obey. I have no desire except to serve him and you”

Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Why would your God wish ruin on His mightiest disciple? Why bid me bury an axe in Azania’s breast?Do they not bow , pray and sacrifice in his name?”

The witch’s reply, filtered again through soft lips, crawled across the air like venom: “Those once blessed have sunk into decadence.

They cherish silks and scented flesh, forgetting the flame their ancestors carried. Their last sultan was a final chance to restore the old fire—he died punished by his own arrogance, and his kingdom split. On one side stands a man; on the other, an abomination. All while men resembling beasts gnaw at the feet of both of them.”

Blake frowned. “Abomination?”

The crone’s eyes gleamed like coals. “One of my own sisters,” the slave recited, almost whispering, “defiled her purer blood by lying with the decadent Sand‑Sultan, moved both by love and ambition . She has birthed a thing neither blessed nor mortal—an affront to the Great Sun, an insult, an abomination, a sin to cleanse.”

Disgust rippled over Blake’s features. He could stomach sea rot, battle gore, even the scent of burning ships—but the notion of bedding one of these hissing, bone‑thin witches? His lip curled. “Any man eager to share a bed with your sister must wield madness for a pillow and blindess for a whore ” he muttered.

The old witch threw back her head and loosed a laugh that crackled like kindling. Through the bed‑slave’s careful voice it became a teasing purr: “My sister is no shriveled hag, and she isn’t a common womb or seed . She is a ripe apple, juicy to the core—one the Sand‑Sultan could not resist biting.”

Blake’s stare remained ice‑cold, but the woman continued “From that union,” the slave translated, “an abomination was born. And this age has already birthed one too many of such creatures—half divine, most rotten.”

Her tone hardened, the slave struggling to keep the intensity. “Sooner or later, these mongrel heirs will clash, each will search to bend his own world to his will, the only difference being how big that world will be for everyone else.

The bigger the ambition, the more frightening the change.”

She stepped nearer, shadow stretching like an omen across the floor. “Slay the abomination,” she hissed, the girl echoing in a trembling whisper, “and from that red spring a kingdom will rise. A realm that bestrides sea and sand alike, born under your banner. Ships mastered by steel, deserts commanded by flame—water and fire bowed beneath your will and pleasure.”

Blake felt the words sink like iron into water, unsettling the depths of his ambition. A dynasty—his dynasty—founded not on plunder alone but on prophecy, on a cleansing fire that would scour an empire and leave him unchallenged.

“Break the Fire’s enemy,” the translation pressed on, the witch’s eyes glowing with fanatic heat, “carry the crest of the One True God farther than any sail has flown. Be the torch that lights the world, and all kingdoms shall blaze or bow in your wake—until only yours remains, brightest and unbroken for a hundred years and more.

Deliver victory to your holy father, he commands and bids you to, and your rewards shall be immeasurable.”