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“Peace? There can be no peace,” Qi said, his plume giving him an extra foot to his already intimidating height. “Every trade embargo, every attempt at peace we’ve made has been met with disaster. There can be no peace with these creatures. We cannot afford to wait. Every minute we wait, the Changelings get closer to discovering us. We must attack now. It’s the only chance of success we have.”
More hoots of acceptance. The gathered Titans seemed split roughly down the middle.
Nus, the only female chieftain, got to her feet next.
“The truth is, we don’t have the weapons we need to defeat the Changelings,” she said. “We should wait, but not for when we have enough warriors, but when we have enough powerful weapons.”
Before she even sat down, Qi was on his feet and up in her face.
“You would wait until the Changelings attack and bring the Fallen Temple down on our heads!” he spat.
Nus growled and slipped a knife from the sheath at her side. Qi had a foot or more on Nus, but she showed no signs of backing down.
Hatred borne from centuries of bickering and squabbling came to the fore. The Titan audience broke apart and squared off against each other.
A’nshon got between the chieftains about to come to blows on the stage and shoved them apart. He glared at them with his one good eye.
“Do not fight!” he said. “This is exactly what the Changelings want! If we’re going to mount an effective battle against them, we must work together.”
Qi ran a hand through his thick plume.
“No one doubts your bravery, A’nshon,” he said. “I’ve met you on the battlefield many times and always came away with a fresh scar, but you are asking for the impossible. Never in all our history have our clans come together.”
“You’re wrong,” Nus said, getting to her feet. “Our ancestors put aside their differences during the Great Welding, when we fought a similar foe all those millennia ago.”
“We had the emperor to lead us,” Qi said. “But now, he has been taken from us.”
The Titans whimpered on the stage and in the crowd. It could never be said often enough: the emperor was the heart and soul of the Titans.
“This isn’t going well,” I said. “The Changelings will win if they don’t work together.”
“It’s difficult for them to go against their nature,” Fiath said. “They’ve spent so many years fighting each other. It kept their skills sharp but dulled their wits.”
“They need someone to follow,” I said. “Someone to unite them against their common enemy.”
Fiath was quiet. Then he sighed and those lines returned to his mouth and eyes.
“We could leave, you and I,” he said. “We could leave this place right now and no one would notice. We could creep into the forest and go anywhere in the empire. We could set up a home somewhere, live out the rest of our lives in peace. If you could do that, would you want to? Or would you prefer to stay here and fight?”
I could see by the haunted look in his eye that he was being serious. It wasn’t an idle suggestion. He meant what he was saying.
I squeezed his hand tighter in mine and smiled at him.
“If you let an enemy like the Changelings do what they want, if you let them walk all over you and don’t put up a fight, they will never let us live in peace,” I said. “I’ve known enough bullies in my life to know that. The only chance at peace we have is in the hands of these chieftains. If they can’t come together, if they can’t find peace between them, we’ve already lost.”
My response wasn’t a surprise to him. Still, he looked disappointed. He turned to face the stage where the chieftains were now in each other’s faces, and so was the audience, growing even more belligerent and aggressive. They began to shove each other. A couple even pulled out weapons.
It was going to be a slaughter.
“For our future then,” Fiath said.
He released my hand and stepped through the crowd, heading toward the stage.
“Wait!” I said. “Where are you going? Fiath? Fiath?”
No one stopped him or prevented him from climbing the steps to the stage. They were too busy preparing to fight each other.
The chieftains paused when they saw him approach. They glanced at his hands and body for weapons. He had none.
