The rumors, whispers, and general frenzied planning all went up in flames about two weeks after her little game. That night, everything had been normal. But the next morning, all of Wikuna was in chaos. The heads of the fifteen top noble Houses, except house Eram and house Zalan, were found dead. Every ranking member of her father's council of advisors, military officers, and top aides, except for the Chamberlain, were all dead. And finally, several shady types in the city, heads of thieves' guilds and assassins and underground societies, were also found dead. In one fell swoop, the ruling minds of about three quarters of the city's political factions had all been wiped out, leaving the new noble heads to pick up the pieces.
Ulfan's men were quiet, they were efficient, and they were punctual. She had ordered all the murders to occur on the same night, and he had come through for her in spectacular fashion. They did not miss a single name.
Court that morning was eventful. It was full of frightened yammering, fierce whispering, and glares in every direction. Her father didn't even show up, so she knew that he was very busy trying to find out what in the nine hells happened. Because not just her father's men were killed, it made Keritanima a much less likely suspect. After all, she had nothing against the heads of the noble houses, no reason to really kill them. Her fight was with her father, and almost everyone felt that she still had no real intention of taking the throne. They saw her as much smarter than they thought, true, but still the image of the Brat clung to her, making them think that she was acting out of pure emotion. That getting her father was more important than the throne that would pass to her afterwards, and which would make her much easier to get off of it than Damon Eram had been. She had never shown an interest in the crown, even after they knew that she was smarter than they thought. Indeed, they all knew that she had done everything she did to get out of taking the throne. If her father was out of the way, they all felt she'd either abdicate or end up getting the army to turn against her, which would allow some other noble house to step in and forcibly take the throne from her.
Her killings had fulfilled three key objectives. Firstly, it would put even more pressure on her father. Secondly, it softened up every noble house in a position to harm her after she had the throne, and laid the seeds that would be added to her other little plots to turn them against one another when she did have the crown. Thirdly, the murders of the higher-ranking thieves would turn the dark men whom the nobles hired to do their dirty work inside out. The effect of that wouldn't be felt until one of them tried to hire an assassin, and would find all the guilds in wars of succession. The underworld would be too busy settling who owned what street to hire out men to stick daggers into overfed milksops for the rich people. The only guild left that was large enough to handle such contracting was Ulfan's, and he had already promised her that he wouldn't hire out to anyone that had designs on her. It created an extra layer of protection for her, allowing the nobles to try to kill each other but not allowing them to try to get at her or her friends.
A day of overhearing had convinced her that the plan had been a smashing success. None of the noble houses were organized enough to do anything against her, but the plans they'd made concerning her father, made before the murders of the noble heads, were still there and still in motion. Nobody thought she was behind it, though there was enough speculation to make her consider defenses in case it was tracked back to her. It had seriously undercut her father, who was still reeling from the last round of assassinations that had killed off his best men. She had gotten everyone else this time, leaving him with very little support and very few seasoned advisors.
And because so many people from so many widely varied factions were all killed on the same night, everyone pointed their fingers at everyone else.
It was an atmosphere of truly delicious insanity. Keritanima moved through it that next morning with the calm of a sashka dancer, standing in the eye of the political hurricane she had conjured up. She saw it on all sides, from the smallest noble house to the largest, even in the wild stares from Jenawalani. They all just knew that someone very high in the chain had to have arranged it, and since so few suspected Keritanima, that turned all those accusing stares in Jenawalani's direction. Jenawalani was that high up, and she was well known to be a very good player of intrigue. She had also been there the whole time, something Keritanima had not done, been there and had her ear to the ground to know who, how, and when to strike to arrange so many consecutive killings. Something like mass murder fell in with her elemental style of doing things, taught to her by Damon Eram, so it made her a much more likely suspect than her older sister. Jenawalani spent that morning and afternoon in damage control, trying to insure that nobody thought she did it strongly enough to come after her. By nightfall, Jenawalani was doing the same thing Keritanima was doing. She had all but locked herself in her rooms and had Royal Guards protecting her door.
By the time Keritanima returned to her apartments that night, she felt greatly relieved. Now things were ripe for the next phase of the plan. The only real immediate business to take care of was Ulfan's payment. After that, the next campaign would begin, the campaign to send her father over the edge… or at least make everyone think that he did so.
No kingdom wanted an insane monarch on the throne, after all.
It was all part of the plan. She needed the nobility to think that Damon Eram had lost it during the tremendous stress of trying to keep his throne, just as so many thought she had lost it when Sabakimara had all her friends and acquaintances murdered. It was poetic justice as far as she was concerned, her father suffering the same fate that she nearly suffered herself, at least in the eyes of the noblity. The true vengeance in her plan was that Damon Eram would not be mad… only everyone would think that he was. Unable to convince them otherwise, he would scream out his frustration and feel the pain spiral through his mind, see it in the eyes of people who had once respected him, feel it in the whispers that would hush as he approached and continue as he passed.
She wanted him to hurt, and she would hurt him every way she could think of before she finally put him out of his misery.
The idea of letting him live to suffer had started feeling more and more repugnant every day. Part of her liked the idea of him spending a long life in howling fury, but a more primitive part of her wanted him to suffer, then to die. She truly did not know what she would do when the time came to decide her father's fate, and fortunately that was something that she wouldn't have to decide for quite a while. No matter what she did to him in the end, before that end she wanted him to hurt, and hurt, and hurt some more, and he had to be alive to endure that. After she couldn't possibly think of another way to hurt him, then the time would come to judge his fate.
At least in that respect, Keritanima was a pure-blooded Eram. She had a vindictive streak in her about ten miles wide. She was quite willing to tear the kingdom apart if it would bring her father the agony she felt he deserved.
But to do that, she had to get close to her father, at least once. She had to see him up close, see him out of his robe. That would usually mean a private audience, but Damon Eram would not bring Keritanima into his presence without a few hundred witnesses around him. The alternative was easy enough to arrange. With her mind weaves and her powers of Illusion, there was nowhere in the Palace she couldn't go. All it took was sneaking in while he was in session with what few advisors he had left. In those more intimate surroundings, her father didn't wear the heavy Royal robe and crown. In those private surroundings, the stress was clearly showing on him. His fur was thinning, stress-induced shedding, and his eyes were milky and somewhat blurry. He sighed a great deal, and moved as if he weighed twice as much as he really did. Seeing him in that degenerated state didn't move her at all. To her, he didn't look bad enough. But she saw all of him she needed to see.