Chapter 44
“Are you sure I can have an atelier like this?” Mave asked Rys for the tenth time in the past week.
“It will be months before your mage tower is ready. If you don’t use the facilities in the palace, where will you conduct your research?” he told him.
Mave stared at him, then sighed. The armored mage ran a hand around his collar, which was a habit he apparently had.
The two of them stood in Mave’s new atelier, which looked more like a forge. Probably because it contained a forge. Mave was a blacksmith and a rune-crafter, so he would make good use of it.
“I didn’t expect you to let us stay in the palace,” he said.
“I’m recruiting you. As you’ve seen, there’s no shortage of space here.” Rys shrugged. “I’m more surprised that so many Black Sorcerers left the League.”
“Graem is our heart and soul. The entire inner circle agreed to leave—and we’ve been interested in leaving for years now. Maliah summoning a demon lord using a world-threatening pact was the last straw,” Mave said.
In the month since the encounter with Maliah and Grishaw, a few things had happened.
The Black Sorcerers held a vote and agreed to leave the Malus League. Rys offered them the opportunity to establish a tower in his territory, with no strings attached. Nearly two-thirds of the mages came.
Getting them into the Kingdom was the hard part. The League went into hard lockdown now that they had confirmation that Rys had succubi, but they still remained unaware of Leth and his Haunts. While Maliah attempted to stop the Black Sorcerers, and even arrest them, the Haunts greased some wheels and allowed the mages to escape through the Labyrinth.
And by greasing some wheels, Rys meant that the Haunts tricked some mages into arresting the wrong people. The resulting outrage and open warfare between mage towers created enough chaos in New Ahm that nobody noticed the Black Sorcerers stroll out the front gates. Especially as New Ahm didn’t even have gates.
Mave even brought some examples of the teleportation magitech that the League used. It was far too advanced to replicate in the Kingdom, but it explained a lot about what had happened recently.
Rys also marveled at the fact that human mages were mastering teleportation. Not even the Infernal Empire had established long-distance portals that anyone could use. The railriders had been fast and the backbone of the Empire’s economy and logistics, but a portal network would have changed everything.
Something for Rys to research in the future.
Finally, Mave, Graem, and a few other Black Sorcerers had moved into the palace. Most preferred to reside in their own purpose-built village nearby while they constructed their tower, but the presence of the inner circle in the palace was important.
It meant that the Black Sorcerers were establishing themselves as Rys’s trusted mages, or at least willing to do so. He didn’t know how interested they really were, long term. For now, they played along while he bribed them with excerpts of planar theory and bedtime stories about the Cataclysm.
“There’s something I want to show you,” Mave said.
Then he reached up and removed his helmet.
Her helmet, it turned out. The face beneath the armor was hauntingly beautiful, almost unnaturally so, with ice crystals for eyes and rusty blonde hair tied up in a bun. Rys suspected she could walk into a ball wearing a dress and receive marriage proposals from half the men there, including the ones who were already married.
“I’m assuming there’s both a reason you hide your face and gender, and why you’re revealing them to me,” he said.
She nodded. “My true name is Maeve, but please continue to call me Mave. It’s far easier to pretend to be a man—even a tiny one—than a woman. While magic does not discriminate between genders, the same cannot be said about the politics of mage towers. I’m showing you because I feel it’s a betrayal of your trust if I don’t.”
Cute. She had removed a single letter from her name for her false moniker.
Rys eyed her features closely. Now that she had removed her helmet, and didn’t have the obscuring runes that interfered with her magical presence, he could sense her better.
“You’re using your armor to hide your identity as well. Some of your runes actively suppress or scramble your magical presence, at least when you’re not casting spells,” he said.
She nodded, but her expression tightened.
“You won’t say why?” he asked.
“The reason is more complicated. I don’t believe it matters at present. If it does, then I will explain everything to you. For now, I will assist you as much as I can in my position in the Black Sorcerers,” she said.
“Are you a native of the region?” he asked.
“I was born in Gorgria,” she said.
That might explain the strangely familiar feeling to her magical presence. He had sensed this recently.
He really wished that he knew what was familiar about it. Because Faeris had the same magical presence, and he wanted to know if Maeve was connected to the queen, or if there was something in the blood of Gorgria.
“I’ll be blunt: do you have any connection to Queen Faeris? I already know that you used her spy network at some stage,” he asked.
Maeve stared at him with unblinking eyes. “It’s possible that a lot of people have connections to Faeris. She sleeps with men as readily as you sleep with women.”
“Are you insulting me, or making a pass? I can’t tell when you look at me like that,” Rys said.
“What do you think?”
“I just said what I think.”
Maeve frowned. “I thought that was a joke.”
“It was.”
Her frown deepened. “You’re not a very serious person, are you?”
“When there’s a need to be serious, I can be very serious,” he said. “I prefer to reserve it for when it’s absolutely necessary.”
That caused her to nod. “Yes, I can accept that. I don’t want to know what it feels like to be erased from existence by a hundred cubic feet of hellfire. In any case, I have powerful connections to Gorgria. Queen Faeris intervened to cut them off once she found out what I was doing in Avolar.”
Rys kept his expression neutral. “Do you know Princess Alaretta?”
“Given she never leaves the palace, nobody knows her.”
Odd. Rys had met her. In fact, given how readily Faeris had introduced her, Rys didn’t understand why Alaretta was considered so shy.
Or maybe that was because Faeris wanted to marry him. Not that he knew how serious she had been. Women didn’t usually offer both themselves and their daughter on their first meeting with a stranger.
“I see. I’ll be talking with Faeris shortly about future plans for dealing with the Malus League. Did you want to join us?” Rys asked.
Maeve stared at him, her icy eyes trying to dive into his mind. After a while, she shook her head.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Rys,” she said, before turning to face her forge and getting to work.
Perhaps that had been too on the nose.
He left, then headed to the war room. It had become his cabinet room lately, as he didn’t plan on war for some time.
The map table remained in place, but no figures stood on it. The Malus League was in lockdown, but Maliah took no aggressive actions. Without his pet demon lord, he couldn’t afford to pick a fight with other nations. And with his scheme to launder artifacts through Avolar defeated, the League was in economic turmoil.
Or at least, it should be.
Most of his cabinet assembled in the room. Mina, Fara, Grigor, Alsia, Vallis, Maria, and Tyrisa.
Although Tyrisa was less a member of cabinet and more a glorified secretary. Graem had a standing invitation, but unless the matter directly dealt with Maliah or mages, he preferred not to come. That suited Rys fine.
“Have we found out where the League is getting their money from yet?” he asked.
“Given we know they have teleportation, that’s easier said than done,” Mina said. “For all we know, they’re embedded in the Federation.”
“That sounds likely,” Alsia said. “There are many corrupt merchants and nobles who would not hesitate to work with them. If there was an easy way to surreptitiously work with the Malus League, they would use it.”
“Then we’ll assume that the League isn’t about to suffer economic collapse,” Rys said as he slipped into a chair.
A moment later, Mina sat in his lap. Her tails curled around him and she pressed her breasts against him.
Other than placing his hands on her plump thighs, he ignored her. She giggled at his touch.
“Are you certain that Grishaw will not reappear sooner than several years from now?” Alsia asked. She now had a slight tummy and rubbed it from time to time.
“A demon lord of his strength can take up to twenty years to reform in Hell,” Rys said. “I didn’t hit him anywhere near hard enough to put him away that long, but it will take some time. That means we can prepare. Plenty of time to destroy the Malus League before he returns.”
“Assuming we wish to,” Grigor said. “You deeply valued his secrecy. If he returned once you were stronger, could you not destroy him utterly and prevent him from telling Ariel?”
“Maybe. There’s also the risk of every other infernal he might bring with him tattling,” Rys said. “The larger problem is building an army large enough to defeat the League in only a few years. Maliah was far more powerful than I expected.”
“We would have slain him without Grishaw’s intervention,” Grigor declared.
“Maybe. But what trick will Maliah use next time? What if they attempt to pact with a different demon lord?” Rys said. “We stopped Grishaw, but what if they develop summoning circles for more demon lords?”
“How did they even learn about Grishaw?” Vallis asked. “Like, Margrim knew him, but I checked on a few demonology tomes from Tarmouth and found nothing on him. And how do you even summon somebody that powerful? Or learn about diablerie?”
“Elias,” Fara said. “Graem’s predecessor was a tremendously powerful infernalist. It sounded like Varian and Maliah were digging through Elias’s work and stumbled on Grishaw.”
“That’s my assumption, and Graem’s as well,” Rys said. “The risk is that Elias knows more, or that Varian finds Elias’s source.”
“Source?”
“A knowledge devil, presumably.” He shrugged. “From what I’ve read, a lot of magical advancement has come from knowledge devils. If a powerful mage summoned a capable knowledge devil and was good enough to not be tricked and feasted on by them, then they might learn enough to become genuinely dangerous.”
“Faeris will appreciate that,” Maria added. “She wants a deeper alliance to work against the League. In fact, she’s drumming up support for some form of archipelago-wide crusade against them.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Isn’t that ironic,” Vallis said with a smirk. “The great infernal general Talarys on the right side of a crusade.”
“There aren’t really a right and wrong sides of a crusade,” he said. “I’ll deal with Faeris later, when I talk to her. But I don’t have a good reason to oppose her right now. I imagine the politics might take months to work out, if not years.”
“If it were that easy, the League would have been destroyed decades ago,” Maria agreed.
Mina bounced up and down in his lap. “My turn, my turn.”
“Somebody’s excited,” Vallis said.
“That’s Rys. I can feel him against my ass,” Mina said.
He rolled his eyes. “What’s the situation in Avolar, Alsia?”
His fox spymaster pouted at him, but patiently waited for her turn to come.
Alsia stepped up instead. “Duke Terraph is dutifully working with me to calm down the dains and establish new elders. Despite their earlier worries, the Circle of Brethren has once again agreed to prematurely promote new Sages upon request.”
“By dutifully working with you, you mean…” Vallis trailed off.
“Hyrie is keeping him pliant and loyal,” Mina said. “Alsia might as well be the duchess of Avolar, given it’s mostly Kinadain.”
“That’s a problem,” Rys said. “Maria, I want you to be involved with the area. I imagine there must be plenty of non-Kinadain who lack representation. They might be an easy population to exploit for support.”
Both Alsia and Maria nodded. Tyrisa scribbled something down and gave them both notes, which caused the duchesses to glare at the knowledge devil. She glared back.
Vallis lounged in her chair, although her eyes focused on the fox doing the same in Rys’s lap.
“So, is this the part where you settle down, raise a family, and think about your future?” she joked.
“No, this is the part where I settle down, raise an army, and think about conquering the archipelago,” he said drily. “We’ve bought time to build up our strength. The other nations in the archipelago have decades of development on us, and sometimes investment from the continents.”
“Yeah, but we have the backing of a fossilized sorcerer warlord.”
“Thank you, Vallis.”
She winked at him.
“He’s a very big fossil,” Maria said.
Vallis looked pointedly at Grigor, who was in his human form but still towered over everyone in the room.
“I didn’t mean in that way.” Maria smiled lewdly and placed a hand under her bust.
For a moment, Vallis appeared about to say something very inappropriate. Then her face reddened and she thought better of it.
Mina caught onto it. “The succubi would eat you alive, Vallis.”
“How do you handle them? The Lilim are nice enough, but every time I’ve spoken to Hyrie she’s incorrigible,” Vallis said.
“That’s because she is incorrigible. Rys, why haven’t you put her into her place? The succubi whine endlessly about the fact you’re not fucking them.” Mina paused. “I mean, I’m not complaining that you’re ignoring them given…” She coughed.
Fara rolled her eyes. “We know you’re not sleeping with him, Mina. You’re not on the schedule yet.”
“You have a schedule for screwing Rys?” Vallis asked, incredulous.
“There are three of us. It’s difficult to organize things without one, especially now that Rys is far busier.”
Tyrisa’s jaw dropped. “I am so proud of you!”
“Yes, because we did it for you,” Maria muttered while Alsia glared at Tyrisa. The devil stuck her tongue out.
Vallis turned to Rys. “You let them organize sex with you?”
Rys rolled his eyes before picking Mina up. She squeaked and complained as he set her on the floor.
Then he walked over to Alsia and Maria and wrapped his arms around them. They happily allowed him to slip his fingers beneath their dresses. Their lips pressed against his neck.
The other women in the room stared at him, save for Fara who merely huffed and lowered her tails. Grigor pointedly ignored the display, drinking his dark ale and reading the meeting notes that Tyrisa has distributed earlier.
“I’m still the king, Vallis,” Rys said. “There’s a difference between allowing others to choose the nights they sleep with me, and preventing me from having sex with them at any time.”
He pulled his slick fingers free from his duchesses, then returned to his seat. This time, Vallis stood and tried to claim his lap. Mina still beat her to it.
“You’re like children,” Fara said. “Shoo.”
Fara shoved her niece off Rys’s lap, then sat down herself.
“Enough fighting,” he said, as the tails of the foxes began to cast arrays. “I’ve gotten sick of mediating the slap fights between Mina and Sarae.”
“They’re not slap fights,” Mina said. “I’m cementing my place as the superior sister.”
“For once, I agree with her,” Fara said. “It’s an important process.”
“My point is to return to the meeting,” Rys said flatly. “As I said earlier, we have time to prepare now. Gather more investment, train a proper army, find more seals to regain my true power, summon more infernals, and construct our own intelligence network. We found ourselves within a web of politics as we established ourselves.”
He looked pointedly between each of his cabinet members, and they met his gaze, one by one.
“Next time, I plan to seize the initiative. I will be the dominant power in the archipelago. The Kingdom of Kavolara with control the island, and eventually become the Tolaran Empire,” Rys declared. “Work toward that. Dismissed.”
His cabinet shuffled out with minimal infighting, although Maria reminded him of his talk with Faeris later in the day.
“I know,” he told her. “She’ll bitch at me about the castle in her territory and openly ask me to have sex with her.”
However, Mina and Fara didn’t leave. Rys gestured for them to walk with him to his atelier.
As they strode through the corridors of the palace, he cast an aural barrier around them. Mina did the same, just in case.
Countless servants busied themselves everywhere in the palace. Their numbers had nearly tripled recently, as Alsia had felt it important to hire representatives from Avolar—after careful vetting. The veteran servants from months ago oversaw the newbies.
Tsarri was one of the new hires, although she had a strange habit of being anywhere Rys was. As he and the foxes left the war room, she stood in a corner cleaning a bronze statue.
By the time they entered the outer courtyard, she was cleaning the outer rim of one of the fountains along the wall. Mina giggled at the wolfkin maid, especially as Tsarri was breathing heavily.
“I think she likes you,” Mina said.
“I found her rolling around on your bed the other day, breathing in your pillow,” Fara said, staring into the distance. “I saw her soul leave her body when I entered the room.”
“Ah, one of those sorts.” Rys stroked his chin. “She’s harmless.”
“That’s your response?” Fara asked.
“If she was a succubus, I’d do something about it. You’d be surprised at how many times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night, my hands tied, and a dozen succubi ready to take turns,” he said.
“Actually, I wouldn’t be,” she replied.
“Neither. I’ve been listening to the stories the succubi and Lilim tell. Did you actually do that five hundred succubi orgy?” Mina’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
“I neither confirm nor deny my presence that night,” Rys said.
Damn, it had been far too long since anybody had asked him about that particular birthday party. He had hit the big 100 at the time. Time sure flew.
“So, I assume this is about Aochi?” he asked them, changing the subject.
“Kind of.” Fara frowned. “The Garrote Clan finally contacted the village—they used a message canister, which means this is serious. They’re sending a representative to confirm and investigate what happened, and to explain the situation with Mina. Her name is Marin.”
“Do you know her?” he asked.
“She’s kind of infamous,” Mina said with a bitter smile. “Mostly because she’s a five-tailed fox who hasn’t worked an honest day in her life. She’s middle management in the command branch, but that is usually reserved for six-tailed foxes who have proved themselves.”
“So she’s a schmoozer.”
“She’s a slut,” Fara said. “She’d fit in well with the succubi.”
Ah. No wonder Marin was infamous. Someone who slept her way into a position of power was never well-regarded.
“Do you know anything about her otherwise?” he asked. “Her stance, whether she’s likely to be working with the Gold Clan?”
“She’s ambitious, and Nia has heard that Marin is currently associated with the enforcer branch,” Fara said. “With that said, I can’t see this as being good for her.”
“Why not?”
“Because nobody of value gets sent out to this shithole. Marin has pissed somebody powerful off in the clan and she’s being punished.” Fara smirked. “Couldn’t have happened to a better person.”
Given Marin had five tails, that meant she might be close to Fara in age. Fara was due to get her fifth tail very soon, after all. Perhaps Fara’s animosity was personal. Something for Rys to chew on.
“Change of topic: have you had any luck contacting Imira through Sarae?” Rys asked Mina.
“No. I’m not convinced that Sarae has even met Imira herself. Which makes sense. Imira is one of the most powerful people on Pharos, and Sarae is one of many agents.” Mina shrugged. “We might need to visit Pharos in person, or find another avenue.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we should keep an eye out. Something about the archipelago has drawn the interest of both the Gold Clan and Imira,” he said. “Keep an eye on your sister.”
“Oh, I will.”
The three of them stopped outside Rys’s atelier. He sensed others in there.
“I have company, so I’ll leave you here,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight, Fara.”
He leaned over, grabbed her by the hips, and drew her into a kiss. Her tails and arms wrapped around him, and it was a full minute before they came up for air. Another set of tails tickled his neck during the process.
Mina’s hot breath washed over his ear, and he felt her hands on his ass.
“Mina, not now,” Fara mumbled.
“You can’t just do this in front of me,” Mina whined.
“I can and will.” Fara pressed her lips against Rys again.
Afterward, he shooed the foxes away. Mina walked backward, staring at him with a red face that screamed her desire.
He held up his end of the deal, and hadn’t taken her yet. But she couldn’t make up her damn mind. His wolfkin maid wasn’t the only woman who rolled around in his bed smelling his pillows when he wasn’t there.
Stepping into his atelier, Rys was surprised to find both Graem and Orthrus together. While Graem visited this room often due to the collection of esoteric books and research that Rys gathered, Orthrus rarely left the sub-levels.
“What’s brought you two together?” Rys asked, closing the door.
“I am always fascinated by the progress of magic,” Orthrus said.
“And I am curious about what your advisor knows about the Labyrinth,” Graem said.
Ah, yes. “Advisor.” That was one way to describe Orthrus.
Rys took a seat and faced the pair.
“If you’re here, I actually had a question to ask,” Rys said. “What is your relation to Varian?”
“Ah. I had expected this to come up earlier.” The old man stroked his bushy white beard. “He’s my uncle.”
Rys blinked. “Your uncle?”
Given Graem looked like he had seen empires rise and fall, how old was Varian?
“Yes. He’s my father’s older brother, which is impressive given my father was a century old when he had me, and I’m just as old.” Graem gave Rys a craggy grin. “Do I look it?”
“Given Maliah is potentially older and looks twenty-five, that doesn’t mean much. Your body is damaged due to the enchantment process,” Rys said. “So Varian is at least 200 years old. Humans don’t live that long.”
“Correct. He’s not human.” Graem paused. “Allow me to tell you a story.”
“Make it brief. I’m not a fan of sob stories.”
“Good. If you were, you might have sided with Maliah,” the old man said. “I’m Graem Harpersmith, and my uncle is Varian Harpersmith. We belong to a noble and prestigious family of mages from Shropham. You know it?”
“I know of it. But you know that I’m a little long in the tooth. What’s the modern status of Shropham?” Rys asked.
“If Ahm is the magic capital of Gauron, Shropham is its shady brother dealing dodgy magical artifacts in back alleys,” Graem said. “Varian was a black mark on my family’s history. He and four friends researched deeply forbidden magic and angered almost everyone on the continent. The mage towers, the Inquisition, kings, merchant empires, Malataine’s paladins, and even one of Azrael’s agents got involved.”
Agents? Rys had thought that the angels had vanished, so that must have been something else.
“In any case, my family had a black mark. When I was undertaking a research project as a magister, I found some of Varian’s notes in the family library. I used them to overshadow everyone else in my annual demonstration of my research, in the hopes of becoming an archmagister and getting my own tower,” Graem explained. “It was a trap.”
Rys raised an eyebrow. Orthrus hovered closer, his interest now piqued.
“My grand magister had planted the notes. Other mages believed that if I used anything that belonged to my uncle without telling others, then I would eventually go down the same path. They arrested me and attempted to execute me.” Graem’s face twisted in disgust. “I escaped, as you can imagine.”
“Such folly,” Orthrus said. “I had hoped for better from the human researchers of today. A true pity.”
He sounded genuinely disappointed at this twist in Graem’s story. Perhaps Orthrus was capable of feeling emotion.
“I’ll spare you the details of my escape, but I eventually found one of Elias’s contacts. Elias was one of Varian’s four friends who caused the controversy. He helped me escape here. I’d say the rest is history, but…” Graem ran a hand over his craggy face. “I met Maliah, who had already founded the Malus League.”
“What’s his story?”
“Much simpler. Maliah has a history with the wunderkind, Taren Hand,” the old man explained.
Hand. Rys remembered the name.
“The Grand Magister of the Tower of Stars. He banished the demon prince Belrauth not that long ago,” he said. “Isn’t he the greatest mage alive right now?”
“Yes,” Graem said. “And he and Maliah apprenticed together.”
Rys stared at Graem. “Don’t tell me this all starts due to an inferiority complex?”
“It’s more complicated, but yes. Gauron… is deeply corrupt. Maliah comes from one of the poorest regions of Gauron, Staropol, which is run by the Inquisition. Hand is the heir to an ancient family of mages that dates back to the Golden Age.” Graem smiled. “Maliah once told me the story of when Hand summoned his familiar, the legendary earth elemental Gnome.”
That sounded interesting, and Rys made a note to investigate this legendary elemental he knew nothing about.
“We’re getting sidetracked. So, Maliah has problems with the structure of the tower?” Rys asked.
“More or less. In order to catch up with his wealthier peers, he began to research forbidden magic. Ahm has zero tolerance for it and he was exiled from the towers. He caused some trouble, but left for the archipelago shortly after. Here, he found Elias and Varian.”
“But not the other three friends?” Rys asked.
“No… Neither Varian nor Elias told me what happened to any of them. I only know of them because of their history on Gauron. I assume they died.” Graem shrugged. “In any case, I found Maliah when I arrived. His silver tongue worked well on me. I was furious at my treatment by the mage towers, and he easily convinced me to study with him, and to become his… experiment.”
Rys had been right to assume that Maliah and Graem were connected. Their magic was too similar, and both had been subjects of human enchantment.
He hadn’t expected that Maliah had done the enchantment to both men, however.
“He did this to you, and you still stayed in the League?” Rys asked.
“I did ask him to.” Graem laughed bitterly. “Afterward, I was introduced to my uncle. You see, Varian is the same as Maliah and me. Maliah pursued human enchantment in order to become immortal, just like Varian. Because my uncle has a body with magical power so far beyond ours that he makes us look like humans, and normal humans like ants.”
“If he’s so powerful, why didn’t he show himself?” Rys asked. “He could have won the battle himself, from the sounds of it.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met him outside of a mage tower, although he moves from place to place. I imagine he loves building new ones, given the League often reclaims the ones he leaves behind. Both Hellfel Tower and Harpers Point are his creations,” Graem explained. “The last I heard of him was when Elias died, when he swore vengeance on Queen Faeris, but he went dark afterward.”
“And you assumed that meant he vanished, despite swearing vengeance?” Rys asked.
“Your tone suggests that you think I’m a little senile.”
“Given he’s spent years working on a way to summon a demon lord to fulfill his vengeance plot, I think I’m allowed to.”
Graem rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “True. Perhaps I just wanted him to go away. In any case, that’s who he is. An itinerant mage of immense knowledge, history, and power who mastered human enchantment. Like with Taren Hand, Maliah is chasing after him. The difference is that Maliah can sympathize with Varian.”
That explained why Maliah was so interested in Rys. As far as the archwarlock was concerned, Rys was another mage who had been chased away from Gauron. Maliah had a flock, and it was all mages who had been exiled by Gauron’s mages.
“It would seem you have a true foe then,” Orthrus suddenly said, turning on Rys. “You’ve been distracted recently. Perhaps it might be time to focus on the seals once more to regain your power?”
“I’ve never stopped thinking about them, Orthrus,” Rys said. “We’ll need to head to other islands, won’t we?”
“Indeed. We must go west. To Dalyros, Kinaria, and beyond,” Orthrus said.
In order to regain his power, Rys needed to continue his conquests.
Fortunately, he planned to do that anyway. Time was on his side, as it always had been.