Page 1475

‘I see,’ said Rezamaar. ‘And are you a king, too?’

Damian paused at that. “No, but perhaps I should be. I’ve never had a kingdom before, but that was the whole point to all this, wasn’t it? Because now I do!”

Feromas sighed. ‘Please don’t encourage him.’

‘But it’s so much fun,’ said Reza, laughing. ‘I would’ve thought that by now, you’d just roll with it like I am.’

‘Believe me, sometimes I wish I could,’ said Feromas.

“The King of the Humans!” said Damian. “That’s who I’ll be!”

‘That name doesn’t suit you in the slightest,’ said Feromas.

“The Trouble Master! The Builder of Bridges! Aha! That’s me!”

This old guy might have been even crazier than he had realized, Cisco felt.

Dunstan decided to speak up now. “Are you talking about Dozer and Morgunov, Grandpa?”

Cisco blinked, not having made that connection but suddenly seeing how it could make a certain degree of sense out of Damian’s ravings.

“Those two clods? Nah. They’re always a step or two behind. Though, yeah, it definitely would’ve been annoying if they found out I was still alive, too.”

Cisco observed Dunstan’s disappointed face. That had almost been clever. Cisco would’ve believed it.

“Well, anyway,” said Dunstan, “isn’t it about time you explained why the hell you’ve gone so far out of your way to gather us all together like this?”

“It’s a team building exercise!” said Damian. “I thought that would be obvious by now, given the jackets!”

Dunstan eyed his own again. “Yeah, but to what end? Why do you want us to be a team so badly? Hell, I still don’t know how you were even able to find me the way you did.”

“Heh, I have my ways,” said Damian.

‘And by “ways,” he means “associates who can handle all the hard stuff for him,”’ said Feromas.

“Hey, don’t give away my ways!”

Feromas ignored him. ‘Dunstan, the goal here is simple. We’re building a fourth servant empire.’

“No, a kingdom! Not an empire! Weren’t you listening?! I’m a king, not an emperor!”

‘Whatever.’

“You want to build an organization that can take on the Vanguard?” said Dunstan, almost laughing. “That’s great and all, but I think we might need a few thousand more servants on our side.”

“Silly Dunstan. It’s about quality, not quantity. Like my wife here. Sure, I could have like ten more, but even all put together, they wouldn’t be as good as her!”

Cisco and everyone else looked to Grandma, who oddly enough, did swoon a little bit as Damian kissed her on the cheek.

Well. Alright, then.

Cisco supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. While it was true that she’d been acting normally enough up until now, she had been married to this lunatic for a very long time, presumably. She probably wasn’t a normal person at all, servant or not.

And the same could likely be said of all of these Rofals, Cisco figured.