There were no kings in the southern jungles, but Lord Admiral Yumi Trafammer was as close as it got. He had an army, an estate tucked away in the mountains, and a fleet that demanded taxes. Yumi couldn’t influence Bayreach, but he could strangle the jungle around it. He could strangle the ocean. They called him a tyrant and the Piranha of the South Seas.
Dvini hated his guts, and it took a lot to make him hate.
If Yumi was king, then Dvini was the duke, and the only reason he wasn’t squashed under Yumi’s boots was because of how close he stayed to Bayreach. Now that he was expanding, Yumi was a problem again. Dvini was flanked on either side by a pair of swashbuckling guards who walked with misplaced arrogance and chattered to themselves.
Yumi’s palace was constructed out of wood and clay, an ugly thing with more than two dozen rooms and a wide tropical garden. They walked past curved palm trees and squat slaves toiling away at the soil. They glanced up at Dvini as he passed, fear in their eyes. They weren’t his, but they’d heard their own stories about the Licani slaver who cut his competition to ribbons. Dvini didn’t pay attention to them.