RAKEL
I awake alone.
Someone has put me to bed, bandaged a deep cut on my upper arm, and changed me into a fresh nightgown. It’s an unnerving thought, until I notice the lingering scent of violets on my blanket. It says enough about who saw to me after I collapsed – Luz.
Huh. Reunited with my long-lost mother and she doesn’t even tend my wounds when I’m hurt. Can’t say I’m surprised. Guess letters were Yaita’s limit after all.
I sit up and the room swims. Everything in it looks soft, the edges blurred as they were after I healed Nisai, only more so. I press the heels of my hands to my temples as flashes of the ceremony return to me. Smoke. Shadow swirling, burning into me like acid. The terrible feeling of the floor heaving beneath my feet. The chasm that tore open near the great altar. The look of pain and horror on Ash’s face. Devouring darkness. Everywhere black. Then nothing.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, then wish I hadn’t moved so quickly. Forcing myself to breathe deeply, I find some steadiness. When the dizzy feeling subsides, I stand and cross the room to the silver mirror.
There’s a graze on my forehead from where it must have hit the temple floor. Is that why my vision is blurred? I gently press a finger around the edge and give it an experimental sniff. The scrape isn’t deep, but I’m grateful Luz still cleaned it with honeywine and sealed it with olive oil to keep it from festering.
I lean closer to my reflection. My eyes. Maybe I should have expected it, given how Sephine’s were entirely dark. But it’s still unnerving to see the tiny webs of blood vessels have turned black.
If this is how the ceremony left me, what about Ash?
Did it work? Is he all right?
I’ve got to find him. But the headache pounding through my skull, like nothing I’ve ever experienced, says otherwise. I lay down on the bed, intending only to rest my eyes for a few moments, only to startle awake when Kip raps on the open door. I have no idea how long I drifted.
“You’re back with us,” she says, a note of surprise in her usually deadpan manner. “Good.”
“How’s Ash?”
“Shield was here last night, checking on you.”
For a moment I think she’s making some obscure comment about herself, but then I remember she’s never once called herself by that title, even when she was officially serving as Ash’s stand-in. A Ranger is for life.
“He left something for you.” She reaches into her leather vest, pulls out a small, folded packet and passes it to me. “Can you walk? There’s a meeting. The Emperor-elect wants you there.”
I tuck the packet into my satchel. I’m desperate to see what it contains. But I also know that if it’s from Ash, I want to read it alone, not with Kip looming impatiently over me.
“Give me a moment,” I say.
“Don’t keep the Emperor-elect waiting.”
“I’m not going anywhere without my boots. Not even for a Prince.”
“Emperor-elect.”
I wave that away. “‘Prince’ rolls off the tongue easier.”
Her flat stare ends in a shrug that says: “it’s your nose you’re risking”.
As we start off down the hall, something crunches beneath my feet. Sherds of stone and mortar litter our path, more on the left than right. I’d thought my uneven gait was an injury or stiffness. But it’s not me. The floor itself now tilts.
In the quarters the high priestess had granted Nisai, we find Barden. There’s only a couple of candles lit, so he’s not much more than an outline, his head bent over some documents. Strange. He was always better with his words than me – all palace guards are expected to read and write just in case – but what’s caught his interest in the Prince’s documents?
No doubt something that he hopes will help him climb further up the imperial ladder.
I clear my throat.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Barden blurts as he jerks back, looking as sheepish as when we were kids thieving oranges from Old Man Kelruk’s grove. Now, the grove makes me think of Ash.
“Where is he?” I ask.
Barden scowls. He knows I’m not talking about the Prince. “I don’t know. Kip just said he’d made himself scarce after visiting you. Can’t say I’m sorry.” At his last words he looks painfully uncomfortable, like he’s gone too far. “I mean, I’m sorry for you. I know you cared for him.”
“Care,” I snap. None of this is Barden’s fault, but right now his sympathy is about as soothing as vinegar fumes.
“Sorry?”
“Present tense. I care for him deeply.”
Barden nods, solemn, and gets to his feet, crossing the floor to meet me. He murmurs, soft enough so it’s only the two of us who can hear: “Sometimes we have to let those we love find their own way.”
I want to rage at him, tell him he can keep his stale-smelling advice. But I know exactly what he’s talking about. Back in Aphorai, he had to let me go. To let me find my own way. Maybe if he pushed harder, I would have caved in and married him like he always said he’d wanted. Maybe I’d be living a different life now if I’d said yes. A quiet life, the wife of a guard on the Aphorain Eraz’s estate. I thought I’d find that suffocating. But maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe it would have been nice. Pleasant. Safe.
I might have been wrong about what it would be like to have been Barden’s wife.
What I wasn’t wrong about is that I needed to decide for myself.
As does Ash. I pushed him. And look where it got us. If he needs some space to gather himself after what happened, I have to accept that.
I’m about to concede Barden’s right when I catch a whiff of violets. I spin to find Zakkurus has approached on silent feet. They wear a tailored robe of night-sky blue, creating sharp angles at the shoulders before tapering in and angling out again at the waist. A row of embroidered flowers – I squint and barely make out irises – decorate hem and cuffs, the silver thread gleaming in the torchlight. A silver band holds back midnight hair, and their deep blue eyes are made up with rur ink.
For once, their expression carries no hint of mockery or amusement. “Come. The Eraz’s chariot has arrived. I cannot afford not to be there when they start.”
“The meeting?”
“The war council.”
The only city walls unbreached during the Shadow Wars.
When I was young and still small enough for Father to carry me on his shoulders, that’s what he’d say every time we entered Aphorai City. It didn’t matter which gate we used or what we’d been talking about until then. He’d still stop, gaze up at the height and breadth of the defenses, the archer’s slits from which more swallows than arrows had launched over the centuries, and remark in admiration: the only city walls unbreached during the Shadow Wars.
Now, looking down from the second highest of the temple terraces, it’s undeniable that the impossible has happened. A great, gaping wound runs through Aphorai City from the stepped pyramid to the eighth gate, the one that leads most directly to the river and on to Ekasya. The gate itself is in splinters, as if some huge creature took hold of each side and tore it in two as easily as a child tears a leaf. Along the path of destruction, piles of rubble have replaced buildings, palms and rock-figs that once lined broad avenues have toppled, their roots bare to the sky.
This part of the temple, where Sephine first had me summonsed after the perfume trials, seems relatively unscathed. The palms have fared better in their planters than those in the streets below, and Sephine’s garden beds are untouched. The fountain remains intact, though no water bubbles from the sculpted dahkai flower spout.
Over in the pavilion, several figures are silhouetted behind gauzy purple silk that billows in the breeze. Temple guards have formed up at a respectable distance. Zakkurus leads us past them, then motions for us to sit beside the fountain. Nisai may want us here, but even recent events haven’t erased the fact that his family is one of the most powerful in the Empire. Guess it takes more than a huge groundshake to upend centuries of rules and manners.
Still, I’ve got a good enough view to pick out who’s who. Nisai sits across from his mother, Shari. She wears a deep purple robe. A golden torque at her collarbone drips with the rubies of Aphorai and the amethyst of the imperial family. Her cousin, Malmud, Eraz of Aphorai, sits diagonally opposite, still formidable with his bull neck and shoulders and black, braided beard. A woman I don’t know sits on the other side of Shari, clearly aristocratic from her fine, sky blue silk robe and the shimmering pearls pinned in an elaborate crown of gold hair.
Between light gusts of the breeze, the mix of luscious, aristocratic perfumes mingle with the amber oil of the Eraz’s guard. I realize I’ve grown so used to being around Kip, Nisai and the others that my nose has stopped noticing their presence unless I deliberately single them out in my mind. But today, there’s two conspicuous absences.
And Yaita.
Zakkurus approaches the nobles, dipping into a graceful bow. “My condolences, your Highness. I feel the loss deeply.”
Nisai gazes out over the city, then up to the partially collapsed top tier of the temple above us. No offerings will be made from there anytime soon.
“I worry for the people. They will be afraid, and fearful people will seek solace in prayer. If they cannot make their entreaties…” He looks to the Eraz. “Have you managed to assess the extent of the damage, Uncle?”
“Enough to know that Aphorai City will take turns to recover.”
“As will the families who lost loved ones during the upheaval. Are they being assisted?”
“My people are already on the ground lending direct aid.”
Nisai nods approval. “And the wall?”
The Eraz folds his hands over his sizeable paunch. “We might be able to build temporary defenses around the breach. But my engineers warn that overall structural integrity may have been compromised. Essentially, our fair city is wounded. It would only take a half-competent commander to finish her off. Your brother is more than that, and our scouts say we’ll soon see their dust on the horizon. I’m sorry, my boy, my promise of protection to you is once again smoke on the wind.”
“No, Uncle. You did everything within your power to keep me safe. Even the most secular thinker cannot deny the possibility of a link between my former Shield’s reckless attempt to defy the Lost God’s curse and the destruction wreaked upon our city.”
I wince. Both at Ash’s loss of position and at my role in what came next.
“I believe,” Nisai continues, “this was an act of the gods.”
“The Primordial, rather,” Zakkurus mutters, covering the outburst by pouring cups of kormak with a showy flourish.
Shari takes a cup but doesn’t drink. “I’ve sent word to my Losian counterpart so she knows to expect us.”
Nisai frowns. “You’re suggesting I leave Aphorai? My ancestral home? And go further from the capital? Mother, what happens when I run out of places to flee?”
“I’ll admit Daprul hasn’t always been the most forthcoming with her thoughts on the Council. But I trust her. As the last province capable of standing in defiance of your brother’s so-called Regency, Los is the safest place for you now.”
Malmud throws back his kormak, swallowing with a grimace. “And if we can bring the Losian army to our side, we may have some chance in standing against your brother’s forces.”
Zakkurus nods agreement. “Moreover, my Prince, several of the Losian Five Families are indebted to us – their appetites for our perfumes have long exceeded their fortunes. If the need eventuates, we could leverage that debt to conscript their household guards.”
“Tell me you’re not suggesting a full-scale war,” the Prince says, looking between them.
Nobody replies.
Nisai pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and rises to his feet. Taking up his crutches, he paces out to the low wall overlooking the city. Barden follows, a look of genuine concern on his features as he gives the Prince’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. They exchange a few murmured words and Nisai’s back straightens. Barden may not have the wits of the likes of Ami or Esarik, but seems he knows how to get through to the Prince.
Nisai returns to the pavilion. “I’ll do it. On one condition. We’re not going to Lostras to recruit the army for a battle. We’re going to recruit an army to show we’re serious, to give us leverage to have a genuine parley. While I cannot abide Zostar and his activities, I cannot believe Iddo would drive us all into all-out war if there was any room for compromise.”
“He’s a good boy, really,” the blonde woman pipes up. “If we could…”
Shari takes the woman’s hand. “We’ll do whatever we can to find a humane solution, Galen.”
Is this Iddo’s mother? Romantics have relished gossiping about the love story between the two Council members. Now, it seems tragic. How Galen’s loyalties must be torn.
“Of course we’ll work towards a compromise,” the Prince continues. “But I must speak with my brother on equal terms. I have to give him a reason to listen to me; I cannot do that when he has an army at his back and I do not. So yes, Mother, I will visit Daprul and the Losian Eraz.”
“Commander, not Eraz,” Kip rumbles.
Zakkurus shoots her a sharp look.
“Sorry?” Nisai asks.
“Er, forgive me, Your Highness. You’ll need to have the Province Army Commander onside. The Eraz can’t do squat without him.”
The Prince looks to his mother.
“I expect she is correct,” Shari concedes. “Whenever the Council had to review any decree or make a major change, Daprul would always consult with the Commander as well as the Eraz. Though it was naturally never remarked upon, I’ve always had the impression that the former’s word carried more weight than the latter.”
Kip shrugs. “It’s the way we do things. You’ll see when you get there, Your Highness. But go to the Commander before the Eraz, otherwise it will be an insult.”
“I’m sure you’ll not let me put a foot wrong.”
Kip looks slightly ill, her gaze going to the edge of the wall. I don’t know if it’s because she’s going to bring up her breakfast, or if she’s looking for an escape route. Why isn’t she happy about returning home?
“Is there something amiss?” Nisai prods.
“No, Your Highness,” she says, swallowing hard.
He regards her seriously. “I’ll admit there is a risk the Losians might see me as a bargaining chip to curry favour with my brother. Do you think that a likely scenario?”
“I couldn’t say, But I’ll do all I can to steer you true.” The last is said with a thump of her fist to her chest in salute.
Malmud rises to his feet. “I’ll notify my stewards. We must leave immediately if we’re going to make it to the river before the enemy cuts off access.” He gives Nisai a hearty embrace and heads for the stairwell.
When he’s gone, Zakkurus clears their throat. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but what if you cannot talk sense into your brother? Should we not be planning for every eventuality?”
“We are. Ami and Barden will be sourcing the ancient weapon against the Children of Doskai, in case Zostar has worked out how to harness their power.”
Zakkurus blinks, momentarily stunned. “You figured it out?”
Nisai smiles ruefully. “We deduced where the knowledge could be found. It seems there was more distribution of power from the time of the Founding Accord than even I knew. Another check and balance, though this one unofficial.”
His mother nods. “Each member of the Council of Five inherits the location of their Province’s sacred cache, passed through the generations and kept secret until the unfortunate day when it may once again be needed.”
“So,” Nisai continues. “We know where the Aphorain cache is. With my brother’s superior army on the march, we can’t afford to divert our own forces, so we’ll send a scouting party to determine what is there. Barden will be my representative, and Ami will accompany them in case there’s any relic or record to decipher. My mother will accompany me to Lostras, to meet with the Losian imperial wife. I would hope Daprul will see it is in all our interests to reveal the location of Losian cache. Presumably the more we have of this weapon, the better.”
Zakkurus holds up a hand. “I’ll take care of the logistics for your journey, my Prince. Please, go see to any preparations you wish to make before we depart forthwith.”
The nobles file away, flanked by the temple guards, Kip a step behind Nisai.
Zakkurus returns to Barden and me, perching on the edge of the now-still fountain. They explain everything that happened in the temple. Yaita brought me back from the brink of death, channelling the unleashed shadow magic to herself. She’s been unconscious ever since. She seems to be in a stable condition, but nobody knows if that condition will ever improve. Or if she’ll ever wake.
When Zakkurus has finished talking, I look out over the city, pensive. “I never thought these walls could be brought down. And now… Just when we need them most.”
The walls. Yaita. I feel awful about what happened to both, but I can’t see how the groundshake was anything but a random natural event. Unfortunate, but random.
Zakkurus scans the trail of wreckage through the city, blue eyes strangely intent. “We’ll one day find our salvation in Asmudtagian destruction.”
“Sorry?”
“Just something Sephine used to say in the aftermath of a tremor.”
“Typical Sephine riddles,” I scoff.
“Possibly.”
“Though one thing I did believe as a child has come true.”
“Oh?”
“That I’m the likely to be the cause of my mother’s death.”
“Come now, a little melodramatic even for you, no? Do you truly believe that?”
I don’t answer.
“Let me come at it from a different angle, then. If you’d known she might get hurt, would you still have taken the chance?”
I can’t bring myself to say it. Because yes. The answer is yes. I would do anything for Ash. Something about the thought catches me off guard. It’s terrifying, in a way. I never before imagined feeling such … devotion.
I remember the packet Kip gave me earlier.
I take it out and open it. Ash’s prayer braid falls to the ground.
Zakkurus blinks mildly. Barden clears his throat and looks away.
I cannot escape the notion that our actions not only failed, but that to meddle with such forces also angered the gods – I will not be party to such destruction. By the time you read this I expect I’ll have long left the city. I wish it weren’t so, but this is the way I can best show my love for you – setting you free of me and my curse. I didn’t want to see it, but it’s clear now that I am more danger than protector to those I love. It’s inevitable I will cause harm wherever I go, but from now, it will only be to those who deserve it. I’ve accepted there is no other way I can live my life. I hope you will one day come to understand. Until then, know the only good part of me – my love for you – remains at your side.
– Ash
The wooziness returns in a crashing wave.
A note? That’s all he’s left me with? After everything we’ve been through?
I risked my life for him. I thought we were a team. Guess I thought wrong. Seems being a martyr is now more important to Ash than working together on a solution. Maybe it always was, and I just didn’t want to see it.
Wordless, I cross to the edge of the temple platform and sit on the edge. Down in the city, it’s a hive of activity. But it’s different to when we were preparing for a siege. Carts, camels, litters or on foot, people are streaming into the desert like sand in a timeglass.
I look down to the note again.
Notes. Letters. Things people send you when they think they’ve got more noble things to do with their life than being in yours.
Where is my life, now? At Father’s? Cowering and hoping Zostar’s army doesn’t loot and pillage down to the very last village?
No.
I’ve got important things to do, too.
I turn back to Zakkurus. “What will happen to Yaita?”
They give a languid shrug.
“Take care of her? Take her to Lostras with you. I’m going with Barden and Ami. I’m going to find this weapon.”
“Rather valiant of you, petal.”
“I’m sick of being a game piece.”
They give me a knowing smile. “Ah, you’d like to be a player.”
“Stenches, no. I want the game to be over so I can go make a life for myself. The way I want it.”
I hold Ash’s note high, out over the edge of the platform. The breeze sends it rippling and flapping.
I take one last look and let it go.