Surely Lucian hadn’t heard right.
“Excuse me?” He stepped up beside Vespir. Camilla and Petros exchanged glances, and then Camilla placed her hands together as if in prayer. She gave the most insultingly brief shrug.
“There was a skirmish on the edges of the peninsula—a dracomachia. Unfortunately, such behavior falls outside of the acceptable range of competitor combat. As a result, the Race is off. There will be no victory and no penalty.” With that, the priestess gestured to the landing strip, the black-liveried guard waiting in a perfect line. “Welcome to Dragonspire. Rest well, for tomorrow is the final challenge. You will be taken to your quarters—”
“No.” Lucian felt as he used to when presented with an enemy’s surprise charge. Tamping that emotion down, he took a deep breath. He would not let himself be that person, but this…was wrong. “The rules never said anything about dracomachia. Vespir and Karina weren’t even involved.”
“It’s simply impossible to ascertain who would truly have won under these circumstances,” Petros replied. His whining tone was like a needle inserted directly into Lucian’s ear.
“Meaning what?” Vespir raised her head. Her voice was rough. “Karina and I couldn’t have won normally?”
“It’s impossible to know,” the priest said.
Lucian glanced at the others. Emilia hung back, looking paler than usual; perhaps the long flight had done her in. She was rubbing circles at her temples. Hyperia appeared absolutely livid, and Ajax bristled.
“Didn’t you see?” he barked, pointing at Vespir. “She got that tiny-ass dragon to go faster than a bull Hydra! Who does that?”
“Our rules are sacrosanct,” Camilla said.
“Your rules are dragon shit,” Lucian seethed. Beside him, Vespir seemed to lose the will to fight. She gazed at her feet and muttered something he could not catch.
Hyperia shifted through their small knot of a group, her passage as smooth and golden as she. The Volscia girl looked the priests in the eye.
“Vespir won this challenge with as much honor and ingenuity as I have ever seen.” Lucian imagined her voice as an ice-encrusted diamond. “Give her the victory.”
“My lady.” Camilla sighed. “Your every word is redolent with command, but you are not an empress yet. There is much difference between a truly accomplished dragon rider and a handler’s tricks. I assure you, this is far less impressive than you may think.”
Vespir flinched as if she’d been slapped. Lucian’s temper frayed to the breaking point.
“You were never going to give it to her. Were you?” he snarled. “From the moment she arrived at the island, you’d already decided her fate!” The old him wanted nothing so much as to grab Petros by his shirtfront and shake some damn sense into him.
Vespir’s hand on his arm stilled him. Instantly, Lucian turned his head and quelled that hideous voice. How could he bring peace to the empire when he couldn’t be peaceful at the slightest provocation?
“Thank you,” Vespir said to the priests. “I always knew this Trial wasn’t fair. At least now you’re being open about it.”
Camilla smirked.
“Rest, and we’ll dine at eight. Do enjoy the palace grounds. Come this time tomorrow, four of you will no longer be able to.” With that, and a swirl of her robes, she glided toward the entranceway with Petros at her side.
The five were left surrounded by the armed guards, whose presence suddenly felt less than welcoming.
Lucian shook his head. “The Dragon saw what you really did.”
“The Dragon doesn’t care about people like me,” Vespir grunted. One by one, the competitors’ dragons were led off by an organized flurry of handlers, taken to the aerie at the very tip of the platform. The imperial guard would escort each of the competitors to their rooms. Hyperia turned back to Vespir, pursing her extraordinary mouth.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, before striding away.
“The five of us should have a drink or something after dinner,” Ajax suggested as they entered the palace.
The ceiling soared twenty feet overhead, tiled in gold. Jewels winked in decorative swirls upon the walls, creating mosaics of the five Houses’ dragons. Wyverns studded with rubies and Drakes dense with sapphires glistened as they passed. Golden statues of long-dead emperors and empresses saluted them from recessed alcoves. The marble floor echoed with their footsteps.
Ajax spun, taking it all in. “Just the competitors. If this is the last night of my life, I don’t want to spend it with those priest clowns.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Emilia groaned, peeling off from the rest when one of the soldiers asked her to follow. She waved goodbye but seemed distracted. Lucian frowned as he followed her with his eyes.
“See you later,” Vespir muttered, and soon she and Ajax had left Lucian with the captain of the guard.
The fellow wore plated ebony armor with the silver imperial seal on the chest: five dragon heads radiating outward, like a five-pointed star. His helm had two great, stylized horns of obsidian curling around it.
“Which way to my room?” Lucian asked, then gasped as the guard removed his helmet.
The captain grinned, a familiar smile in a wonderfully familiar face.
“Rufus?” Lucian cried.
“Hey, one captain to another now.” Rufus clasped forearms with Lucian. “Though, last I heard, you were giving all that up to weed gardens for the Sacred Brothers.”
“Something like that.” Lucian grinned.
Rufus was a Karthagon boy from the deep desert territories, conscripted into the army when he was barely twelve years old. The two had met in the snowy terrain of the northern expansion. Soon after Lucian’s first battle on dragonback, he’d left the luxury of his family tents and the officers’ mess to rough it with the foot soldiers. That’s where he’d met Rufus, when the boy had been awed by Tyche and Lucian had encouraged him to pet her. Where they’d trained together, pushed each other to better things, made fun of each other for their bumbling attempts to talk to girls.
Rufus had started off scrawny, Ajax’s height. Now, he was nearly six feet, broad-shouldered. His smooth, dark skin had lost its adolescent roughness. The snapping light in his eyes, though, was still him entirely.
“When did you get this job?” Lucian slapped his friend on the shoulder. “I thought you were transferring to a division on the Masarian frontlines, closer to home.” It had been over two years since they’d parted. Lucian had been sorry to lose a friendly face.
“Your father put in a good word for me at the top. I transferred to the corps here, and then right after the emperor started getting sick…” He lowered his voice. “The old captain of the guard just offered his resignation and left overnight. Next thing I knew, I was promoted.”
“At least one of us fulfilled his potential,” Lucian said, trying to smile. Rufus lost his own grin.
“I don’t know how in the depths you got into this Trial, but may the bright stars guide you to the throne,” he said.
In Karthago, they had worshipped the stars long before the dragon riders arrived. Karthagons believed that the stars were their ancestors, every one reborn as a god in the sky. Gaius Sabel, due to his wife Ayzebel’s influence, had allowed the people to keep their religious customs so long as they did not flaunt them. Generous, most people called it. Basic decency was Lucian’s opinion.
A ruler should accept all his people, not a special class of them.
But after the Race, Lucian felt like the Trial was simply dragging all five of them along, up to the edge of a cliff and then over it. Justice didn’t exist here. Only power.
Rufus had once told him “there is power in the stars, and in the hearts they govern.” An old saying from an older Karthago. Lucian had smiled bitterly at the idea that there could be anything graceful or loving in power.
This was not something to tell Rufus. There’d been so many things Lucian had never told him, for the sake of the other boy’s happiness.
So Lucian clapped his brother-in-arms on the shoulder.
“Pray for me,” he said, “and the stars will do the rest.”
Dinner had been a silent affair, everyone scraping their plates and eyeing the priests at either end of the long table. The dining hall was a long, echoing chamber with wooden walls and the shields of each of the five families on proud display. The table, twenty feet of polished mahogany, had been set with crystal and linen, decanters of gold, the plateware pewter with heavy cutlery of the princeliest silver. The roast boar and flamingo tongues had been exquisite, but no one had eaten very much. Lucian had had to make do with bread and figs. When the meal was done, the five trooped out in formation to find a parlor far away from the sour-faced priests.
They found one, a room with tall windows facing the east. The river was a bend of silver in the moonlight, and the whole of Dragonspire was lit with twinkling lights. Fireworks erupted in the distance, blossoming red and green in the sky. The people were celebrating their new soon-to-be emperor.
Emilia sat on a low silken couch. Lucian placed himself next to her. Vespir perched cross-legged on a chaise opposite, and Hyperia took her customary golden place at the head. Ajax whistled at a servant; a whole line of them in imperial black waited at the corners of the room, perched liked trained ravens.
“Wine,” Ajax said. Then, “A lot.”
So they all drank together.
Wine from the imperial vineyards was very good and strong. It had only taken a single cup to soften everyone’s hard edges. Two or three cups to relax them.
Now, after four cups, Lucian felt almost happy.
Hyperia slowly put a hand through her magnificent hair. She had to move slowly so she didn’t wobble; whenever she spoke, she spoke very clearly, as if proving that she was in no way drunk. The trouble was she’d say things like, “If I die, and you die, and we all die, then no one else will die. Correct?” and look around for confirmation.
“We should get some food,” Emilia groaned. She rested her head against Lucian’s shoulder. Her hair smelled nice.
“Y’know, I was jus’ thinking the same thing, about everyone dying.” Vespir smacked her lips, turned to Hyperia. “If we all get Cut, would that mean no one’s emperor?” She chuckled. “That’d be funny.”
“No, it’d be civil war.” Emilia tried pouring some more wine and sloshed it. “That happened in the pre-empire days, you know? They used to have civil wars all the time. You could, er, schedule them, they were so regular.” She gave a tiny belch. Lucian privately thought it was adorable, but he didn’t say anything.
“I want a civil war!” Ajax climbed to his feet. “Can you imagine everyone on dragons just, I don’t know, dragon-ing?” He sat next to Vespir with a triumphant smile. “I would win.”
Vespir snorted into her cup. “No. No. You’d go down first.” She wiped her mouth, giggling as she roughly elbowed Ajax. “Didn’t you learn anything from this afternoon? Your dragon is so dumb,” she hissed, then clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes bulging. Incensed, Ajax looked like he was trying to puff himself up. Like a puff adder, Lucian thought. Or a puff fish. Something small that puffs.
“Dog is not dumb! He’s…crafty.”
Everybody looked at him askance.
“I’m sorry. I love dragons!” Vespir waved her hands, apologetic. “I’m a friend to all dragons. Dragons are my people. I like dragons better than anyone else.” She placed her hands over her chest, looking sincere. Then she snorted. “But your dragon is so, so dumb.”
“Well, your dragon’s small!” Ajax thrust his face into Vespir’s. She grinned and knocked her forehead against his.
“Boop.” That cracked her up, but no one else got it. Wiping her mouth, she said, “Your dragon is so sweet, but so dumb.” She paused. “Your dragon’s so dumb…”
Oh, Lucian couldn’t resist.
“How dumb is he?”
Vespir’s eyes lit up. “Your dragon’s so dumb that he tries to migrate south for the winter with the geese.”
Vespir kicked the table at her own joke. Even Hyperia chuckled, but it could be that she enjoyed Ajax’s humiliation more than anything.
“Your dragon is so dumb,” Vespir whispered, “that he thinks the dragon throne is a place where he gets to take a shit.”
Vespir fell onto her side and curled her knees to her chest, laughing with unbridled joy. Ajax looked like a grimy, closed fist.
“Your dragon’s so dumb,” Emilia said, lifting her head with a grin, “that he mistakes the Platonic dracomachian hypothesis for Calliphon’s theorem of draconic hierarchy.” Hyperia and Ajax gazed blankly at her. “Well, I thought it was funny,” she grumbled, and slumped back against Lucian.
“I think,” Hyperia said in low, dulcet tones, sitting regally with one hand against her cheek and her eyes closed, “that I may have to vomit soon.”
“We need more of this.” Lucian shoved the pitcher at a servant girl. “And something to eat. Bread, grapes, rice, uh, bread? Yes. Thank you.”
“We’re missing a good opportunity for a symposium here, you know.” Emilia poked Lucian’s side.
“First.” Ajax held up one finger. “What’s a supposition?”
“Symposium. Back in the empire’s infancy, it was a party where everyone would drink wine and debate philosophy and science and the meaning of the universe.” Her eyes sparkled at the thought.
“That sounds awful,” both Hyperia and Ajax said. If they noticed their brief moment of unity, they didn’t show it.
“No. It was wonderful if you were intelligent.” Emilia wrinkled her nose. “For a few hundred years, discourse was treated with reverance. But in the past century or so, debate and philosophy have been deemed essentially useless. Right around the time the conquering spirit infected every aspect of Etrusian life. What’s the point in expanding the base of human knowledge when you can just expand lines on a map?” She went for a drink and found her cup empty. Emilia waved it in the air while she looked for the servant. “What’s in this stuff?”
“Wine,” Lucian whispered. She elbowed him.
“Careful. That sounded almost treasonous.” Hyperia’s soft, chilled voice indicated that her brief moment of not being herself had ended. Damn.
“Well, soon I’ll be dead, so it’s fine if I get a little angry,” Emilia muttered.
“You don’t know that,” Lucian said, more roughly than he’d meant to. She blinked at him in surprise. Clearing his throat, he said, “You could win. You won the Game, after all.” Despite the full understanding that only one of them could triumph in this Trial, and despite wanting that throne for his own reasons, the idea of Emilia dying…and on his order, if he were victorious…filled him with despair.
“If only the Truth was a debate. I know I’d win that.” Emilia sighed and Ajax snorted, chugging a new cup of wine.
“I know how to talk to people. Trust me, the priests would be amazed by what came out of my mouth,” he said.
“Trust me, they already are,” Emilia replied. Lucian laughed before he could stop himself.
“Watch me. Listen to how brilliant this is.” Ajax hopped onto the sofa, wobbling a bit to keep his balance. Beside him, Vespir craned her neck to watch.
“Should we look away?” Emilia muttered as Ajax made big, sweeping bows.
“Would you even want to if you could?” Lucian replied.
“This is a supposition,” Ajax cried. Emilia sighed. “A, er, talk about why I’m going to be emperor, or why I really should be. So…” He paused, screwing up his face as he organized his argument. “I should be emperor because I am all about expanding. You know? Expand the empire. Expand the boundaries. Why?” He ticked the reasons off on his fingers. “More expansion means more land. More land means more people. More people means more taxes. More taxes means more money. More money means I get richer. More richer, I mean, I get richer means I’m in a good mood. More good mood means we’re all in a good mood.”
He paused, letting that brilliance sink in.
Everyone did their best to be polite.
“Also,” Ajax said, with the air of someone who knows he’s got a crushing point. “I’m going to get girls. Girls.” He threw his head back and crowed to the ceiling. “Giiiiirrrrlllllssss.”
“That is hardly a fitting argument,” Hyperia began, but then Vespir leapt up beside the boy.
“Girls are amazing!” Vespir shouted, grabbing Ajax’s shoulders. “But don’t be creepy, though.”
Ajax shook his head emphatically. “No, no, I will not be creepy about it. If I walk up to a girl and say, ‘Hello, Miss Girl, would you like to come back to my golden palace?’ and she says, ‘No,’ that is totally fine. But there’s, I think, a sixty percent chance she will say yes, because I am an emperor, and I have a golden palace.”
“Yeah, golden palace!” Vespir shouted. She looked positively delighted by the idea. “My turn!” she cried as Ajax bowed to no applause.
Ajax threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Yer my bes’ fren. Boop,” he said, releasing her from the hug and collapsing into his seat.
“That’s not how it works, but good try.” She wobbled in place, was silent a moment to compose her thoughts, and began.
“I don’t know how to write my name,” she said. Good start. Lucian noticed—and saw Hyperia notice—that the servants appeared to be intently listening to Vespir. “I come from a small village, the kind of place you pass through to get to somewhere that’s actually worth visiting.” She wavered, but found her balance. “When you talk about ‘expanding,’ you know what I think of?” She wasn’t asking Ajax so much as the whole table of them. “I think of hundreds of soldiers camping all over my village, hogging our two wells so they can water their horses. I think of soldiers loading up on our chickens and grains and potatoes because they’re hungry. Because apparently we never get hungry,” she grumped, rubbing a hand across her face.
“Yeah, hungry,” Ajax called through his cupped hands. It seemed like he was trying to support her more than he understood what was going on.
“So after they take our water and our food, the soldiers plant a flag in the ground and say we’re part of the empire and then move on. But they leave behind some guy who sits at a desk and tells us that now we have to start paying more money and more chickens and grain for…I don’t know what.
“And the guy behind the desk never gets his hands dirty, but he starts telling us how to run our land and when to hand over our children for the army or to work in their palaces or their fields. And no one cares when they take us, because why would they? We belong to them from the day we’re born.” Vespir stopped wavering; in fact, she stood frighteningly still. “They tell us how to run our lives, and then have us die for them, and then write letters saying how sorry they are that we’re dead. Only we can’t even read how sorry they are, because no one thinks it’s a good idea for us to read.”
Vespir’s voice grew louder as the room got quieter.
“My older brother Casca. He got pulled into the army when I was eleven. I came home one day to find a wooden box on our kitchen table and my mom crying. She had a letter with the Pentri seal on it. We knew one of my brothers and sisters was dead in the wars. They burn the body, put the ashes in a little box, and send them back to the family.” Vespir’s eyes shone with unspent tears. “Mom couldn’t read the letter to find out who’d died, so I had to run it down to the local imperial outpost to get some guy behind a desk to read it.” She sniffed, rubbed her nose. “He told me Casca was a deserter, so they’d killed him on sight. And all I could think, when my mom and dad wept and prayed at the little family altar that night with the clay figures of the Pentri family and asked for forgiveness for raising a coward…all I could think was, of course Casca ran. He wasn’t a soldier. He told jokes. He overslept and ate too much rice porridge. His trousers never fit because he grew so fast. And they squashed his whole long, skinny body into a little box on our kitchen table.
“Y’know, before the Etrusian Empire came east, my people were horse people. Not dragon people.” Vespir blinked away her tears. “When Valeria Pentri came through to conquer us, we put up such a good fight that she married one of our nobles. Kinda like they did in Karthago, the Pentri started looking like us. But it’s still mostly Etrusian, right? So my family name, the words I speak, the clothes I wear…it all comes from Etrusia. Sometimes, I wonder what my name would’ve been in some other language. I don’t know.
“So, what are we left with?” Vespir asked, snapping out of her self-reverie. “Not enough. They ask more of us when we have less, and why? Because someone put a flag in our village or something.”
She mumbled this last bit to the floor. Ajax roared with applause, and quiet glances darted back and forth between the servants. Lucian saw all of them twitch or nod slightly. Ajax hugged Vespir when she sat beside him. “Mine was better, but yours was really good, too,” he said.
Lucian poured the girl another cup of wine, trying not to let his hands tremble. What she’d said was simple truth.
“You didn’t explain the key part, though.” Hyperia curled her lip, revealing small white teeth. “Why should you be empress?”
“I mean. Why should I?” Vespir grumbled.
Emilia, meanwhile, twirled a strand of hair around and around her finger, adopting that far-off look that Lucian had once known so well.
“Lucian?” Hyperia glanced his way. “Do you have anything to add to this symposium?”
This would’ve been a good time to say no, to drink and toast to whoever would win and keep his thoughts buried deep. But after Vespir’s speech, and all the wine, Lucian felt his tongue loosen. And even though part of him shouted to stay silent, he found himself speaking the words.
“When I was a boy,” he said slowly, “I worshipped my father.”
Finally, Lucian told the full story of his first battle when he was fourteen years old. He told how he had been raised to wield arms, how he had vowed at age seven to one day avenge his mother and murder the northern barbarians who’d taken her away. Lucian had trained with a sword and a spear, imagining with every hack and thrust that some Wikingar monster died beneath the blade. When Tyche hatched, he had worked to be an aerial menace worthy of the Sabel name.
He remembered how, when he and Dido turned fourteen, their father declared that they were ready to do their duty for empire and family. Hector, who always put duty and honor before everything else, who took exceptional care to teach his twins to be proud and noble as well as fierce and strong. How Lucian had loved him.
The first time he and Tyche had flown into battle against the northern hordes, Lucian’s new armor had fit snugly, his fur-lined cloak flapping behind him in the frigid northern air. He and Tyche had landed alongside his father in a dense forest, the Drakes nimbly alighting with ease. And Hector had explained the plan.
Ahead of them, through the gnarled winter trees, there was no battlefield, no barbarian horde. Lucian could see only huts and the smoke from cooking fires. He heard children’s laughter.
“But, Father,” he’d said, “this is a village.” Lucian recalled feeling like the whole day was a drawing that wasn’t turning out the way he’d imagined.
His father told him that in real life, victories came from everyone doing their part. Wikingar soldiers were headed east to meet the imperial troops in battle. Lucian’s job, he said, was to make certain that any survivors would return to find their homes gone. No families. No shelter. They’d be cut off at the legs. So the ground troops charged the village, and Lucian took to the air on Tyche.
Lucian recalled setting fire to those thatched roofs, the burning sap and resin smelling sickly sweet, like toffee.
War looked so different from fifty feet in the air. The villagers mostly comprised the old, the sick, and those too young to wield a weapon. Lucian and Tyche mowed them down wherever possible, easily dodging the few arrows that were shot their way. Lucian felt sick as he moved along the village, destroying every home and building he could.
And then, beneath him, as Tyche reared up and prepared another fireball, he saw the old man and the child.
The man’s beard was long, his eyes sunken. He pointed at Lucian in horror. The order to fire stuck in Lucian’s throat as the old man clutched the little boy against his chest. His grandson? Probably. The child, no more than eight or nine, looked up at Lucian and the dragon and screamed in fear.
“Tyche. Fire,” Lucian whispered, and his dragon spewed a stream of pure flame.
Later, when Lucian had his father’s hand on his shoulder and was taking a victorious stroll through the ransacked village, they came across two bodies.
One was a man, the other a little boy. They were both charred beyond all recognition, but Lucian knew them. The man’s arm was tucked around the boy, his body curled about him in protection. Their fat still sizzled, like something roasting slow over a fire.
Lucian realized, in that moment, that he was not and never would be any kind of hero. While the soldiers cheered and their few prisoners wept, Lord Sabel kissed Lucian’s cheek and said, “You are my worthy son.”
Lucian stopped his tale then and drank more wine.
Emilia sat fully upright now, her gray eyes soft with horror. Across from him, Vespir leaned over and put her head in her hands.
“What did you do then?” Emilia whispered.
“I yelled that I hated him.” He wiped his lips. “That I hated this whole rotten empire.” Lucian closed his eyes. “He slapped my face. He’d never struck me before. That was the first time he put me in the brig. It wasn’t the last.”
“You fought to expand the borders of something you hate?” Hyperia shook her head, her eyes hard. “There’s nothing worse than a hypocrite.”
“You don’t know.” Lucian leaned closer to Hyperia, every hair on his arms and the nape of his neck standing on end. Fury sharpened his focus. “You lived your whole life in golden palaces, like Ajax was rambling about. People like you don’t understand what it is to have no choice.”
“We all have a choice, every day,” Hyperia said.
“No. A few of us have a choice. You. Eh, even me,” he growled, because he knew she was right. He could have flown away on Tyche at any time, even if it meant paying the price. He had slaughtered and burned for the sake of his family’s pride and in the interest of saving his own skin. “But people like Vespir don’t. Even Ajax.” He glanced at the two of them. “You can’t talk about choice when they have none.”
“I know what it’s like to make a terrible choice.” Hyperia stared out the window.
“Your sister wasn’t a choice. She was a victim.” He expected her to attack him over that, but Hyperia didn’t respond. “So that’s why I want the throne. I can’t accept a world that didn’t have room in it for that old man and boy.”
Silence.
Finally, Hyperia spoke. “Antipone wrote the only law of empire we’ll ever need.” She held up a hand, palm forward, pinkie and ring finger bent. She’d adopted the classical stance of the philosopher. Lucian could tell by Emilia’s raised eyebrow that even she was impressed. Hyperia was well educated. Lacking in imagination, yes, but not in education. “ ‘I thank the forces of order that give me a tongue to speak the truth and a mind to comprehend it,’ ” she said, quoting the first rule by heart. She continued. “ ‘Our empire is the only true and orderly and good thing in this world. How else would those civilizations condemned to chaos and primitive life be raised up with medicine, law, agriculture, and the arts? An empire provides honorable work for its soldiers. Their labor, steeped in blood for the future’s glory, is a sacrifice that lets all prosper.’ ”
The wine fired Lucian’s gut.
“ ‘An emperor receives the fruits of war and gives greater meaning to the world as he conquers it. He prospers.
“ ‘The nobles take bounty from the emperor’s outstretched hand, allowing them to breed soldiers and scientists and philosophers, who in turn bring meaning and hope to the people. They prosper.
“ ‘The people are safe and fed, and find meaning as they work for the stability of the empire. They prosper.
“ ‘Those who live in chaos struggle and die. The empire restores order. Free from chaos, all nations give their people and riches to the empire, a tributary feeding into a greater river. They prosper. Thus, only an empire generally, and this one specifically, is moral and right.’ ”
Finished, Hyperia leaned back in satisfaction. Emilia cleared her throat.
“Dragon shit,” she said cheerily, sweeping her hair back from her face.
Lucian gave a shocked laugh.
Hyperia’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“Antipone wrote that in the second century AD, long before the war machine was ascendant. Also, the second rule discusses temperance, how important it is not to simply conquer for the sake of conquering. Antipone specifically said that an orderly empire could only remain healthy by creating spells of peace as well as war, like the rotation of crops. Funny how no one ever remembers the second rule when they quote her.” Emilia frowned. “Besides, didn’t you hear Vespir and Lucian? Hungry people grow hungrier. Poor people grow poorer. Innocent people are burned alive. How does tearing families apart stabilize anything?”
“Temporary suffering is needed to make the future greater,” Hyperia answered automatically. Lucian imagined the Volscia girl’s mind as a system of cards; get a question, pull up the proper response without even considering what you’d been asked. He watched Emilia, feeling a surge of excitement. Yes. Get her.
“You know, I read a lot,” she said conversationally. “I love statistics.”
Hyperia groaned, but Emilia continued.
“The Imperial University did a recent study on the conquered Wikingar clans.” Her words stung Lucian’s heart. “When we first began our conquest, they had a twelve percent infant-mortality rate. Years later, it was discovered that the twelve percent hadn’t changed. But one number did fluctuate, greatly. Care to guess?” She leaned nearer to Hyperia. “The death rate for people aged sixteen to twenty-five nearly tripled, because our empire keeps shoving them onto the front lines of even more wars. So with the same number of dead babies and fewer new families, how exactly do the Wikingars prosper? We’re the only ones who get anything from it.”
Hyperia did not respond for a moment.
“You cannot compare a dragon to a cow,” she said at last. “They serve different needs.”
Lucian felt as if he’d been struck. Emilia took a hissed breath, but her words remained calm.
“If a dragon eats too many cattle, the situation worsens for cows and dragons alike.”
“What would you do, then?” Hyperia’s voice dripped acid. Emilia didn’t flinch.
She rested her cheek in her hand. A sigh ruffled the curtain of her hair, which had fallen back over her face. “I’m simply saying that this current system doesn’t work. Maybe it would be all right, conquering these people, if we really did make them prosperous and happy, but we don’t. We promise order, but we’re making the world more chaotic.”
“The empire is the furthest thing from chaos imaginable,” Hyperia spat.
“All I know is that for anything to get better, something must change.”
“Be careful.” Hyperia’s voice chilled the room by several degrees. “Be sure you don’t start speaking like the chaos lord, Oretani, or his fanatics.” The girl stood and wobbled only slightly. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you all for the final challenge in the morning.” Hyperia swept from the room, the servants bowing her out the door. Ajax rose as well and set his cup down with infinite care.
“Guess our happy-family moment’s done,” he grumbled. Vespir followed him, and Lucian stretched. It had to be past midnight by now. If this was to be his last sleep, he felt it would be a sound one. Hopefully.
He still feared seeing those two charred bodies at the foot of his bed, but after speaking of them, the pain had lessened.
As he and Emilia walked into the dark halls, he said, “I like the way you think.”
She gave a weak smile. “I have no idea what’s coming tomorrow. I’ve spent years searching for every scrap of information on this Trial I could find, and there’s nothing on the Truth.” She gazed up at Lucian with cautious eyes. “I have to ask. Have you…seen anything odd?”
His heart picked up pace.
“Visions, you mean?” he whispered.
She nodded, biting her lip. “What do you see?”
“The burned bodies of the old man and the boy. The ones I told you about.” He frowned, but exhaled in relief. “You see things as well?”
“Yes. I wonder if that doesn’t have something to do with whatever we face tomorrow.” She spoke low as they walked, checking over her shoulder in case they were being followed. Lucian didn’t blame her. It felt like secret eyes studded this entire gilded palace. “I haven’t questioned Ajax or Hyperia, but Vespir told me she’s seen her family. That’s all she’ll say.”
“And you?” Lucian stopped them. “What have you seen?”
Emilia was still for so long he thought she wouldn’t answer.
“When I was fourteen, I saw a girl executed for being a chaotic.” She began to rub her fingers together very fast. He’d noticed her doing that off and on. “Sometimes…I see her again.”
“That’s awful.” Even though his flesh crawled at the word chaotic, Lucian felt a surge of sympathy. He’d heard stories—the nails, the blood—but he’d never seen the specifics. Monstrous as those abilities were, Lucian had always thought the practice of putting people to death was vicious. Apparently, Emilia felt the same.
“If I see that tomorrow, I don’t know what I’ll do,” she muttered. Lucian took her hands in his, stilling her rubbing.
“You’ll face it. You’ve always been brave,” he said.
She shook her head, hair tumbling into her face again. “You’re wrong.”
“If it can’t be me, I hope it’s you,” he whispered. “You’re smart and you’re good and you’re brave.”
He’d meant it to be kind, but Emilia pulled away.
“I’m smart, at least.”
She fled then, her slippers a soft patter as she sped down the hall and made a sharp right. Lucian ran a hand through his hair. Where had that come from?
As he headed for his bedchamber, Lucian’s foot struck something that skittered across the floor and glinted in moonlight. He knelt and discovered small shards of crystal, picked them up.
Odd. They were shaped like teardrops.