by Devin Madson
“Stop! Jie, we don’t have to—”
I cried out as he slashed my throat with his sharp nails, and through the thundering of my pulse came a banging upon the door. “Emperor Jie? Empress Miko?” The doors rattled in their tracks, and eyes alight, Jie gripped my shoulders and slammed me into the floor. My head hit the matting.
“Stop… fighting… me,” he hissed, spit spraying my face. “Just die already!”
Something hit the doors.
“Just…die!”
He jabbed a finger at my eye and I rolled him onto the matting, pinning him with my knees. He tried to buck me off, creeping his hand toward the hilt of his fallen dagger. Blood poured from the wound in my arm and my throat burned, but the boy was not done, would never be done until one of us lay dead upon the floor. It was him or me, and I did not want to die.
Jie was so focussed on reclaiming his dagger he didn’t see the cushion until I wrestled it onto his face. There I held it with all my strength, pinning it down with locked elbows while he fought to throw me off, wriggling and squirming and kicking.
A muffled cry wailed into the feathers, then there was nothing but the drumming of his heels hard and fast upon the wooden floor.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in my broken voice. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
The drumming sound changed as his sandals fell off, leaving his heels bruising upon the floor. His shoulders twitched. His head jolted. His grip upon my arms opened and closed and his fingers straightened, bending back even as they reached for me in the darkness.
“In the hands of the gods may you find true peace, in the hands of—” His tense, twitching body went limp. His heels stopped drumming.
I pulled the cushion away and there lay Jie, his face slack and discoloured. “Shit.” My bare feet scuffed the floor as I scrambled back from his lifeless body, small and pitiful now without its rage. “No. No. No!” I pressed trembling hands to my cheeks, but I could not drag my eyes from the boy’s broken body.
He had been just a child.
“Your Majesty?”
Manshin stood a few steps inside the doors shattered in their tracks. His face was thinner than I remembered, its harsh lines gilded by Mei’lian’s rising flames. We had once tried to save that city. Together.
Without a word his gaze darted from me to the still form of Jie and back, and his expression hardened. I had no words, no plea, no explanation, nothing until he turned to leave.
I breathed a wheezy plea then. Lacking all intelligible words, the sound nevertheless confessed the depths of my fear. But he didn’t leave. He called no guards. He just slid the doors closed as best as he could.
“Get up,” he said, striding back toward Jie. “Your people need you.”
“My…”
He crouched at the dead boy’s side. “You’re the Empress of Kisia, are you not, Your Majesty?”
“Yes,” I wheezed. “But no one will follow me, not after…” I looked at Jie, his head lolling as Manshin lifted him off the floor. Minister Manshin was a tall man, and in his arms the boy looked a boy indeed, a child who ought to be playing with toys instead of lying dead upon the floor. I reminded myself he had wanted me dead, had fought with the ferocity of a much larger, older man, yet still shame poisoned every thought. It ought not to have come to this.
The minister crossed the floor and set the boy down upon a silk-covered window seat. Bathed in orange firelight, Jie’s body sat propped against the stiff cushions like he had fallen asleep.
“Do you think people followed Emperor Kin because they chose him to be their emperor?” Manshin said, returning to the table. “Do you think they would have chosen a commoner had they been asked? No. Emperor Kin took the throne and held the throne because he knew the power of a good story.”
Bending down, he poured tea into the only bowl on the table. No curls of steam issued from the spout, the liquid as lifeless as Jie.
“Emperor Lan was dead,” he went on, carrying the tea back to the boy. “And whether or not it was Grace Tianto who did it, it made a fine tale. Lan and Tianto were well known for their heated arguments, and Emperor Lan had just sent Grace Tianto back to Koi in disgrace—how easy to believe that had been a final straw. Did it matter that Tianto hadn’t been in Mei’lian at the time? No, it only made the story all the easier to manipulate. And before anyone could wonder how it had happened, a new emperor sat upon the throne.”
Manshin put the tea bowl into Jie’s slack hand, closed the boy’s fingers around it as best he could, then let it go. The limp arm dropped, sending the bowl to smash upon the wooden boards, spilling tea and shards of ceramic.
“Now we have a story,” he said, turning back to me. “An emperor too ashamed to see the dawn. It’s time to get up now. You have to make these soldiers follow you and we don’t have much time.”
He walked to the door and there he waited—patient, loyal Manshin. He had come, the ally I needed, yet I could not drag my eyes from the lifeless boy basking in the light of his burning city. I was still alive. I could fight on. But at what cost?
27. DISHIVA
No one spoke as we left the campsite, Loklan, Esi, and Shenyah as dead-eyed as the heads in the sacks tied to the back of Itaghai’s saddle. My mistakes. My responsibility to free their spirits or present them to Gideon, come what may.
Levanti watched us from the trees as we approached the deserter camp, and the sentry who greeted us took in our brandings and our stained clothing before his gaze came to rest on the sacks dripping blood and swarming with flies.
“We have a shrine and a burning pit,” he said at last.
“Thank you, but I will take them back with me.” I grimaced at the wrongness of the words, but the man made no judgement, only shrugged, leaving me to my dishonour.
A small crowd had gathered to stare and they all bowed their heads as Whisperer Ezma emerged from her hut, the prongs of her jawbone headpiece reaching for the trees. Behind me Loklan gasped.
“A Whisperer,” Shenyah said, breathless with awe.
Ezma waved her hands. “Clear a path. Nefer, show these Swords where to go while I have a word with Captain Dishiva.” She looked to Loklan, hovering around his horse. “Let them bring the injured horse through. Safer you leave the poor thing to be taken care of here than risk walking her all the way back to Kogahaera. If you must leave us, you may ride one of your fallen brethren’s.”
A moment of indecision, then with a grim smile, Loklan said, “Yes, Whisperer.”
While they walked into the camp, Ezma smiled at the remaining crowd until they dispersed through the drizzle, whispering all the way. Once they were out of earshot she turned that smile on me, hard-lined and dangerous. “I want your word on peace, Dishiva e’Jaroven.”
“Peace? I have no control—”
“I do not mean peace for this land. What Gideon does concerns me little beyond how it affects those Levanti who choose not to be a part of it. Give me your word you will not tell him where we are, or that I exist. We will not interfere in your plans or his if you leave my people alone.”
My people. There was a possessiveness to her words that rubbed like sand upon my thoughts. Horse whisperers were not herd masters, not Sword captains; they were separate, individuals who were part of a conclave of horse whisperers but had no followers. Not like Dom Villius. Yet when I didn’t speak she went on: “My people have done nothing to earn your emperor’s ire and you must know that with a horse whisperer as their leader, we could. I could. If he makes me.”
Behind her the camp was full of Swords who had come to lick their wounds and their honour, to beg forgiveness and to grieve, and to bask in the protective aura of a whisperer. Now that same whisperer—tall, graceful, and sure—stood before me speaking threats while a light dusting of rain sparkled in her hair like stars.
“I will tell him that rumours of a deserter camp are much exaggerated.”
“Good,” Ezma said. No smile, no grimace, nothing but a perfunctory nod. “I ought
to have killed you last time rather than let you walk free but had you not returned, Gideon would merely have sent more people after us. This way is better for everyone.”
I did not doubt for a moment she meant it, or that she could have done it. She had the poise of a skilled fighter while I had been named Third Sword of the Jaroven for my resourcefulness and my stubborn refusal to give up.
Soon Loklan and Esi and Shenyah returned, and still crushed beneath the weight of our collective silence, we prepared to leave. Ezma pressed rations and fresh water upon us and I climbed into Itaghai’s saddle.
“Captain Dishiva!” Tor shouted, striding toward us. “Captain!”
I turned in the saddle, the translator’s expression launching my heart into my throat. “What is it?”
“That book you gave me,” he said, and I clenched Itaghai’s reins as Tor went on. “I haven’t been able to translate much yet, but I flipped through looking for all the references to Veld I could find, like you asked. He seems to have been a sort of early believer in a time when he was scorned for following the One True God. ‘He who saw that which was and that which is—’”
“That which has been and that which will be,” Ezma corrected. “There is an important difference.”
“You know the book?”
She returned my stare with a challenging lift of her chin. “Missionaries reach almost everywhere on the plains, and there are certain phrases that stick in the mind. Do continue, Tor; it was rude of me to interrupt you.”
Ezma folded her hands behind her back, but went on staring at me while the young man spoke. “Well, Captain, given he was so scorned for wanting to believe in something no one else believed in, it took me a while to see why someone would say Leo Villius is like him, but…”
Tor trailed off, biting his lip and looking from Loklan to Shenyah and back to me.
“But what?” I said when he didn’t continue.
“Well, he dies, you see. Three times, so far that I am up to and I don’t think I’m reading it wrong. I don’t think it’s a title, I think it’s his name. Veld dies and he comes back and—”
“Dies how?”
“The first time he is killed on the orders of his leader. The second time he dies in a throne room when he stands up for his people.”
I had been there for that one. I had seen it. “And the third?”
“The third time he is trapped in a cave.”
I sucked in a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. It did nothing to calm my racing heart. “In a cave?”
“That’s what the book says.”
“And you’re sure?”
“Yes, but it’s a complicated book and Chiltaen doesn’t come naturally so…”
“And after the cave… he lives again?”
Tor frowned. “Yes, it says he is reborn, but I haven’t gotten any further.”
“Try to get a message to me when you do, all right? I need to know what happens next.”
“Yes, Captain.”
I had not killed him, and when Leo had seen where we’d taken him, he’d laughed. He had not struggled or cried out for help, not tried to fight, and when Jass and I had set him down in the small cave he had merely wriggled, getting comfortable for the long wait.
He had known.
Beside Tor, Ezma still stood watching me with narrowed eyes and the sort of intensity Leo Villius himself possessed. I could not meet her look, sure on some level she knew what was going through my mind.
“Are you all right, Captain?” Loklan said as I stared at each of my Swords in turn.
“No. Yes. I don’t know,” I said. “But I have to go. I’ll meet you back at Kogahaera. I… there’s something I need to do.”
“Before you go, Dishiva.” Ezma stepped forward, her hands clasped behind her back. “Where were you born? Where was your herd?”
“I… uh, on the Essaph Plain, why?”
The whisperer nodded. “Then I need you to be very very careful indeed. We will meet again. Of that I am sure.”
I rode through the day and into the night until I could push Itaghai no farther. We stopped far from the road where no one would see us, but I could not rest and could not eat, could only think of the laughing priest waiting to die in his cave.
The next day we broke clear of the fen and rode across rain-drenched fields to the mountains west of Kogahaera. By evening Itaghai was struggling with the seemingly endless climb. Everything looked the same in the blustering rain, every track edged in jagged rocks and caves and trees dropping their sick yellow leaves. Even when the rain eased back to a drizzle, thin waterfalls maintained the sound of furious water crashing upon the world, masking all other sounds.
A sensible person would stop for the night and make camp, would tend their horse and eat and rest and plan how to find the right cave in the morning. I kept going.
“Jass!” I shouted to the darkening sky, and cupping my hands to my mouth I called again. “Jass! Where are you?”
Itaghai flicked his ears in disapproval, but afraid of being too late, I urged him on along the dusky trail. “Jass!”
No answer came and I kept searching as night birds swooped from their hollows to hunt. More than once I leapt from the saddle, sure I had the right place, only to find the cave too small, too narrow, or entirely uninhabited. Yet this looked like the right place, I was sure of it, and went on calling for Jass long after I ought to have stopped. Just one more cave. Just one more.
I walked Itaghai on into the gathering shadows. For all I knew I was going around in circles or had wandered too close to the city and would be seen, but I went on shouting into the whipping wind all the same. It stole the words from my mouth while heavy rain hit my shaved scalp. Perhaps if I looked for the crack that led to the caverns beneath the manor, I could—
“Dishiva!”
I spun yet saw nothing but rain and rocks slick with moss, nothing but trees and ferns and flowers flattened by the storm. “Jass?”
No reply. I peered into the night as it closed its hand upon the world. “Jass!”
“Dishiva!” He appeared, a smoky figure in the haze.
“Jass! Is he alive?”
I leapt from my saddle as he jogged toward me through the dusk, and though he must have been burning to ask what had happened with the deserters, he said nothing, just lifted his arms and let me walk into them to be held. That he gave comfort unconditionally, that he gave it even though he had trusted me with the lives of many he cared about, brought forth tears I had been unable to shed. But I swallowed them because comfort was not why I had come.
“Is Leo still alive? Please, Jass, tell me he’s still alive.”
I could have pleaded. I could have shouted. I could have cursed him with every curse known to the Levanti tongue, but it would have made no difference to the slow shake of the head I received in answer. Without waiting for an explanation, I hurried toward the cave now so obvious upon the rocky mountainside.
Smouldering coals lit a shadowy space no more than a dozen paces deep. We had carried Leo out wrapped in my bedding, which Jass had made into something like a nest in the centre of the cave. The remnants of a meal remained, along with a collection of small bowls woven from flaxen grasses. Jass had made it as cosy as he could, yet I strode through the light and the warmth to where Leo sat propped against the back wall, his bound hands in his lap. His head lolled and there was no trace of life in his glassy eyes.
“Leo?” I shouted into the young man’s face, gripping his shoulder and trying to shake him. But the body was stiff and slid slowly sideways to lie like the broken collection of limbs he was. “Leo,” I repeated, my voice breathless at the edge of panic. He was dead. But how? I hadn’t been gone many days and I had left them with food and water and—
Still crouched, I spun back to Jass, standing in the doorway with Itaghai’s discarded reins in his hand. “I told you to keep him alive.”
“I tried,” Jass said, and though in the light of the fire I could see how tired and w
orn he looked, how much the ravages of the poison still haunted his face, it did nothing to stem my fury.
“What do you mean you tried? He’s dead!”
“You can’t force a man to eat or drink, Dishiva,” he said. “And trust me, I tried. Every time I poured water down his throat he would breathe it in and start choking. Any food I tried to give him he spat back out.”
“Surely it takes longer than… How many days have I been gone?”
“Three? Four? Five? To be honest, I have lost all sense of time up here, but I think he might have been bleeding more than we thought too. There’s certainly a large pool of blood drying beneath him, see?”
Jass pointed, and the hint of its scent coalesced into a stink.
“However it happened, he wanted to die and there was nothing I could do to stop him.”
I got to my feet, hands clenched into fists. “Yes, he wanted to die so he could come back again. Come back and finish the job of killing us and destroying everything we have fought for.”
“He might not. He—”
“He will. I took the holy book to Tor at the deserter camp like you suggested. That man, Veld, who they all venerate, he first died on the orders of his leader. Then he died being cut down in a throne room. And then he died in a cave. And then he came back.”
Jass’s eyes widened. “That’s in their book?”
“Yes.”
“No wonder the pilgrims think he is a reborn hero. What if he is, Dishiva? What if he really has been sent by their God to remake their holy empire?”
“Then we had better hope Tor finds out a way to kill him before he kills us.”
For a moment we just stared at one another over the smouldering remains of the fire. Then Jass said, “Until then, what are you going to do?”
What was I going to do? I had been so focussed on getting here in time to stop Leo dying that I had given little thought to what I would do after. Yet there really was only one option. “I have to tell Gideon everything,” I said, clenching my hands to keep them from shaking. “I have to make him see Leo isn’t his friend. That Leo is only using him and—”