It left Ari feeling conflicted and more than a little annoyed. How was it possible for these same people, so normal and so much like any other community he’d ever known, to harbor such hate? He passed by a window and saw a teenage boy on top of a Ravarian woman at least a decade older than him, stripping off her clothes in what was clearly a non-consensual encounter.
It almost felt like an answer to his question, but Ari knew that it was merely the other side of the coin. He slapped the fisher’s tentacles against the window, causing the teenager to flinch and stare in his direction long enough for the Ravarian slave to escape, at least for the moment.
His frustration transformed into fury as he considered the likelihood of similar events occurring throughout the city on a regular basis. Ravarians, and potentially his fellow Hume, being raped and abused. A social order that relegated innocent people into being treated like objects and beasts.
Ari reminded himself that he’d brought his fisher into the city for a reason. He let it stop climbing for a moment, scanning up and down the tower and trying to recall which floor the room Diya had brought him up to for their discussion and card game had been on.
His educated guess proved to be accurate. Ari had the fisher pull itself up to one of the tower’s tenth-floor windows, and a single glimpse into the room told him that he’d found his target.
Diya was sitting in his study, an ornately furnished room with a polished wood table, a desk, and several bookshelves. It was the first time Ari had seen him in over a month, and he was a little surprised by how different the Saidican Emperor looked.
He’d cut his blond hair short and grown a thin beard that was paler in color, almost white. His clothing was looser than the usual style of the Sai, a purple shirt along with black leather pants. He wore no weapon that Ari could see, a fact that brought several obvious possibilities to mind.
Diya wasn’t alone, either. He sat across a young, pretty Sai girl with shoulder-length light brown hair, a freckle-dusted face, and an attractive figure that looked like it was still a few seasons short of full maturity. It took Ari a couple of seconds to remember her name.
Xenith, Diya’s daughter. She wore a simple black dress with thin shoulder straps and a hem that dropped only to her knees. Her feet were bare, and she had them curled underneath her in her chair to keep them warm.
Diya was talking, and Xenith appeared to be taking notes with quill and parchment. It was such a casual scene that it left Ari at a loss for what to do next. He ran one of the fisher’s tentacles across the crystal glass, tapping it and testing its integrity.
Diya was more observant than Ari had been expecting, and instantly turned his head in the direction of the noise. The room was heavily lit by ward lights, which would have made the reflection more prominent than what lay beyond the glass, but it wasn’t enough to keep him hidden from the astute gaze of the Saidican Emperor.
Diya smiled. He held a hand up to Xenith, who instantly drew back when she noticed what her father was looking at, knocking over her ink pot in the process. Diya made a calming gesture toward her and then folded his hands behind his back as he drew up to his full height.
“Can you hear me, Lord Stoneblood?” he called. “We’ve been expecting you.”
CHAPTER 26
Diya’s smile chilled Ari to the bone, even though he was seeing it through a second set of eyes. The fact that he was merely controlling the fisher seemed like no barrier at all from that smile and the cold confidence of the Saidican Emperor’s stare.
Diya slowly made his way over to the window and set his hand on a rune ward next to it. There was an obvious flicker of light as the crystal glass melted out of existence. Diya took a step back and gestured to the room while staring at the fisher, as though he was inviting an old friend in for an evening of food and conversation.
“Xenith,” said Diya. “Go fetch Rachel. I’m sure she’d be eager to meet with Lord Stoneblood again, and I’m equally sure that I’ll catch an earful from her if she isn’t informed of this development immediately. And send for the new slave, while you’re at it.”
Xenith, to her credit, had recovered from her initial surprise. She stared at the fisher, mouth slightly agape with wary curiosity.
“Xenith?” Diya turned and looked at his daughter, and she only then seemed to come back to herself.
“Of course,” she said. “I… will be right back.”
She hurried to the door and out of the room. Diya still had his arm outstretched, and Ari hadn’t yet brought the fisher fully into the room. He scanned over the space, searching for any potential traps or surprises for a couple of seconds before realizing that it was a pointless exercise.
Why would Diya care about trapping or killing a single fisher? He knew about Ari’s ability to control the Weatherblight, though he didn’t know anything about how it worked. Diya was taking a tremendous risk in opening the window and inviting him inside, and Ari couldn’t understand his motivation.
He brought the fisher forward and into the room. Diya gave a small, approving nod, and then walked around the monster to trigger the ward a second time, sealing the rain outside, along with any other potential reinforcements Ari might have been able to bring to bear.
“Can I offer you some wine, Lord Stoneblood?” asked Diya. “Will you even taste it, if you drink it? Now that’s an interesting question, if there ever was one.”
He was still smiling, and he gestured next to the chairs, as though entertaining a fisher in his private study was no different than having any other guest.
“Or you’re welcome to stand,” said Diya, when Ari kept the fisher where it was. “I do honestly think that the fact you can’t talk will make this conversation easier for us to have. Have you seen much of Central Dominion, as it is now?
“It’s still a pale imitation of what it once was, though we have made great strides. I was rather paranoid during the first few days after our last encounter, I must admit. The rune wagons, which I’m sure you’ve seen, were somewhat of a reactionary measure. We never used as many during the Empire’s original run, and we still got along well enough against the Weatherblight.”
Diya paused and brought his thumb to his chin, as though he was taking the time to carefully articulate his next thought. From his eyes, Ari could tell what he truly was up to. He was searching for any sign of readable body language in the fisher’s posture. That element of social interaction didn’t transfer through his control of the monster, which was a larger advantage against someone like Diya than it might have otherwise been.
“I have no particular grudge against you, Lord Stoneblood,” said Diya. “In fact, you remind of my old friend, in spite of the conflict that’s occurred between us. Perhaps even because of it. You’re full of ideas and surprises, and you know so many important things.
“That’s why I’ve been so eager to talk to you. I don’t seek violence against you, Lord Stoneblood, not if it can be avoided. I simply want your help. The knowledge you have or might eventually have about the Soul Engine, along with whatever technique you use to do, well, this… These are valuable things.
“I’m offering you a partnership. We’ll work together to tame this world. I can make you a noble amongst the Sai, perhaps raise you up even higher than that. All I ask in return is that you come to me in good faith, and present yourself here, within my city.”
Diya leaned his head forward and furrowed his brow slightly, bringing his hands to clasp in front of himself. It was the stance of a grandfather giving sage advice to a new generation, though Diya was clearly still on the younger side of the role. He waited for a time, as though expecting Ari’s fisher to grow vocal cords and give him a verbal response.
“Unfortunately, I can’t play coy, since you’re unable to ask questions or make demands,” said Diya. “If you refuse my offer, I will find you and your companions, and I’ll do what must be done. That’s simply how it must be, and don’t let my phrasing fool you, it won’t be so clean in practice. I’ll
torture those you care about most, Lord Stoneblood, and I will make you watch.”
Diya’s voice was intense by the end, with a cold stare that seemed to emphasize the threat of each word. The silence held for a few seconds as he finished speaking, and then the door opened.
“Ah,” said Diya. “I believe you’re familiar with my newest slave, are you not?”
Tialese, the former Vereshi of Varnas-Rav, stepped into the room. She was as pretty as Ari remembered, with brown hair, a pale face, slim features, and a small set of black wings that had never reached full maturity. She looked like Rin, with the same violet eyes and expressive mouth, but she wore a simple white servant’s slip and carried a metal platter with a wine bottle and two glasses.
She hesitated, seeing the fisher, but quickly regained her composure and directed her gaze back where it had been. At the floor. The once-proud Vereshi of the Ravarians was now Diya’s house slave, and everything about her screamed of a broken woman. Worse than broken. She was defeated.
“This is an example of what you should hope for,” said Diya. “If you struggle against me and turn this into a protracted affair, you’ll wish your friends end up with such treatment. I won’t hold back. I even have special plans for some of them. Eva, for example, given our history and the respect I have for her. I have special ideas for the role she’ll serve.”
Ari’s blood boiled, and he couldn’t tell whether the hot anger he felt was in the fisher or his true body. The fisher let out a rolling, monsterish hiss. Diya laughed and waved his hand, shooing Tialese from the room.
“I wonder…” said Diya. “Do you understand why I’m so confident, Lord Stoneblood? Why I invited you, no, a fisher, into my chamber? I have everything to lose, but for you to be destroyed in the body you control would likely affect you less than pulling a hangnail.”
Ari willed the fisher to spread its tentacles out to the sides while drawing it up to its full height on its back legs. Diya was unarmed, unarmored, seemingly at his most vulnerable, and still smiling that same cold smile.
“I am an anomaly even amongst my people,” said Diya. “I rule not because of tradition, or through circumstance, as some might claim. I rule because my strength is unmatched.”
Diya made a fist and stomped his foot. Light flickered around his body, coalescing to form a nimbus of golden energy. Ari had seen him use his mystica before, both in person and through Mythril’s memories. He could use it to strengthen both his offensive and defensive capabilities, but only for a limited amount of time.
Ari willed the fisher backward, dodging Diya’s first punch. The room was not large enough for him to be able to evade effectively for long, certainly not long enough to wait out Diya’s self-buffs. He dropped the fisher low, dodging a blurring kick more by accident, than intention.
The fisher hissed as Ari commanded it to shoot its tentacles forward and seized Diya by the legs. He managed to get a secure grip around his ankles, but Diya twisted, grabbing the tentacles and using them to reel the fisher toward him instead of succumbing to the binding.
“If you attacked me with an army of the Weatherblight, the outcome would still be the same,” said Diya. “You can’t beat me, Lord Stoneblood.”
Ari gritted his teeth and the fisher let out a clicking scream that mirrored his anger. He thrashed at Diya with the monster’s forelimbs and tried to sink its segmented jaws down on the other man’s shoulder. Diya’s clothing tore, but the flesh underneath resisted damage like steel.
Hands seized the fisher by the neck and back of the head. Ari felt the monster he was in control of being lifted into the air. Diya’s body flashed as he cast a second spell over himself, this one shining a teal-silver.
“Remember this,” said Diya.
He pulled, and the fisher came apart, head separating from body as easily as a child might pop the blossom off a flower. Ari felt a rush of pain and terror that he was sure had triggered another convulsion in his physical body back in the real world as the awareness he’d been viewing the world from quickly faded.
There was more, however. He could hear a voice, not where he’d just been, in the room with Diya, but outside, in the rain. It was shouting for him, demanding his attention. Ari filed through a half-dozen fishers before finding another that had somehow made it into the city.
“I know you can hear me! Please, listen. Please…”
The fisher was standing in the street in an area so familiar that it almost made Ari lose himself in nostalgia. He, or rather, it, was standing across from a woman in a grey evening dress, her hands clasped together and a desperate expression on her face.
It was Rachel. She looked as though she’d been out in the rain for some time, both her grey evening dress and brown hair soaked to the point of dripping and sticking to her body. Even through the rain and the night, and from the perspective of a monster, seeing her stirred emotions within Ari.
Emotions that didn’t belong to him. Rachel had been the woman that Mythril had loved, and if nothing else, that emotion had slowly begun transferring into him along with the memories. She was older than Ari was by at least a decade in appearance, and probably far more, given how the Soul Engine had preserved her age. And yet, looking at her made him feel things that he’d only thought he could feel by looking at Kerys.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” asked Rachel, her voice muffled slightly by the rain. “I know you can control them. You wouldn’t pass on an opportunity like this if you had that ability.”
What she was doing was stupid and dangerous that it almost made Ari wonder if she’d developed a suicidal streak. She stepped closer to the fisher and reached an arm out. Ari wanted to scream at her to get back, to point out that he could lose control at any time. But another part of him, a part of someone, wanted her as close as she could get, even now.
“He’s lying to you!” Rachel brought her hands to her breast, shivering in the cold. “Everything Diya said, everything he did in your meeting, it was all designed to solicit a reaction. He’s not invincible like he claims, and more importantly, he already knows where you and your friends are!”
Ari scowled, which translated to a clicking hiss through the fisher. The way Diya had phrased a few of his statements had given him hope that perhaps the scout they’d questioned had been lying after all. It was far more likely that what Rachel was saying was the truth and that the Saidican Emperor had planned every word he’d spoken far in advance.
“He’s planning a major attack on your settlement,” said Rachel. “I’m sorry. You don’t have more than a week. But I can keep helping you! I can keep feeding you information, if…”
She hesitated and stared at the fisher expectantly with her piercing green eyes.
“If you come find me, once you remember more,” she finished.
Ari felt his emotions shifting into a turbulent, unwanted mess. He bobbed the fisher’s head up and down and felt grateful that he wasn’t there in person. If he had been, he wasn’t sure what would have happened and what else might have bubbled up to the surface.
He could feel his control over the fisher waning. With the last of his focus, he swept his tentacles in a gesture away from himself and then willed it to rush off as far away from Rachel as he could get it.
CHAPTER 27
Ari knew he was back in his own body from the character of the headache affecting him when he blinked his eyes open. He let out a low groan and tried, unsuccessfully, to sit up.
“Ari!” said Kerys. “Oh, Ari…”
He felt the pillow underneath his head shift, and he realized that his head was actually lying in Kerys’ lap. He was back in his own room, which he took to be a fairly bad sign in regard to how his body had fared while he’d been controlling the fishers.
“I’m okay,” he muttered. “Totally fine.”
“You almost destroyed Amber’s alchemy equipment when you started thrashing around,” said Kerys. “You hit your head against the stone. You were throwing up blood, at one point. Ari, you are n
ot fine.”
“Gimme a kiss,” he said.
Kerys scowled at him, but he could see the smile underneath it. He reached his hand up and caressed her cheek. Seeing her was exactly what he needed, a reminder of who he was and what mattered most. It also reinforced the urgency of their current situation.
“Kerys, can you gather all of the adults?” he asked. “We need to have a community meeting.”
“Almost everyone other than Grena and Lady Prestia is waiting outside the room,” said Kerys. “We… thought you might not make it.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” said Ari. “I’m made of tough stuff.”
He ran his hand across his chin and frowned as he saw a few flecks of dried blood come back on his finger. Kerys frowned at him, and it was only then that he noticed the red puffiness around her eyes.
“I’ll take less of the potion next time,” he said. “I didn’t realize that Amber made this one so much stronger.”
“You’d better,” said Kerys. She gently shifted his head off her lap and stood up, slipping her injured arm into one of her skirt pockets as she headed for the underchamber’s open doorway.
The rest of the older members of Etheria filed in, each favoring Ari with a look of concern in their own style. Eva shook her head and sighed when she saw him, while Rin shot him an empathetic smirk. They joined Kerys by Ari’s side, while Durrien, Amber, and Virgil stood in a semi-circle at the base of his bed.
“Where to begin,” said Ari. “As my old friend Milo would say, we’re knee deep in it…”
He explained what he’d seen and heard over the last few hours, both of the Sai capital city and of his conversation with Diya. He could see the faces of his friends darkening as he gave them Diya’s exact words, and the ease of which he’d made threats against them and their community. Ari hesitated as he recounted how Tialese had been made into Diya’s personal slave, noticing the way Rin’s jaw tightened at the mention of her sister.
Reborn Raiders (The Weatherblight Saga Book 4) Page 16