Nolyn

by Michael J. Sullivan

  She calculated her supply of arrows as she departed the arena: twenty-one left. By the time she reached Maeve Avenue, Sephryn was hot, and when she passed the double-coin signage of the moneylender, she needed to wipe perspiration from her brow or risk getting it in her eyes. A blind archer was a dead archer. Still, she didn’t want to take a hand away from the bow even for an instant. Sephryn saw movement in the narrow corridors between the shops and homes—shadows that lurked.

  When did it get so hot? She glared up at the bright sun that swam in a vast blue sky.

  What happened to the clouds?

  Like startled grouse, a cluster of ghazel burst out from between an herbalist and a weaver’s shop. Sephryn turned and launched six arrows between three heartbeats. Each shot entered a goblin’s eye. She hadn’t planned it that way—hadn’t thought at all. But in retrospect, she realized that all those years of acorn splitting had paid off. More footfalls approached, and she nocked again, but the new arrivals weren’t ghazel.

  Five legionnaires sprinted onto Reglan Road, swords in hand. They stopped, looked down at the staggered line of fallen ghazel, then at Sephryn. Laughing, they offered a salute. One said, “Pardon the interruption, dear lady. We thought these were getting away.”

  As the soldier spoke, Sephryn spotted another group of five ghazel far down the street jumping over a stone wall beside the fuller’s shop. Six other legionnaires were in close pursuit, shouting profanities and grunting as they hopped the masonry wall. The soldiers saw it, too. “Have to go, ma’am! Got a lot of cleaning to do!”

  “Wait!” Sephryn called as they bolted like hounds, joining the chase over the wall. “Is Prince Nolyn alive?”

  Maybe they didn’t know or hadn’t heard, or perhaps, like hounds after a scent, they were too single-minded to answer. Either way, Sephryn was once more alone on the street. After that, she jogged rather than ran. The heat from the sun, the stress from the arena, and the sense that the danger was waning started to take hold.

  She slowed to a walk and realized she was more than tired. Sephryn was reluctant to reach her goal, afraid to face what she was starting to believe to be the truth.

  “At this moment, he’s fighting for his life at the Grand Arch.”

  I took too long. He’s dead. I know it.

  Sephryn remembered the sight of hundreds of ghazel. Was there ever really a chance?

  To reach the Grand Arch, she had to pass back through Imperial Plaza, which was still a bloody mess. Bodies lay on top of one another, a fresh coat of blood sprayed over older stains. The rings of slaughtered ghazel were laid out like flower petals, with dead Instarya at the center of each. Their bodies were still there. All of them surrounding the big circle in the middle where—

  Sephryn stopped in shock.

  At the center of the plaza where Nyphron lay, a solitary legionnaire stood. He appeared to have been dyed red. They saw each other at the same instant. His face, coated in sadness and blood, washed with relief as their eyes met. Dropping his sword, he ran to her. For a moment, Sephryn worried it might be the bald Fhrey in disguise again, but then she noticed the wristband. She’d made the bracelet long ago when she was so poor that she had to cut strips of leather from her sandals. The thing was ugly—Sephryn was no artisan—but it had been made with love. At that moment, it was beautiful because it was still on his wrist. The impostor hadn’t had that hideous, poorly crafted, and yet absolutely wonderful leather bracelet.

  Nolyn!

  He embraced her. She was off the ground, swinging in a circle as he whirled her about. His arms squeezed her so tightly she could hardly breathe. She didn’t care. She didn’t need breath, not anymore. He’s alive! He’s alive!

  “You’re safe!” he shouted, setting her down, tears making clean lines down his cheeks.

  “So are you,” she managed to get out.

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her. “I should have done what you asked. I shouldn’t have left you. I should have gone to my—”

  “No, no, no.” She stopped him. “I was wrong. I always am.”

  “No, you’re not.” He squeezed even tighter and whispered in her ear, “And I love you. I always have.”

  Then he drew back, his hands running down the length of her arms, moving toward hers.

  “Nolyn, I—”

  “You have your mother’s bow,” Nolyn said.

  “What? Oh, yes. There were ghazel dancing and chanting in the arena. There aren’t anymore.”

  “It was you! You saved us.”

  “She saved everyone,” the man behind Nolyn said.

  Only then did Sephryn realize they were not alone in the world. Imperial Square was full of soldiers. The shabbiest and bloodiest stood just behind Nolyn. The one who had spoken, the man in a First Spear uniform, she recognized. “Amicus Killian?”

  “How in Rel can you remember names like that?” Nolyn smiled at her. His hand came up and cupped her cheek. His eyes locked on hers.

  He doesn’t want to look away. Doesn’t want to see what’s right beside him.

  Eventually, as the soldiers gathered around, he had to. Sephryn watched the happiness fade as Nolyn looked down at the body of his father.

  The emperor’s eyes were still open, one leg twisted in an undignified manner. Nolyn knelt and straightened it, then closed the emperor’s eyes.

  “Nolyn . . .” she began but then faltered. She had to tell him. How could she not? “Nolyn, I—”

  “I misjudged him.” He continued to look at his father, and his voice grew heavy. “I thought he hated me. He didn’t. I thought he tried to kill me, but it wasn’t him. I thought he’d sent me away after my mother’s death out of cruelty, but—at least in his mind—it was out of kindness. I thought the tattoos were meant to humiliate me, but they were for my protection.” Nolyn placed a hand on the emperor’s head. “He wasn’t the father I wanted, but I think he may have been the father I needed.”

  His words hurt. Sephryn knelt beside Nolyn and took his hand, pulling it to her chest. She had to tell him the truth. It felt so wrong not to. She’d been forced to promise a stranger she’d keep silent, and other strangers had forced her to steal a horn and kill the emperor. She was done letting others control her. While terrified that the news would end their relationship and create an uncrossable chasm between them, keeping the truth from Nolyn would be cowardly. She knew nothing about the man who’d given her the bowstring or why he wanted her to stay silent.

  How could remaining a coward save the empyre, much less the world? She wanted his words to be true, but wanting didn’t make it so. “Nolyn, I have to tell you something. Something terrible. Something unspeakable, and I have to say it now, or I won’t ever be able to. I did an awful thing. A horrible thing. You’re going to hate me.”

  Nolyn looked at her. “I could never do that.”

  Such a wonderful thing to say, but reality often made short work of pretty words. “You don’t yet know what I did. I—”

  “Sephryn!” a woman’s voice called. “Sephryn!” The soldiers moved apart to let the woman through. It was Arvis, and in her arms, she carried a bundle. “I saved the bread, Sephryn.”

  Sephryn shook her head violently. “Not now, Arvis. For Mari’s sake, not now!”

  “But . . . I saved the bread.” Arvis began crying. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I had to kill Mica to do it. I didn’t have a choice. She came at me with a knife—was gonna kill both of us. Don’t be mad—please don’t be angry. I couldn’t let her take the bread—not this time. But this isn’t my bread, Sephryn. I know that—I mean, I didn’t, but I do now. Mica told me. And that’s when it all came back. You see, the Bakers took mine. Rodney and his wife, Gerty the Turdy. They took my daughter, Alina. It was years ago, but that’s what happened. Oh, no, that’s not right. They didn’t take her. I couldn’t feed Alina, so I gave her up. I gave my daughter to the Bakers. That doesn’t matter, but this does because this bread isn’t mine. It’s yours. Don’t you see?”

  �
�Arvis, what are you—”

  The bundle in Arvis’s arms moved, and a baby cried.

  Sephryn’s heart leaped at that sound; she knew that cry. “Nurgya?”

  Arvis nodded. “I saved the bread, Sephryn. But it’s not my loaf. It’s yours.”

  “The bread . . .” Sephryn broke from Nolyn and, reaching out, took the child. Her arms shook until her baby filled them.

  “You were in the market. The person who bought the bread for Arvis.”

  “You were forced to do evil today, and while I can’t restore your soul—for there are tallies that cannot be erased—I can still reward you for such a great sacrifice.”

  “And what could you possibly give me that I care about?”

  She looked at her son’s rosy face, then up at Nolyn. “This . . . this is the awful thing I did,” she lied. “I didn’t tell you about your son. Here he is.” She cooed at the baby, then added, “Nurgya, this is your father.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Last Galantian

  For the first time in eight hundred and thirty-three years, Founder’s Day had been skipped. Some saw an ill omen in Nyphron’s death occurring on the anniversary of the city’s founding. But everyone agreed that the emperor, who had died while defending his people from an invading ghazel army, was a hero to the end. Everyone also agreed that his son, Nolyn, and a handful of elite soldiers known as Teshlors had fought a courageous battle at the Grand Arch. Their bravery and skill had confounded the ghazel horde until Sephryn, daughter of Moya the Magnificent, used her famous mother’s bow to break the magic spell on the city. Together Nolyn, Sephryn, and the Teshlors had saved Percepliquis from destruction—and rescued its citizens from a gruesome death.

  Emperor Nyphron was laid in a golden coffin on a satin-covered catafalque that was placed in the center of Imperial Plaza. He was dressed in his full set of armor, which had been polished until it shone as bright as the sun. The population of the city filed past the body for three days. On the third day, as the bundles of flowers began to wilt, he was laid to rest in an alabaster sarcophagus. Lacking a proper tomb—no one had thought the emperor would need one for centuries—the sarcophagus was placed in the palace.

  Over those same three days, the city had been cleaned. Blood had been mopped and stones scrubbed, but it soon became obvious that a faint, unsightly stain would forever remain. Every dark corner of the city had been searched for hiding ghazel, and large sections of the sewers had been filled with concrete. Despite all such efforts, rumors of goblins lying in wait persisted, and for a long time, mothers had little trouble ensuring their children would be home before dark.

  “You could have spaced it out a bit,” Smirch said, struggling with his uniform. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Actually, he can’t.” Amicus adjusted Nolyn’s ceremonial sword belt. “You can bet Hillanus and Farnell are plotting as we speak. Right now, everyone sees us as heroes. Only an idiot would raise an objection. Hillanus would be killed by his own men if he tried. We need to get that crown on Nolyn’s head while the wave is still cresting.”

  “Besides, I prefer to get everything over with at once.” Nolyn scowled at the gaudy, full-length mirror that revealed a vision of himself in golden robes and an ermine mantle. “No sense having to get dressed like this twice.”

  “Just seems such a waste.” Smirch pulled on his buckle. “Why have only one party when you can have two?”

  The Teshlors and the soon-to-be emperor were holed up in the echoing Grand Hall. They gathered at one end, near the single high window that cast a lone shaft of white light on the tile floor. Nolyn’s father had been placed in the emperor’s private quarters until a final resting place could be constructed, and Nolyn didn’t feel comfortable dressing in the same space as a huge alabaster sarcophagus. In truth, Nolyn didn’t feel comfortable anywhere in the palace, his father’s private quarters least of all.

  I don’t think I can live here. Maybe Seph and I can just run away? Oh, and Nurgya, of course. Can’t forget him. By Mari, I’m a father!

  Nolyn didn’t feel like a father. There had been none of the pomp and ceremony that usually accompanied a royal birth, and he hadn’t had enough time to become acquainted with the idea. The kid was just there, waiting. Nolyn had hoped that the moment he looked at his son he would feel something. He had imagined some magic enchantment would overwhelm his heart, and he would instantly fall in love with the boy. It hadn’t—at least not yet.

  Have I inherited my father’s indifference? Nolyn stared at himself in the mirror and physically shook at the vision of an emperor staring back. By the eyes of Eton, I look like him.

  “Seriously, Your Eminence.” Amicus emphasized the new title they were all still getting used to. “You were less nervous in the Erbon Forest.”

  Nolyn scowled. “That’s because I wasn’t about to become a husband, father, and emperor of the known world. Things were easy way back then. I was only waiting to die.”

  “Way back then?” Riley questioned as he checked over the dress uniforms of the Teshlors. “That was just two weeks ago, sir.”

  They all looked at him.

  “Are you sure?” Amicus asked. “You know it’s a crime to lie to the emperor.”

  “I’m not the emperor yet,” Nolyn said. “Lie all you want, Riley.”

  Riley straightened Everett’s collar and noted the deep cut on his forehead, the blow that had nearly killed him. “Put your helm on.”

  Everett did so. The helmet had an ugly dent where the blade that caused the cut had creased it.

  “Never mind. You’re a lost cause,” Riley said, and turned to inspect Jerel.

  “Well?” Jerel asked and smiled.

  Riley rolled his eyes and moved on to Smirch, who had his belt buckle on the wrong hip and wore a two-day growth of beard. Riley shook his head. “Honestly, man. It’s the coronation.”

  “I’m not ready for this,” Nolyn said. “I mean . . . look at me!” He turned to face them, holding out his arms and turning around slowly. “This isn’t right.”

  “Well,” Amicus said, “it’s got to be a better job than assistant administrator in a salt mine.”

  “You’re not getting out of this, you know.” Nolyn wagged a finger first at Amicus and then at the rest of them. “I’m going to do what Jerel wanted.” He said it as a threat and pointed at DeMardefeld, who shone like a mirror.

  “We’re going to be bodyguards, right?” Mirk asked, with a hopeful rise in his voice. Mirk and Everett were delighted to be in the city at the center of the world, to be all dressed up in gleaming metal. For them, the terrors of the past were forgotten and the dangers of the future yet to be realized.

  “No!” Nolyn shouted, then reconsidered. “Well, yes, but not in the way you think. You’re going to be bodyguards, but the body you’ll be protecting is the empyre. The empyre will be your family now, Amicus. I want you to train an elite corps of troops that will be unequaled in combat.”

  “For war?” Amicus asked suspiciously.

  “No, for peace,” Nolyn replied. “Your Teshlors—my Teshlors—will protect the empyre, eliminate corruption and cruelty, and uphold my laws and the new charter of rights.”

  Amicus laughed. “I’m not a god. I can only teach them how to fight.”

  “That’s where Jerel comes in. He will turn these warriors into Night Heroes by instilling in each the modesty, goodness, and truth that Gifford of Rhen embodied when he courageously rode out to face single-handedly the army of the fane. The rest of you will assist them. Through all of you, by the power and honor of the Teshlor Nights, we will make the empyre not merely great, but noble. In other words, if I have to be emperor, all of you are going to suffer with me.”

  The entire place had been meticulously cleaned for the celebrations. Sephryn watched Nurgya playing on the floor of the bedchamber that had once belonged to Empress Persephone, but since her death, it had become more like a shrine than a home. The room hadn’t been occupied in centurie
s except by a lonely ghost, if the tales of the cleaners were to be believed. No members of Nyphron’s staff had ever entered the old bedroom.

  The palace servants were a bit giddy at the prospect of a living empress once more inhabiting the palace. The great canopy bed was covered in a quilt that depicted the history of Clan Rhen. Rumors reported it had been crafted by Brin. The gorgeous rug had been a present from the ancient warrior Menahan. The fired clay cups and bowls on the glass-encased shelving, which had been made by Gifford of Rhen, were all washed and dusted. With so much memorabilia, the place felt more like a museum than a bedroom.

  As much as Sephryn had loved her namesake, who had become a vague memory of light and goodness over the years, she found it difficult to imagine sleeping in Persephone’s bed. Emperor and empress would be expected to live in the palace, but it didn’t feel like a home, much less her home. At the same time, Sephryn couldn’t imagine returning to the empty house on Ishim’s Way. Even though Mica hadn’t been murdered there, Sephryn couldn’t forget the blood-covered walls.

  Nurgya was her salvation. He appeared to take after Nyphron’s side of the family, his hair so blond that it looked nearly white. His eyes, however, were as green as Nolyn’s and Sephryn’s—a shade darker, perhaps. And he was perfect. Sephryn had checked her son over a dozen times. Not a mark was on him. As best she could determine, the Miralyith likely never touched Nurgya. Mica had staged her own death and, after stealing Sephryn’s son, the two of them had hidden in the sewers.

  How could she do it? Mica had always cared for Nurgya like her own child. And then she took him because a voice in her head told her to? A voice she believed was a god.

  Sephryn wanted to hate Mica but found it difficult.

  I did the same thing, didn’t I?

  Sephryn tried to draw a distinction between what she had done and Mica’s actions, rationalizing that not only had Nurgya’s life been at stake, but so had the future of the empyre. Sephryn truly believed that the world would benefit if Nolyn or Nurgya became emperor, so her decisions hadn’t just been because of a voice.