by Terah Edun
No, it’s not a refusal, she thought bitterly. It is complete blindness to the very idea that he should be giving back to the empire that has given him so much, by being a fair and impartial ruler, let alone a kind one.
She sighed bitterly as Thanar said, “I know that you’re weary. We all are, but you above all else should know—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Ciardis didn’t let him. She wouldn’t take one more ounce of blame for this horrible, horrible situation. On any level.
She whirled on him with teeth bared. “Don’t turn this on me. Don’t make me the bad person here. You know I’m right. He has managed to turn every situation into a beneficial solution to him. He is the problem. More than the gods. More than the dragons. More even than backstabbing nobles with barely a scruple of morals between them.”
Sebastian blinked. “That may be so. But we can gain assurances—”
Ciardis threw up her hands in frustration. “Can you give me an assurance that he won’t revert to the backstabbing snake that I know he is?”
“No,” said Sebastian frankly. “But you know and I know that there is no one in the world who could do that and not be lying through their teeth. He’s my uncle, so I can say that with complete honesty.”
He stared at her.
She stared at him.
Then she laughed, and the door came crashing down.
Soldiers poured into the room with no resistance. They had their weapons drawn, but they didn’t make to assault their escaped prisoners, so Thanar didn’t attack them just yet. He flared his wings menacingly, but they all knew it was more for show than anything else.
Maradian walked through the door with a pleased smile on his face. Ciardis’s frown immediately dipped. He looked different somehow. Just an hour had passed, and yet the Emperor seemed as if he had visited a fountain of eternal youth in the intervening time.
The look of weathered exhaustion was gone, even though he retained the same features of his natural face before. He just looked healthy now. His cheeks were no longer hollow, his eyes no longer dreary, and he didn’t have the gait of someone too near death’s door.
“You’re looking better,” Ciardis said with a surprise even she couldn’t hide.
The Emperor smiled. “You’d be surprised at what a little rest can do for the soul.”
“And being away from your palace nexus of power?” Thanar asked in a clever tone.
A small smirk appeared on the Emperor’s face, but he didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead, he clucked his tongue and said, “I’m so glad to see the three of you again. I was almost faint at the prospect of you escaping through a window or burrowing a tunnel in the time we’ve been apart.”
“Or walking out through the front door,” Ciardis said with bite. “We’d be happy to do that again.”
Maradian gave her an amused look. “Not this time, my young friend, though what an interesting set of hours it has been.”
Ciardis snorted and crossed her arms. “I would have been a fool not to ask.”
Maradian nodded politely and waved away a set of guards who seemed keen on boxing the triumvirate in more tightly. Maybe he saw Sebastian’s hand twitching for the sword at his waist or Ciardis’s eyes narrow in displeasure. Whatever the case, the Emperor seemed keen to keep them on amicable terms.
Ciardis was wondering why he hadn’t just ordered their blood shed already.
“I see you found my second guest,” Maradian said politely as his eyes landed on Raisa.
“Oh yes, we found her,” said Thanar with a pointed delicacy.
Maradian blinked and yawned like a cat. They eyed each other with a measure for power, but each turned away, sure that his point had been made clear.
Ciardis tapped her foot in an unconscious mirror of her mother’s earlier impatience as she said, “Why did you bring us here?”
The Emperor waved his hands. “Well, to be perfectly accurate, I didn’t force you here—”
“We’re tired, Uncle,” interrupted Sebastian in a carefully neutral voice. “The least you can do is honor us with your honesty. Be forthright and we’ll do the same.”
Maradian paused. “Very well. I wanted you to see my allies…and understand what I can do with and to my enemies.”
He was clearly talking about Raisa when he said enemies.
“Seen,” said Ciardis with a level tone. “Now how do we know that you won’t stab us through the heart the second you get a chance?”
Maradian smiled and shrugged. “Believe me, I’ve had numerous chances to have you murdered, flayed, gutted, and knifed in a back alley. But you intrigue me, Weathervane. You always have. Your flair for getting into trouble has gotten you into more scrapes than I think even I know of, and yet you always seem to come out of them alive.”
Ciardis felt an eye twitch. “Is there a point to this?”
Maradian smiled. “Of course there is. It is this: I can teach you to move beyond staying alive, child. I can teach you how to thrive.”
“The Emperor’s right, you know,” said Lillian as she walked over to the Emperor, weaving between the soldiers standing at attention like a snake moving around blades of grass.
“I’ve never known a better player of the game of empires,” Lillian continued as she stopped in front of the man she cleared admired.
The measured tones of her mother’s original personality shone through. Ciardis felt her lips press together in great displeasure. This might have been the Lillian with the mental acuity that she knew, but at the same time she was clearly still very much affected by whatever had been forced on her. She still had her intelligence in this form. She even had her wit. But her scruples seemed to have been wiped clean. At least the scruples which had anything to do with one Maradian Athanos Algardis.
The Emperor preened at the attention given him. “I can promise you this, I will be your mentor and benefactor. As long as our alliance stands, my word is my bond.”
His eyes glittered in anticipation.
Ciardis Weathervane was practically shivering in revulsion.
But as he said: his word, in this case, she knew would be his bond.
Tone succinct, she said, “All right.”
“I’m so glad we’ve come to an agreement,” Maradian said in magnanimous delight. “I do so approve of powerful allies.”
“I’m sure you do,” muttered the prince heir.
Maradian gave them all a very satisfied grin which Ciardis desperately wanted to stuff down his throat and make him eat. However, that wasn’t in the plans. Not yet.
Maradian smiled. “Now, I’ve always had plans. You should have realized that by now. And this time around, as much as I would love to merely watch this epic battle of ages between you and this presumptuous god, I can’t leave the battleground without first assuring that you’ll win.”
Ciardis stirred uneasily. “And how do you plan to do that?”
Maradian gave her a cat-like grin. “By ensuring that this bluttgott is hampered before he even reaches this plane of existence. I can most easily show you how this will be done rather than explain, but not just at this moment. We have other things to discuss first.”
Ciardis didn’t like his crude deflection, but she too wanted to know some things from him, and right now this would be the best time to do it. Airing grievances at the start of the alliance when all was well would be a smarter practice than trying to get information out of Maradian when the accords surely broke down again an hour from now, a day, a week. The timeframe didn’t really matter to Ciardis Weathervane so much as the ability to get away from the Emperor and live to cross him another day.
“Fine,” Ciardis said. “That is all well and good, but there is one thing I absolutely must know now.”
The Emperor raised an eyebrow. His welcoming face invited her to proceed with her question.
So Ciardis said bluntly, not seeing the need to beat around the bush, “What did you do to my mother?”
Maradian rocked ba
ck on his heels and hummed. He didn’t answer right away, but even as he thought about his response, she was thinking of all the things she had seen and heard and gone through in the past day. They seemed to be linked in some way, and she was desperately reviewing the content as they slowly but surely came together in her mind. The pieces touched on more than Lillian, though. They touched on everyone under Maradian’s influence. Everyone who had disappeared. Everyone who was practically overwhelmed with anguish.
As she waited for his response, she wondered.
She even muttered aloud, “Anguish is the key. Mental seems to matter even more than physical…”
She was just rattling off the thoughts in her head, but the Emperor gave her a gleeful grin. “Oh, you’ve finally noticed, have you?”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking about all the people he had made suffer, or her mother in particular, but she felt the cold dispassion that had over taken her for the spoken agreement between their two parties disappear. Instead, anger took its place.
Anger that erupted into fury when the Emperor continued on with nonchalance, “Some of my best work, that.”
He was like a child with a toy admiring his invention. But these were people’s lives, people’s well-being, and her own mother’s among them.
Ciardis couldn’t help it. She lunged at him, not really intending to kill him but wanting to do something. As expected, a soldier caught her and sent her sprawling back with a none-too gentle push. They had done just what she needed, though; she had needed to get a closer feel of his psyche while his barriers were lowered in glee.
It wasn’t that the anger hadn’t overwhelmed her; it had just solidified her resolve to find the key to breaking him. And to get that key, she needed to know what he was made of. As a soldier caught her in mid-air, she didn’t put up much more than a token fight. Instead, she was watching the reactions of his soldiers, the sharp intensity of Lillian Weathervane’s gaze, and most of all—the almost dreamy look in the Emperor of Algardis’s own eyes. The kind of look you got when you were working strong magic and feeding on the powerful effects that it set off in your brain. Pleasure, pain, all heightened by magic. If used correctly.
She couldn’t prove it. Not yet. But she had a suspicion.
That the Emperor of Algardis was a mental mage.
21
The realization was as shocking as ice-cold water being thrown into her face.
She struggled not to show it. Luckily, at that moment, no one was paying the least bit of attention to the emotions flashing across her face.
The soldiers were busy grabbing on to any body part they could reasonably reach. They were so eager to prove their usefulness to the Emperor that they also immediately blocked Thanar, Sebastian, and Lillian from reaching her as well. Not that she was sure Lillian would have intervened anyway.
Quickly, one grabbed Ciardis by the neck and another twisted back her arm so tightly that she knew she would have a lovely purple bruise by the next morning.
She whimpered at the pain but remained steadfast in her refusal to scream.
The guards holding her, however, didn’t seem interested in torturing her, just in moving her away from the head of the empire that they had already failed once this day.
Seconds later, Ciardis was pushed away. She was so distracted by the sensation of being grabbed from all directions while processing all of the facts that she had gathered in her head that she didn’t even try to halt her body being flung backwards.
Luckily for her, she fell into Sebastian’s waiting arms. Thanar stepped forward with a warning snap of his wings.
“I’d be more careful if I were you,” the daemoni prince cooed directly into the face of the one who had so roughly pushed Ciardis. His eyes might have been focused on one, but his tone encompassed the entire room.
Several of the men edged back, ostensibly to get more room around them so they could attack. But Ciardis could see the fear in their eyes, and practically smell the scent of fear in the air.
The soldier who had held her was a bit different. He blanched but stood his ground.
That one has character, Ciardis thought as she stood up with a slight bit of assistance from Sebastian.
That one is going to need a new set of teeth soon, Sebastian replied in her mind. Judging by the look on Thanar’s face.
Yes, that too, Ciardis replied. She straightened and lightly touched Thanar’s left arm, letting him know she was okay, and to drop this if he was willing. She wasn’t in control over what he did or said, but as they had learned this morning, it was easily possible to vastly underestimate the Emperor’s abilities. Magically and mentally. She didn’t want to do anything to set him off again.
It wouldn’t do to make the same mistake a second time around.
For his part, the Emperor chuckled, seeming actually amused at her bluff. At least, that’s what he thought it was.
When his female commander looked over at him, waiting for instructions, Maradian waved a hand at his soldiers and said, “Relax. No harm, no foul.”
Ciardis wanted to comment that he could have said that before his soldiers pushed her away so roughly, but just as much as she wanted to get close to him and test her theory, she got the feeling the Emperor of Algardis had been surreptitiously appraising her as well.
Continuing onwards with an interested gleam in his eyes, Maradian said, “Now, back to your question, Lady Companion Weathervane.”
Ciardis was startled at his formality. It had been a long time since the Emperor of Algardis had referred to her as anything but her actual name. Or, if he was feeling familial in nature, then he would call her princess heir-in-waiting. This was a change.
Then Maradian turned to look at Lillian with a smile. He waved her over. Ciardis watched her mother practically glow as she jumped back over to titter in Maradian’s ear.
The visual made Ciardis Weathervane practically throw up in her throat.
With unhappiness that she couldn’t, and didn’t, even try to hide, Ciardis said, “I guess you were referring to my mother, then.”
The Emperor looked up from bopping Lillian on her upturned nose and winked at Ciardis.
“Of course not, my dear,” he said confidently. “Though if you prefer formality, it can be arranged.”
Ciardis’s mouth thinned into a line. Why did it feel as much a relief as a nasty threat to be addressed so by the Emperor?
Probably because his moods are as fickle as your mother’s today, Sebastian said. And formality can indicate as much displeasure with a subject as can aloofness.
Ciardis tried to school her expression into a more neutral face. Sebastian was right. Unfortunately. Right now, with the Emperor holding all the cards…including her mother’s mental well-being…in his hands, they couldn’t afford more mistakes.
So she restrained her reply as she looked for a way to turn the subject back around to the priorities of the day: namely, a god on the horizon, a dragon empire that would be looking for its waylaid ambassador, and oh, a city on fire as well.
She’d almost forgotten about the last priority, though she was beginning to suspect that the visual of Sandrin burning was an exaggerated one. For one thing, she had been outside and seen not a single section of the sky enveloped in smoke.
She had to wonder if the servants she had encountered were just puffing their own smoke. Perhaps even too frantic with fear to pass more than highly unsubstantiated rumors along in their haste, she thought.
After all, the palace was falling apart around their heads.
It wouldn’t have been a stretch to think the entire city was suffering the same fate. Fire would be an easy thing to strike up in surprise somewhere. Once it ignited in the palace, it would then be fairly easy to go from the crisis of a building falling apart to a lantern landing in a bed of straw and spreading its fierce flames unchecked from rooftop to rooftop like some avenging fury out to kill every single individual in its path.
Ciardis shivered.
&nb
sp; It wasn’t hard to imagine at all.
And that scared her. The city by the sea, the capital of the entire empire, was vulnerable now. Vulnerable to its own destruction from within. As long as she stood here in a stand-off with the Emperor of said city, its denizens and the whole of the lands, nothing was getting done to protect the empire from any sort of threat.
22
“My question for you,” Lillian said in a cool, confident tone that had Ciardis immediately shifting focus with sharpened eyes to her mother, “is simple.”
Ciardis could tell in a second that the ‘switch’ between emotional Lillian and calculating Lillian had been flipped. It was like a metal spine had been fused to her mother’s back. Lillian smoothly leaned away from Maradian’s petting touch and stood in her own space. She didn’t move away, but she wasn’t as dependent on him like a soggy noodle in need of comfort. Her gaze grew intense, her face proud. Ciardis wasn’t so sure she didn’t like the lines of compassion and care that showed on ‘emotional Lillian’s’ face, but right now she far preferred the one that didn’t seem to consider the Emperor a resting couch.
That Lillian was a well-rounded individual with fierce emotions and even fiercer concern for others.
This Lillian was like a shark in the water, focused on her own end goals and, so far, willing to take on her daughter’s cause above all when necessary.
Ciardis needed the latter, even though as a child she would have killed to have just one single day with the former.
“Ciardis,” snapped Lillian in a loud voice. Her tone and her attention clearly said this wasn’t the first time she had tried to grab the Weathervane’s attention.