Creatures of Light, Book 3

by Emily B. Martin

  My words were swallowed by the blasts.

  The world went white and silent—like a bolt of lightning shot straight between my ears. I was in the air—my feet had lost contact with the ground. I twisted, reduced to basic impulse, until I hit something solid on my right side. The breath drove out of my lungs, and I rolled, chafed raw by snow and grit. Unthinking, I curled up, clutching the back of my head and neck, shielding my face from falling debris. I choked, my throat thick with dust and smoke. The flash of heat gave way profoundly to icy cold as the initial explosion dissipated. My head throbbed, my blood was thick and fiery. I smelled copper on top of the acrid smoke and wondered vaguely which painful place on my body was bleeding.

  Despite this jarring symphony of sensations, the world was still silent. I shook my head, dizzy, leaving streaks on my vision, and tried to lift my shoulders off the ground.

  I’d been saved by the archway—it stood incongruously amid the pile of rubble on all sides. The terrace was no longer flat and pristine, but buckled and streaked black with smoke. Dazed, I staggered upright, clutching the stone pillar for support, trying to organize the blur of shapes and shades around me into a recognizable picture.

  The first sound reached me, distant and muzzy. I turned back over my shoulder. The second Lumeni soldier was facedown in the water, flanked by pieces of a broken archway. Valien had leaped the remains of the retaining wall and was plowing through debris like it was underbrush, half his face red with blood. Not far behind me was a slip of forest green under the rubble. I saw his lips forming her name, but I could only register the blurred suggestion of each syllable. Ell-ah-may.

  He lunged downward and heaved her upright, her dark brown hair and copper skin coated white with masonry dust. The dust on her face cracked and split as she grimaced, and as he freed one of her arms, she waved it under her own power. Alive, then. Alive and shouting at him about something. Waving her hand forward. His head lifted and he locked sights on me where I slumped, clutching the archway for support. And then he looked past me.

  The muffled cloth in my ears was being replaced by ringing, high and sustained, bringing with it the continued shouting and horn blasts from around the palace. I turned back to the terrace and took one step away from the arch, wobbling. I took another step, letting go of the pillar, still clutching the white banner, now streaked with soot and blood that could only have come from me.

  The muddy shouting grew more distinct, and I realized it was because Valien was gaining on me, struggling over the demolished walkway. He was calling my name. I moved faster, slipping over a chunk of a paver that had buckled in two. The terrace was smoking—patches here and there still spit fire as Lyle’s incendiary grenades gobbled up their fuel reservoirs. Down by the lakeside, there was no more white statue—Ama Alastaire lay in pieces in the water.

  “Gemma! Gemma, stop!”

  I broke into a run, wild and loose-limbed, picking out the flicker of red sash, black fabric amid black stones.

  Valien’s voice grew clearer, sharper.

  “No, Gemma, get back! Don’t look, go back—Gemma, don’t look!”

  Chapter 17

  There was a lot of screaming.

  I think it was me.

  Chapter 18

  I strode up the gangplank to the bobbing Splendor Firmament, heedless to the row of crossbow quarrels pointed at me from above. My right ear still rang—I couldn’t hear anything on that side, splitting my world into two halves. I carried the white banner of parley in my fist, the stained fabric still shedding the occasional pearl, leaving a shiny, straggling trail behind me. A knot of Alcoran soldiers stood clustered at the rail, uneasy with the sudden pause in the assault. I snapped at them once, and they scattered, giving me space to pass through them.

  Shaula was storming down from the quarterdeck, her black fur-lined cloak billowing out behind her. The commodore, ship’s captain, and an abundance of officers were with her, but they were of no importance to me. I headed straight for them—sailors and deckhands scurried out of my way like roaches from lantern light.

  “What is this?” boomed the commodore, his helmet gleaming in the morning sunlight. “What are you doing—”

  “Be quiet,” I said sharply to him. “Don’t speak again.”

  His words turned to a rasp in the back of his throat, his jaw hanging open.

  I gestured to the mainmast. “Signal the rest of the fleet to cease fire and make berth in the river.”

  “The commodore will do no such thing.”

  I turned my gaze to Shaula, who was regarding me with her usual stern look, the same sort of disapproval as when I’d rolled out of my mother’s potato cupboard, sobbing.

  “If you had any sense,” I said to her, “you would kneel.”

  She didn’t move, and neither did any of the officers. “Gemma,” she said with the voice she’d used to scold me as a child. “You are a traitor to your country at least five times over at this point. I’m afraid you have no authority in current company.”

  “Who ordered this assault?” I asked. “No siege or movement of state military can take place without royal decree.”

  “I gave the decree,” she said. “You forget, as always, that the Prelate has the ability to act for the monarchy when circumstances require it. It’s the most basic form of balance between the monarchy and the council.”

  “I didn’t forget,” I said. “I wanted you to remind my officers.” I pointed at the deck. “Kneel.”

  She still didn’t move, her face twisting from disdain to anger. “Enough of this, Gemma. Where is the king? Answer that question, and we shall consider ceasing fire until he is returned.”

  “You have killed your king,” I said.

  A ripple ran through those gathered onboard, a collective intake of breath, of sideways glances. The knot of officers shifted, the sunlight glancing off the golden emblems of the Seventh King on their boleros. Shaula narrowed her eyes.

  “You stoop to great lows to find ways to circumvent—”

  “He was killed in the incendiary blast to the Blackshell terrace,” I said. “He was approaching to hail the ship and halt the attack when the trebuchets released. If it wasn’t the percussion that killed him, it was the impact from debris.”

  One young officer was twisting her cloak in her fists. The captain was muttering rapidly to the pale-faced commodore. Whispers flurried behind me, lost to the ringing in my right ear.

  “I beg your pardon,” the commodore said briskly. “But the Prelate guided the ships to Lumen Lake upon a revelation from the Light. There was no indication the king and queen were here. How could she know where to find you if we were not meant to be here?”

  “Miraculous things happen around the Prelate, don’t they?” I murmured, my gaze locked with Shaula’s. “So many miraculous things that one may even start to believe some of them were divinely driven. Where is my letter?”

  She lifted her chin, and with expertly practiced disdain, she said, “What letter?”

  “You destroyed it, didn’t you?” I asked. “The letter to me.”

  She sniffed in a non-answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A loss, then.” I shrugged. “At least no one can use it against me.”

  The bait fell true. Because Shaula would never, ever pass up an opportunity to declare my shortcomings to me.

  “You would deserve it,” she said poisonously. “It clearly was not the first. Exchanging love letters with a lakeman, an enemy to our country. Unfaithful, ungrateful little queen—you were never fit to stand beside the Seventh King.”

  I saw several brows furrow, and the young officer, with less of a leash on her tongue, puzzled out loud, “So . . . there was a letter?”

  “Quiet, Lieutenant,” said the commodore. His gaze flicked between Shaula and me. “But . . . there was a letter?”

  Shaula frowned, but she was poised enough to recover quickly. “The Light reveals itself in many ways, and it is not the Prelate’s ob
ligation to disclose any of them. But you continue to distract us from our more pressing matter. We took care to plot where the king was likely to be held. We noted where each of the prisons were on the shore and on each island, and we organized our strategy accordingly—”

  “Did the king ever divorce me?” I interrupted. “Did he ever sign the annulment papers?”

  Shaula sputtered, perplexed.

  “Did the council ever complete the arraignment?” I continued.

  “The order stands for your execution,” she said. “Signed by the king after you escaped imprisonment.”

  “No,” I said. “It was signed by you, but it wasn’t a signature authorized by the king, and that makes it invalid. And when the king is incapacitated, the authority comes to the queen, not the Prelate. Am I not still your queen?” I asked. I washed my gaze over the knot of officers. “Am I not still your queen?”

  “Yes,” cheeped the young officer.

  “Oh, Light,” murmured the commodore.

  Shaula twitched a hand, as if hoping to puncture the swelling panic. “This proceeding cannot possibly take place without—”

  “GET. ON. YOUR. KNEES.”

  She gave a start at the lash of my voice, at the step I took toward her. Behind her, with the creak of leather boots and starched uniform trousers, the young officer dropped to kneel on the deck. The others followed suit. A flicker of action in my peripheral vision told me the sailors and deckhands who had been standing slack-jawed a second ago were sinking to the deck.

  Slowly, arranging her thick black skirt around her, Shaula lowered herself down. She furrowed her brow, staring straight ahead, appearing to think very hard.

  “Commodore,” I said.

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “Signal the rest of the fleet to cease fire and make berth in the river.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  As the commodore hurried back to the quarterdeck, Shaula looked up at me. Even with her eyes two feet below mine, she still managed to convey an air of authority.

  “You cannot remove me,” she said. “You cannot try me like a civilian. The title of Prelate ensures—”

  “I don’t want anything to do with you,” I said. “I am handing you over to Queen Mona Alastaire to be tried for war crimes against Lumen Lake. You forget, as always, that when the Prelate assumes the voice of the monarchy they assume the retributions as well. It’s the most basic form of balance against a corrupt prelacy.”

  I turned my back on her and waved to the line of soldiers who were kneeling by the rail. “Four of you, come with me. The rest of you, stow your weapons. A contingent of Lumeni soldiers will be aboard momentarily to arrest the Prelate. Make no attempt to interact with them. Your only job is to keep the Prelate in her current location until she is in Lumeni custody. The Splendor Firmament will then make berth in the river, where you will wait for further instruction.”

  There was a flutter of gloved hands as they silently saluted me. I looked back over my shoulder. The commodore was up on the quarterdeck speaking to the signaler clutching the semaphore flags. My gaze dropped to the cluster of kneeling officers flanking Shaula and locked on the young one. She was looking at me, but seemed to regret it.

  “Lieutenant?” I asked.

  “Second lieutenant,” she replied.

  “Lieutenant. Come with me.”

  The newly promoted officer hurried to rise, and I turned and made my way across the deck to the gangplank. At the mainmast, the pulley rattled as the signal flag was lofted into the air.

  “Gemma!”

  Shaula’s voice was direct and disbelieving. A few soldiers rose from their knees as I passed, perhaps to flank her side as she got to her feet.

  “Gemma!” she demanded again.

  I kept walking without looking back. I kept walking until I had crossed over the rail, descended the gangplank, and reached the far end of the deepwater docks, her voice eventually lost to the hush of wind and the ringing in my ear.

  Mona stood at the end of the dock, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest, looking back at the smoking ruins around Blackshell. The three trebuchets had blasted apart the corner of the palace that abutted the terrace, and odd bits of interior décor—a twisted lamp, a scorched curtain, half a wingback chair—littered the broken flagstones. Ellamae was next to her, half-sitting on a mooring post, beating the dust out of her uniform. Her right leg stuck out awkwardly, wrapped in a hasty splint Valien had lashed together from fragments of roof timbers and strips of his cloak. Another strip wound around his forehead, though the blood on his face had yet to be cleaned off. He didn’t seem to register his own injury, though—he hovered at Ellamae’s shoulder, his fingers occasionally landing in various places on her body as if to check to be sure she was really alive.

  Mona turned to face me and the group trailing me as we approached. “Did she . . .”

  I nodded. “Send them in.”

  She waved to the cluster of Lumeni soldiers behind her, and they made their way past us for the Splendor Firmament. I looked to Ellamae.

  “Is there a stretcher?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” I beckoned to the group of Alcoran soldiers and the lieutenant, and then proceeded off the dock and back toward the palace.

  The grounds seemed oddly hushed after the chaos just shortly before. In fact, the parts of the palace that hadn’t been impacted looked positively peaceful, the layer of crisp snow sparkling in the morning sun.

  The terrace was quiet as well, but it was not peaceful. A harried guard of six Lumeni soldiers stood tensely around the cloaked body on the ground. Two were shifting a stretcher close to the edge of the cloak.

  “Away, all of you,” I said. They looked up, and without waiting for a nod from Mona, who trailed behind, they scattered backward.

  I knelt down on the broken stone pavers, far more slowly than I had not long before—there were still skid marks in the soot and snow from where I’d lunged to the ground. The blood in the cracks of the pavers hadn’t dried, thanks to the cold, adding new stains to the ones already streaking my skirt. I looked up at the young officer.

  “Lieutenant—?”

  “Itzpin, my queen.”

  “Lieutenant Itzpin, you understand you’ll be asked to testify?”

  Her lips were bloodless but set. “I understand, my queen.”

  With fingers strangely still and calm, I pinched the edge of the cloak and pulled it back so only she could see.

  She maintained admirable control, unlike I had. I watched as she struggled to memorize the sight, using her face as an anchor to keep from looking down. I didn’t need to see again. I wouldn’t ever unsee it—the blood coating both sides of his neck where his eardrums had ruptured, the loose angle of his jaw, broken. Despite this, his eyes were closed in an ordinary way, and his hair lay in curls over his forehead. I thought of that instead—as if it were early morning, and I’d woken up to find him in the last threads of an easy sleep.

  Gemma, came his usual murmur. What time is it?

  Always checking, always wondering how much time we had—just us—before the day truly began.

  I gestured to his wrist, lying near the lieutenant’s boots. She crouched down and pinched it in her fingers. After a long moment, she lifted her hand to his blood-soaked neck but stopped herself and reached for the vein in his thigh instead. Finding no pulse in either place, she leaned back.

  “Verdict?”

  “Deceased,” she said. And then, more softly, “Oh, blessed Light.” She removed her plumed helmet.

  I lowered the cloak and nodded to the soldiers. “Move him onto the stretcher. Lieutenant Itzpin, see that he’s brought to the healing wing and guarded until I return. This Lumeni soldier will show you the way.” I pointed to the red-haired soldier from my first day at the lake—he startled, jittery.

  I stood back as this was accomplished, watching them carefully heave the king’s covered body onto the stretcher and pick it up between them. They follow
ed the lieutenant, her helmet tucked under her arm, as she walked after the redheaded soldier.

  The silence behind me was profound. I turned to the others. Ellamae leaned heavily on Valien’s shoulder, her splinted leg propped up on a broken paver. Mona stood woodenly by. They were regarding me with the alert caution of something that might erupt at any moment.

  I suddenly registered the missing faces.

  “Where’s Arlen?” I asked.

  “Taking a contingent to the river,” Mona said.

  “And Rou?”

  Something behind her eyes flickered. “No one’s seen him.”

  “Was he near the terrace?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I looked at Ellamae. “Were any of your scouts killed?”

  “Two,” she said gingerly. “No injuries among the rest.”

  “They can form a search for him?”

  She nodded but didn’t move. Neither did Valien. Neither did Mona.

  “Go on,” I said. “He could be hurt—what are you waiting for?”

  “Gemma,” Mona said, her voice barely more than a whisper. Her hands twitched toward me. “I’m sorry.”

  No, I didn’t want to do this now—I didn’t want them to suddenly conjure pity. Ellamae nudged her husband in the ribs, and he helped her hop forward, reaching for me. She meant to embrace me—Ellamae, who’d wrestled Celeno to the ground three days previously, wanted to wrap me up in a hug.

  I stepped back, out of her reach, and her fingers closed on thin air. She wobbled on her one good leg, and Valien grasped her elbow to steady her. I looked back to Mona, standing, for once without her shoulders thrown back.