by Callie Bates
I suppress a snort. Empress Firmina always sails from Vileia. It’s prettier, and there’s less chance of colliding with a warship. In any case, the imperial family is rarely in residence here, since Antonius the Second moved his seat of rule, along with the entire court, out to the then-village of Aexione. He complained of Ida’s crowds and smell, but everyone knows he just wanted his courtiers where he could keep an eye on them. But the wink of muskets and cannons high on the ramparts reveals that the Old Palace is far from unoccupied.
I don’t like how small it makes me feel. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Or feel easy.
But I like a challenge. I do.
The ship rocks slightly as the sailors put down anchor. The witch hunters nudge me down the plank to the wharves, where a coach-and-four waits, outfitted in plain black. It appears my arrival is to be kept secret.
I stretch my legs, glancing around the high walls surrounding the wharves. I can’t see the city, or even hear the sound of it. It’s suffocating, even with the water behind me and gulls crying overhead.
Quentin gestures me into the coach. It’s warm and musty and claustrophobic. The witch hunters climb in, and the horses begin to move. A bell clinks from the roof, and a hammering starts in my chest. I fight the urge to run. Instead I reach for the crank to lower the window. Maybe some air will make me feel more myself.
“Sit back.”
I stare at Quentin, who watches me with displeasure. Faverus shifts. I look at him. A sweat has broken out on his forehead.
Is it the heat in the coach, or is he worried about something? Quentin seems even more tense than usual.
I sit back. I don’t want them to close the shade, depriving me of any view at all. Am I supposed to remain unseen, or is there something I’m not supposed to see?
“I’m so looking forward to this interview with your grand inquisitor,” I remark. “Will it be here, in the palace?”
Quentin looks uncomfortable.
“Aexione,” Faverus says. “We have to get you to Aexione.”
So they are bringing me to the emperor—if the grand inquisitor doesn’t declare me a sorcerer first. But to judge by Faverus’s sweat, it’s either the journey there that frightens him, or what we’ll find when we arrive. I’ve heard rumors about the grand inquisitor’s casual cruelty. He’s been known to mutilate people accused of sorcery, to unhinge them with simple torture, even when they’re later found innocent. Perhaps even his own men are afraid of him.
Abruptly, we rattle into darkness. We’re beneath the Old Palace now, in a series of tunnels hewn into the rock by some ancient, enterprising laborers. They connect to the equally labyrinthine passages leading up into the palace complex itself. We seem to rattle forever through the dark, broken only by the occasional torch or lantern outside the coach.
Out of nowhere, I’m assailed by the visceral memory of Madiya’s cave. Of lying there on the stone table, my memories torn away, longing for Mantius to sweep in and carry me away in his feathered cloak. All the gods, I hope I haven’t abandoned Lathiel to that, again. I hope he followed the lead I gave him. And I’ve lost Rayka. It seems as if no matter how hard I try to help my brothers, I can never save them.
And now, as if I’ve summoned her, Madiya’s voice slips into my mind. Jahan.
I grip the cushioned seat. I can’t afford to hear her in my head. Not here, not now.
Jahan.
No, I think. No, no. She has no right to do this to me—to violate my mind like this. But she keeps on whispering. I want to scream at her, but it won’t do any good. I don’t know how to stop her. I never have.
Light lances through the coach. I gulp a breath. I’m cold with sweat. Her voice still echoes on, but somehow, in the light, it seems more endurable.
The coach slows—so that we can be released through the gates, presumably—and Faverus shifts to look out the window. As we pick up speed, his face contorts.
Shouting hits us like a wave, voices echoing outside the coach. I straighten, forgetting Madiya. Faverus’s eyes flick to me. Sweat gleams below his cap. Quentin just stares me down, as if daring me to look outside or ask them what’s going on.
The roar resolves into a single word: “Korakos!”
The whole coach shakes. A face appears in the window—there and gone—as if a mass of people are throwing themselves at us. Clearly someone spread word of my arrival.
We burst forward. I glimpse hats and raised fists. A throng fills the space between the grand buildings of Pompeia Boulevard. It’s nothing like the usual jaded citizens who populate Ida’s streets. I’ve never seen anything like it here.
“Justice!” they’re shouting.
“Sorcery!” they’re shouting.
“Bread!”
“Equality!”
Someone leaps close and thrusts his fist at the closed window, then tumbles off, leaving a paper in the window’s edge. It flaps as the coach gathers speed. I crane my neck to look behind us, ignoring Quentin’s protest. What’s going on? Has Ida completely transformed in my absence?
We pull free of the crowd, dashing through the busy streets. Here no one shouts except to protest when the coach nearly collides with them. I glimpse honey-colored stones, decorative cornices over windows. Ida. The driver is aiming for the Great Bridge, which links the Old Palace to the exclusive, aristocratic neighborhood of Vileia on the other side of the Channel.
I eye Quentin, who’s seething, and Faverus, still sweating. No wonder they wanted to keep me away from the windows. The emperor isn’t going to like this. “That was quite the welcome! It looks like someone’s glad to see me.”
Quentin just mutters something. Faverus mops his brow with a handkerchief.
Past the flapping paper, an expanse of blue gleams out the window. The Channel. We’re on the soaring arch of the Great Bridge now, one of Ida’s most monumental feats of engineering.
I lean back. “I couldn’t tell if they wanted to kiss me or kill me. Kiss me, I think.”
At this, Quentin erupts. “They’re traitors! They want you to bring that Ereni witch to Ida. They want sorcery.”
Sorcery? Ida’s cynics want sorcery? I can’t say I’m complaining, but it’s not quite the response I expected. “What would they do with sorcery?”
“They want to change the government.” Quentin sneers. “They want to bring back the Glorious Republic and they think your witch can help them do it. Because there was magic in the Glorious Republic.”
“How ambitious,” I say neutrally, trying to hide the hope that pounds into me. If Ida’s people want sorcery, then Emperor Alakaseus will have to do a good deal more to suppress it than declare war on Eren. No wonder he’s bringing me to Aexione by an unmarked coach. If the fervor for revolution that’s swept Eren has arrived in Paladis, then it’s not only sorcery the emperor has to fear, but the loss of his throne.
He’s not going to be happy to see me. On the one hand, if his control is wavering, I may have an advantage in our negotiations. But on the other…Alakaseus Saranon has been emperor for nearly thirty years. He’s accustomed to having his way. He won’t want to listen to an upstart from the Britemnos Isles.
No wonder I’m being sent straight to the grand inquisitor.
“They’re disloyal,” Quentin grouses. “They’ve been Paladisans for more than two hundred years now. Why don’t they want to be part of our glorious empire?”
“Maybe because they’re treated as secondary citizens?” I suggest. I was. Aunt Cyra pressed the emperor to grant me full citizenship, but before that I was just like most of the empire: a citizen without full rights.
Quentin just rolls his eyes.
The paper jammed in the window is chattering. I can’t quite make out the words on the back. With an angry sigh, Quentin opens the window and snatches the paper before it can blow away. He shakes it at Faverus.
“Another call to arms by ‘the People’s Party.’ I knew it.”
He makes as if to throw it out, but I reach for the sheet. With a dark look, he lets me have it.
The People’s Party. That’s Lucius Argyros, a man I’ve heard speak many times in the university’s lecture halls. And Pantoleon. My friend: a lawyer, an intellectual, a dreamer.
I read the heading. Brothers and sisters of Ida & All Paladisan States! it proclaims. Self-governance is your birthright! Sorcery is in your blood! Rise up together, today and every day, against the tyrants who would impose their laws on us! I feel myself wince; it is rather loaded with hyperbole.
My gaze catches a paragraph at the bottom of the sheet and the breath stills in my lungs.
The Paladisan emperors made sorcery anathema. Paladius the First never received a mandate from the gods, but acted out of his own lust for power! Sorcery is a skill like any other, a talent anyone may possess. Our brothers and sisters in Eren have shown us how it may be used. Now it is time to show them that we’ve heard their cry for freedom! Let us answer them and bring magic back to Ida and Paladis, where it belongs!
No wonder the people were waiting for me at the gates. Everyone in Ida must know how Elanna woke the land and threw off the Eyrlais. They’re rising to our revolution.
The emperor really isn’t going to be happy to see me.
Dislodging him will be far harder than deposing the Eyrlais. But I didn’t come here to fight the Saranons; I’m here to broker an alliance. And I know the cost of revolution. I’ve already lost one friend.
Besides, I know who wrote this pamphlet, and I’m not sure I like it. Its words bring back the visceral smell of the university archives, the old scuffed wood and the soft musty scent of books. The cramps in my legs from sitting too long hunched over age-spotted pages. Pantoleon, grinning up from a passage he’d found—triumphant at first, but the grin sliding away as he read to me what was written there. The bald facts of how the witch hunters oppressed Ida’s sorcerers, how they systematically slaughtered and subdued all resistance to Paladius the First’s new order.
“You see the vitriol they’re writing,” Quentin says, from the other side of the paper. “It’s grown worse since what happened in Eren.”
Since what I did in Eren, he means. I’m trying to find my breath. There it is; I can breathe again.
Pantoleon and I spent three years sifting through the archives, hunting for the truth—as if understanding the past would be enough to mitigate the grief of the present. As if it could bring back my mother, his father. Sorcery orphaned us both, in different ways.
And we both know the consequences of being caught. What on earth is Pantoleon doing, writing our secrets on public flyers? Revolutionary fervor must be upsetting his common sense.
I fold the paper in half. I have an interview to survive, and an emperor to negotiate with. I don’t have the luxury of telling Quentin my true opinion. “It is unfortunate,” I hear myself saying. “The people can be so excitable.”
Quentin looks dubious, but Faverus nods vigorously. “They’ve been agitating throughout the city. Talking about how the government needs to change, and the emperor’s ministers need to be elected by the people, and His Imperial Majesty himself is a tyrant. It’s treason! They should be arrested, but the city watch is too soft to do it. Of course, they’re secondary citizens, too…”
I make noises of agreement as they talk. Neither of them seems to notice me slip the paper into my pocket.
Pantoleon and I are going to have words about this.
* * *
—
IT’S TEN MILES to Aexione—plenty of time to forget my tentative hope at the sight of the crowd and the flyer, and remember I’m being taken to be examined by Alcibiades Doukas himself. I can’t let Quentin and Faverus see my mounting fear, so I stare out at the countryside as if my life depends on it. Outside the city, the landscape turns impossibly bucolic, young vineyards green under a staring blue sky, dusty olive groves, lambs bleating on rocky outcroppings. This side of the Idaean peninsula, west of Mount Angelos, is far greener than the land to the east, which becomes abruptly arid in the mountain’s rain shadow. The mountain itself looks no more troublesome than a high-piled cloud. It’s hard to imagine that this is what periodically shakes the ground from Aexione clear to Ida and beyond.
“It’s been talking lately,” Quentin says, evidently noticing where I’m looking.
Faverus stares down at the cards he’s shuffling. “People in Ida are saying it’s the gods,” he mutters. “They’re angry with the Saranons.”
Quentin smacks his knee. “Maybe the gods are warning them to be silent!”
I watch Faverus. He hasn’t looked up from the cards, which must be quite well shuffled by now. He’s frowning. Does he not approve of the rebellious Idaeans, or is it Quentin who bothers him? For the first time in my life, I wonder how someone like Faverus becomes a witch hunter. What would make a young man hate sorcery so much that he wants to hunt down witches? Or does it just sound like a noble thing to do?
“All the gods, Fav, are you going to deal?” Quentin demands. Faverus startles and passes out the cards. None for me, of course. I may be a well-treated prisoner, but I’m not invited to join the game.
Just as well; I don’t want them to see how damp my hands are. I stare back out the window. I need to make a plan, but so far all I can think is survival. The bells will fray any magic I attempt to work. I’ll have to rely on my wits, and Madiya’s claim that she rendered me immune. It’s not entirely reassuring.
We draw into Aexione through a purpling dusk. The sprawling palace, larger than most towns, seems to float in the growing darkness. Torches blaze against its white marble colonnades, throwing the friezes on the lintels into relief and deepening the shadows of the courtyards. I feel gritty and anonymous in my Caerisian tweed. Our coach wades through a chaos of carriages and phaetons and berlines, past shouting footmen and cross drivers. Courtiers lean from their conveyances to harangue their servants and laugh at one another. The racket seems to rise in a wave against my ears. I’m careful not to lean forward; Quentin is watching me. The courtiers are still wearing the styles I set: the short hair, loosened cravats, unbuttoned coats, long trousers. Strange to think Finn and I were once mocked for wearing such things. From this distance, I can’t recognize anyone. I wonder where Leontius is. I wonder if he even knows I’m coming. If he’ll even speak to me, if he does.
Our coach swerves through an archway into the open courtyard that serves the palace’s eastern wing. We’re surrounded now by the barracks and training yards and rooms that house the imperial guard. The emperor’s chambers are on the other side, reached through a long, well-guarded corridor.
Heat is building in my chest and on the back of my neck. If the grand inquisitor finds me guilty, I’ll die in this place or in the Frourio, the emperor’s prison in Ida. Or they’ll take me to the Ochuroma, where Madiya suffered for all those years. They’ll torture me; they’ll destroy my mind. Imagining Mantius coming to save me won’t be enough. Nothing will.
Maybe my father was right. Maybe I should have used the opportunity I had to destroy their damned order.
And grant Father and Madiya the satisfaction of seeing their work done for them? Not likely.
We stop. Quentin leans forward, pleased. But Faverus is perspiring again. I don’t understand it. The door flies open, pulled from outside by imperial guards. There are two of them—no, four—six—eight. They wear elaborate, old-fashioned costumes and plumed hats. But the bayonets slung around their shoulders prove they’re not merely decorative.
Someone else waits behind them—a light-haired man wearing a bandolier of stones. A bell quivers between his outstretched fingers.
My stomach has gone cold. My chest, too. It’s Alcibiades Doukas.
I remember the girl they took, the one they brought before the
emperor. The witch stones had unhinged her mind. She was barefoot, her gown crumpled and dirty, her matted hair crawling with lice, judging by the way she kept scratching it. Her eyes held a vacancy that showed she saw something the rest of us didn’t, something that wasn’t really there. She didn’t seem to see us or even recognize the emperor except as a backdrop to whatever was playing out in her mind. We were meant to laugh at her, but I couldn’t make myself. Neither could Leontius, it seemed. He just grimaced and swallowed and, as soon as he could, strode out of the Hall of Glass. I followed, and when I glanced back over my shoulder, the witch hunters were tormenting her with their bells, making her cry out.
Now that is going to be me. And then they’re going to kill me.
But no. I think of my ancestor in his feathered cloak, the greatest hero of his age. Mantius wouldn’t be cowed by these people. I can’t let the witch hunters see anything but an irritated nobleman, shocked he’s being treated with such indignity.
Quentin slides out into the evening. “Sir! We brought you the Korakos.”
I’m not sure I like how pleased he sounds. Faverus, meanwhile, just gestures me forward. I get out of the coach, ignoring the tremors in my legs. The grand inquisitor, Alcibiades Doukas, looks thoughtfully at me. He’s a slight man, with a dimpled chin and a narrow smile. With his light, fading hair, he must be from one of the northern provinces, or had a parent who was; either way, he didn’t grow up a full citizen, even with his Idaean name. His uniform is cut from silk velvet, and gems wink on his fingers. Did he ring the bell? I didn’t even hear it.
I decide to pretend I don’t even know who he is. “Gentlemen, I must object.” I pitch my voice in the most laughingly aggravated manner I can, inspired largely by Zollus Katabares, one of Leontius’s Companions. “I’m innocent of any crime! Unless coming back to Aexione after so long is a crime? Has the length of my absence offended someone?”
“We’re merely taking precautions, Lord Jahan,” Alcibiades Doukas says, his narrow smile deepening. His voice is surprisingly modulated—a courtier’s. “Follow me, if you will.”