They’d bound the soldier who’d struck down Ranvera to a post at the center of the platform. He’d been stripped to the waist, presumably for dramatic effect, but didn’t look otherwise mistreated. What was the point? Beating him wouldn’t make him any more of an example than he was about to become. I didn’t even know his name.
Once the lieutenant-governor started speaking to the assembled army, I didn’t notice anything else. None of us did. He looked unassuming: chestnut hair and neatly trimmed beard more-or-less indistinguishable from a dozen other diplomats I’d heard speeches from. We expected something fiery and inspirational, but that wasn’t what he did. He spoke for an hour without notes, and by the end of it we felt terrible—every one of us ashamed. I don’t think I could remember a word he said, but I’ve never been as ashamed of myself as I was that day—and my company had held its assigned position.
He turned away from us at the end, said a few words I couldn’t hear to the soldier bound to the post, and nodded to his wife. The soldier had looked defiant up until that point, trying to put up a good front for his former comrades. But whatever the lieutenant-governor said drained the defiance from him. The soldier sagged against his bonds, as if in surrender.
And then his head exploded. Blood and flecks of bone and brain spattered the front ranks of the drawn up soldiers, though none of it touched the lieutenant-governor or his executioner-wife or to the young girl who still clung wordlessly to her mother’s leg.
That speech made the lieutenant-governor famous, but afterward in private he made a shorter, grimmer speech to us captains. “I am not a soldier,” he told us, in a way that made us ashamed that we were. “You know who among you is the best tactician. You will make a plan, and you will attack in the morning and you will carry the enemy defenses. I will leave the details to you.”
He took a breath. “You think you have accomplished something because each of you has fought bravely and your company didn’t break. I want to tell you that it means nothing. No one will speak of you or remember you unless you win tomorrow.”
He stared at me—I suppose every one of us thought he was staring at them. “You think I am exaggerating to upset you, to make you fight harder. But I am not personally concerned with how hard you fight. If you fight poorly, another will replace you who fights better. What I tell you comes from the Talisman of Truce itself. If you fail here, you will be forgotten by man and god alike:
Let those who fall in battle be celebrated if their fall be brave. But if
They fall through misdeed among their comrades, or through
failure of their comrades to fight steadfastly, there shall
be no need for celebration: Their kin shall mourn them if they choose but
their fall incurs no obligation among their foes.
I had heard the Truce quoted before, mostly in dry history lectures. But the lieutenant-governor used the words like a lash. He turned and left with those words, and we turned to planning—this time planning how to win the battle, not just how to minimize Overcaptain Koros’s mistakes.
I hated the lieutenant-governor. I cursed his name, which I can’t even remember anymore: It vanished from my memory years later when he gave it up in the Empress’s service. Mostly I hated him for being right.
We hated ourselves but we fought brilliantly. We broke Davynen’s principle defenses the next morning, and took the city while the poor fool of a soldier’s magic-blasted body was still sagging from its post on that terrible stage.
I was in the thick of the fighting and they promoted me, but I felt dirty about the whole thing. I hated the lieutenant-governor for that speech, but I couldn’t help respecting his ability and his oratory. I wasn’t surprised when he was named a governor, then continued to rise in the Empress’s service. He would be chancellor of all Ananya the next time I saw him, the Empress’s closest adviser.
That moment outside the walls of Davynen was the first time I saw the way nothing touched him, how even death avoided the man.
Part I
The Executioner’s Daughter
Chapter 1
Sperrin
Mount Melnen Road: Twenty-eight years before the Loss
When I was a boy we played gods and heroes, just like kids everywhere. I was the only one who didn’t really care which side I played, so I got to play a god a lot, while everyone else wanted to play the Holy War heroes. I wasn’t any less patriotic than anybody else. But I think in some ways I was playing a different game than the rest of the neighborhood kids fencing with our linen-wrapped sticks.
I don’t think I realized it at the time, but I was learning to kill. I did care who won or lost, and even then I was the best tactician of all the kids in the town. But really, for me the games were personal. It wasn’t just that I wanted my team to win: I needed to beat the players on the other side.
I could tell the difference between play and real life—I never killed anyone in the game, except in a pretend way. But I wanted to. After the game they were my friends, but during the game, if they were on the other side, I wanted to kill them.
Later, as an adult, I started to think that might have been a little unhealthy.
But the whole time I was a child, and then when I was a soldier, no one else ever seemed to be the least bit bothered by it. My wife even felt jealous of it, I think: She wanted me to have the same passion for her that I had on the battlefield. Or at least that’s what I thought she wanted at the time. Ironically, trying to do that is how I lost her.
* * * *
I killed for the first time when I was fourteen. I was in a pioneer unit—kids with shovels and axes sent to keep mountain paths clear. I managed to get separated from the others. Our channeler was an old drunk, which was why she’d been assigned to a pioneer unit instead of somewhere useful. If she hadn’t been sleeping at the main camp she would have noticed I was gone and found me. I wasn’t worried; it might mean a night spent out in the mountains, but she’d find me in the morning when she sobered up. Except that I ran into an Alliance scout instead. He must have separated from his group too. He had a blade and I had a trench digging tool, but I struck faster.
After I stabbed him we found ourselves stuck in a roadside ditch together for the night while he slowly bled to death internally. He wasn’t going to make it out of the ditch alive, and we both wondered if his friends would show up before mine did—in which case I wouldn’t, either. I didn’t speak any Alliance languages then and he didn’t speak any Ananyan, so we spent half the night talking without understanding each other. Then at some point he stopped responding and I realized he had died. I always wondered what his name was.
I guess it was the right thing to do, because the next morning after the pioneer troop found me the subcaptain in charge had me sent to Officers’ Academy, and I never had to do any more shoveling.
Sperrin
Officers’ Academy: Twenty-six years before the Loss
“So what’s the academy bladefighting champion doing here in the library studying instead of out on the practice fields in the heat like the rest of us?”
I looked up at the speaker: scrawny kid with red hair, slated for the scouts. Passable with a blade as well, though he didn’t really have the size for his straight-ahead fighting style. It took me a moment to place his name.
“Nemias, right?”
The redheaded kid nodded. I could see a touch of nervousness in his eyes, wondering if he’d overstepped himself.
I met his gaze squarely. He was sweaty from the practice field, while I felt cool, though I hadn’t come in all that long ago. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing in here. The same thing I’d be doing out there—practicing.”
“Practicing? Maybe you told the blade-coaches that, but I don’t see how you’ll improve your footwork from a book.” He gestured to the lavishly illustrated volume on the table in front of me.
“Well, I’m not going to improve my footwork working with you,” I said, smiling to show I meant no offense. We both k
new it was true.
He smiled back, a little ruefully. “So what’s in the book that’s more useful than working out with me?”
He actually seemed to want an answer, which surprised me a little. I usually had the two tables in the small academy library to myself. I had finished just over half its volumes so far—mostly history, tactics, strategy, fighting techniques, and the occasional treatise on logistics or engineering. Or in this case, anatomy.
Nemias looked more closely at the book. “That looks ancient,” he said. “Are those pictures hand drawn?”
I nodded. “It’s older than anything else I’ve seen here. But it’s a copy, not an original. There’s a note in the front that said it was one of a dozen copies made by the sorcerer Juila herself. She made them near the end of the Holy War for the use of generals, before the old magic was banned. At least one of the copies survived and ended up here.”
The pages in front of me depicted an adult male silverwing in several positions: resting, flying, diving, as well as an anatomical view with wings fully outstretched. Each pose had vulnerable areas and strongest points marked, while copious notes originally handwritten by several different authors described the fighting techniques to expect from silverwings and the best counters to them.
“So it’s a guide to fighting creatures that nobody has seen in eight hundred years.”
“Basically, yes.”
“And you think that book on fighting extinct creatures will teach you more than working out with me.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you should work on your footwork.”
He faked being hit by a blade thrust, as if I had wounded him. “Seriously”—and he did seem serious about the question—“what’s in there that’s useful to you?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe nothing. But you never know what you’re going to encounter. There are plenty of fey in the mountains, even if there aren’t any godservants. Why do you think there’s still so much cold iron used in building mountain forts? There are giants in this book, and a giant took out half a company of the Westerly Whipsnakes and their channeler a few years ago, and got away clean.”
“Really?” Nemias asked. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“The commander’s report is in that volume,” I said, pointing to one of the bound volumes of annual action reports from various regiments. The library’s selection was haphazard, but useful.
Nemias looked back at the open book on the table. “You can really learn to fight one of those godlings just from these drawings and notes?”
“I won’t really know unless I meet one, will I?”
He laughed, then realized I was serious. A different look crossed his face. “Can you show me then?” he asked. “If I run into one, I wouldn’t want to lose because of my bad footwork.”
“Sure,” I said. I moved the tables aside, and I spent the next half hour analyzing silverwing strike techniques and counters for him.
“Don’t you need to refer back to the book?” he asked at one point.
“No,” I answered honestly. “If it’s about how to kill something I usually get it the first time.”
The lesson seemed to leave an impression, and I thought he might come back to learn more. But our paths didn’t cross again for seven years, as it happened.
Sperrin
Glass Desert Campaign: Nineteen years before the Loss
“You there! Sperrin! I know you.”
“You do,” I said. It took a moment to place the spare frame, filled out since I’d seen him last, and the narrow face. His hair had gone from red to red-brown. “Nemias. Congratulations on your promotion, Captain.”
“Yours as well, Captain Sperrin. You’re making a bit of a name for yourself. Even more of a blademaster than you were at the academy, I hear.”
“I suppose,” I said. “I think I’ve had some lucky assignments.”
“Right. The Alliance troopers just fall dead in front of you, the way I hear it.”
I shrugged. “Nice to see you in the line infantry now. Last time I saw you, they wanted to make you a scout.”
He smiled. “I didn’t make much of a scout. I don’t like running, and I don’t know how to avoid a fight.”
“I guess your footwork’s gotten better, then.”
“It has,” he answered. “Someone told me to spend more time in libraries.”
“It worked for me.”
We clasped shoulders. “You’ll like it here,” Nemias said. “There’s a lot of killing to be done, and I hear you’re a good killer.”
I didn’t really know how to answer that, so I just nodded.
He was right, though: I was a really good killer by then. I’m not a bit ashamed of all the killing I’ve done. All of it was in the name of the Empress—or later, in the name of survival. But a part of me had started to wonder if I should be ashamed of how much I liked it. At twenty-three that distinction hadn’t crystallized yet, though.
As newly minted captains in the Glass Desert campaign, Nemias and I really got to know each other: fighting in the same battles, eating in the same mess, and more and more called on to plan fights together. We led a reinforced company together on a scouting-in-force before the battle at Camalyn Brook. When the action got hotter than expected and our channeler went down we fought back to back, and left a heap of dead Alliance troopers around us. He swore for me at my wedding. I pinned the insignia on him when he was promoted to overcaptain, two weeks after my own promotion. I used one of the silver overcaptain’s leaves the Empress herself had pinned on me.
We weren’t like brothers exactly, but we fought well together, and enjoyed each other’s company. Mostly we enjoyed the fighting, and planning the next fight. When I realized I needed to do something that would destroy my career, he was the one person I went to for advice. Though I would never be able to tell even Nemias the real reason I had to abandon a family and career that I loved. That would have destroyed everything he loved as well.
Sperrin
Glass Desert Victory Garrison: Nineteen years before the Loss
It took a few minutes to register that I was engaged to be married. I didn’t have any idea it was coming. I was sitting in my office, filling out duty rosters, when a tall, thin channeler entered. My future sister-in-law as it turned out—the same one who would send me away later, but I had no way of knowing that at the time.
She said something, but it didn’t register. It must have been the traditional words of engagement, but all I could do was stare at the golden object she held. She put it on my desk on top of the pile of duty rosters. Then she turned and must have left, but I never saw her go.
The token looked like a piece of golden fruit, covered with spiky outer leaves. I know a lot more about them now—my wife created and delivered many of them while we were together—but at the time I had no idea. Naturally, I picked off the first leaf, and the first few memories filled my mind: Sefa as a teenager, diving into a river to rescue a drowning sheep; Sefa at the Empress’s Academy, organizing a Memorial Day ceremony; a young Sefa lost in the woods, but determined to find her way home without having to be rescued.
They tell you that the memories are random, a way of getting to know the person you’ve been chosen to marry, but I know now that isn’t true. The memories are chosen to play on your emotions and vulnerabilities, to make you need each other, to feel like you complete each other. You fall in love, not with the person as they really are, but with the parts of the person that most appeal to you, which are the only parts you see before the marriage. I’m told the engagement pieces are not hard to make if you know what you’re doing—perhaps half a day’s work. The hardest part is keeping the chosen subjects from realizing their memories are being magically copied. Not that it would change anything, but it would ruin the surprise.
So if you ask me, were Sefa and I in love when we married, of course I was in love, and the thought Sefa might not be never crossed my mind. What alternative did we have? Who knows, the couples the Empress brought together
might have come to love each other anyway, but it wasn’t the sort of thing the Empress took chances on. Besides, as I later found out during my years in the palace, the Empress got a lot of enjoyment from what she saw as matchmaking. Most Ananyan rulers since the Truce delegated all but a few upper-level marriages to local officials, but the Empress took a personal hand in a surprising number of them.
Sperrin
Boldwater Province: Eighteen years before the Loss
I had always heard there was no way to tell the gender of a baby before it was born, but it turned out that wasn’t true, at least not if your wife was a channeler who had the Empress’s favor. The process just uses a lot of magical energy that could be better used to heat an herbary or plow a field, and I gather the channelers decided it was easier to tell people it was impossible than to tell them the Empress thought their pregnancy was a low priority. Sefa’s pregnancy, as it turned out, was an entirely different story.
Sefa’s sister, Nolene, took us under her wing from the time Sefa knew she was expecting a daughter. It almost seemed like Nolene didn’t have any other duties during that time, she was around so much. I was nervous as a trooper on his first campaign and some days Sefa wasn’t much better than me, but Nolene always seemed to know how to make us feel better.
I was home on leave a lot during the pregnancy: My regiment was quartered nearby and doing a lot of retraining new recruits after the battles of the Boldwater Campaign had depleted us. My overcaptain at the time probably preferred to have me fretting at home than fretting in front of the recruits. And he wanted me focused when the time came to fight again. So when Nolene would tell Sefa and me to get out of the house and do something, we did. Sefa and I hadn’t really spent a lot of time together over the years we’d been married, and pretty soon we would both be back at our careers, but for that one magical season we went to concerts and explored all the parks and forests nearby. We went boating and even spent some time taking cable-carriages to cities we had never been to and spending a few days exploring them.
The Lost Daughters Page 2