He would need me too, I realized. He would need me as much as I needed him. I focused on that, as the water sloshed around Tenia and I looked at the dead face of the girl who had called me her chancellor, who had blown me a kiss across the room and promised we’d be together forever. My only friend. I focused on my father’s need. He would need me. I had to live for that. He needed me.
I felt an ache in my chest where the Empress’s magic had been torn from me. It hurt, but it wouldn’t kill me. Absurdly, I thought about Rhenne, the small redheaded girl who had lost her place at the Academy while I was kept in her stead, because my father was chancellor to the Empress. Rhenne’s latent ability to channel the Empress’s magic had been stronger than mine, but not strong enough to keep her place. Tonight, she was still alive because she had lost that place.
For years at the Academy I had struggled with the awareness that I’d only been admitted for my political connections, for my father’s position and my friendship with the Empress’s daughter, rather than for the just-barely-good-enough strength of my gift. Now, as I looked at the bodies of the students who had mocked me lying dead in the water, I knew that weakness had saved my life. I felt numb and empty from the loss of magic, but not dead.
Gingerly, I untangled myself from the husk of the Empress and stood up.
My legs wobbled as I stepped down from the Seat, holding the massive gilded arms for support.
Water covered the last two steps. I shivered, unable to control my reaction. I squatted on the step and rinsed the blood from my hands and face in the brackish water. I scrubbed my face hard, as if it would make the reality around me go away.
No one can see you, I thought. You’re just wasting time.
I didn’t care. Even if no one else was alive in the palace I had to wash off the Empress’s blood.
I’m only still alive because I’m a terrible channeler. And now there’s nothing to channel.
I took another step in my ruined shoes, sloshing through lukewarm water.
There’s only one person in this palace who will have answers to what’s going on here, and that’s my father. He knew I could turn to him when I had nothing else left. He said so.
I knew he was still alive. I needed him to be. He hadn’t been at the initiation ceremony. I clung to that. Remembered the people who had glanced my way—pitying me because official duties had meant my father hadn’t been able to attend his own daughter’s confirmation into power. Hadn’t been there when I approached the throne, when I felt the Empress’s embrace. For a moment I tried to savor the feeling of connection, of acceptance, of power again, but I couldn’t. All I could see was Tenia. What will I do without you, Tenia?
Trust your father, she had told me. And that’s what I would have to do. If I could find him.
Hours had passed since the attack. I might be alone in the dying palace. If there had been a counterattack it would have already happened.
For a moment I thought the counterattack might have failed already, or passed through and left me for dead. But then I realized that Ananyan soldiers would never have left the Empress’s body behind. There had been no counterattack.
I knew my father’s duty as chancellor if the palace faced a catastrophic attack: My father would have led an evacuation through the sally tunnels to safety. I knew his duty meant he couldn’t risk others’ lives to try and find me or save me, not when so many were dying. So I would have to find him myself.
Water sloshed at my feet as I began to wade forward. With the Empress and Tenia and the royal family dead, all the magic in the Drowned City had faded away. Binding magics had strengthened the levees holding back the sea from the half of the Drowned City that remained above water. Those bindings had vanished with the harbor defenses and the lights on the walls and in the streetlamps. As I sloshed toward the door of the Presentation Chamber, circling to avoid the floating bodies of my classmates, I could feel the water rising, slowly but perceptibly.
My father would most likely have been in his office in the South Tower when the gods had struck. He might have gone any number of places since then, but his office, I decided, was where I should start looking—if for no other reason than that it meant ascending, away from the rising floodwater.
Sperrin
The Drowned City: The night of the Loss
My first two kills were god-sent: an slender silverwing with glossy marks around its wingtips and green eyes, and a hulking ironback with black-and-red chains tattooed around its neck and shoulders. I committed details of their features to memory, so I could write them down accurately later. A decade after Khemme’s suggestion, it still helped me to hold onto myself since I had gotten myself so lost in killing—the details were still murky in the just-returning memories.
The ironback I took outside the Hall of Ceremonies, in a presentation area filled with display cases. It had killed two guards with its heavy, backcurved stillsword and was tossing heavy darts at a pair of fleeing servants. The ironback half-turned as it noticed me coming into the chamber, flexing its shoulders so the tattoos rippled on its iron-gray skin. The creature didn’t look very worried. It threw another dart, shattering the skull of the last servant, then turned to face me.
The guards’ palace swords had shattered against the ironback’s stillsword. It seemed surprised when my blade held. They never know how to fence, I thought, meaning the guards and the creature both. I remembered reading that in the book at the Officers’ Academy, so many years ago.
The ironback didn’t seem to have a plan for when its strength and power failed to overwhelm me. I deflected an overhand slash, then severed the creature’s spine with a slash through the gap in its collarbone, where ironback armor was weakest. Apparently, the information in the book could be trusted.
By the time I had worked my way to the central guard station, I found myself sloshing through ankle-deep water. The city engineer had once bragged to me of the levees’ ability to hold for up to a week in a magical failure, but that had clearly been optimistic. I had passed the man’s corpse on my way through the dining hall.
The silverwing attacked from above. I heard the slight whir as it flapped its wings twice before diving.
Jumping out of the path of the silverwing’s dive, I wheeled and slashed its right wing tendon, crippling the wing and throwing it off balance. Ignoring the tough skin on the creature’s exposed back, I stepped inside its guard on the crippled side and gutted it. The silverwing splashed facedown into the water. I pinned its head underwater with my foot until it stopped thrashing.
Those two messengers of the gods—I had no idea which god they served—seemed to be outliers. Most of the palace attackers must have moved on to other targets in the city. Not until I reached the Presentation Chamber did I find another sign of life.
Ketya
The Drowned City: The morning after the Loss
I had seen the older guardsman before, though I couldn’t remember his name. Most guards were in their mid-twenties, four or five years older than me—veterans, but not graybeards. This one was closer to my father’s age than to mine. I recognized him because he always carried a big, clumsy-looking blade on a worn baldric. It looked jarring hanging across the breast of his tailored palace guard uniform. He had some sort of scandal in his past, but I don’t think I had ever heard the details. After what had happened to Mala and her parents, people were very reluctant to pass gossip or rumors on to me. My father had a way of intimidating people.
It wasn’t like my father told me anything much, either.
Grizzled or not, right now I was glad to see the guardsman. He carried the blade unsheathed in his right hand: It looked black, like seasoned iron, rather than the silvered inlays of the palace blades. Here and there I could see odd grooves and studs, though whether they were for bladework or to facilitiate magic I had no idea. It struck me as strange that even as a just-initiated channeler I didn’t recognize the design of the blade. It must be very old, I decided. It looked a little like some of th
e patterns in the old theater costumes but I didn’t know what it signified, if anything.
Sperrin
“Have you seen anyone else alive?” I asked the girl. It took me a minute to place her, soaked in blood and bedraggled as she was: Ketya, the chancellor’s daughter. A little shy perhaps. Just returned from the Empress’s Academy but I’d seen her around the palace for years before that. Not one of the girls I had to keep away from the guardroom. “You came from the Presentation Chamber, correct?”
Ketya shook her head. “No one,” she managed to say. “The water is getting deep there.”
I nodded. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t...I don’t think so. The blood is...the Empress...I...”
I didn’t wait for a coherent answer, patting her down quickly. “You’re right, you aren’t hurt. Nothing cut or broken, anyway. You are sure no one is alive back there?”
“I’m sure. I hoped I would find someone...”
“Me too. But I’m not surprised. We need to get to the sally tunnels. I don’t think they will be flooded. And as far as I know they are the only place in the palace safe from the godlings.”
To my surprise she shook her head again. “We can’t,” she said.
“What do you mean, we can’t? Why not?”
“I don’t mean we can’t. I mean we have to go to the South Tower first. My father’s there. Or at least, he might be. Have you seen him?”
You’re father’s dead, I wanted to say. But I didn’t actually know that. Not surprisingly, there weren’t any standing orders for what to do if the royal family and everyone else in the palace had been massacred. As far as I could tell, my duty was to find whatever survivors I could and get them out of the palace to safety, then worry about what to do next.
I could check the South Tower, but there was a good chance that doing so would get the one survivor I had found killed.
But I couldn’t ask her to leave the palace not knowing whether her father was alive or dead. I wondered if my own long-forgotten daughter thought I was dead.
“Stay behind me,” I said. “Close, but not too close. If something kills me, you don’t want it to get you on the same blow.”
She smiled wanly, as if she thought I was joking.
Ketya
The whole thing felt like one of those dreams where nothing makes sense but you can’t wake up. Things got progressively stranger on the way to my father’s chambers. I was following the soldier—Sperrin, I’d finally remembered his name was—“close but not too close” when he stopped at one of the bodies. I’d been trying not to look at them—so many of them were people I’d known for years—but he had spotted something that seemed important to him.
Steeling myself against the sight of yet another dead friend, I edged closer—hoping it wasn’t “too close.” Then I saw what had stopped him.
This body didn’t belong here.
The corpse wore a green-and-gold Central Alliance uniform.
By the dart in its back, the soldier had been killed by the godsent, so at least the gods weren’t teaming up with Ananya’s strongest enemy. But what was an Alliance soldier doing here in the palace?
Two attacks at the same time went beyond coincidence.
After a moment or two of checking the soldier’s body, Sperrin seemed satisfied with what he’d found and we moved on. I wondered what he’d been looking for, but didn’t want to ask. He hadn’t said a word to me since the “close but not too close” comment.
I wanted to hear another living human voice to help push the dead ones out of my mind, but even in my current bad-dream-you-can’t-wake-up-from state that sounded stupid and dangerous. Sperrin was probably still alive for a reason, while only a combination of blind luck and my lack of magical aptitude had saved me so far. I would have to wait to ask questions until we were out of the palace.
I kept reminding myself of that, but I still had trouble not calling out to Sperrin as he walked ahead of me, never seeming to look back.
As we approached the South Tower stairway, Sperrin held his left hand up to stop me. He went completely still. A moment later I heard a footstep on the stairs.
Quiet as a serpent, Sperrin edged forward, disappearing into the doorway that led to the stairs.
Do I stay here? I wondered. It might be my father on the stairs. I waited for what I hoped was long enough to let him find whatever was up there, then followed after as quietly as I could.
Sperrin stood behind a column at the edge of the main landing, watching. In front of him on the landing six Central Alliance soldiers lounged in that pose soldiers got between duties with no officers nearby. All of the soldiers were male, and husky. Piled in the center of the landing were empty pack frames and poles. They planned on carrying something out of here. A fairly substantial something. But what? The South Tower held administrative records and the living quarters of the chancellor and his staff. Not the sort of records people would kill for, either—mainly birth and marriage and employment records. Maybe the soldiers were lost, or in the wrong place?
Like a serpent, Sperrin uncurled and struck. The first soldier fell before he realized Sperrin was on the landing. Two more died reaching for their weapons. Then three of them circled Sperrin, blades in hand. Their weapons crackled slightly with the sound of magic. I could see slight green flickering on their blades.
I didn’t see Sperrin’s hand move but suddenly one of the soldiers fell. Dark blood welled from the fallen man’s side. The other two came at Sperrin, one high and one low. Sperrin pivoted and chopped. His heavy black blade sliced through the first man’s neck and lodged deeply in the second attacker’s back. Both of them pitched to the ground, unmoving.
Sperrin glanced back at me as he cleared his blade, then cleaned it. Something looked different about him. It took me a moment to place what had changed.
In all the years I’d seen him in the palace, I had never seen him smile before.
His blade secured, Sperrin walked over to the man whose side he’d cut. The Central Alliance soldier lay in a pool of blood, still moving slightly.
Squatting, Sperrin bent over the man, and said a few words in one of the languages of the Central Alliance. The dying soldier grimaced and spat. Sperrin said a few more words, sounding a little regretful. Then he calmly stood up and wiped the bloody spittle from his face.
He motioned me into the landing. Carefully, I stepped around the bodies. The Alliance swords lay on the stone floor, magic gone with their wielders’ deaths.
“Where will your father be?” he asked. The smile had faded, replaced by his usual neutral expression.
I pointed up the short flight of stairs. “There. He’ll be in there if...if he’s here.”
“Thank you,” said Sperrin. He began walking.
The injured soldier had died, I noticed.
I walked fast to catch up with Sperrin. Probably “too close,” but there was something I needed to ask. “What was it you said to that soldier?” I asked. “What made him so mad?”
“His name,” Sperrin responded. “I asked him to tell me his name before he died.”
Sperrin
I knocked on the heavy door. Painted decorative edging scrolled around the door like a trellis, distinctive from all the other doors in this section of the palace. Fresh paint, too. The chancellor had picked a poor time to have his door redecorated.
Knocking seemed an oddly formal gesture, under the circumstances.
A bolt slid back and the door drew open slightly. Faint light backlit the chancellor as he appeared in the slight crack of the doorway.
“Overcaptain Sperrin. It is an honor to see you, as always.” The chancellor wore well-tailored traveling clothes, just worn enough to look comfortable and yet somehow formal. His short chestnut beard was neatly trimmed, despite the earliness of the hour. Even in the half-light his personable green eyes seemed to twinkle. His daughter has the same eyes, I thought. If you hadn’t been forced to watch him officiate at an execution, it was impossible
not to like the chancellor. Which was why he was chancellor, I supposed.
I still despised the man.
That wasn’t really fair, I knew. I had a soldier’s distrust for politicians and their insincerity, and this was the highest-ranking politician in Ananya who wasn’t actually a member of the royal family.
Which meant, I realized, that at least in name the chancellor was the highest ranking person left in the Ananyan Empire, since all of the royal family was now dead in the Presentation Hall with the Empress. Until a few hours ago, the Empress’s magic had made the palace the brightest building in all Ananya. The darkness in the halls around us was all the proof I needed that none of her family still lived.
Something felt off about the chancellor’s clothing and demeanor. More than off: Much as I disliked him, the chancellor may have been the most fearless and aggressive man I ever knew. The man who had forced a broken army to take Davynen, just by sheer force of personality. The man who had ruthlessly destroyed every obstacle in his path. The only man whom the Empress had trusted utterly, and who had carried out her policies with a wolfhound’s fierce devotion.
So why did the man whom I would have expected to be taking charge of a counter-attack not rally an attack? If even he saw a counter-attack as helpless, why was he not leading an evacuation? This was the last person in all Ananya I would have expected to find hiding in his chambers at a time of danger. And he was dressed as if he intended to leave on a pleasure cruise at any moment. Where was the commanding personality who had forced his way from the mud of Davynen to the height of the Empress’s service?
In all the years I had known the man, I never knew the chancellor to do anything without reason. I had hated him for it since I first encountered him at the siege of Davynen, but he was brilliant at his job. He was brilliant at every job the Empress ever gave him. But now he seemed cowed, just another bureaucrat in a dead palace. What happened to him?
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