by Amy Raby
Vitala was not her given name. When she was born dark-haired, Papa named her Kolta: “blackbird.”
She was eight years old when the stranger arrived. Mama and Papa took him into the bedroom to speak with him. They shut her out, but she pressed her ear against the door to listen.
“We’ve completed the testing,” said the stranger, “and your daughter is exactly what we’re looking for. Highly intelligent, physically strong, and coordinated. And, of course, she’s black-haired.”
Mama said something she couldn’t quite make out.
“In the village, perhaps,” replied the stranger. “But in the Circle, dark hair is an asset. She can pass for Kjallan. It will allow her to move in areas where others cannot.”
More mumbling from Mama.
“The Circle is prepared to offer you compensation. Four hundred tetrals.”
Papa gasped.
Mama raised her voice. “I’m not selling my daughter!”
“Of course not,” soothed the stranger. “But Kolta will never reach her potential here in the village—not with the prejudice against girls like her. Why subject her to harassment and ostracism, when among the Circle she will be valued and revered? The money is our gift to you. A token of our thanks for aiding Riorca in its time of need.”
Mama began to sob.
“Treva, he’s right,” said Papa. “It would be selfish to keep Kolta here. A half-Kjallan bastard will never be accepted—”
“You hate her!” cried Mama. “You want to be rid of her!”
“Madam,” said the stranger, “consider the advantages to Kolta in joining the Circle. She will receive a thorough education, far better than anything she could get here. And she will be among her own kind. We have other half-breeds like her, dark-haired girls who know what it’s like to be Riorcan but look Kjallan. For the first time in her life, she will have friends.”
Mama continued to sob.
“Treva, think of it,” said Papa. “Four hundred tetrals! You know what that money would mean for us. This man is right. The Circle can do far better for Kolta than we can.”
Something unintelligible from Mama.
“No,” said the stranger. “It must be now. She must begin her language training immediately, or she’ll never speak with the proper accent.”
A long silence followed, broken only by Mama’s sobbing. There were soft words that Kolta could not make out.
The stranger was saying, “We find it’s best if there are no good-byes.”
The door opened, and the stranger stepped out. Terrified, Kolta hid in the corner between the wall and the door. But the door moved away, revealing her. The stranger stared down at her in surprise. “Were you listening, Kolta?”
She shook her head.
He knelt, bringing himself to her eye level. “Tell me the truth, and you will not be in trouble. Were you listening?”
She hesitated a moment, but nodded.
“And yet you do not cry.” His mouth twisted as he lifted her chin with his finger. “My name is Bayard. I’m going to be your friend, Kolta. Would you like that?”
She was silent.
“The people here don’t treat you very well, do they? They don’t like dark-haired girls. But I’m going to take you somewhere else. Somewhere you’ll be loved, Kolta. Do you want to be loved?”
Her chin began to tremble.
“Of course you do.” He folded her into his arms, and she began to cry. “It’s what we all want.”
• • •
Lucien limped on his artificial leg through the doorway into his office, fell into his chair, and leaned his crutch against the wall. Four years he’d been emperor, and still a shiver went down his spine every time he crossed that threshold. He’d spent too much time in the opposite chair, the one on the other side of the desk, facing a loud and frightening father he could never please.
Septian, his bodyguard, a head taller than Lucien and twice as broad, moved in almost perfect silence as he took his customary place behind the chair and shouldered a musket. He carried the weapon more for show than for any real need; it would be a rare enemy Septian couldn’t handle with a sword or a knife or even his bare hands. Lucien had been escorted by Legaciatti all his life, but since ascending the throne, he’d become hyperaware of them, especially Septian. The man rarely spoke, and his face was impossible to read. What did he think of Lucien? Did he recognize Lucien’s head for military strategy? Or, like Florian, did he privately roll his eyes at what he perceived as a useless, crippled boy?
Lucien rubbed his forehead. His empire was fragile, precarious. He had problems to solve. Real problems. What his bodyguards thought of him should be the least of his concerns.
Septian cleared his throat.
Lucien raised his head and saw the man standing in the doorway. “Remus. Come.”
The Legaciattus entered, bowed his obeisance, and sat in the chair across from him. The door guards shut him in.
“What’s the schedule today?” asked Lucien.
“You’re seeing Legatus Cassian Nikolaos this morning.”
Lucien made a face. “Pox. Is he waiting outside?”
“Yes, sir. And this afternoon, you were going to speak to the new recruits at the palaestra. Then there’s the meetings with your advisors.”
Lucien nodded. The morning would be a harassment, but the afternoon wasn’t so bad. He liked public speaking, especially when the audience was young soldiers—it wasn’t long since he’d been one himself. He’d seen action on the battlefield, and frontline soldiers tended to respect that.
Was there a gap in his schedule? His meeting with Cassian would not take all morning. “Remus, has that woman who won in Beryl arrived yet?”
Remus smiled. “She arrived by ship yesterday, Your Imperial Majesty, and awaits your pleasure.”
Lucien brightened. “Have her ready to play by midmorning.”
“Very good, Your Imperial Majesty. Shall I send in Cassian?”
“Yes.”
Remus left, and the guards admitted Legatus Cassian Nikolaos, Lucien’s highest-ranking military officer. Cassian was a longtime friend of Lucien’s father, the former emperor, and he was everything Lucien wasn’t. Big, burly, whole—that is, possessed of all four limbs—and afraid of nothing. Middle-aged, he had decades of command experience behind him, and it rankled him to report to an emperor in his twenties. “Legatus,” said Lucien, granting the man permission to speak.
“Your Imperial Majesty.” Cassian bowed.
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. The bow wasn’t as low as it ought to be. It bordered on insolence, yet the slight was subtle. He would look foolish if he drew attention to it. “Have a seat.” He’d tried several strategies for winning Cassian’s respect. Flattery hadn’t worked. Neither had pointing out the patently obvious holes in the man’s proposed strategies. In the end, he’d given up and fallen back on the style he’d used with his equally intractable father, a tone of breezy, uncaring confidence. It didn’t work either.
Cassian began, “Lucien, about the Riorcan rebels—”
“That’s Sir or Your Imperial Majesty,” snapped Lucien. “And I’m not going to decimate the Riorcans.”
Cassian stiffened. “Sir, you’ve let their crimes go unpunished far too long. They flaunt their disrespect in a hundred tiny ways every day, and their Obsidian Circle sabotages our supply lines and assassinates our officers.”
“I have a battalion combing the hills in search of the Circle. It’s not easy to find. In the past year, we’ve found only two enclaves, neither of which had more than twenty people in it. And you know what my soldiers discovered when they broke in.”
“Corpses,” said Cassian.
“They killed themselves rather than risk interrogation. We know nothing about where their headquarters are or who’s in charge.”
“Sir, this is why you have to decimate the Riorcan villages. We can’t find the Circle, but we can find the villagers who support them. Punish them, and that support will en
d.”
“Cassian.” Lucien paused, considering his words carefully. “You are one of Kjall’s finest commanders, and I have a tremendous respect for your experience in the field. But you haven’t been in Riorca. I have—”
“For two years!” spat Cassian.
“Two years longer than you have, and those years opened my eyes. Most Riorcans want nothing more than to live their lives and raise their families in peace. The rebels are a minority. Your opinion is noted, but my mind is made up. We will not decimate Riorca.”
“Yes, sir.” Instead of leaving, Cassian sat quietly in his chair.
Lucien eyed him narrowly. “You are dismissed, Legatus.”
“Sir, about last night’s state dinner . . .” He hesitated.
“Didn’t like my speech?”
“Your oration was superlative and the food exquisite. But you deprived us of the court’s brightest jewel, the imperial princess.”
Lucien’s mouth tightened. “Celeste chose not to attend.”
“At your urging, no doubt.”
“She is thirteen years old, Legatus, and she finds state dinners tedious.” Indeed, he could hardly blame his sister for not wanting to spend an evening being slobbered over by older men looking to insert themselves into the line of succession. In Cassian’s case, it was particularly disgusting, because he was already married. He would divorce his wife in a heartbeat if he thought he could remarry more advantageously. And while politically motivated divorces and marriages were common in Kjall, Lucien considered the practice repugnant.
“Perhaps she found them dull when she was a child, but she’s a young woman now. Young women love to be the center of attention. Perhaps she would like to attend the upcoming dinner for the Asclepian delegates? I should be glad to escort her.”
Lucien stared at him stonily. “No.”
“If you should change your mind—” began Cassian.
“You are dismissed, Legatus.”
• • •
Vitala paced nervously in her suite. The door guard—a new one, thank the gods; there must have been a shift change—had informed her the emperor would see her later that morning. Soon, the moment would come, the moment she’d spent eleven years preparing for. Could she seduce and kill Emperor Lucien?
Seduction was the easy part, but she’d never targeted an emperor before.
We know very little about his love life, Bayard had told her. Only that he must have one.
What if he liked only blondes or redheads? Gods, what if he preferred men?
She’d suggested to Bayard that she lose her first Caturanga game with Lucien. She’d seduced a Kjallan officer once with a similar technique. She played the part of a foolish bufflehead searching for a misplaced glove, which turned out to be under her chair. A little flattery and flirtation, a touch here and there, and he was hers. But soldiers were easy; an emperor was something else. Lucien was probably approached by beautiful, sexually receptive women on a daily basis. She had to make herself stand out.
You must win the initial game, Bayard had said. He may lose interest if he thinks you have nothing to teach him. And we don’t know how long it will take you to lure him into bed. This man is powerful. He has his choice of women. And he may be particular.
Thanks for the encouragement, she had retorted.
We suspect he likes strong women.
How can you tell, if you know nothing about his love life? she asked.
Because the closest relationship he’s ever had with a woman was with his cousin Rhianne, said Bayard.
The one who ran off to Mosar?
She was rebellious as a child, and Lucien was her partner in crime. Word is he misses her. We think the more you remind him of Rhianne, the more interested in you he’ll be.
Fine. She would win the first game. But how to proceed from there?
Someone knocked at her door. “Miss Vitala? His Imperial Majesty will see you now.”
2
Lucien Florian Nigellus. Vitala had never met him, yet he’d occupied her thoughts and shaped her studies for years. His biographical information painted a picture of an isolated man. Both his elder brothers were dead; his father had been forcibly deposed and imprisoned on the island of Mosar. He had no heirs and had not yet married. His only close relatives were an aunt, a female cousin, and a younger sister, none of whom were eligible for the throne. He’s crippled and alone, Bayard had said. Kill him, and you will spark a succession battle that will tear the empire apart.
As she walked to the emperor’s quarters, escorted by two Legaciatti, she glanced at the wall hangings and carved ceilings, relaxing her mind to see the magic anchored in them. Usually, magic dissipated quickly. A mage pulled a bit of magic from the Rift and used it to accomplish some purpose; then it drizzled away. But some mages—Warders—had the ability to anchor magic in the physical world. They could make it last. Anchored magics were invisible to most eyes, but Vitala could see them.
A blue glow infused the wall hangings; they’d been warded against parasites. The faint red line across a doorway she passed was an enemy ward, set to sound an alarm if someone crossed it with the intent to harm. Each ward possessed a tiny contact point—literally, a hole in the Rift—through which the magic was anchored and made to persist. Vitala could see those contact points. And she could break them, sending their magic harmlessly back to the Rift.
Where were all the heat-glows? Since entering the palace, she hadn’t seen a single one. They tended to be eyesores, but how did the imperial staff heat the palace without them? Perhaps the glows were hidden from view, inside the walls or behind the hangings.
Her escort slowed. Just ahead, four Legaciatti guarded a set of double doors. She’d reached the emperor’s quarters.
“Vitala Salonius?” The door guard directed the question to her escort.
“This is Miss Salonius,” one of her guards confirmed.
“The emperor is ready for her.” They opened the double doors, and Vitala relaxed her mind to scan the threshold for wards.
There weren’t any.
How could that be? Bayard had assured her they used enemy wards in the palace. She’d seen one already, across a different door. Was it possible they’d developed a ward she couldn’t see? Would she trigger it if she stepped across the threshold?
One of the door guards raised an eyebrow at her. “Miss Salonius?”
“Sorry,” she stammered. “I’m nervous.”
He winked. “Don’t be. He’s not like his father.”
Vitala’s nerves sang as she stepped through the doorway, but nothing happened. There truly was no ward there. Why?
She was in a sitting room similar to the one at the entrance to her suite, but larger. She scanned the floor for wards and saw none. Then she lifted her eyes to a table at the far end of the room, where a man sat before a Caturanga board. Emperor Lucien.
She’d spent so many years studying this man and plotting to kill him that she felt a perverse and unwelcome intimacy with him. Having only a rough description of what he looked like, she’d constructed a mental image, which she saw was accurate in the broad strokes but wrong in all the details. He was taller than she’d expected, his build slim and muscular. As he struggled upright from his chair and slipped a crutch under one arm, she could not help taking in the most obvious fact about him, that he was missing the lower half of his left leg. She’d known he was an amputee, but it was different seeing it in person. She swallowed uncomfortably.
He wore a wooden leg of simple design, a straight post of polished mahogany banded in gold. He limped on it, supporting himself with a matching crutch. As he moved toward her, smiling broadly, she forced her attention away from his leg. He wore a fine syrtos of blue silk, over which glittered a jeweled loros, the mark of his rank. Like most Kjallans, he had a hawk nose. Coupled with the clean, masculine lines of his face, it gave him a commanding appearance despite his youth. His black hair, slightly mussed, dipped over his forehead—he needed a haircut—and his
eyes, so dark they were almost black, regarded her with intensity and intelligence.
He didn’t look like the sort of man who would enslave half her people and starve the rest with outrageous demands for tribute. He didn’t look like the man who’d massacred her people at Stenhus. But one couldn’t judge a man by his looks.
She sank into a submission curtsy, acknowledging their vast difference in rank.
He took her hand and lifted her up. “Vitala Salonius.”
“Your Imperial Majesty,” she answered.
He looked her over, and his eyebrows rose. He smiled appreciatively. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
He led her to the table, and she gaped at the Caturanga set. She’d never seen anything like it, not even at the tournament in Beryl. The water piece, nearest her, was a clump of swirling blue mist—obviously magicked. Her hand moved unconsciously toward it, but, remembering her manners, she yanked it back. “May I?”
“Go ahead.” Lucien leaned his crutch against the wall and lowered himself into a chair.
She picked it up. Underneath its pyrotechnic enchantment, the piece was made of stone. Perhaps carved agate, like the set in her rooms. The mist swirled over her fingers. “It’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Lucien grinned. “I have talented pyrotechnics on staff.”
She set down the water piece and picked up the Traitor. Standing in the palm of her hand, he moved like a living thing, scanning his surroundings and tucking a dagger behind his back. As she turned him, he shifted the weapon from hand to hand, keeping it from her view. Curious, she relaxed her mind and spotted the contact point that held the enchantment in the physical world.
With her mind already in the proper state, she glanced at Lucien to view his wards. A fertility ward glowed purplish blue; there was nothing else. That couldn’t be right. She looked again, convinced she’d made a mistake. No, she hadn’t, unless the Kjallans had invented a new sort of ward she couldn’t see. He had no wards at all to protect against disease or parasites. He wanted to avoid siring bastards, but he didn’t care if he got sick? That made no sense.