by Terah Edun
“Well?” prodded Thanar.
“Taking one last look at the city,” Ciardis answered with wistfulness in her voice.
“Let’s wind time back,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked as her gaze searched the expansive and grid-like city. Searching, memorizing, internalizing.
“Let’s forget who you want to kill,” he said. “Let’s talk about who you want to save.”
She turned and gave Thanar a small smile. “That’s an easy answer. Everyone. I want to save everyone.”
But she could see it in his eyes the moment she spoke the words. He didn’t understand. She shook her head and turned back to lean against the rails. He was trying, which was more than she could say for Sebastian, but her sense of compassion was as alien to Thanar as his ruthless instinct for murder was alien to her. It couldn’t be taught. It couldn’t be reasoned away. It was just there.
Swallowing harshly, she pushed further out until the pointed edge of the railing tips dug into her abdomen and she could just hear the noise from the city. The sounds of horses’ hooves clopping on the few cobblestone streets surrounding the late empress’s palaces came to her ears, and the indistinct murmuring of the crowds off to do their morning business rose like a swell of noise to the parapets.
Behind her she heard Thanar move. Curious, with her hands still gripping the rails tightly, she turned her head to see him step back and turn around. As he did so, his left wing brushed on her back, a light, feathery touch that she knew could be as hard as a whip when called upon, and he leaned back against the railing beside her.
“Do you know what they’re calling us on the imperial hallways?” he asked.
Ciardis laughed hollowly. “No, I don’t, but I can guess.”
She eased back from the railway herself so that she stood facing him. Close enough to be enveloped by his wings, far enough away to look up into his eyes with no problems.
Thanar reached down and tilted her chin up just a bit, so that he could see her face clearly, she supposed. Ciardis knew her eyes were flashing in irritation at the presumption, and she didn’t bother hiding it. Thanar was too presumptuous for a person she hated.
Thanar said, “I know you took Vana to the warehouse.”
Ciardi turned away. Not surprised. “You were spying us. I don’t know how but you were, right?”
“Yes,” said Thanar flatly.
“And?”
“And I think you were right to show her. If we die on the road ... there needs to be someone aware of the damned thing besides that dragon,” Thanar said.
Ciardis blinked. “You don’t trust Raisa?”
“I don’t know her motives,” Thanar said flatly, “and neither do you. But we do know this ... the emperor will do anything to ensure his power. If that means killing his son and you, so be it. So having a dragon that can’t be killed aware of the secret may just save someone’s life. It might not be yours, but it’s a trump card in hand. He can’t eliminate everyone in his way, not with Raisa as an accomplice.”
“I don’t know if I’d call her an accomplice,” Ciardis murmured. “She has her own goals. Her own mission, and it has nothing to do with ours.”
Thanar shrugged.
“But yes, Vana needed to know. The sooner the better,” Ciardis said, “even though we still don’t know how the blasted ship fits into the princess heir’s plan.”
“We’ll find out. Eventually it all comes to light,” Thanar said. “But....”
“But....” Ciardis prompted.
“I think that whatever it is we find out,” Thanar said slowly, “we’ll wish we’d left alone.”
“How can you say that?” Ciardis demanded.
Thanar’s eyes sharpened in the morning light. “Because I hold no illusions. The emperor is dangerous. Perhaps even more dangerous than the blutgott. We know the god of destruction’s motivations. But your emperor? Every time one layer of truth peels back, three falsehoods are revealed.”
“Which is why we need to unmask him,” Ciardis said with balled fists.
Thanar shook his head. “Sometimes you let sleeping dogs lie.”
She glared. “He’s the darkness at the center of our empire. We’ve seen that. We just have to prove it.”
Thanar gave a dark chuckle. “You might be right there, Ciardis. But he’s more than just a simple concept of evil. He’s an unpeeled onion, and if you keep pulling back layers and reveal the core, you might regret ever starting that journey.”
“I may regret the journey, but I’ll never regret the outcome,” Ciardis argued.
Thanar rattled his wings in frustration.
“What makes this so important to you? This imposter emperor? You didn’t know his brother Bastien and bear no goodwill to him regardless. Why risk unmasking Maradian and making an enemy out of the most powerful man in the empire?”
Ciardis looked him dead in the eye. “Satisfaction.”
Thanar raised an eyebrow.
“Satisfaction that a man who is making my life a living hell will go down in his own hell if I die,” she said as she turned and walked back down the stairs into the palace below.
Chapter 12
Ciardis went to her room and packed her stuff. It didn’t take long. She had few garments, and more scraps of clothing than actual attire. It all fit in one knapsack, and when a servant came to retrieve her belongings, even that was gone.
There was nothing else tying her to the room, so she went outside and sat on the steps, watching the staff buzz around like bees in a hive as they prepared for the journey. It wasn’t long before she was disturbed on her perch. This time not by servants trying to get around her, but by a tall form throwing her body into shadow.
Ciardis turned around on the steps without standing, and glared up.
“I thought we were done talking,” she said ... trying not to snap at Thanar in irritation. She quickly realized her mistake. Thanar didn’t stand over her.
Instead, Prince Heir Sebastian stood two steps below her in sensible travel attire. And behind him, with his true form revealed to everyone, stood Christian.
Ciardis sucked in a breath and turned over quickly to scramble to her hands and knees. Thanar chose that moment to make an appearance out of the sky and drop down to the steps above her, so that she now knelt between her two soul bonds.
Thanar quickly saw her problem, and this time no jokes were made. He gripped her elbow as she stood. Ciardis quickly yanked her elbow out of his grasp without even a thank you and sidestepped Sebastian to rush down the marble steps. She could feel the attentions of both Thanar and Sebastian focused on her from behind, like eagles sighting prey.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t interested in either of them at the moment. Her attention was on the koreschie that was already drawing shocked gasps and calls for a guard from the surrounding servants.
She didn’t blame them ... not really. Christian looked ghastly with his trademark translucent skin and visible purple veins in the sunlight, like a victim of a magical attack that had half turned him into a ghost.
Reaching her friend, Ciardis put her hands on Christian’s arms protectively and glared around as she shouted, “Don’t you have work to do? Get out of here!”
Some of the servants jumped like startled rabbits. Others turned around so quickly that they almost fell down the stairs in an effort to get away.
Ciardis sniffed. Served them right.
“What’s wrong, Christian?” she asked frantically while looking him up and down for injury. She even took time to look around, anxiously anticipating an unseen foe jumping out of the bushes at any moment. It had happened before, and it wasn’t like Christian to let his disguise fall ... not without damned good reason.
“Wrong?” the koreschie asked in surprise.
Ciardis focused on his face for moment as she watched the throbbing purple veins just under his skin move with an unsettling rhythm.
She reached up a shaking hand to his cheek to ghost her fing
ers over the pure white flesh of his cheeks.
“Your disguise,” she said breathlessly. “It’s gone.”
Christian nodded. “Yes, it is. Where we’re going we won’t need it.” Taking her hand from his cheek, he kissed it and set it down at her waist. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to scare some baggage handlers into handling my cases correctly.”
He stepped around her, nodded up the stairs ... toward Thanar and Sebastian, presumably ... and walked down to the base of the grand staircase.
Ciardis turned around fully as she watched him descend the steps as servants, who were too frightened and wet behind the ears to not show fear, scattered in his wake.
Crossing her arms, Ciardis watched Christian, baffled.
Finally she asked, “What’s his problem?”
Behind her, Sebastian said, “His people aren’t well liked in the western lands. Historically, koreschie have been banned because the western tribal leaders believe their presence brings plague and death.”
Ciardis turned to see both of them descending the steps to stand on either side of her.
“Well, it’s not exactly untrue,” she pointed out.
She was thinking back to the night that Christian had used his koreschie gifts on the satyr known as Thomas, infecting him with a plague so virulent the traitorous creature had perished within the hour.
Sebastian nodded. “But it goes beyond the prejudice against kith. The western people hated koreschie in particular ... because of their gifts and their unfounded beliefs that Christian’s people had something to do with the Aerdivus plague.”
“Did they?” Ciardis asked while not taking her eyes off Christian. She was done taking people’s kindness as fact. Before she’d seen him admit to it, she would have never believed that Thanar could or would kill thousands of innocent kith for his own purposes. But he had.
She could believe no less of the koreschie as a race.
In fact, Ciardis considered it her duty now to question the motives of her friends just as much as she would a stranger. It had become clear to her, after all, that she trusted too easily. That didn’t mean she was giving up on her friends—it just meant that she was willing to believe the worst much sooner that she had before.
Thanar said “No.”
It took her a moment to remember what question she had asked. Were Christian’s people responsible for the creation of the most heinous virus to hit the Algardis population since its founding? Did they really kill off thousands of individual by design ... or worse, by mistake?
“You’re sure,” Ciardis said while looking at Thanar out of the corner of her eye.
“No one really knows for sure,” Sebastian answered. “It’s possible.”
“It’s as likely that the goats in the northern vales caused that virus,” said Thanar.
The derision in his voice was palpable.
She felt rather than saw them exchange acrimonious glances over her head.
“There’s no proof of those ignorant human claims,” said Thanar.
“No proof,” Sebastian said bitterly, “but somehow not one koreschie sickened and died from the plague that killed tens of thousands in weeks.”
Ciardis asked, “How would you know?”
“What?” asked Sebastian.
She looked up to see his green eyes locked fiercely in some weird male test of wills with Thanar.
Ciardis grunted and snapped her fingers in both of their faces.
“Down here, boys,” she said.
Both Sebastian and Thanar looked down at her with irritated looks on their faces.
She almost giggled.
“How would you know if a koreschie died in the plague?” Ciardis asked. “Christian looks just like us ... usually.”
Thanar said, “Christian can pass when he chooses to, but in death all is revealed.”
Ciardis looked at him in confusion before she heard Sebastian explain, “The koreschie form is revealed when they die, no matter what. Their face becomes the pure white you see Christian’s has taken on now, and the purple veins become visible with a magical glow.”
“Well,” Ciardis muttered, “that would be unsettling to someone who wasn’t aware of the secret.”
Sebastian nodded. “In the early days of the plague, it was rumored that the koreschie community would burn their dead in secret to prevent the knowledge of their true identity from coming to light and to keep their families from facing recrimination.”
“Does that have anything to do with why burning those bodies in that village on the edge of the Ameles Forest felt so wrong?” Ciardis asked.
They tended not to burn their kin in the north at death, but she wasn’t exactly sure of the customs so far south.
Sebastian said, “Wrong and illegal. The fourth empress passed a law that bodies must be inspected before cremation to prevent those who passed in life from sliding into death unknown. It’s not just koreschie, it’s a whole host of other kith that are able to pass, willingly and unwillingly.”
“And if the cremations still happened?” Ciardis said while thinking about a random village drunk who had been given a sendoff by pyre ... although she couldn’t remember quite why they hadn’t buried him.
“Anyone who is found to be practicing funeral rites against imperial policy joins the deceased on the pyre ... after dissection, of course,” Sebastian said as he munched on an apple.
Remind me never to report the village death services to the imperial toads again, Ciardis thought with a shudder.
I heard that, Sebastian said flatly.
Ciardis rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. Your rules are arbitrary.”
“Arbitrary, no. Discriminatory, yes,” Thanar said.
“Want to say that again?” Sebastian said as he glared with green eyes over the red apple.
A snarl from Thanar’s end answered his question.
“Down, boys,” snapped Ciardis. “Now’s not the time for fighting. What do you mean, Thanar?”
Please let him speak, she said to Sebastian.
To her surprise, Sebastian settled back.
“I mean, the imperial court loves to forget that their precious human population is guilty of so many, many crimes against its own people. Humans kill far more humans than kith ever could,” Thanar said.
“Fair enough,” Ciardis said as she bit her lip and turned at a shout from below.
Two menservants were straining under a heavy barrel, but with a third they quickly pushed the wooden barrel on top of one of the donkeys that looked a little too big to be your average pack mules.
She turned back to see Sebastian give a brittle smile as he said, “That is true, and we work to ensure that no humans guilty of crimes are absolved from recrimination in death. We hear their testimony. We judge their actions.”
Ciardis felt that the last two sentences had more importance than Sebastian was explaining, but she let it be.
“All right, so that doesn’t explain why Christian would voluntarily go into the western lands without his disguise,” she said, more worried than ever.
Thanar folded in his wings as he started walking back up the stairs. “He doesn’t have a choice.”
She turned away from watching Christian in the courtyard below to look at Thanar walking up the palace steps.
“What does that mean?” she asked Sebastian, who remained.
“It means that kith like Christian are shot on sight in the western lands if they’re found to be hiding their presence for any reason,” Sebastian said with finality in his voice.
Ciardis’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
Ice entered her tone: “And this is legal?”
Sebastian gave her an unreadable look. “Before the walls rose, it was a dark time. Yes, it is justifiable under imperial law. For a long list of reasons. But those aren’t the laws you need to worry about.”
“They’re affecting Christian, so I think I will,” Ciardis challenged.
Sebastian shook his head. “Since their incorporation into the empire, the western lands have always been given a sort of ... leniency. They form their own laws, which, although subservient to imperial ones, are still the regulations that rule life in the desert provinces. Or, rather, they did.”
“And now?”
“And now, fifty years on, we’ll just have to see,” Sebastian said with a shrug. “Better to be safe than sorry and have him go in completely open. They can’t say we were hiding a koreschie in our midst if they object to his presence.”
Ciardis shook her head. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s the western lands,” Sebastian said. “Nothing makes sense.”
“You’re making it sound like it’s a whole different world from the rest of Algardis,” she said in disbelief.
He looked at her. “It is, Ciardis, it is. And it always has been. There’s a reason why the emperor was so keen to wall off the westernmost edges and abandon the cities to their fate. We’ve always had problems there.”
“What sort of problems?” she demanded.
“The kind we don’t talk about,” he said defiantly.
“Or the kind you ignore while innocent people die?” she challenged.
“While kith die, yes,” he said.
“I’m not seeing the difference.”
“Kith. You said people,” he said uneasily.
“Kith are people,” she said staunchly.
“Not according to the law,” he said with darkened eyes as he looked behind her toward his palace.
Ciardis got the feeling that he was no longer talking about koreschie.
Squaring her shoulders, she stepped into his line of sight. “One day you’ll make the law. You can do what’s right.”
Sebastian turned dead eyes on her. “And what incentive do I have to make it right?”
She swallowed in disbelief. “Are we still talking about Christian? He’s your friend!”
“I think we both know we’re not,” Sebastian said with a dark finality.
She took a deep breath. “Fine. You want to talk about Thanar. Let’s.”
“Where was he this morning?” Sebastian asked without blinking.