by Sabaa Tahir
I listen to the drum messages as I ascend the steps. Supply train attacked north of Estium, thirty dead. Warlock Grímarr spotted in Strellium barracks raid. Seventy dead.
My time away has emboldened Keris and her cronies. I must find a way to wrest the balance of power back.
The men at the front gate salute, and I barely wave them at ease before turning toward Faris, who strides out of the keep to greet me. “The Emperor?” I say.
“Charming petitioners with the Empress Regent.” He glances down. “Shrike, you’re bleeding all over the steps.”
“A scratch,” I say, and when he rolls his eyes instead of smothering me with concern like Dex or Harper would have, I’m thankful he understands me. “The Emperor shouldn’t be so visible. Why is Livia seeing petitioners with him?”
“You can take that up with her.” Faris puts his hands up. “She won’t listen to Rallius, or me. Says the people need to see their emperor.”
Of course Livia would say that. She doesn’t realize how many assassination attempts we’ve foiled.
Dex appears from the hallway behind Faris, in his usual Mask’s armor, but for a blue-and-gold cloak that marks him as Livia’s steward.
“Security is the least of our issues, Shrike,” he says. “There are a dozen Paters making noise about the recent attacks on supply trains. The Empress Regent is to meet with them in an hour, but they might take greater heed of her if you—and your scim—were present.”
“I’ll be there,” I say. Delphinium welcomed us with open arms five months ago. The people here welcomed the Scholars too.
But then Livia freed the Scholars. The Commandant sent assassins for our allies and my nephew. The troops haven’t been paid in weeks. We began rationing to prevent starvation, as Keris has a chokehold on all the roads south of the Argent Hills.
And I bear more bad news.
As I pass him, Faris peers behind me. “Where’s your little archer?”
I know who he’s speaking of. Laia’s sudden departure from our group stung. Part of me respects her lack of sentimentality. She had a mission. She did what she had to do.
Still, I wish she’d at least said goodbye.
“Little archer? She has better aim than you, you ass.” I punch Faris in the arm, and he winces. “And she’s braver. I didn’t see you delivering a baby in the middle of a siege. As I recall, you were trying not to faint. Dex, catch me up.”
Dex slows his stride to match my limp. “Grímarr attacked three more supply trains. Burned them down to the axel. His men were screaming the same thing they’ve shouted during every raid.”
“Ik tachk mort fid iniqant fi. Have you found anyone to translate it?”
“It’s archaic Karkaun,” Dex says. “I’ll keep working on it. I do have good news: My uncle sent word that he’ll be here in a week. He brings a thousand men.”
“Thank the skies.” That will swell our numbers to a little more than ten thousand, and that’s with the Scholars fighting. It’s nothing against the hundreds of thousands of men Keris commands. But she’s the one who taught me that there are many ways to win a war. Not all of them rely on superior numbers.
“We’ll have to cut rations again,” Dex adds.
“Gens Lenida is sending us grain, potatoes, and apples from their reserves,” I say. “Dispatch a platoon of guards to meet it. That shipment will buy us time.”
“Time for what, Shrike?” Dex says. “What’s our play? The Paters will ask you the same question. Are you ready to answer it?”
Apparently not. “Anything else?”
“A request from the Scholar council. And—” He considers his words. “The Ankanese have sent an ambassador. No escort, no horse even. Just appeared at the gates this morning out of thin air. Said you’d be back by midday and that he’d see only you.”
My father visited Ankana long ago. They think we’re barbaric, Father told me upon his return. They are so far beyond us that I’m surprised they agreed to see me.
“Shall I have him wait until the Empress Regent can see him too?” Dex asks.
I shake my head. Livia has enough to deal with. “Send him to my quarters. Immediately.”
“Perhaps a physician first?” Dex’s brow furrows at my limp. “Lieutenant Silvius arrived from Navium while you were away. Rode with your uncle Jans.” Dex lingers a moment on the physician’s name, and I hide a smile. At least there’s still some joy left in this world.
“I heal quickly,” I say. “But give Silvius quarters in the castle. In Navium, he made do with limited supplies, as I recall. We need that kind of skill. And get me that translation. Look into Karkaun customs and rites—it felt more like a chant than a war cry.”
By the time the Ankanese ambassador knocks at my door, I’ve washed the road off and changed into my ceremonial armor. Most of my shallow wounds have healed, and the hole in my leg has stopped bleeding.
“Greetings, Blood Shrike.” The man is my height, with deep brown skin and curly gray hair. He speaks Serran with the barest trace of an accent. His slippered feet allow him to walk silently, but his blue tunic, heavily embroidered with silver animals and flowers, rustles as he bows.
“I am Ambassador Remi E’twa.” Despite the fact that he has no weapon, there’s power in the breadth of his shoulders and in his purposeful gait. He is a fighter.
“You have the look of your father,” he says as I close the door. “I met with him, long ago. He was a good man. Open to our ways. I taught him the words of parting. Emifal Firdaant.”
“What do they mean?” I ask.
“‘May death claim me first.’” At my expression, Remi smiles. “Your father was confused too. But then he spoke of his wife and daughters, and he understood. I felt great sorrow at his death.”
I gesture for the ambassador to join me in my sitting room. “Your people have long avoided dealings with the Empire. What has changed?”
The ambassador appears surprised at my bluntness, perhaps used to pleasantries.
“You have outlawed slavery, Blood Shrike,” he says. “A requirement of any dealings with our nation. If you can swear that it will remain so, I am here to open trade between Emperor Zacharias and Ankana, and negotiate an agreement. As a token of our goodwill, I have brought a dozen Ankanese sappers—”
We have army engineers, I nearly say, but bite my tongue. Among all of my men, I can likely count a half dozen sappers. Keris has the rest.
“And portable trebuchets,” he says. “Smaller and lighter than what you had at Antium, but just as powerful. You will need them, I believe, for the coming battles.”
His presumption rankles me, but considering I have few sappers and no trebuchets, I swallow my annoyance. “You see the future,” I say. “Like the Augurs.”
“Our gift is not stolen.” Remi is pointedly neutral. “It is earned after long years of study. We see impressions. The Augurs saw details.”
“When you look at me, what do you see?”
It is not the question I mean to ask. But it is what I have wanted to know from the moment Dex told me the ambassador was here.
“When I look at you now, I see Dil-Ewal,” he says. “She who heals. When I look at your future, I see—” He pauses and shrugs. “Something else.”
He transitions smoothly into the trade agreement, laying out what he wants in return for the sappers and trebuchets. I agree to sell him grain and livestock—skies knows where I will get them from—and tell him the crown will consider the sale of scims, which appears to satisfy him. After he is gone, a knock sounds at my door.
I open it to find my sister’s head bent at an awkward angle. Zacharias clutches a hank of her hair and pulls at it with happy vigor.
“What madness possessed you to leave your hair down?” I tickle Zak’s foot and he releases Livia and flops toward me with a “ba!”
Livia says he’s t
oo young to be speaking. But I think he knows who loves him best. When I take him, he reaches for my braid, but only gives it a light pat before grabbing my face instead.
“Traitor child.” My sister smiles. Zacharias is as beautiful as she was as a baby, with soft brown curls and cheeks that want a pinch. His coloring is a mix of Livia’s and Marcus’s, a glowing golden-brown, and he watches me with the pale yellow eyes of the Farrar family.
“He missed you.” Livvy settles herself into the spot I vacated. “Refused to sleep properly without Auntie Shrike to give him a cuddle. But I told him you were off doing something very important.”
I glance at her ladies-in-waiting, Merina and Coralia Farrar. They’re Marcus’s cousins—and nothing like him. They love my sister and Zacharias with a fierce protectiveness, but they do not need to be party to matters of state. Livia dismisses them, and they take the Emperor from me, escorted by a sober-faced Captain Rallius and three other Masks.
After I tell Livia everything that happened in Marinn, she rises in agitation.
“We knew the Commandant would play dirty,” she says. “The jinn attacks were meant to bring Marinn to its knees just in time for her to demand a treaty.” My sister paces the room. “Sometimes I want to leave all of this. Take Zacharias and go far away, to some warm southern land, where no one will know us. Where he can have a normal life.”
“Your people need you,” I say. “And they need him. He is the child of a Plebeian and an Illustrian, brought into this world by a Scholar. He is a symbol of hope and unity, Empress Regent. A reminder of what the Empire could be.”
“Thank the skies you’ve finally come around.” Livia smiles. “A few months ago, you wanted to throttle me for setting the Scholars free.”
“But you did it anyway,” I say. “You’re brave. And wise. You just have to be patient too.”
By the time Livia and I enter the throne room, a wood-beamed dining hall with too many cobwebs, two dozen Paters have gathered. My uncle, Jans Aquillus, is also there, and nods when I enter. He will be one of the few Livia and I can count on to stand with us.
I offer a greeting, but step back, a hand on my scim, to allow Livia to speak. For the thousandth time, I wish for my mask. Its silver reminded me of who I was. What I was capable of doing. It reminded everyone else as well. Too often, the Paters forget.
“Wine, soldier,” Livia calls to the aux at the door. He disappears and Pater Cassius snorts.
He’s a tall, slope-shouldered fellow with a thick head of gray hair and parchment-pale skin. “He’ll be hard-pressed to find it,” Cassius says.
“A by-product of war, Cassius,” Livia says. “We’re not having a garden party.”
“No, we are not.” Pater Agrippa Mettias speaks up. He is clever, blunt, and an excellent fighter—a quintessential Northman. Though only in his late twenties, he’s successfully guided his Gens since the age of sixteen.
With his deep brown skin and high cheekbones, he is also exceedingly handsome. The grizzled old Paters tease him for it, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His self-assurance makes me like him more. He’s a good ally. I would hate to lose his support.
“Keris seized Gens Mettia’s southern estates,” he says. “Declared me a traitor. Most of my family escaped—but those who did not were beheaded. She has offered my lands as a reward for the Emperor’s head. And an additional ten thousand marks for mine.”
Bleeding skies. Every assassin from Antium to Sadh will be on their way here for a bounty like that.
“I am deeply sorry for your family’s suffering, Pater,” Livia says. Perhaps I imagine it, but his face softens, ever so slightly.
“That is the cost of loyalty, Empress Regent.” Mettias glares at Pater Cassius. “I am willing to pay it, even if others are not.”
“Hear, hear,” Uncle Jans mutters, half of the Paters joining him.
“But”—Mettias fixes his flinty gaze on me—“we need a plan. Keris chips away at us bit by bit. An assassin was found on the castle grounds a week ago. And in every city she has visited, the people have proclaimed her Imperator Invictus.”
My fist tightens on my scim. Supreme Commander. It is an honorary title for an Empire’s ruler, but when bestowed by the people, it carries far more weight. Before Taius was named Emperor, the Martial clans dubbed him Imperator Invictus. When his sons vied for the throne after him, his second-born won the title—and the throne—because of his prowess on the battlefield.
“How?” Uncle Jans paces the room. “How, when she left our people to suffer and die?”
“Those in the south don’t know—or want to know—what really happened in Antium,” Livia says. “Not when she’s promising them wealth and slaves from the Tribal lands.”
A side door opens and I turn, expecting the aux with the wine. But it is Faris who hovers at the threshold.
“Shrike.” Faris is so pale that I wonder for a moment if he’s been injured. “A word.”
I step out into the hall, where Faris waits with half a platoon, three of whom are Masks.
“Something’s happened in the kitchens.” He gestures for the soldiers to stand guard and hurries down the corridor.
If an assassin has gotten in, I’ll bleeding break something. Even if the killer is dead—which he must be, or we’d be walking to the dungeons—another breach is not something the Paters will tolerate.
Four legionnaires flank the entrance to the scullery. With them is the aux Livia sent for the wine, his face an unsavory green.
“I have two more guards at the exits. Shrike . . .” Faris is at a loss, and I am suddenly unsure of what I am about to see. I shove through the doors and stop short.
For it is not a dead assassin I find, or even a live one. It is a bloodbath. A wretched stillness blights the air, and I do not need to look at the ravaged bodies to know everyone is dead. One of the faces is familiar. Merina—Livia’s lady-in-waiting and nurse to my nephew.
“Merina came down to get tea for the Empress Regent,” Faris says from behind me. “The aux you sent for wine found them.”
I clench my fists. Both Plebeians and Scholars worked in these kitchens. It was one of the places they got along just fine. All were survivors of Antium. All loyal to the Emperor.
And this is what they got for their loyalty.
“The assassin?”
“Killed himself.” Faris nods to the wall behind me. “But we know who sent him.”
I turn. Splashed across the stones in blood is a symbol that enrages and sickens me, all at once.
A K with a crown of spikes atop it.
XVII: Laia
Winter falls harsh on the Forest of Dusk. The thick evergreens protect me from the worst of the wind. They do not, however, protect me from Elias’s frosty countenance.
The first day after he finds me, I try walking beside him—talking to him. He bolts so far ahead I can barely see him. For the rest of the day, I walk alone, missing Darin, Musa, Tas—even the Blood Shrike. At one point, I call out to Rehmat, thinking I can finally ask it questions about its origin. But it does not respond.
Later that night, when I pull out a meal of desiccated dates and flatbread, Elias disappears, returning a quarter hour later with a steaming bun stuffed with minced fowl, raisins, and almonds.
“Did you steal this?”
At his shrug, I bristle. “This is someone’s hard-earned labor, Elias.”
“Soul Catcher, please.”
I ignore that. “I will not eat it if you stole it.”
“You wouldn’t, would you?” His glance is fleeting and I cannot tell if he is mocking me or making an observation. “I always leave a gold mark,” he says flatly. “Bakers are less likely to lock their doors that way.”
I am about to respond when I notice the stiffness of his shoulders. How he clenches his fists.
When Elias and I traveled through th
e Serran Range after escaping Raider’s Roost, I did not wish to talk, for I had taken my first life—a Tribesman who tried to kill us both.
Elias was so careful with me then. He spoke to me—but he did not rush me. He gave me time. Perhaps, with his mind so deeply entwined with Mauth, I must do the same.
The next day, I do not speak and he relaxes a touch. In the evening, when we’ve stopped, I break my silence.
“I saw your mother, you know,” I tell him. “She’s as charming as ever.”
He pokes at the fire with a stick.
“She tried to kill me,” I go on. “But then her master and my former lover showed up. The Nightbringer—you remember him. He was in full Keenan regalia. Red hair, brown eyes, those freckles . . .”
I sneak a look at Elias. But other than a slight tightening of his infuriatingly square jaw, he does not react.
“Do you ever think of Keris as your mother?” I ask him. “Or will she always be the Commandant? Some days, I cannot believe Cook and my mother were the same person. I miss her. Father and Lis too.”
I yearn to speak of my family, I realize. To share my sadness with someone.
“I dream of them,” I say. “Always the same nightmare. Mother singing that song and the sound of their necks br-breaking—”
He says nothing, only rises and melts into the night. The space he leaves is vast, that gnawing loneliness of showing your heart to someone only to find they never wanted to see it. The next day, he is silent. And the next. Until three days have passed. Then ten.
I talk about everything under the sun—even Rehmat—and still he says nothing. Skies, but I have never known a man so stubborn.
After a fortnight, we make camp early, and Elias disappears. Usually when he leaves, he windwalks and I cannot follow. But this time, he stalks into the forest and I find him in a clearing, lifting a small boulder above his head—then slamming it down. Lifting it, slamming it down.