Short Swords: Tales from the Divine Empire (The First Sword Chronicles Book 3)

by Frances Smith

  “Perhaps Dawn and I could play duets, since we’re both suddenly in need of something to occupy our time,” Summer muttered. “Though you must admit it will be a bit of a step down: giving concerts where once we expected to have concerts given in our honour.”

  The smile died on Aurora’s face, replaced by a frown that disfigured her fair face. “This is not my choice, Summer.”

  “Not your choice? Of course it’s your choice! Whose choice is it if not yours?” Summer yelled, her hands curling into fists. “You rule here! Everything that happens in this country is your choice!”

  Aurora lowered her gaze, letting her eyelids hood her eyes from Summer’s view. “You never understood the limits of my power, did you Summer? So often I tried to explain to you the difference between my own authority and that of a tyrant, to help you see what separates me from one of the emperors of old Qadessa. But you could never grasp the point. Perhaps that should have made me see before I did.”

  “I understand well enough,” Summer spat. “I understand that it was you who took me into your academy, into your palace. I understand that it was your choice to take me under your personal tutelage, as though I was someone special, as though I was worthy of your attention. I understand that it was your choice to tell me about the prophecy, your choice to tell me that it was my destiny, or could be at the least. I understand that it was your choice to tell me that I could be great, be celebrated, be admired, be lauded by everyone from the Wintermarch to New Qadessa. I understand that it was your choice to fill my head with so much talk of glory that it...” Summer trailed off, until she fell silent for a moment. She looked away, and when she spoke again her voice was softer, for this last rebuke was intended for herself as much as for Aurora. “It was your choice to make me love you, though it was my choice to believe you loved me in return.”

  “I care for you, Summer,” Aurora whispered. “Never doubt it nor forget it.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Summer said.

  Aurora sighed. “Of all that you have accused me, I am guilty,” she said. “But I am not casting you from the doors out into the street to beg for a your crust-“

  “You’re pitching me out of this room,” Summer growled.

  “-you are doing that yourself,” Aurora finished, riding over Summer’s words as though she had not spoken. “I have offered you, as I have offered Dawn, a place in the academy still. It was your choice to refuse me.”

  “What should I have done instead?” Summer demanded. “Watch while some cuckoo takes my place in this room, in this palace, in your heart? No, you can cast me off like an unwanted cloak, you can dismiss me like a servant unable to do her work any more, but you cannot make me humiliate myself by watching you parade your new, young, nobly born protégé before my eyes.”

  “This has nothing to do with Eve’s birth,” Aurora murmured. “Or yours.”

  Summer snorted disdainfully. “So if her mother was a wolf-shifter and mine could trace descent to one of the five heroes then you’d still be throwing me over for her?”

  “Summer-“

  “Don’t you ‘Summer’ me!” Summer snarled. “You’re not my mother! And I was a fool to ever forget that.”

  Aurora said nothing, to that. She showed no reaction, either in the way of being touched or of being hurt.

  Summer turned her back on Aurora, facing the bare wall, leaning down to rest her arms upon the naked mattress before her. Some of Summer’s red hair fell down over her shoulder and into her face, before she irritably pushed it out of the way.

  “What are you going to do about Dawn?” she asked. “Are you going to kick her out as well?” Dawn had been with her, when Aurora had broken their world into fragments, but while Sunset had stormed back to her room, Dawn had run off...somewhere. Probably run into the arms of her sycophants. For all the good that would do her. As soon as they realised she wasn’t their ticket to the good life any more they’d be gone faster that you could snap your fingers. No, Dawn would learn the value of her fine friends now.

  Poor kid.

  “I am not forcing anyone to go anywhere,” Aurora repeated.

  Summer snorted.

  “Dawn will be free to stay at the academy, just as you were free to if you wished,” Aurora concluded.

  “Are you going to turn her out of her room?”

  “She will be sent to the academy, with the other students,” Aurora said. “I have already changed some of the other room arrangements so that Dawn will be able to dorm with her friend Miss Quickwit.”

  “It would almost be kinder to throw her out,” Summer said. “You know what they’ll do to her. It will be like in all those histories of Qadessa you made me read: the moment the Emperor’s favourite fell the mob would tear down his statues and smash all his monuments, and folk who had fawned on him the day the before would say ‘What an ugly face he has! I never liked the man! Good riddance to the likes of him!’ Dawn doesn’t deserve that, but that’s what she’ll get if you stick her in the academy and let her inferiors get hold of her.”

  “I will do my best to look after Dawn,” Aurora said. “But, if there is any trouble, I am sad to say that Dawn will have brought it on herself.”

  Summer shook her head. “If we have brought this on ourselves it is only because we trusted in you.”

  She wished that Aurora would respond to the venom that she was directing towards her. Summer wished that she would grow angry, that she would shout, or cry, or flee from the room. Anything to show that Summer’s words affected her. But she did not. She gave no sign she cared at all. After all, what was the anger of a slave to trouble a queen?

  It might genuinely have hurt Aurora to know that Summer thought thus, she who had led her people out of slavery, and that was why Summer didn’t say it. Even now, even with such ample cause, she could not bring herself to be so vile to her who had been her life’s light for so long.

  “Can I ask you a favour?” Summer asked.

  “What is it?” Aurora replied, so calmly and so patiently that it was infuriating.

  “Don’t send Dawn away,” Summer murmured. “You kept me here alongside her, so why not keep her here alongside the new girl, this Eve? Dawn could still be the one. I know that the champion promised in prophecy must have five friends, five to re-forge the Five-fold Rod and to wield it once again. I know that I don’t have any friends, and if you told me that was why I couldn’t be the champion then I could accept that I ruined my own chances. But Dawn has friends, enough to re-forge the Rod and to use it. She could still be the one.”

  “She is not,” Aurora murmured.

  “Then lie to her, pretend that she could be,” Summer shouted. “It’s okay to lie so long as you’re sparing someone from pain, isn’t it? She loves you, she...she loves you. It will break her heart if you send her away.”

  Aurora shook her head. “The pain must come, sooner or later. Dawn is not who I thought she was, no more than you were. Better that she confront that truth now, while she still has time to learn from it.”

  “Learn what, not to trust a word out of your mouth?” Summer spat. “I hope you treat the new girl as badly as you’ve treated us.” She took a deep breath. “Just tell me why. Answer me that one question: why? How could we be worthy once, but suddenly not be any more? Why did you think that we could be the subject of the prophecy, but cannot be now?”

  “You do not want to know the answer,” Aurora said.

  “The icy winds I don’t, tell me!” Summer shouted. “Tell me why, after doing everything that you have ever asked of us, we are suddenly so unworthy of this charge that you must banish us from your door and from your heart and put some cuckoo in our place?”

  “You are too proud,” Aurora said. “Your very words condemn you: ‘stick her in the academy and let her inferiors get hold of her’. You are speaking of your fellow pupils, Summer, boys and girls your own age or younger. And yet you speak of them like a Qadessi lord speaking of his slaves or vassals. You
are not willing to progress through the academy as an ordinary student-“

  “Of course I’m not,” Summer said. “I’m your protégé or nothing!”

  “Then you are nothing!” Aurora said, her voice finally rising, gaining a touch of heat and anger. “Do you believe, Summer, that my sister and I, or any of our friends who followed us, were motivated in what we did by dreams of glory? Do you believe that we freed the slaves from Qadessa because we wanted statues raised of us? Do you think I founded this League so that I could rule it? You are too proud, Summer, too proud to serve. No one with an ego so swollen as yours has become could ever become the champion of this land, if for no other reason then you could not bring yourself to serve her people.”

  Summer blinked. “So that’s it. I didn’t wash the feet of enough beggars and so now my life is ruined.”

  “You still have a much better life ahead of you than many of those beggars,” Aurora pointed out. She sighed. “In truth, I should have seen this much earlier than I did. You hold yourself above others, even above Dawn. Despite all my efforts you have never been at ease treating others as equals to yourself...and there is the matter of your wolf-shifter heritage.”

  “What about it?”

  “You ignore it,” Aurora said. “You have kept it a secret from everyone save me.”

  “Because everyone hates shifters,” Summer said.

  “A prejudice you could have changed, had you embraced all that you are and risen to become the champion of this land,” Aurora said. “Instead you hide it, suppress it, and even pretend to join in the common contempt in which shifters are misguidedly held by some. You would rather pretend to be something you are not rather than suffer in the popular estimation.”

  “Is that so grievous a fault?” Summer asked.

  “It is not the mark of a hero,” Aurora said. “I am sorry, Summer. So many mistakes I have made with you, and Dawn. I allowed your pride to swell, turned a blind eye to Dawn’s laziness and rule-breaking. I placed too heavy a burden upon the both of you, and I forgave too much when you fell short of the standards I should have held you to.”

  “But now you don’t have a use for us any more you’re free to punish like you should have done in the first place,” Summer said.

  “Yes,” Aurora whispered. “It could be phrased like that.”

  Summer took a deep breath. “Then I don’t think that there is anything more to be said between us, is there?”

  “Summer-“

  “With the greatest of respect, m’lady,” Summer said firmly. “If we are no longer master and apprentice; if, in fact, there is no longer any sort of relationship between us at all, then I have better things to do than listen to you. Like finishing off my preparations to depart. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Once again Aurora displayed an infuriating calm, refusing to rise to Summer’s insolence. “Where will you go? To your grandfather’s house.”

  “No,” Summer said derisively. “I spent years wanting to get away from that place, why would I want to go back?”

  “Your grandfather loves you, Summer.”

  “You said the same about yourself, once,” Summer said.

  “Then where will you go?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Summer lied. “But it will be somewhere better than here, I can tell you that.”

  “And what will you do?”

  Summer looked Aurora in the eyes. “You’re wrong,” Summer said. “Now, at least, you are wrong were you were right before. I have greatness in me. I do have a great destiny in my future. A greater one than you can possibly imagine. And I don’t need you or anyone else to validate my inner light, to give me the nod of approval before I can go ahead and seize what I know lies in store for me. I have a destiny, whether you choose to see it or not. And I’m going to find it, and I’m going to seize it with both hands.”

  “I wish that that was not the answer that you gave me, and yet being who you are I cannot see what else you might have said,” Aurora murmured. “I fear for you, Summer. I fear your pride will be your undoing.”

  “I take it you’re not going to wish me luck, then?” Summer asked. “I’ll come back, you know. I’ll come back here trailing clouds of glory, and then you’ll regret he day you cast me out.”

  Aurora smiled, that benevolent smile that had convinced Summer that she was loved. “If that happens, Summer, then the only thing I will feel is happiness, for I will rejoice in the fact that you have found your path and your place in the world. So long as you are happy with the choices you made to get there.”

  Summer didn’t deign to respond to that little bit of tendentious moralising. She just stood still, and waited for Aurora to leave.

  “Goodbye, Summer,” Aurora said, her voice a soft caress. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Goodbye,” Summer replied coldly. “Close the door behind you, please.”

  Aurora was silent for a moment, and then she nodded once, and did indeed shut the door gently on her way out.

  Summer stared at the closed door, the closed door that had finally snapped the tie that had bound her to Aurora. She supposed that she ought to feel free. She did feel free.

  But she also felt empty at the same time.

  Summer sat down heavily on her bed, the mattress crinkling beneath her. She stared at her hands. Years she had spent under Aurora’s tutelage. Half her life preparing for the moment when she would seize her destiny, become the hero, make her mistress proud. And now...now she would have to accept that that would never be. Wherever her destiny was, it was not in the Sacred League, and Aurora was no part of it.

  Of course, there had been warnings of this for some time. Ever since Dawn had turned up, with that insolent smile and that determination to make all of Summer’s hard work count for nought. But somehow, Summer had never quite believed in the threat of Dawn. She had always considered herself to be better, cleverer, stronger, more gifted in the fire-call and in the true magic. All Dawn had was a little determination, and even that was undercut by her pathetic need to be validated by other people. No, Summer had never taken Dawn seriously as a threat, had even grown comfortable having her around. It had been nice to have a rival, pushing you on, but not pushing you too much. A rival who could, in the final analysis, be seen off without much difficulty.

  But now they had both been beaten to the finish by someone they hadn’t even known was in the race. It was enough to...

  To what? Not to scream, Summer didn’t feel like wasting her breath. She didn’t feel like anything really. The only she really wanted to do was leave. Leave this palace, leave this city, and leave this country. Leave this world.

  That, contrary to what she had told Aurora, was what she meant to do. It was also why she wanted to get her former teacher to leave, lest she find out that she had already stolen the means to do just that. At first Summer had only wanted to know how it worked, or so she had told herself. Now she would see how it worked for herself, when she left this place behind. Aurora would not approve, but what right did she have to judge Summer now? She was the one who had forced her to this course.

  Summer got up and began to throw the things she meant to take with her into a light travelling bag selected specifically for the purpose. Everything else she would leave behind. Aurora could keep them or discard them as she wished. Perhaps she could throw them onto a bonfire and burn them like she had incinerated all of Summer’s plans and ambitions.

  She could not stay here. She could not, after half a life of training to be something more than just a person, to become a symbol, a hero, an object of adulation...she could not simply accept an ordinary life, a little life amongst little people. It would be unbearable.

  She had to leave. She would leave. She would seek her fortune amongst the other worlds that bordered onto Dareth. Perhaps she would find her way to the world of the fair folk, and they could teach her how to project an aura of glamour that would beguile all who saw her. Or she could find out where the dragons cam
e from. Or...well, the possibilities were nearly endless. She was, after all, talking of setting off for other worlds.

  Summer finished her hasty packing. She had a single change of clothes. She took a few books – Wainwright’s The Honest Man, a weighty tome of philosophy, and her own journal and sketchbook – and her charcoal pencil, quill and ink, so that she could continue to update her journal. She tossed a couple of keepsakes in there, an old family amulet, a charm necklace that Dawn had given her. She took no food, for she would doubtless be received hospitably and with great honour wherever she ended up, and no money, for it would do her no good where she was going. There were other things she could have packed, but the only other things she meant to take where her violin and her rapier. The rest...the rest would have to stay behind. Some of it she could leave easily; other things, like the traho set, would be more of a wrench to abandon, but it would have to be done. Destiny was calling her, after all, and it would not wait.

  Summer debated with herself whether she ought to leave notes for those she was leaving behind. It was debatable if any of them deserved the courtesy. Lady Aurora almost certainly did not; she had renounced her claim to have anything to do with Summer Phoenix. That left Grandfather… and Dawn. Dawn wasn’t family, or even a friend, but...

  She couldn’t leave without a word. She would leave Dawn a note, explaining everything.

  Summer got up and wandered over to her desk, pausing to feel the roughness of the wood, the scars that she hade made when she carved her name: Summer Phoenix.

  She pulled the chair back, and was about to sit down when she was interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the window. From outside. From eight stories up off the ground.

  Summer rolled her eyes and wandered over the window, regarding the grinning chimpanzee outside, tapping on the glass, with bemusement.

  “Who are you?” Summer asked.

  Dawn pouted. “Don’t be like that, Summer; come on, let me in.”

  Summer rolled her eyes as she opened the window and backed out of the way to let Dawn scramble inside. At fifteen, Dawn Starfall was three years younger than Summer, and at five feet and nothing she was a head smaller than Summer too. A shock of red hair – not true red, like Summer’s, but an off-red that was not quite orange – fell down her back towards her waist, shot through with streaks that Dawn had dyed white for no particular reason that Summer could see. It made her look like one of the poles that children danced round at the fair and seemed, like the white peacock feather in her hat, or the golden sash tied around her waist or the crimson tabard she wore over her tunic, to exist solely to draw attention and stand out from the crowd.