The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  “I was visiting Ignazio,” I said reluctantly. “He has information on a plan of Ruven’s. This is only a guess, but given that he spoke of turning our own people against us, I suspect it’s a scheme to use his command potion to sabotage the Empire.”

  “Ah.” Caulin nodded. “That fascinating potion. I’m not surprised. It doesn’t take much imagination to think of a hundred ways he could use it, and he’d be a fool not to try.”

  I didn’t doubt Caulin had thought of a hundred ways he would use it, if he could. “Ruven is no fool. Have your own connections learned anything relevant? If he’s attempting to place someone in a key position in the Empire under his control, he might well hire a Raverran poisoner.”

  “Investigating that angle is precisely why I’m here.” Caulin’s lips thinned in a smile. “You think like a true daughter of the Serene City, Lady Amalia.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. Somehow that didn’t feel like a compliment, coming from a man whose methods I despised. “Thank you.”

  His eyes took on a gleam I didn’t like. “You should use that mind to the Empire’s benefit.”

  “I like to think I do, Lord Caulin.”

  “Do you?” He raised his brows. “One might argue that your current attempts at lawmaking serve no one but our enemies.”

  He meant my proposed act to end the forced conscription of mages, into which I’d been pouring countless hours and every crumb of political influence I had. Attempts at lawmaking shouldn’t have stung, coming from a man who’d never tried to pen a law in his life, but it set my teeth on edge.

  “One might argue that,” I agreed stiffly, “if one lacked both the wisdom to recall that the mage-marked are imperial citizens and the foresight to realize that it only strengthens the Empire to free them.”

  Caulin’s tone shifted, becoming softer, more dangerous. “It’s a waste to bend your efforts toward foolish gestures that could deprive Raverra of its most formidable weapons just when we have greatest need of them.”

  “The mage-marked aren’t weapons. They’re people,” I said. “They deserve a choice.”

  “The security of the Empire sometimes requires that we control other people’s choices.” Caulin shrugged, as if this were an inconvenience to be tolerated, like a light summer rain. “Choice can be dangerous. You would do well to remember it.”

  A certain edge in his tone sent prickles down my back. “Dangerous? Surely you aren’t threatening me, Lord Caulin.”

  “You?” He laughed. “Oh, I would never threaten the daughter of La Contessa. No, no. That would be folly. I merely meant that as you make your political moves upon the board, you may wish to consider how they endanger the more vulnerable pieces around you.” Caulin’s eyes went flat as black glass. “It would be a pity if your friends wound up as casualties of your principles.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. He still smiled, his demeanor mild and affable except for those eyes full of old death. But I knew whom he meant: Marcello, my Ardentine scholar friends, perhaps even Istrella or Zaira. He could have them killed, if he chose, and no one would ever trace it back to him; that was his job, after all.

  I’d known this was coming. It was inevitable, now that I was taking my place on the stage of Raverran politics. My friends would be in danger so long as my enemies saw them as weaknesses.

  “Vulnerable?” The voice that came out of me was cold and hard. “Oh, I think not.”

  “Is that so?” Caulin asked, all innocent curiosity.

  Once, he might have successfully intimidated me. But I had made the choice to kill my own cousin to save others, when I held the terrible destructive power of Mount Whitecrown beneath my hand; whatever soft spots remained in me had been blasted away in the volcano’s fire.

  “You are a fool if you think them unprotected,” I said. “It’s not my mother’s retribution you should worry about. It’s mine.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, affecting an expression of mild concern, and said nothing. But those black eyes analyzed me.

  I stepped closer to him. “Let me be absolutely clear, Lord Caulin. I will not bury my meaning in false pleasantries. If you touch my friends, I will destroy you.”

  The absolute certainty of it hummed angrily in my pulse and resonated in my voice. It didn’t matter that Caulin outranked me, or that I was only an heir with little power of my own. I would find a way. And Caulin heard it.

  He regarded me awhile, considering, as if I were a difficult passage he was translating from Ancient Ostan.

  “I’ll bear that in mind, Lady Amalia,” he said at last. “But in return, do me the favor of considering the impact your little law could have. I would prefer to be your ally, not your adversary.”

  I drew in a breath to tell him exactly how much consideration I’d given to the impact this law could have: The nights lying awake wondering if I was going too far, or not nearly far enough. The long discussions with my friends at the Mews over what it might mean for the safety of mage-marked children and the people around them. The hours poring through history books, analyzing the forces at play, the pendulum swing of action and reaction that had rocked the ships of nations since long before the Serene Empire existed.

  But before I could utter a word, the echoing patter of running footsteps sounded in the broad marble hall. The ragged urgency of the sound pierced my chest with a thin sliver of alarm; after two months home safe in Raverra, my nerves still expected danger in every sudden motion, every sharp word.

  The guard who’d conducted me through the prison halls ran toward us, her eyes wide, gasping for breath.

  “Lady Amalia!” she called. “Come quickly! It’s your cousin, Lord Ignazio. He’s… I think he’s dead!”

  Chapter Two

  Two guards and a physician crowded Ignazio’s cell, now awash in glaring light and harsh bands of shadow from a pair of luminary lanterns on the floor. I stopped myself from pushing past them into the tiny stone room; this still could be a trick. But though I could only spy Ignazio’s thin, sprawling figure in pieces, between the backlit legs and scabbards moving between us, the absolute stillness upon it gave me little hope this could be anything but death.

  The physician rose from her crouch at Ignazio’s side with weary gravity, shaking her head. “It’s too late to save him.”

  The guards parted for me, and I saw him at last. Ignazio’s body lay facedown on the cold floor, twisted in apparent agony. A moment ago this had been a creature of intricate thoughts and complex misgivings, a living soul I could both hate and still somehow love. Now it was only an empty thing, like dry wood with the sap gone from it. Everything I might have wished to tell him, all his unresolved regrets and unspoken secrets, gone.

  “What killed him?” I asked. My voice came out tight as an overstuffed case at risk of springing open.

  The physician shook her cloud of iron-gray hair. “I’m not sure yet. I’d guess poison, but—”

  Something leggy and iridescent black scuttled out from beneath Ignazio’s sleeve. One of the guards shrieked and jumped back; the physician, with the unruffled calm of a grandmother who’s seen worse, brought her boot down on the insect before I could do more than catch a sharp breath.

  “There’s your answer,” she said grimly, lifting her foot to reveal the crumpled remains of something resembling a scorpion. The guard who had shrieked went nearly green and averted his eyes.

  “A chimera,” I breathed. It had to be. Its legs were too like a spider’s, curled up in death, and it had two curving tails instead of one.

  Whatever Ignazio had wanted to tell the Council, Ruven had made certain the knowledge died with him.

  “I should have realized Ruven wouldn’t tell Ignazio something that important unless he was certain he could protect his secrets. Ignazio should have realized.”

  I paced a tight arc in Marcello’s cramped office, my hands clasped behind my back to keep them from trembling. Marcello slumped in shock before a writing desk piled high with deployment orders, his eyes wide at
the news I’d given him.

  “Does the doge know about this?” he asked, pushing the curling black locks of his hair from his face as if he could shove his own thoughts into order.

  “Of course. I went to the courier lamps at once to tell my mother.” I loosed a shaky breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She’s in a closed Council meeting all day, so I couldn’t see her in person. I had to break her the news of her only cousin’s death in the courier lamp code.”

  I couldn’t help a certain bittersweet wonder at the strange, cold miracle of magic and imperial bureaucracy that had brought my message to her. A clerk had received and transcribed the brief pulses of light, then handed the scrap of paper to a page to run it through the echoing marble halls of the Imperial Palace to where Ciardha stood waiting outside the Map Room door. Ciardha in turn would have discreetly passed it to my mother without disrupting the meeting. And my mother must have looked down and felt something, some tangle of emotions I could only imagine, before lifting her gaze to the rest of the Council to calmly inform them of this new piece of intelligence.

  So I had come here, because Marcello was the only one in all the world whom I could talk to when I was this rattled without fear of the consequences of seeming vulnerable.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  I shook my head. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. He was a traitor, and everything I ever liked about him was a lie.”

  Marcello rose in front of me, stopping my pacing. We stood so close a strong breeze could have swayed me into him. Face-to-face like this, I couldn’t escape the quiet sympathy in his warm green eyes.

  “Don’t pretend he doesn’t matter. He was your family.” Marcello’s lips twisted into the wry echo of a smile. “You know how my father nearly ruined my life, and I’d still be upset if he died. I understand.”

  “I’m really fine.” I brushed imaginary dust from my lace cuffs, just as an excuse to look away from him. “Seeing him dead so soon after I spoke with him was unnerving, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure?” Marcello hesitated, then laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You still haven’t talked about Roland, either. It might help to—”

  At Roland’s name, pain squeezed my chest. I shook Marcello’s hand off. “Anyway,” I interrupted him, “we need to figure out this plan of Ruven’s that Ignazio died to warn us about.”

  Marcello gave me a long, dubious look. “You’re not going to let me help you, are you.”

  I set my jaw stubbornly. “You can help me stop Ruven all you want.”

  “All right.” He threw up his hands in mock defeat and sank back into his chair. “The wise officer knows when to retreat. In any case, it sounds as if we’ll want to watch out for Ruven’s control poison.”

  “It’s his most dangerous weapon.” I latched eagerly onto the problem; unlike death, it was something I might actually solve. “So long as he has enough alchemists working for him, the sheer mathematics of it are terrifying. All it takes is one controlled person with a vial of potion to bring several under Ruven’s control, and then they can each spread it to more…” I trailed off, envisioning Ruven’s taint spreading across the Empire like spilled ink across a map.

  Marcello dragged his fingers through his hair. “And all those people wouldn’t be sitting quietly. They’d be sabotaging our infrastructure, killing our leaders, capturing our mages, all right in the heart of the Empire. We need a way to deal with this potion, or to deal with Ruven.” He tapped one of the reports on his desk. “Terika’s trying to find an antidote—she stole a few samples of the potion when you rescued her from Ruven’s castle—but she says it may not be possible to create one. She’s determined that we can detect the presence of the potion in a drop of blood, though.”

  “I’d suggest you start regular testing of everyone in the Mews, then,” I said. “Soldiers and staff as well as Falcons and Falconers—anyone who can get in the doors. We should do the same with any other officials Ruven might want to control, from the doge on down.”

  Marcello nodded. “What about this scorpion chimera? I’m concerned he might use more of them for assassination.”

  “Ferroli’s Tincture of Purity should counteract the venom.” I bit my lip, thinking. “I’m not sure how much you have in stock, but it might be wise for key leaders and Falcons to start carrying some.”

  “I’ll put the alchemists on it,” Marcello agreed, leaning over his desk to scribble himself a note. “You should keep some in that satchel of yours, too.”

  “I already do.” I patted the satchel’s familiar weight on my hip. I’d taken to carrying it with me almost everywhere, since recent events in my life had proven the value of being prepared. “We’ll want to raise security on the Falcons as well. Ruven thinks of magic as power, and he’s targeted them before.”

  “You’re right, we should.” Marcello sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Damn. This is going to mean more arguments.”

  “Oh?”

  He hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Marcello,” I said dryly, “I’m your friend and I’m privy to the Empire’s most carefully guarded secrets. There is very little on this earth you can’t talk to me about.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” He flashed me a smile, but weariness lay under it, like brittle gray ice beneath a thin dusting of bright snow. “You know why I joined the Falconers, of course. To help my sister, and people like her.”

  “Ah.” I thought I had an inkling of where this was going. “And not everyone seems to share this perspective, in your talks about security.”

  “Some of them want to lock the Falcons up like their grandmother’s heirloom silver at the first sign of a threat. Or worse.” He grimaced. “It’s certainly driven home why your law is so important. I didn’t notice it as much before my promotion—but when you get past a certain command level, there are no Falcons in the meetings anymore. And the tone of the discussions changes.”

  “I know what you mean.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve been in those types of meetings myself.” The tendency to think of the mage-marked as resources rather than human beings was an obstacle I’d run into disturbingly often in my attempts to garner support for my Falcon reform law.

  “I imagine you have. And there’s this same ruthless distance when we talk about military strategy—who and how many we can afford to lose.” He shook his head. “I can’t forget that these are people, not playing pieces. I don’t think I’m cut out for command, Amalia. I’m too soft.”

  My throat tightened. I seized his hand, before I could think better of it.

  “Stay soft,” I urged him. “The Serene Empire needs more people like you in power. People with compassion.”

  “I’m worried that over time, I’ll start thinking like them, piece by piece, and not even notice.” Marcello curled his fingers gently around mine. “I don’t know if it’s better to quit, and be certain I’ll always stay myself, or keep trying to become the colonel’s successor, and risk becoming someone I wouldn’t recognize.”

  “You’re the most honest man I know,” I said. “You’ll always be yourself.”

  “You think so?” Hope warred with doubt in his voice.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  That evening I sat in the drawing room after dinner, writing personal letters to attempt to persuade key Assembly members to vote for my Falcon reform law as I waited for my mother to return home from the Imperial Palace. Finished letters accumulated on the tray as the mantel clock ticked away the hours. My pen hovered over the beginning of the twentieth, hesitating over whether a certain baroness’s husband or her consort would hold more sway over her opinion, when at last I heard Old Anzo open the door for my mother. Her voice floated in from the foyer, punctuated by the efficient murmurs of Ciardha, her impeccable aide; she was still working, even at what the clock informed me was an hour past midnight.

  I rose, ready to go meet her in the foyer, but she slipped into the drawing room with a sw
ish of midnight-blue velvet and a rustle of lace before I made it to the door. She pulled jeweled pins from her hair as she approached, letting her auburn locks tumble down over her shoulders; she had already cast off the majesty she wore in public like a cloak, probably the moment she walked through our palace doors.

  “Mamma,” I greeted her, scanning her face for signs of grief.

  But she still wore her business mask, enigmatic and aloof. She was either saving her mourning for later, or she’d done it long ago.

  “Amalia.” She pushed the door shut behind her, never breaking her gaze; the click of the latch sounded grim and final as the seal on Ignazio’s prison cell. “Sit down. We have things to talk about.”

  I settled back into my chair, suddenly feeling as if she’d caught me skipping my oratory lessons to sneak off to the library. Ciardha’s voice sounded distant and muffled in the foyer, giving instructions to Old Anzo. “We do?”

  La Contessa sank gracefully into a chair opposite me, scattering her pins beside my letter tray. “The Council of Nine is taking your message about Ignazio’s warning seriously. We spent much of today coordinating attempts to uncover what Ruven might be up to. Lord Caulin even claims to have already received a tip indicating that Ruven is hiring Raverran alchemists from the Tallows to help spread his poison.”

  “That was quick,” I said, surprised.

  “Indeed.” Skepticism dripped from my mother’s voice. “And thus far, my own people have been unable to corroborate this piece of intelligence.”

  “You think he’s making it up?”

  “Caulin has his own sources, and he doesn’t always share. It could be good information.” She delicately spread her hands. “Or he could be making a mistake, perhaps moving too quickly on an unreliable tip to try to gain cachet as the most newly elected Council member. Or, yes, it could be a fabrication.”

  “But why would he lie about something like that?”