The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  She shook her head, her artifice glasses flashing, and peeled her bloodstained fingers away from the small, round hole in her sleeve. And then she picked up her brush, hand trembling, and resumed painting.

  Marcello dropped to his knees by my side, his face drained of color. “Is she—”

  I gripped his good arm. “Let her finish,” I whispered, tears standing unshed in my eyes.

  Marcello crushed my hand in his, staring at the blood on his sister’s arm in anguish. I glanced behind us, nerves singing, ready to throw myself into the fray to protect them both with my dagger if I had to.

  But the fight was already over. Bodies lay strewn across the floor like fallen leaves; I had to hope they were all only unconscious or otherwise incapacitated. Someone had backed Foss, Aleki, and a handful of others into a corner and warded them there with another rune-scribed rope. Several of our people hurried from one downed opponent to the next, making certain everyone was both all right and unlikely to get up again soon.

  “There,” Istrella gasped, and a flash of light and the scent of scorched stone came from the doorway. She swayed against Marcello, who put his good arm around her; an alchemist came rushing over, clutching a satchel full of supplies, roll of bandages already in hand.

  Colonel Vasante whirled on Zaira, all the fury of the Demon of Carnage in her face. “What in the Nine Hells was that?”

  Zaira rose from the side of the fallen Falconer who’d shot Istrella and turned to face the colonel, tense and wary.

  Vasante slammed a fist into her palm, striding toward Zaira. “It’s not your job to break ranks and fling yourself at the enemy. It’s your job to stay out of the way until we need something set on fire.” She flung an arm at the bodies littering the marble floor. “You could have gotten good people killed.”

  “I don’t give a plague-infested rat carcass for what you think my job is,” Zaira retorted hotly. “And I never asked anyone to protect me.”

  “You are too damned valuable for us to risk losing, and you know it.” The colonel jabbed a finger at Zaira. “We only won because they were trying not to fight back. Istrella wouldn’t have been shot if it weren’t for your idiocy.”

  “What? She got hit?” Zaira whipped around, dark eyes wide, to stare at Istrella. The alchemist was tying off a bandage on her arm, having removed the ball and applied a healing salve. Istrella bit her lip, tears standing in her eyes.

  “Hells, Istrella.” Zaira’s voice was hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

  Istrella managed a brave smile. “Oh, it’s all right. Only we’d better hurry. I think I hear more people coming.”

  Sure enough, the sound of running boots thundered outside. I helped Marcello haul Istrella to her feet between us, and we ran through the shadowy maw of the doorway, deeper into the Mews.

  At long last, we burst into Colonel Vasante’s office. As our rear guard still struggled to hold back the controlled people rushing to stop us, the colonel strode without hesitation to a small room that had been hidden behind a bookcase now pushed aside. I couldn’t see what she did in there, but the wards that had glowed orange all through the long bloody corridors flared all at once with an intense blue light.

  In the hallway past her door, the din of battle cut suddenly short in a cascade of rustling thuds as everyone collapsed, defenders and attackers alike. Through the window I saw every guard in the courtyard fall, too, limp as a dropped handkerchief.

  A terrible silence fell over the Mews, broken only by the harsh breathing of the dozen of us crammed into the office. Everyone else was asleep.

  Then someone swore, and someone else laughed, and a soldier burst out crying. Zaira breathed Terika’s name and passed a hand over her face. Istrella reached out shakily to Marcello, who gathered her into a one-armed hug. He met my gaze over her head with haunted eyes.

  My red and gold Assembly gown was stained and torn, and beneath it my legs trembled. But there was no room and no time to sit down. We were far from done with this night’s work.

  Colonel Vasante knew it. She took a deep breath and straightened her spine.

  “Right,” she said, her voice clipped and commanding. “That should have knocked out everyone outside this office. We need to round up every single inhabitant of the Mews and confine them in the shielded training rooms until this damned potion wears off. We can sort out who’s controlled and who isn’t later. And we need to get a message to the Imperial Palace at once.”

  “I’ll go,” I said, my voice wavering despite my best attempt to keep it steady. “They’ll let me through to talk to the doge and the Council without question, so I can deliver the message most quickly.”

  Colonel Vasante nodded brusquely. “Take Verdi and your Falcon with you, Lady Amalia. Then you’ll have plenty of protection in case something goes wrong. We don’t know what else Ruven might have set in motion.”

  Marcello cast an anguished glance between me and Istrella. Zaira protested, “I need to make sure Terika is all right.”

  “Take five minutes and two guards,” Colonel Vasante said curtly. “But I want you out of here. If something goes wrong and the Mews falls back under Ruven’s control, I don’t want to give him two warlocks.”

  I expected some retort, but Zaira made no reply. I took a closer look, alarmed. Surely a silent Zaira must mean she was bleeding to death—but aside from an assortment of minor cuts and bruises too insignificant to have triggered the magical protection of her enchanted corset, she seemed unhurt. But strain showed on her face—in her temples and her jaw, well hidden enough that I doubt anyone else but Terika would have noticed.

  “’Strella—” Marcello murmured.

  Istrella pushed gently at his chest. “Go with Amalia. I’m fine. If you stay here, you’ll just stare at me and look sad the whole time, and it’ll be creepy.”

  I lifted a hand to cover a smile.

  “Make sure you have a physician look at that wound,” Marcello fretted.

  “I will,” Istrella promised. “And we should have one look at your shoulder, too, when you get back. You used it too much tonight.”

  A strange expression passed over Marcello’s face. “It’s not as bad as I expected it to be,” he said, with a one-sided shrug. “I feel fine.”

  “You may now,” I said dubiously, “but we still need to warn the Council and the doge. I have a feeling this is going to be a long night.”

  It was odd, gliding down the Imperial Canal with its splendid façades and glimmering luminaries, surrounded by the usual evening traffic: half-drunken revelers, their voices echoing loudly over the water; finely dressed patricians on evening visits, decked out in lace and velvet; and the last round of weary merchants and artisans heading home after stopping in a hostelry for dinner. The night air was alive with chatter and laughter and the lap of water against wood and stone, with the occasional swelling of song. I overheard a comment or two about how the breeze had quite picked up for a while there, or how strange the clouds had looked for a minute, but no one had any idea that the entire city had been in danger of obliteration.

  My oarsman had seen and suspected more as he waited faithfully for us at the Mews docks. His face looked a bit pale and ragged, but his hands stayed steady on his oar as he guided us toward the Imperial Palace. I made a mental note to slip him a ducat and a word of thanks when we disembarked.

  “Well, that was awful,” Zaira said, wrapping her arms around her knees.

  I nodded emphatically. “I’m not sure which was worse. Having to fight friends, or knowing what would happen if we failed.”

  “Or watching the place I’ve dedicated my life to protecting get taken by the enemy and my beloved little sister shot.” Marcello put his hand over a face still pale and glassy with shock.

  Zaira gave us both a sidelong look. “Or watching everyone drop like puppets with cut strings at the end, and realizing the Empire asked past Falcons to work their fingers raw building a trap to keep their own people from ever rebelling. That wasn’t fun, either.�
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  “No, it wasn’t.” I grimaced.

  “And damn me to the Nine Hells, but I hate that I have to be glad they did it.” Zaira shook her head. “That was too cursed close.”

  “It could have been a lot worse.” I drank in the lights and voices around me that meant the city was alive and safe. “Jerith wasn’t the only Falcon at the Mews who could have destroyed Raverra; he was just the one who could do it most quickly.”

  “Thank the Graces you weren’t there for the toast, Zaira.” Pain roughened Marcello’s voice, and he held himself with care on his cushioned seat in front of Zaira and me. “I shudder to think what would have happened.”

  “Thank you very much. I’ve been trying hard not to think about that,” Zaira snapped.

  “Sorry.” Marcello glanced around the boat, as if he might find a change of subject lying in the bottom. “I hope the colonel has someone looking after the children,” he said finally. “They’re going to be frightened when they wake up. It’s going to take us a long time to recover from this, in more ways than one—days of quarantine for the whole Mews, our courier lamps gone, wounded soldiers, bad memories.”

  “Those poor little brats who got controlled.” Zaira’s knuckles were white on her knees, and her fingers dug into her skirts. “I keep thinking of Aleki’s face. I keep thinking…” She broke off.

  I reached out, tentatively, and touched her shoulder. “It’s all right. Everyone’s safe now.”

  Zaira shook her head. “That Jerith is such a bastard,” she said abruptly.

  I blinked. “What?”

  “He knew just what to say to rattle me. Do you know how many times I’ve had nightmares about my fire getting out of control and raging through the city?” Her lips pressed tight together.

  I remembered something she’d said to Jerith on the tower top, which hadn’t made any sense to me at the time: That’s how it always begins.

  “It won’t happen,” I assured her. “I won’t let it.”

  “I suppose that’s what I keep you around for.” She let out a long breath, as if she could expel her feelings into the shining Raverran night.

  “I’m worried about Bertram,” Marcello said abruptly, shifting the strap of his sling on his shoulder. “He’s been posted at the Mews for years. But that man wasn’t him. It was his face, but he had too much muscle on him, and not enough freckles, and he held himself all wrong.”

  “Ruven,” I said, my stomach contracting with the terrible surety of it. “That’s what he was doing in Raverra on the Night of Masks. Finding someone who could get into the Mews and replacing him with one of his own people. That’s why he had to come himself—so he could use his vivomancy to sculpt the face to match.”

  Marcello shivered. Zaira swore, touching her own cheeks. “I’ll bet that hurt.”

  The more I thought about it, the more disturbing it became. “This is bad. If he can hide his own people among us with faces we trust, we can’t catch them with Terika’s blood test like we can someone controlled by the potion. He has two different ways to infiltrate us, both of them devastatingly effective.”

  Zaira snorted. “The face trick won’t be too hard to catch, now that we know about it.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Watch this.” She turned to Marcello. “Hey, Captain Lefty, whose fault is it the Mews got taken?”

  Marcello grimaced. “Mine. I should have had Bertram questioned when he came in late. I should have—”

  “I don’t actually care,” Zaira interrupted. “I’m just making a point. And Amalia, what changes would you make to the Mews wards after today?”

  “Well, I’d update them to automatically signal the Imperial Palace when they were activated, using bridge runes so no one could alter the enchantment to bypass the signal, and—”

  “Don’t care about that, either. But you see my point. If you know someone, it’s not hard to tell if they’re acting right.” She nodded at Marcello. “Even Captain Oblivious here noticed that guard wasn’t who he looked like right away, from across the room, once we knew something was wrong.”

  “I wonder what he did with the real Bertram?” Marcello asked. But by the heaviness in his voice, I suspected he could guess the answer as well as I could.

  “The bodies that turned up after the Night of Masks,” I said grimly. “There might be more face-shifted people out there. That’s another warning we need to give the doge right away.”

  “Well, you’re about to get your chance,” Zaira said.

  The Imperial Palace reared before us, ablaze with lights, rising in sugar-spun glory above its wavering reflection. At this hour, most of the staff who didn’t live there would have gone home, but I’d lay odds my mother was still working, and half the rest of the Council besides.

  “And the Empire endures,” I murmured.

  Zaira followed my gaze. “They don’t even know what almost hit them.” She uncurled somewhat, then, chuckling. “I suppose that’s one upside to all this. I can’t wait to see the doge’s face.”

  I had been to the Imperial Palace after hours many times, to meet my mother when she worked there late into the night. It was a different place after midnight, its glorious gilded halls empty of officials and pages, petitioners and courtiers and hangers-on. The guards remained, of course, and an occasional servant or clerk hurried past in the grand, airy spaces designed to accommodate hundreds. But with the glow of the luminaries not quite reaching the ceiling frescoes and the portraits watching us with night-dark eyes and studious frowns, it felt as if we were intruding on some sacred and secret place, trespassers in the halls of the Graces.

  The guards all recognized me and let me through, bowing to the urgency in my stride, eyes widening at our ragged appearance. Every time we crossed a threshold, I laid my hand on the center of an artifice seal worked discreetly into the elaborately carved molding around the great arched doorways, feeling the tingle of magic in my palm. My mother had never told me what would happen if I didn’t, but I could spy the artifice runes and wirework hidden away in the swirling vines and leaves of the decorations on every portal, so I wasn’t about to chance it, even if it slowed down our pace as we hurried to get to the doge and any of the Council still in the palace.

  We soon arrived at the end of the public spaces, a great set of closed gold-chased doors. Six guards with pikes and pistols stood at attention before them, and an official in a blue-and-gold jacket rose from the chair he’d been reading in beside the door as we approached.

  “Lady Amalia,” the official greeted me with a bow. “La Contessa is still in the Map Room, in a military strategy meeting. Do you wish me to find out if you can join her?”

  “We have urgent news for the doge and the Council.” I didn’t bother to hide my shortness of breath. “I need to speak to them at once.”

  The official’s face grew serious, and he gave a sharp nod. “I believe you will find His Serenity at the courier lamps.” He waved to the guards, who opened the golden doors.

  We hurried through into the Thinking Room, a long corridor designed by an early doge who wanted a place to pace while working through difficult problems. Windows lined one wall, overlooking the sparkling lights of the Imperial Canal, and paintings depicting great discoveries and accomplishments in imperial history now hung opposite them.

  “The doge first,” I decided. “Especially since he’s at the courier lamps. He can spread the word.”

  At the end of the Thinking Room, we veered away from the gallery that led to the Map Room and the other chambers of the Council of Nine, and toward the ducal apartments and the courier lamp room. But before we reached the elegant curve of marble steps that ascended to the lamp tower, it became apparent the climb wouldn’t be necessary; the doge was striding toward us, his golden robes flowing, a pair of guards trailing after.

  His glare fell on me. “You! I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you. You pass your cursed law, and mere hours later the Mews apparently has such an inflated sense of indep
endence I can’t even raise them on the courier lamps. What have you done?”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Zaira muttered.

  I bowed. “Your Serenity, there’s an emergency. Lord Ruven has made his move.”

  “I’m well aware of that, which is why I need to contact the Mews.” He made as if to move past me, then spotted Marcello and stopped. “Captain Verdi! Why is no one manning the courier lamps?”

  A cold spear of understanding pierced through the net of confusion his words had cast over me. “Your Serenity,” I said slowly, “I think we may be talking about different emergencies.”

  The doge went still, the flush of anger draining from his face. “You aren’t referring to the border fortress?”

  “Border fortress?” I asked. “Ruven’s invading?” Beside me, Marcello sucked in a soft gasp. I couldn’t blame him; I wanted a chair to sink into. “Good Graces, not now. This is terrible.”

  And, of course, he’d planned it that way. It didn’t matter that we’d saved the Mews; with half the Empire’s Falcons in quarantine, our magical might was crippled when we needed it most.

  “What’s your emergency?” The doge’s black eyes flicked between us. “You’ve come from the Mews. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Your Serenity,” I began, “Ruven has—”

  But before I could finish, Marcello doubled over as if he’d been punched in the stomach, letting out a muffled cry. There was a lost note in it that wrenched at my heart, as if something vital had torn away inside him.

  I spun and reached to catch him in case he fell, sickeningly sure a broken rib had pierced his lungs in all the fighting and now he was dying.

  “Is he injured?” the doge asked sharply. One of his guards started forward.

  My hands closed on Marcello’s good arm. I could feel the heat coming off him even through his uniform jacket. And not only heat—the faint tingle of magic.

  A shiver ran across his shoulders, brief as a gust of wind stroking a flash of silver from a sheet of falling rain. His breathing went from ragged to calm in an instant.