The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  “So why are there no people, if he didn’t come this way?”

  “We should reach inhabited areas soon,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I felt. “The courier lamp relay lines were sabotaged in this area, so I don’t know exactly where, but soon.”

  A crow had dropped from the sky to land on Kathe’s shoulder and mutter in his ear—a frequent occurrence thus far on this journey—and he tipped his head as if listening. “Ruven’s pulled back toward Kazerath and is blooding his claim in the hills to the west,” he reported. “No sign of people on the road ahead, for a few miles at least. But I’ve found something else interesting.”

  “It’s not an enemy Witch Lord this time, is it?” Zaira asked warily.

  Kathe only grinned in answer.

  A moment later he trotted off the road at an abandoned inn; our horses followed his around the back of it, their ears pricked and alert. Zaira and I exchanged worried glances, but found nothing more alarming than Kathe gesturing proudly at a red-painted sleigh. Hoofprints churned up the thin crust of snow in the yard around it, and a bare rectangle of ground and the ruts of wheel marks suggested the inn’s residents had taken the wagon rather than the sleigh for the journey to safety in the snowless valley.

  “There,” Kathe said, with satisfaction. “This will let us go much faster. You two are terrible riders.”

  “We use boats in Raverra, not horses,” I apologized.

  Kathe hitched two of our horses to the sleigh and let the third go, whispering to each the entire time. The one he freed trotted purposefully back toward Ardence, and I had no doubt it would find its stable. Zaira, meanwhile, raided the inn for blankets and food, while I left money to pay for everything, hoping that thieves wouldn’t find it before the innkeeper did. Soon the three of us settled comfortably into the sleigh, with me in the middle and Zaira and Kathe to either side. I worried for a moment about who would drive before I remembered that Kathe needed no reins to guide the horses.

  Kathe turned to me and grinned. “Brace yourself,” he warned us. “When we were setting out, I picked horses who liked to run. And I can let them run as fast as they want for as long as they want, without getting injured or tired.”

  “What are you—” I began, but then the sleigh sprang forward.

  Zaira whooped, and I couldn’t blame her; it was exhilarating, the snow flying beneath us, the breeze in our hair, the sleigh hissing along the road. It was so much smoother than a coach, and with Kathe enhancing the horses, our speed was just short of terrifying. The wind stung my face with cold, but the rest of me was snug and warm under Zaira’s blankets, with Kathe pressed against me on one side and Zaira putting out heat like an oven on the other.

  Crows swooped alongside us as we raced through the hills, calling back and forth to Kathe and to each other. The clouds passed and the sky broke blue above us, and snow fell in clumps off the branches of evergreens, which sprang up to greet the sun with the weight gone from them. I let my mind blow clean with the white snow and the clear sunlight and the stark black writing of the trees against the sky, and my heart let some of the weight on it go as well, at least for a short while.

  But the dark empty windows of every farmhouse we passed and the unnerving lack of other travelers on the road reminded me that this was no wintry pleasure jaunt. The bright veneer of snow and sun over everything couldn’t hide that we had already slid off the perilous edge into war, at the cost of thousands of lives. If we didn’t want the whole empire to wind up like this—a desolate ghost country, its people in hiding or dragged off to serve as consumable fuel for Ruven’s magic—we had work to do.

  A crow swooped down out of the sky and landed on the hand Kathe raised to meet it, looking ruffled and quite offended. Kathe listened to its raucous complaints, then peered up at the sky and muttered, “I should have expected this.”

  I followed his gaze and saw a large dark bird circling overhead, its broad wings rocking against the gray sky. “What is it?”

  “A vulture chimera.” The crow perched on Kathe’s hand cawed harshly at the offending creature; I suspected its remark was rude. “Ruven’s, no doubt. It’s tracking us.”

  “I could try to set it on fire,” Zaira offered, squinting dubiously up at it. “I’ve never tried to burn something in the air before, though.”

  “That reminds me,” I murmured. “Since we’re not surrounded by innocent bystanders anymore…Exsolvo.”

  Zaira winced as if I’d shouted a curse at her, but made no objection. Perhaps I should have asked before releasing her within a few hours of passing through the valley of death we had created.

  Kathe was still staring upward, absently stroking his bird’s glossy chest. “My crows would be delighted to mob it and chase it off, for that matter, but it wouldn’t solve anything. We’re close enough to Kazerath that another spy would take its place.” He glanced at me. “Especially now that his domain has the taste of your blood.”

  The healing wounds in my arms itched at the thought, and I rubbed them uneasily; the bandages were off now, thanks to a good healing salve, and the scars passed rough and raw beneath my hands. “I hadn’t thought of that. Does this mean everything in Kazerath is going to attack me on sight?”

  “It means everything that’s part of his domain will know you, and he can put out domain-wide standing commands about you.” Kathe loosed his bird, which fluttered off to a roadside tree. “So if he wants you tracked, he has an entire nation full of animals to track you, all of which know you by scent and sight.”

  “At least the big stinking bird is easy to spot,” Zaira grumbled.

  “The question,” Kathe said, leveling the vivid yellow rings of his mage mark at me, “is what he’ll do, now that he knows you’ve left Ardence. What does he want from you, my lady?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “He wants me to accept his offer. He’ll probably try to put pressure on me.” And he’d made it quite clear how he intended to do that. I swallowed. “Which means Marcello.”

  “So we know his next move.” Kathe rubbed his hands. “Excellent. Shall we try to take his piece?”

  I rubbed my thumb across the ring Istrella had given me. “Yes,” I said, lifting my chin with determination. “Yes, I think we will.”

  Kathe’s crows picked out another deserted inn for us to sleep in—which was somewhat unsettling, especially since I would have expected to be past the evacuated area by now. With no need for stealth and our enhanced horses, we’d made it into the foothills of the Witchwall Mountains, approaching the Vaskandran border. Most likely the local people had withdrawn to Greymarch fortress to the north for safety, taking no chances with an invading army in the area, but with the courier lamp relay mirrors shattered, there was no way to be sure.

  We gathered in the inn’s empty dining room. No fire burned in the hearth, and the shadowy emptiness made the place feel haunted despite the lack of dust or disorder. Nothing was out of place; everything looked as if the innkeeper and all the guests had just stepped outside for a moment, and would be back shortly.

  “Well, there’s a kitchen, so we can make a hot dinner,” Zaira reported.

  We all stared at each other.

  My mouth twitched. “Not one of us knows how to cook, do we?”

  Zaira shook her head. “I never had a kitchen.”

  “I always had a chef,” I admitted.

  Kathe shrugged, looking strangely embarrassed. “I, ah, don’t need to eat.”

  “That’s just weird.” Zaira poked him in the arm. Kathe gave her a startled look, then tipped his head, frowning, as if trying to figure out what this puzzling action could mean. But Zaira had already turned away from him. “Well, let’s see what they’ve got that’s good cold.”

  We had a meal of stale bread, oil-cured olives, a decent sharp country cheese, dried apricots, and honey. Zaira ate about five times what I did, still replenishing her energy after all the balefire she’d unleashed. When she was done she stretched, sighed, and patted her tummy.


  “What do you think?” she asked, eyeing me with speculation. “Is it late enough for some fishing?”

  My stomach clenched the food I’d eaten into a hard knot. “I suppose I should give it a try.”

  Kathe pushed his plate away. He’d taken at least a taste of everything and wound up eating half the olives, so apparently he didn’t mind eating, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary. “It may be ironic at best for me to say this, but I have misgivings about using you as bait.” He paused. “Again.”

  “This time it was my idea.” I rose, pressing my palms on the table to hide their trembling. “He probably won’t show up anyway. And if he does, I’m certain I can get him to talk. Ruven doesn’t want me dead.”

  Kathe nodded slowly, holding my gaze. “I’ll have crows watching you. Good luck.”

  My breath made crisp white puffs in the cold night air. The clouds had begun to clear, and diamond-hard stars peeked through the shredding gaps. I hugged my coat around me as I ambled in front of the inn, taking the longest possible route through the grounds toward the stables. A crow eyed me beadily from the branches of a pear tree, puffed up to a black sphere against the cold.

  “Here I am, all alone, going to get something I forgot from my baggage,” I muttered, turning Istrella’s ring on my finger to make certain it was loose. “Totally not a trap at all.”

  The snow blanketing the patch of rolling fields around the inn shone in the muffled starlight, a stark contrast to the ragged dark edge of the forest and the looming black shadow of the surrounding hills. I wished I could have brought a lantern, more for the comfort of a warm spark in the vast darkness than for the light it would have shed, but I needed my hands free.

  Still, it was hard not to hurry as I crossed the snow, boots crunching, toward the hulking barn behind which we’d left the sleigh. Knowing that we were hoping something would leap at me out of the shadows made it even worse.

  I caught a whiff of hay as I passed the barn; one of our horses let out a sharp, short whinny, no doubt questioning my sanity for being outside on a night like tonight. The moon came out from behind a cloud just as I rounded the corner, throwing a patch of bright silver light on the sleigh and the baggage we’d left in the back to give me an excuse to wander out here alone.

  The scent of anise struck me, faint in the open night air and sickly sweet.

  Marcello bent over our bags, one of my elixir bottles empty and upside-down in his hand, his orange eye blazing with reflected light like a cat’s.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  He straightened when he saw me, for all the world like a guilty child, even as my insides performed an extraordinary set of acrobatics.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. Another empty bottle caught my eye, gleaming in the moonlight at his feet; the sight cut me like broken glass. That was both of the large bottles I’d had in my bag—I had some small ones in my satchel up in my room, thank the Graces, but this was still a disaster.

  Marcello lifted a hand. “I don’t want to do this, Amalia. Graces know I don’t. Please, hear me out; I have a message.”

  It was his voice, worried and a bit embarrassed, as if he were himself again. I could almost believe we were back at the Mews and he was apologizing for some annoying regulation or order he had to follow, if it weren’t for the empty bottles shining in the snow.

  He’d poured out my survival onto the frozen ground, and now he was sorry for the inconvenience. Ruven could twist him to murder, but couldn’t make him rude. My eyes stung.

  “Fine,” I said, clinging to the pretense that this was normal, that he was all right, trying to ignore the horrifying scent of anise surrounding us. “What’s your message?”

  Marcello took a deep breath. “My lord Ruven wishes to extend—”

  I hurled his sister’s ring at him as hard as I could.

  It hit him in the chest and stuck there, runes flaring to life. He went utterly still, the breath he’d gathered easing out in a vague huff rather than whatever word he’d intended. His eyes stayed fixed on me, the human one wide with shock and perhaps a touch of betrayal, the inhuman one glaring with its slit pupil wide to drink in the darkness.

  I fumbled in my pocket and found the obsidian ring, careful not to accidentally slip it on my own finger. Trembling, I approached Marcello where he stood with his hand still raised, feeling his gaze on me.

  “We’ll save you,” I whispered to him, staring into his green eye. “We’ll bring you home. I promise.”

  And I slipped the obsidian ring over his finger.

  His eyes went vague and glassy at once, and he collapsed to the snow.

  Zaira and Kathe helped me settle Marcello on a bed in one of the inn guest rooms. I drew the blanket up over his chest, careful not to dislodge the obsidian ring. Zaira left at once, with a glance at me and an announcement that she was going to forage for some wine, but I lingered by Marcello’s side.

  I couldn’t help staring at his face. With his eyes closed, I could almost pretend that the silver scales running down his temple, cheek, and neck were just an effect of the moonlight. He looked relaxed, peaceful, without any trace of the torment that had pulled at his face ever since that terrible night in the Imperial Palace. I wished he could sleep like this until we found a way to cure him, and then wake believing it had all been a terrible dream.

  Feathers rustled at my side. “What will we do with him, now that we have him?” Kathe asked.

  “We can take him with us to Greymarch fortress and ask them to hold him there for now.” I itched to smooth Marcello’s tangled hair back from his face, but it seemed inappropriate to do so with Kathe standing next to me. “I have to stop there to ask their alchemist to make me more elixir, anyway. I only have my backup bottles left, about four days’ worth.”

  I turned from Marcello’s bedside. I suddenly couldn’t bear to watch him sleep anymore, knowing that the appearance of peace was an illusion. That I’d only postponed the reckoning I dreaded, not avoided it. Kathe followed me into the narrow hallway with its yellow-painted walls and creaky old board floors; I closed Marcello’s door, gently as if I could actually wake him, and leaned my forehead against it.

  Kathe hesitated, then laid a hand on my shoulder—an awkward gesture, as if he’d seen someone do it in a woodcut illustration and knew this was how one expressed sympathy, but had never tried it before. For all I knew, that might be exactly the case.

  “I’m sorry this happened to your friend,” he said quietly.

  “Could you tell whether he…” I couldn’t finish, or meet Kathe’s eyes.

  “The transformation is clearly more than skin deep, but I could also sense Ruven’s presence wound through him.” Revulsion laced Kathe’s voice. “So I can’t tell how much is Ruven’s external influence versus permanent physical changes. In all honesty, chimeras are much more closely bound to their creator’s will than creatures naturally born in a Witch Lord’s domain; I’m surprised his own personality and principles are able to break through at all.”

  I closed my eyes. Marcello’s principles were stronger than the pillars of the Empire. There was a strange comfort in knowing that his honor and loyalty were rocks that even the vast ocean of Ruven’s magic couldn’t wash away. “I see. Thank you.”

  “One way or another, we’ll kill him,” Kathe promised.

  It took me a moment to realize he meant Ruven. I turned to him, a complex tangle of feelings winding tighter in my chest. “Is that what you think I want? Vengeance?”

  He blinked. “Don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “I want Ruven dead to end the threat he poses. But I’d leave him alive if it would fix all the damage he’s done.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I thought of Ruven’s offer; it might well be the only way to restore Marcello. The knowledge twisted at my gut. “My mother taught me that vengeance inevitably comes to rule the one seeking it. And nothing must rule a Cornaro.”

  Kathe grimaced and rubbed the back of his head, mussing u
p his pale, black-tipped hair. “I must confess I find it rather satisfying, myself.”

  “I suppose you would.” I sank down against the wall, exhaustion dragging on me like a damp wool blanket. “I can’t hoard grievances like jewels the way you do in Vaskandar. If my fists are closed around grudges, my hands aren’t free to work. I have to let them go and focus on doing what needs to be done.”

  Kathe crouched next to me, frowning, reminding me for all the world of one of his own birds hunkering inside its feathers against the cold. “Maybe I’m going about this wrong, then.”

  “Going about what wrong?”

  “If you were a Witch Lord, you would hold a serious grievance against me for what I did to you at the Conclave.” Kathe glanced down, drawing patterns in the dust on the floor with his finger. “If I wanted to keep you as an ally, or a friend, I would need to offer you favors in return until you were satisfied.”

  “I see.” I reached out and barely brushed the feathers of his cloak, their softness sliding beneath my fingertips. “You’re still my friend, Kathe. And my ally, too, I hope.”

  He caught my hand gently in his, lifting it so the lace fell away from my wrists and the first few of the raw, half-healed claw wounds showed on my forearm. “You forgive too easily,” he murmured, tracing a tingling path between the red marks. “You let people too close, for a leader of a great empire. It’s dangerous.”

  “Yes, well, I do question my sanity sometimes, particularly where my courtship choices are concerned,” I said, a bit breathlessly. “Don’t think you can get away with anything you like just because I’m willing to give you another chance, though.”

  Kathe’s lips quirked in a one-sided smile. “It wouldn’t be much fun if you let me get away with anything. I prefer it to be more of a contest.” He rose, offering his hand. “Speaking of which, Zaira found a deck of cards while you were outside, and promised to teach me some Raverran games. A wound won’t heal if you poke at it. Would you like to come allow yourself to be distracted for a while?”