“Something’s wrong here,” Chloe said to me. “I can feel it.” She glanced back to me. “Did you come through here before?”
“No. After leaving the hut I always headed south.”
“The witch let you stay there?”
“Yes.”
“My mother told me all the witches were dead. That we had nothing to fear from them anymore.”
“I’m not sure we had much to fear from them to begin with. They were just people and there were good and bad.”
“Which one is she?”
“I don’t know.”
We were quiet a while. Chloe watched Aysta and then whispered, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Something to do with the way her life was saved. I’ll follow a little longer, but then you and I need to leave her.”
“I’m not leaving her.”
“You don’t even know where she’s taking you. It could be right to your death.”
“I don’t care. I’m not leaving.”
I sighed. Women always had to be difficult, no matter their age.
As evening fell I told Aysta we had to stop and make camp. She told me she could see just fine and to keep following her. And by the gods if she wasn’t walking just as sure in the pitch of night as she was during the light of day. With one exception: her eyes glowed a dim red in the night.
TEMPUS LAGE
My cousin Dane shot the arrow and hit the heart. He pulled back on the bow again, his muscles flexing as the sun beat down on his face. A drop of sweat rolled into his eyes and he ignored it, and released. The arrow soared through the air like a hawk and pounded against the target with the thud of a hammer.
The straw man nearly fell apart it hit him so hard. I laughed and said, “Three out of five? Is that the best you can do?”
“It’s your turn, cousin. Let’s see if your skills are as good as your boasting. It’s a shame it’s not a contest of fucking, then I could show you what your dear cousin has been learning in the bedchamber of Lady Heather.”
“I don’t think fucking sixteen-year-old handmaidens is much of a challenge.”
“I don’t see you doing it.”
“That’s because I don’t want to do it. You’re going to put a seed in one of them and their father is going to come after you with an axe.”
I pulled back on my bow, hardly taking aim, and fired. The arrow went through the head of the target and tore it in half. I took out another arrow and it split the first one. Then another hit the groin and another in each knee.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
“You’re not still enough.”
“Still enough how? I hardly moved and I held my breath.”
“But your heart was beating, wasn’t it?”
“Are you telling me you stop your heart each time you fire an arrow?”
“No, I don’t stop it. That’s impossible. I fire in between heartbeats. I have no movement but my fingers coming off the string. Your problem is you can’t achieve that sort of calm, cousin. My mother says you have a restless soul. But who knows? Maybe it’s just a restless cock because you bed so many ugly handmaidens?”
I flung my bow at him and he caught it with his free hand and grinned like an idiot. I began walking back to the castle and he followed me, placing our shirts back on, our two squire boys cleaning up the arrows and repairing the target.
“My mother said I had to be at the castle by nightfall,” I said. “She says we have a very honored guest.”
“Oh, that does sound intriguing. A woman to be your bride, you think?”
“Who knows? My mother has more secrets than a witch’s cunt. She never tells me anything.”
“Well, if she’s ugly, can I have her?”
“You want an ugly bride?”
“Not a bride, you fool, just a night’s entertainment.”
The leaves were golden brown and crunched beneath our feet as we came out of the forest and onto the castle’s wide-open grasslands. We walked to the stone path and made our way toward the gray building which looked like something that might hold an ogre or an army. It was far too large for my mother and I so she had invited Dane and his father to live with us, not to mention the over thirty squire boys, chamber maids, handmaidens, servants, stable boys—even an apothecary—that called Castle Lage home.
We walked into the courtyard past the servants that were loading chickens into cages and preparing horses for rides out to this town or that. A lot of commotion was going on and I enjoyed the noise after the quiet of the forest, but that enjoyment would soon fade. I would have to go out again and try to be still, like I always told Dane to be.
Going inside the castle, we climbed the winding stairs to the antechamber of my mother. She was being tended to by three handmaidens, and one of them, a golden haired beauty with sapphire eyes, smiled at Dane as we entered.
“You boys are filthy!” my mother said. “Get yourselves cleaned up right this instant.”
“I look fine, Mother. Just a bit of dirt is all.”
“A bit of dirt. A bit of dirt! Do you have any idea who’s coming to share your supper with you?”
“No, because you wouldn’t tell me, remember?”
She looked to the handmaidens and motioned with her head to the door. They filed out and the golden-haired one lightly touched Dane’s shoulder as she left and he grinned from ear to ear.
“Tempus, this is a very special occasion. You must be on your best behavior. I wish for you to be polite, but to be silent. Silence signals strength to most people. They will read of you whatever they wish for you will not give them any clues.”
“Ew,” Dane said, “if my young cousin here has to be silent, now my curiosity is piqued. Who’s coming?”
“Just never you mind. He’s not here for you. And I swear, Dane, if you embarrass me or your father we will paint your backside so red you will not be able to heed nature’s call.”
“Mother, just tell me, who’s coming?”
She was silent a moment. “Your … your father is coming, Tempus.”
I froze. I couldn’t breathe and the walls seemed to close in toward me. I felt I needed air but I couldn’t move.
I had never known my father.
“You told me he was dead,” I hissed.
My mother looked away, back toward her mirror. She could not stand to face me.
“Mother, you told me he was dead.”
“He was dead to you … in a way. What I said was the truth in that light.”
“In that light? You told a ten-year-old boy his father was dead when he wasn’t and you speak to me of looking at things in different lights?”
“Life is much more complicated than you can imagine, my young lord. It comes with so many areas, so many concepts and projections, that sometimes you don’t know if you’re asking a question or giving an answer.”
“What does that have to do with lying to me my entire life?”
“Your father is a complicated man. We did not want to … we did it for your own reputation.” She turned around and rose, a glow to her face as she beamed with pride. “You are the son of a king, Tempus. You are the emperor’s son. And he’s coming here tonight to finally claim you as such.”
2
I sat on the sill of a window in the castle at midday and watched as the emperor’s procession approached. In a carriage at the back, my father would be sitting with his top Royal Guards. Would they be discussing me? Did he even care? Not once in my life had he ever come to see me and now he wished something of me.
I looked at the lush castle grounds, and for the first time it filled me with revulsion. My mother and I had spoken.
She had been his Master of the Interior, a position which dealt with the bureaucracy of collecting taxes from the citizenry and stopping counterfeiters of the emperor’s coin. But one night the emperor had taken her and got her with seed. That is how we earned the castle and our lands. I had always been told my father was a powerful lord who had earned thes
e lands with the sweat of his brow. But it had actually been because my mother opened her legs to a man who’d demanded it.
I turned away from the window and went out into the corridor and into my chamber. Three handmaidens and a squire were there, ready with the elaborate dress that was expected of a young Lord of Manor. I went in quietly and stood on the platform as they undressed me and began to clean me with a soft cloth before dressing me and oiling my hair and fingernails.
When they were through, they left and I sat on a chair and stared at the walls. I don’t know how long I was there before my cousin Dane came in and said, “What the bloody hell are you doing? You have an emperor waiting for you.”
“I don’t care.”
He sat across from me. “You don’t care that the most powerful man in the world is downstairs at a dinner table waiting for you? And why weren’t you at his entrance? Do you know how insulting that is?”
“I don’t care, Dane.”
He softened. “Listen to me, my mother was a whore who my father bedded and she abandoned me at his doorstep the moment I was born. I’m surprised she didn’t kill me in the womb, but they say pregnant whores are worth more to certain men and can work less. Some men apparently pay good coin to—”
“Dane, I don’t want to hear about the men fucking your pregnant mother.”
“Right, sorry. But what I’m saying is: we can’t choose who we’re born to, so we have to make the best of things. And you, my dear cousin, could do much, much worse than being the emperor’s son.”
“He’s here because he needs something. Otherwise, why would he care to visit a bastard son?” I leaned my head back against the stone walls. “Do you know one of the maidens said that she’s heard he has dozens of bastard sons and daughters throughout the Empire? That the queen did not care who he bedded and he went out and slept with whatever girls he felt like taking? Dozens, Dane. I have dozens of brothers and sisters I’ve never even met.”
“So what? All that matters is your family here. Me and your mother. Who else do you need?” He rose and stretched out his hand. “The emperor is waiting for you.”
I took it and stood, and went out to meet the ruler of the world.
The dining room, which was a small mansion in itself, was elegantly decorated. Servants dressed all in red—the emperor’s favorite color, my mother thought—lined the walls, at the call of any of the dinner guests, of whom there were many.
Royal Guards took up the most seats, about twenty, and at the far end my mother sat across from Dane’s father. At the head of the table sat a man with a beard and leather armor that gleamed under the light of the sun which had only just now begun to fade. Two empty places were available at the table: one next to Dane’s father and one next to the emperor. Dane sat by his father and I took my place next to the emperor.
He leaned back in the seat and considered me. I stared at the table as a servant placed wine and meat surrounded by flowers before me. Roasted potatoes sliced in the shape of the same flowers were next to that, and skinned baby rats next to those, a delicacy for refined tastes which I found disgusting; only the rich ate it to seem different than the masses.
“Your mother tells me you are becoming quite the archer.”
“Yes, M’lord.”
“Who is your master?”
“Master Genune Ta, from Ulrik.”
“Ulrik,” he said impressed. “A fierce people. Do you know they kill the infirm at birth to prevent them from breeding? They desire only the strongest and most capable of them to breed. All else are disposable.”
“I have heard, M’lord.”
He nodded. “You became Lord of Manor at a young age, and yet your mother says you have no interest in bureaucracy or the management of men. Is that true?”
“It is, M’lord.”
“Do you not care about power? Or perhaps you’re too young to know what power is?”
“I know what it is, M’lord. And from what I’ve seen it doesn’t end well.”
“How so?”
“Dane’s father was a powerful man, and the people he lorded over turned on him when he was at his weakest. It seems to me that the one in power is at the whim of those he holds power over. That’s not ruling, M’lord. That’s more akin to slavery.”
The emperor was quiet, his hand to his chin as he considered me. “Very clever, my young boy. You see more than most men who have been in politics for decades.” He took a sip of wine. “So then, no politics. What do you enjoy?”
“I enjoy the sword, archery … poetry.”
“Poetry?” he said with a smile.
I looked down. “Yes, M’lord.”
“No need to be embarrassed. I quite enjoy the epic poems of Valyroe and Ninevesh myself.”
I met his eyes. “Really?”
“Oh yes. In fact, when I was in a battle a number of years ago in the War of Blossoms, I was standing out in the field and they were collecting the dead. A man, not one of ours, one of the queen’s, he stood in the center of the field and read Ninevesh’s Death on a Frosty Morn. The reading was … absolutely spectacular. I don’t know who that man was but he was killed in another battle and they brought me the book he had been reading from. I keep it in my library.”
“It must have been something. To fight the queen.”
Everyone at the table suddenly grew quiet. Speaking about the queen was not something anyone did in the emperor’s company. He didn’t say anything at first but only sipped his wine, staring at the table and running his hand along the top.
“It is one thing to fight an enemy,” he said, “but quite another to fight a lover. It was exhilarating and heartbreaking at one and the same time. I did everything I could to pacify the queen. I gave her the world with gold trim and she threw it back in my face. She was more interested in … otherworldly things … rather than pleasing her husband and providing him with many heirs.”
“I’m sorry, M’lord. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Quite all right. I have not been asked to speak of her in some time. It just brought back some unpleasant memories is all. Regardless, why don’t you show me the grounds.”
“Of course.”
We rose from the table. Mother nodded to me in agreement and I led the emperor out of the castle. Two royal guards were stationed outside the gates; they bowed their heads as we walked past. One followed behind us with a torch and the emperor lifted his hand and the man fell back. The only light then was the moon and the stars, and they reflected off the stream that ran around Castle Lage.
“When I was your age, I would ride around to castles like this one. The families had to accept me as I was the king’s son but they quite dreaded it. I would eat their food and bed their daughters and leave in the morning with whatever gifts they bestowed upon me. Do you do the same to your manor?”
“No, M’lord. Although my cousin is a different matter. I think he’s put his cock in anything that moved within sight.”
He chuckled. “But you have control of yourself. That’s the most valuable trait a man can have. Control. And gaining it of yourself is the most difficult task to undertake.” He stopped and looked at me. “I have something I need your help with.”
“Of course, M’lord.”
“My heir and only son is quite possibly dead. I need a new heir.”
“Prince Kandarian is dead?”
“We do not know for sure, but he has been gone some time and the reports I’ve received seem to indicate he has passed. So that leaves the issue of an heir.”
“I’m a bastard, M’lord. I could never be your heir.”
“My heir is who I say it is. You are my son as surely as Lucius was.”
“You have many bastard sons. Why would you choose me?”
“A disrespectful but accurate observation. I do have many sons and many daughters. Most of whom I have never met. And we’ve scoured them for the most able, of which, I am told, is you.”
“Able at what?”
“I am too
old to remarry, my boy. I will likely pass through the veil before my heir will be of age. If I were to leave a boy with the title of Emperor Abiding, my Royal Guards would kill him within a day and replace him with an emperor of their choosing. I must have an heir that is capable of conducting the Empire’s affairs immediately upon my death. An heir that is strong.”
“And you believe that’s me? I’ve hardly gone more than a day’s journey from the castle, M’lord. What do I know about administering to an empire?”
“It takes two things: confidence in your abilities—or the ability to fake confidence—and a determination to rise above the morality of the peasants. You must adopt a morality that sees the world as it is rather than as we would like it to be. You must make your decisions based on what you see. Some of those decisions will eat at you, and some of them will be easier, but they will come. So what I need to know is: do you agree to my request that you join me in Zeries as my heir?”
I was silent a moment. I wished to say no. I wished to yell at him that he was a bloodthirsty dog who had raped my mother and deserved a sword in the back, that I wished the queen had won the War of Blossoms. But I said none of those things. As the blood of the royal family ran through me, I would probably not be harmed. But no such blood ran through my mother, or my cousin, or my uncle. It would be they who suffered for my outrage.
“Of course I accept, M’lord. It would be my privilege.”
“Excellent,” he said, a smile on his face. “Prepare to leave on the morrow. You will find it difficult to travel back to visit your family, so spend the night with them. In the morning, you will be the son of an emperor.”
CHLOE
I don’t know how far we walked, but by nightfall my feet hurt, and because I was wearing leather shoes, they were bleeding from constant rubbing. Slesh built a fire and we sat around it. Aysta sat nearest the flames and simply watched without speaking. Her eyes still held the faint red glow though it had dimmed some more through the day.
Empire of War - An Epic Fantasy (The Empire of War Trilogy Book 1) Page 17