We were a hundred miles away when we heard that news, heading into the mountains where we would spend the next year. The new Impia would take at least that long to establish control over the border magics and the people, to make a show of going to war against enemies too terrible to be named or described. The wagons groaned with supplies, our poor horses nearly foundering on the steep mountain roads. We will hide until it is safe once more to come down to the towns, to play the Slow Game once more.
Ila purchased our freedom with her life. Such is the role of the Shadow.
It will be a long time before the Isthmus Variation is performed again. I hope that I am dead and in the earth before another Impia overhears certain whispers between players, before he decides that the Isthmus Variation would be a beautiful weapon to rid himself of a large group of his nobles whom he has grown tired of or who plot against him.
We are a weapon—not against the enemies of the Empire but against those leaders who choose to wield us. We exist to be the blade that turns in the Impia’s hand should he be terrible enough to use us.
Our hidden hand is moving.
Beware.
Copyright © 2010 Kris Millering
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Kris Millering is a linguist by training, a tech tinkerer by trade, and a writer and photographer by avocation. She is a graduate of the 2009 Clarion West workshop. She lives just south of Seattle with her partners and a collection of small carnivores.
http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
COVER ART
“Spring Sunset,” by Andreas Rocha
Andreas Rocha lives in Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife. He studied architecture, but after college his main occupation veered from architecture towards digital painting, something he had done during college as a hobby. He has been working freelance for three years now, doing conceptual and finished illustrations, matte paintings, and 3D architectural visualizations. See more of his work, including a movie version of “Spring Sunset,” at www.andreasrocha.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1046
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2010 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
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