by EF Joyce
She knew this was her cue to beg him to believe her, to assure him of her loyalty and promise she spoke only truth. But Anaka despised all those words, political niceties to fill the space, empty things that hung rotting in the air, serving only to assure the listener that they had all the power, that they could make the speaker swear anything, to dance like a jester. The Handmaiden's actions had already declared her truths and if Alaric really doubted her, no words would change that. She remained silent, matching his stare and not daring to look away.
"Very well," he finally said, closing his eyes for a few seconds. "I have just given the order for my force to relocate outside the Bronze Gates in Kinjia. They will wipe out your sorcerers, I promise you." Her face betrayed her surprise again. Damn face. Hakkon had trained her better than that. But how could he have given the order already? She'd never heard of magic like that before. It had to be trick, yet she could tell he wasn't lying. What kind of power did this man possess? Surely magic was bleeding from the world the same in Dalga as in Yeraz. What secrets lay beyond the Hündür Mountains?
"The sorcerers may be useful in your own army," she prompted. Magic is fading out. These may be the last sorcerers ever born into Yeraz. Are you so powerful that you'd be willing to toss away the last spark of magic left in the empire?
"I have no use for prisoners. Taking them would be like planting traitors in my own forces," he replied.
"Most of them come from the magic school and are little more than children," Anaka added. Children were more likely to show loyalty to whoever gave them mercy.
"Is that what troubles you? The deaths of children? Would you not kill a child to save your own? Or a hundred? Has the price become too high?" No, but you've just told me how much magic you can afford to waste.
"No," she replied. He had answered her question, even if he hadn't realized it. Like Stellan, Alaric would not be a man to cross lightly.
"I will handle Kinjia."
"Very well. Is our bargain fulfilled? Is the way open to my family and me?" she asked. Yeraz grew more dangerous for her every day, and once her daughter was born she would have significantly less control over her safety.
"No, I still need more information. Tibre was a wonderful gift, and I thank you for it. But you have proven too valuable an ally to give up just yet."
"You promised you would send for me once Tibre fell," Anaka argued. "That time has long passed and I've given you more than I ever planned to. Things are becoming dangerous for me in Yeraz. I need to get out." You lying bastard. You promised. She should have known better than to trust any man after power, especially not a mage king.
Each additional day she spent there was an exponential risk. With the information she'd been feeding Dalga, the council would soon know a traitor was among them and it wouldn't be long before eyes turned toward her. Each night she spent with Stellan was even more dangerous; one day he would look into her eyes and just know everything she had done, and he would kill her because he was a killer and she loved the risk. At least she used to.
"You can stay there and give me intelligence until I win this war. Until I stand in your queen's castle, sit in her throne and feast on her food stores. Despite the disbelief in your eyes, surviving your queen's power is not impossible, not for me. I have my own secrets. Believe it or not, assassin, you have enlisted the one person in this world that stands a chance to help you. Now you can be patient and wait for me to conquer Yeraz or you can try and find some other way out of your situation."
Anaka wanted to shout at him, do you know who I am? I am the greatest assassin in Yeraz! I murdered the King of Saleda in his own fortress. I killed Estrial Hakkon, the most skilled fighter and accomplished murderer in the world. I poisoned every last soldier of Stilenthen, singlehandedly! I could have slit your throat in your sleep! Well, maybe not that last one. Instead she bowed low to the King of Dalga and swore she would return with information as things in Yeraz progressed.
Now that she could borrow her daughter's magic, she would be able to communicate with Alaric without anyone knowing. Unseen and unnoticed like the shadow she'd always been, she would hand her empire to its greatest enemy. And once she did, she'd come back for him. No man would treat her like a tool, a slave, a pawn. She would use Alaric and then end him; that much she swore.
With a single thought, she broke off the illusion, dream, or whatever it had been, and materialized in her bed. Anaka stretched, her muscles cramped from spending hours completely still, as her real body had been here all along. Only a projection of her had gone to Dalga, yet the projection had been flesh, a real and solid copy of her body, just like Elixa's in her dreams. Before she could contemplate it further, someone began pounding on the door of her sitting room, frantically jiggling the locked knob. Anaka leapt to her feet and whipped open the door, fully prepared to greet some panicked council member who had discovered Sundry's body or announce some other wartime disaster.
The door opened on Ronan, who practically fell inside. The black of his pupils dominated his deep green eyes, his short curly hair soaked with sweat and the pulse at his neck fluttered frantically like the wings of a trapped insect.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" he said immediately, not bothering to explain himself.
"Ronan, calm down. Take a breath. What happened?" He had been following Balkin. Had he been caught? Did Balkin know she was watching him now, and why? Had Ronan discovered what they'd been planning?
"I was...following Balkin..." he said between gulps of air. "His man saw me on the roof outside...tried to run...I caught him but..." he looked at her again with that guilt, a silent admission that he wasn't giving her the whole story.
"Ronan..."
"You need to come with me," he said. "Right now." Anaka followed him immediately, deciding not to press him further. She trusted Ronan, and if he needed her to come she would not squander time arguing. They wove their way through the halls, which were brimming with people at this time of night – just after the evening feast had concluded. The province representatives were fed every night and then entertained with dancers and bards, a waste of resources if anyone asked her, though she was fairly certain it was all to distract them from the cold, life-leeching feel of the palace.
Her apprentice led her through the kitchens, past the servant's quarters and down three back stairwells before she figured out where they were headed. Anaka's stomach knotted as he unlocked the doors to the lower levels, a place where access was restricted to very few. The stone walls pressed in on her like a tomb, the oppressive, pervading corruption like a smothering blanket. No matter how many times she came down here, she would never grow used to it; that evil that soaked into everywhere, rotting the food, rusting the copper, greening the silver, cracking the stones. All of it came from the Sphere, locked four levels below the palace and still not far enough away.
Ronan kept to the first level, snaking through the plain gray stone corridors seemingly at random until he reached a dead end where a man was huddled, gagged and bound in ropes, his eyes wide and terrified. Anaka recognized him immediately as Jeryl Drugyn, the closest friend and personal body guard to Quinton Balkin.
"You brought him here?" she snapped at Ronan. He knew better! Idiot. Was he trying to get them hung? "Do you have any idea how much you risked by carrying him all the way here? What if someone saw you? Are you a complete fool? Have I taught you nothing? You shouldn't have been seen in the first place, but since you were, you should have killed him on site! Explain this to me!"
"I can't, I can't do it! I'm sorry Anaka, I tried and I just...couldn't. "I'm not my father," he mumbled, his eyes on the ground. "I can't kill. I won't."
"You're an assassin, Ronan! Why else did you stay on as my apprentice after Hakkon died? This is what you've been training for. You have to kill him." She slid her magic dagger from her sleeve and handed it to him, the violet jewel pulsing with life, the jagged edge deadly in the dim light. He looked away, letting it dangle from her fingertips.
"O
nce I realized," he said, "I was going to tell you that I didn't want to be an apprentice, that I didn't want to be trained. But then everything happened...the war, Dalga. I just thought it would be easier once we were out of Yeraz."
"You are not your father," she assured him. Your father was a demon, straight from the Underworld.
"I know. But I still won't do it," he met her stare dismally, knowing he'd disappointed her and that hurt him, but his convictions would not be moved. "I hid him here because I didn't know what else to do." A worthless idiot, her Ronan. What could be so difficult? The man was tied up for Yeraz's sake. He could not fight, he posed no threat to life or limb. Simple. Easy.
Anaka turned the dagger in her hand and neatly slit Jeryl's throat, who'd been sweating, whimpering and struggling pathetically against his bonds for the duration of their conversation.
"You can at least take care of the body," she snapped, wiping the dagger on the dead man's clothes. She started to walk away, and then turned, his words nagging at her. It hadn't been the challenge of course, but the act of taking someone's life. Elixa had the same problems, the Queen of Dreams, unwilling to kill! Anaka had never found it to be any more than a task to be completed. Death was part of life and life a part of death.
Only once in her young life had she seen someone die and felt something. Only once. The horror of it still haunted her, followed her like a ghost. Perhaps that was how Ronan felt about every person. To have so many feelings would be such torture, to care so much. She could scarcely imagine.
"If killing is so abhorrent to you, why do you stay with me? Aren't you disgusted? Why don't you just walk away?" she snapped, her voice cracking. Damn pregnancy emotions. Am I going to cry over everything?
"There can be no light without darkness," he answered, almost pleading.
She scoffed. So poetic. Anaka Vilente had been born in darkness. She needed no light.
Chapter 12
I
Elixa's second dream had been nothing like her first. Dumping the Kotu army into a crater in the ground had been surreal. One second, they were charging at her, a thousand strong with flaming arrows, spears held on horseback, plate mail glinting in the sunlight, and the next they were swallowed by the land, there and then gone. There had been quick yelps of surprise, but no agonizing death wails or blood and gore. No pain and suffering. Just instantaneous victory. The young queen was tortured by neither nightmares nor guilt. Those men's deaths had cost her nothing. The second dream changed all of that.
Daulata, an abundant city-state straddling the borders of Dalga on the edge of the Hündür Mountains, and Baliyo, another independent kingdom, had been thriving on a newly cultivated silk market. In an unmitigated disaster, Dalga had suffered a horrible drought that inevitably led to an uncontrollable fire, wiping out nearly all of the southern empire's mulberry trees and with them their silk worms, leaving Daulata with a completely monopoly in the silk trade. Elixa, then fifteen, knowing the riches it would bring to Yeraz, had been coveting Daulata for some time, but their small government remained diplomatic and fair, quickly meeting every one of the queen's requests in exchange for her leaving them to their sovereignty. Unprovoked, she dared not attack them.
But when the silk prices threatened to crush Baliyo's economy, they begged Daulata to lower the prices. When they refused, two thousand Baliyo soldiers snuck into Daulata's capitol, Atam, and held it hostage, demanding that their tradesmen turn over all silk in their possession or the Baliyo soldiers would sack the city.
As a purely mercantile state, they had no way to combat the surrounding soldiers. Terrified of losing their main source of income, the Daulatan government had turned to Yeraz, and Elixa offered them a deal: become one of Yeraz's provinces and she will come herself, turn out every last Baliyan in their city and save their economy. They would lose the right to a private military, would pay moderate taxes to Yeraz and would have to erect a minimal number of temples and statues dedicated to the Ilahi. They would gain the backing of Yeraz's army and the protection of Elixa's magic, effective enough to dissuade any potential enemies before they ever made a move. Daulata had quickly agreed and Elixa dreamt her way there in an instant.
Somehow, the Baliyo kingdom had gotten word that Atam had thrown their lot in with Yeraz and its sorceress queen. When Elixa arrived, the city was on fire. She had stood outside the high sandstone walls, watching the orange flame meld with the red of the setting sun, sparks leaping up into the indigo sky. She had walked toward the city, dressed in a golden silk gown and glittering crown, lit up by the flames like a human torch.
Elixa saw a Baliyo soldier, evident from his strong physique, scarred skin and armor, slit the throat of an Atam merchant, dark blood soaking into his yellow robes. He'd died clutching his neck, eyes wide and unbelieving. He'd died on his knees, with his hands in the air, begging for mercy.
A fury was born inside the young queen for this man, this creature, who could slaughter an innocent, unarmed and pleading for life, without remorse. With nothing more than a thought, the offending soldier's throat opened in a red smile. Like for like – true justice delivered. The queen hadn't even realized what she was going to do until it was done; her subconscious had cried out for vengeance and the Sphere had delivered. Elixa had walked through the burning gates of Atam, in the opposite direction of the crowd, rushing to flee the fire.
Soldiers murdering children, looting homes, slaughtering men who dared defend their families; they were everywhere, agents of war, heartless killers. The Queen of Dreams became a woman possessed, justice incarnate. She darkened the flagstone streets and quenched the flames with their blood, violently ripping apart each soldier she encountered with only the barest of imaginings. Red had splattered over her gown, her pale skin, her long, light hair. The people of Atam had fled before her, more terrified of her glowing, blood-spattered bewitchment than the soldiers who had burned their lives away.
There had been no place for any emotion other than fury and determination. When she'd finished 2,247 Baliyo soldiers lay dead inside Atam's walls. The magic drained from her, Elixa studied what she'd done with detached horror. Cleaved bodies and pieces of men were strewn everywhere, the streets blackened with blood, visible only from the light of dying flames. Atam's residents had all fled, either into their homes or outside the walls, the dark night eerily silent. Elixa had stared at the corpses, pallid skin nearly glowing in moonlight, dead eyes staring blindly at the smoke-filled sky.
Unlike when she'd faced the Kotu army, she could not escape the reality of the massacre she'd committed. Elixa smelled their spilled insides, tasted their burned flesh lingering in the thick air, felt the weight of their sweat and their effort, all for nothing.
The blood that stained the streets could never be washed away, no matter how many slaves scrubbed them. It took the city fifteen days to collect all the body parts and burn them in a pyre taller than the rolling hills of Tibre. Even after the cleanup, the merchants of Daulata could not abide the red washed roads and blackened walls. Their city was cursed, haunted by the dead Baliyans.
Daulata built a new capitol, leaving the ruins of Atam to rot, a monument to Elixa's absolute power and total ruthlessness. She soon became known as the Red Queen, having killed more people and more brutally than any of her predecessors, other than Tessa who had destroyed Arzu. In her own land she was hailed as one of the strongest Queen of Dreams to live, and they demanded from her the world. But Atam had broken her.
The night after the slaughter, and every night after that, the fifteen-year-old queen awoke screaming from her own nightmares. The soldiers and what she had done to them haunted her, their blood sticky on her skin, their screams ringing in her ears. They had been guilty – they'd slaughtered and raped and plundered, she'd seen it all herself, but that was not enough to erase her own guilt, and it never would be.
Alone in the Queen's Tower, she thought of Atam once again. I am a monster. A scion of war. A destroyer. I am everything he said I was. But she cou
ld change. She had to. For her people. Her people were sick, like her. More than three-thousand Kan Sivids were carried out in the capitol each year, and twice that number were annually rejected. It was wrong to kill without conscious, and wrong to propagate those ideals throughout her culture. If anyone could end the cycle of brutality and mercilessness, it was her, the Empress of Yeraz, and end it she would – beginning with the man who had started it all.
II
Empress Elixa Elspeth, Queen of Dreams and master of the Sphere was perched regally on the throne in one of her best violet silk gowns when Grand General Grayna entered.
"Your Majesty," he greeted, bowing low.
"Grand General," she replied. "Allow me to skip over all the niceties and get straight to the point," she said. "I am going to ask you, right here and now, to make a choice. Yeraz is at a crux. As an empire, we must decide our next steps very carefully. As I'm sure you're aware, my father and I have differing ideas in regard to politics, war and Yeraz's future. I ask you to choose one of us. Me or him. The empress or the Ilahi. I want to know, right now, whom you will follow and obey."
"I choose you, my queen," he responded immediately. "Long have I sought to end the blasphemous reign of Sebastian Elspeth. With you as my ally we shall not fail." Elixa smiled. She'd known he would side with her; she wouldn't have risked even whispering such words otherwise.
"Excellent. Let it be known that all discussions here shall never be repeated. Now, I will need your help to devise a plan. My father is dangerous and we need to remove him from power as quickly and painlessly as possible. Sebastian has a huge following in the temples. The priestesses and the faithful will both stand against us if we dare to make any overt moves, not to mention that he has a rather expansive circle within the palace itself.
"Over the years he's used all his looks and his charms to make powerful friends. He owns the assassin's guild and the heads of the Kan Savid Administration. The province leaders are all smitten with him. In fact very few are immune to him – he's even stolen from me my best and most trusted spy. If we're going to do this, we need to be subtle, smart and quick. Any suggestions?"