by Sarah Ash
“Near your home. But you need human nourishment to sustain you.” He heard the Drakhaoul’s voice resonating within his mind like a dark breath of fiery wind. He had never imagined he would feel so glad to hear that voice again.
“How long have I been here?” It was an effort just to form the words. He was so tired he just wanted to lie back in the sun and drift back into unconsciousness.
“Long enough for me to heal the injuries to your brain. But you are still weak from loss of blood.”
Gulls circled high overhead, white against the brilliant blue of the sky.
“Why did you come back?” he asked drowsily.
“Your need was too great.”
Sleep washed over Gavril. When he awoke again, the sun had moved across the sky toward the west. It was late afternoon.
He sat up and began to take stock of his bearings. “Near your home,” the Drakhaoul had said. Was he on the cliffs above Vermeille Bay? He tried to get to his feet but his legs were so weak that he crumpled back to his knees in the grass.
“What’s he doing here?”
“Looks like he’s been injured. Could be one of the rebels from the citadel.”
Voices sounded close to Gavril. Prison warders? He threw up his arms to protect his head.
“It’s all right, son. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Slowly he realized that they were speaking Smarnan. He opened his eyes and saw two men—vineyard workers, from the look of them—bending over him in the golden light.
“You’ve taken a nasty cut to the head there, boy. Have you been in the fighting?”
“Fighting?” Gavril repeated, confused.
“Fighting the Tielens.”
“Tielens.” Gavril’s fists clenched at the hated name.
“Can you walk, son?” The older of the two nodded to the other, and between them they hoisted Gavril to his feet. “Where are you making for?”
“Vermeille.”
The two workers glanced at each other.
“I wouldn’t go back there right now. Not in your condition. Vermeille is swarming with Tielen soldiers.”
“He can come back with us tonight, Jarji, can’t he? He can sleep in the barn.”
They hoisted Gavril up onto their ox-drawn cart and jogged back through the warm dusk to the vineyard.
The vineyard women made a fuss of him, tutting in horror over his wounds and insisting on feeding him soup fortified with their own rich red wine to “build up his strength.”
It was so good just to sit in the kitchen, feeling the warmth from the fire on the range and to smell the hot peppery steam rising from the spicy meat soup. Good to hear the chatter around him in his native language. Good, above all other things, to know he was free.
“How’s things in the citadel?” Jarji asked him suddenly.
Gavril blinked, at a loss to know what to say.
“How can you ask him that?” said Jarji’s wife, Tsinara. “It’s a wonder he can remember his own name with a head wound like that. What did you find out down at the village?”
“Professor Lukan and the students have taken Governor Armfeld hostage. They’re threatening to shoot him if the Tielens don’t withdraw. But now they say an imperial war fleet’s on its way.”
One of the workers came into the kitchen.
“Haven’t you heard? The fleet’s been sighted off Gargara. It’s making straight for Vermeille Bay.”
Listening to their conversation, Gavril began to realize that Smarna was not a safe place to be.
“Vermeille Bay?” It was the first time he had spoken in a while and they all stared at him. “But if they fire on the citadel, it’ll be a massacre.”
The sun-gilded sands of the Smarnan shore swarmed with Tielen soldiers. Warships, anchored out in glittering Vermeille Bay, had trained their powerful cannons on the Old Citadel of Colchise perched high on the cliffs beyond the pink and white stucco villas.
Elysia stood on the balcony of the Villa Andara and watched the guns from the warships blast the citadel. Tiles shattered to flying shrapnel, flames spurted from roof timbers, clouds of smoke besmirched the clear blue sky. The ancient walls began to crumble under the relentless bombardment.
“No. Oh no,” she whispered to the bright morning air. “RaÏsa. Iovan. Lukan.”
The cannonfire shook the villa to its foundations, deafening as overhead thunder.
A man came stumbling into the orchard garden below.
“Elysia!” he cried in a voice rough with fear and exhaustion. “Help me!”
“Lukan?” She grabbed up her skirts and went hurrying down to the garden.
He had collapsed to one knee in the dewy grass. As she reached him, he raised his face to hers and she saw blood trickling from a jagged gash above one eye. “They’re after me.”
“Can you make it to the villa? Here. Lean on me.”
The guns thundered again and she felt him flinch, his weight heavy against her shoulder. She braced herself and started slowly forward, a step or two at a time. The cannonfire made her heart thud like a kettledrum in her chest. Suppose they turned the guns on the houses next? They would all be blown to pieces.
“Why?” she said, breathless herself now with the effort of supporting him. “Why has Eugene attacked us?”
They reached a wrought-iron bench beneath the balcony and Lukan sank onto it. She sat beside him and pressed her handkerchief to the gash, trying to stanch the blood.
“Eugene is a tyrant. He doesn’t believe in negotiating.”
His voice came faintly now, and she saw from the greyish pallor of his skin that he was near to fainting. He was too heavy for her to carry into the house on her own. What would revive him most efficiently, brandy or water?
“Just because Eugene got his hands on some ancient ruby from the Smarnan Treasury, he thinks it gives him the right to own us all. . . .”
Brandy, she decided as Lukan rambled defiantly on. He needs brandy.
“We must fight to remain independent. It’s our birthright. . . .”
Another violent barrage of cannonfire shuddered along the cliffs. From where they sat they could see the fiery explosions, the jagged, broken walls of the citadel, with smoke pouring out as the fires took hold.
Shouts erupted at the far end of the garden. Elysia recognized the clipped tongue all too well. “Tielen soldiers!” She rose in alarm. “Inside, Lukan; quick.”
The handkerchief dropped as she was hustling him in at the garden door. Too late she glanced back as she locked the door and saw it lying there by the bench, stained bright red with Lukan’s blood. Too late to go back for it now.
“I thought I’d given them the slip.” Lukan slumped against the wall, one hand clasped to his gashed head. “Let me out at the front, Elysia. If they find me here, God knows what they’ll do to you and Palmyre.”
Elysia was busy with her keys, unlocking the door to her studio, trying to steady her shaking hands. “You’re not going anywhere in your condition.”
The door swung open and she pushed him inside, hastily locking it again behind them.
Canvases lay stacked in piles against the walls. Easels had been draped with dust sheets to protect the unfinished works that lay beneath. Dim light seeped in through long linen blinds; the air was pungent with the smell of oil paints and turpentine, tinged with the dust of long months of neglect. Elysia had not yet confronted the task of cleaning up in here.
Men called to one another in Tielen.
“Quick. Under this dust sheet.”
She pushed Lukan down, forcing him to crawl behind a pile of tall portrait canvases and draped more sheets on top. Booted feet came clattering up the wide steps.
“Open up!”
A man stood high on the rocky promontory, gazing out across the sea.
He stood motionless, tensed for action. But within his heart and mind there blazed a cold and vengeful rage.
He could see them in the bay below, the imperial war fleet, sent to crush the rebellion in Colchise.<
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“Eugene!” he cried, his voice strong, rasping raw with anger. “This time you’ve gone too far. You took my freedom, my name—but you shan’t take Vermeille!”
The rage burned more fiercely within him, flooding through his veins with galvanic power. The Emperor’s war machine would show no mercy to the Smarnans.
“But they have a chance if we go to their aid.”
He slowly stretched his arms wide. Blue light crackled and hissed from his clawed fingertips.
He stared at the phosphorescent flickers of light, the physical manifestation of the daemonic energy he felt pulsing through his body. Such terrible power . . .
Far beneath him waves crashed against the jagged rocks, sending up bursts of white spray. If he had misjudged, he would fall to an agonizing death, his body smashed against the rocks.
“We are Drakhaon.”
He took a step back, steeling himself. “Then don’t fail me now.” And crouching low, he ran toward the edge of the cliff and leaped into the void.
“Open up!” This time the Tielen soldiers used the common tongue and there was no mistaking their intent. One battered on the villa door; from the din it sounded as if the butt of a carbine was being used.
Elysia met Palmyre in the hall.
“Listen to that! If they’ve damaged the paintwork, they’ll have me to deal with,” Palmyre said, rolling up her sleeves.
“Stall them,” Elysia whispered. “Tell them I’m ill.” She hastily retreated to the upper landing, where she could watch what was happening.
“Coming, coming,” called Palmyre loudly, bustling back down the corridor. She reached with a shaking hand for the door handle and opened.
Tielen soldiers stood there: big lads, raw-shaven, in their blue and grey uniforms.
“Move aside.”
Palmyre positioned herself so that her generous figure filled the doorway, arms folded across her chest. “What do you want?”
“You’re harboring a rebel. We saw him come this way. We must search your house.”
“There are no rebels here.”
“Then how do you explain this?” He dangled the bloodstained handkerchief under her nose.
Palmyre took in a deep breath. “I can’t let you in without my mistress’s permission. I’m only the housekeeper.”
The Tielens glanced at one another. The one who was acting as spokesman colored a deep red. He couldn’t have been much more than twenty, Elysia thought, brashness barely concealing his lack of experience.
“Then fetch your mistress.”
“She’s ill in bed.”
“Too bad.” He nodded to the others.
“Stop!” Palmyre cried, raising her arms wide to block their way. They took no notice, rudely barging past her into the hall. Elysia hastily pulled a silken peignoir over her day-dress and tugged the pins from her hair, letting it tumble about her shoulders.
“Two of you take the stairs and search the upper floors,” the Tielen ordered. “And you two follow me.” He had kept to the common tongue, Elysia realized, so that Palmyre should not mistake his intent.
She took a deep breath and went to the head of the staircase just as two of the soldiers came running up, taking two stairs at a time.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” she asked in a faint voice, one hand clasped to her forehead as if she had a headache. They hesitated a moment, glancing uncertainly at each other.
“Take her downstairs,” said one.
“You. Come with me.” The other raised his carbine, pointing it at her.
It would not be wise to provoke him, Elysia decided, doing as she was ordered.
She came downstairs just in time to see the young officer fling open the double doors to her salon. His men followed, their boots leaving smears of mud all over her precious Khitari carpets.
The windows of the salon overlooked the bay. As Palmyre and Elysia stood helplessly watching the soldiers thrust bayonets into the sofas and cushions, they could see the Tielen fleet still firing upon the beleaguered citadel, could see flames rising from houses in the shelter of its walls.
The Tielen soldiers paused a moment to watch as another salvo crashed into the citadel.
“Our lads’ve breached the walls!” one said, grinning at Elysia. “It’s all over for you Smarnans now.”
Elysia, lips pressed together to avoid speaking her true feelings, could see only too well. The beach was covered with running men, line after line of grey and blue uniforms, bayonets fixed, advancing relentlessly on the citadel.
And then a shadow passed across the sun, dimming the spring brightness of the morning.
“What’s that?” The Tielens gazed up at the sky.
Elysia moved toward the windows, peering apprehensively out at the bay.
“Dear God,” Palmyre whispered, “what is that?”
Swooping down from the peerless blue sky came a dark cloud, moving swift as the wind, casting its shadow over the soldiers on the sands. Even as they stopped to gaze up at it, a terrible brilliance emanated from it—a glittering breath of flame so bright it seared Elysia’s eyes.
For a moment the whole sweep of Vermeille Bay was irradiated in a surging blue tide of light.
“Ahh.” She clutched at the sill, eyes clenched shut against the cruel brightness, water leaking from her lids. When she opened them at last and blinked away the streaming tears, she saw at first only the dark-winged shadow circling over the bay. Through her dazzled sight she could not be certain, but it seemed to her that she was seeing the impossible.
“Gavril,” she whispered. “Oh, Gavril, is it you?”
The Tielens had fallen silent, transfixed, mouths gaping open. For where there had been hundreds of Tielen soldiers on the sands, there was nothing now but billowing smoke and a blanket of choking grey cinders blowing away into the air. And the dark-winged creature was swooping back across the waves, straight toward the Tielen fleet.
The masts of the Tielen warships lay below him, a forest of white-draped tree trunks.
The cannons were silent now.
As he swooped over them, he could hear human voices crying out in fear. They were moving the cannons, trying to angle them upward to bombard him. Cannonballs whistled toward him.
A cruel laughter welled up inside him as he swerved to the right and then to the left, snaking across the sky. Exhilaration powered him, and an insatiable desire for revenge.
The shots went wide. Some cannonballs fell into the waves, some thudded back down, smashing into the Tielens’ own ships. The cries of fear changed to anger and panic.
Eugene’s fleet was at his mercy. He could exterminate every Tielen crewman, every officer. And the Emperor would be left with no significant sea power to defend his empire.
Princess Karila sat watching the children invited to her eighth birthday party as they played blindman’s buff.
She had tried to join in with the party games, but her twisted body had let her down. Too slow to keep up, she had tripped on the hem of her new blue gown and fallen flat on her face. Some of the younger children had pointed and laughed until they were shushed by their titled mothers, and bewigged servants had rushed forward to pick her up and dust her off. Bruised and humiliated, she had swallowed her tears—refusing to cry in front of the rude little boys—and limped back to her gilded chair.
Her great-aunt, Dowager Duchess Greta, clapped her hands in vain for silence. “These games are too boisterous! Let’s play a different one now.”
“No!” jeered the young guests, too caught up in the excitement of the chase.
Karila stifled a sigh. She gazed at her birthday cake: an elaborate confection of sponge cake, vanilla cream, and pink sugared rosebuds. Her stomach fluttered, queasy at the thought of so much cream and sugar.
Great-Aunt Greta instantly misinterpreted her look.
“Time for cake!” she cried, clapping her hands again.
“Cake! Cake!” shouted the children, jumping up and down.
; The fluttering in Karila’s stomach increased. If only Papa could be here. But now that he was Emperor, imperial business had kept him far away in Mirom with her stepmother, Astasia.
Her eyes strayed to the pile of presents, Papa’s foremost among them: an exquisitely carved and painted musical automaton of a girl holding a little gilded cage containing a songbird. When wound, the mechanical girl pirouetted and the bird opened its little beak and fluted a strange, wistful tune. And he had promised another magical surprise for her—
“Time to cut your cake, Princess!” Papa’s majordomo wheeled the extravagant cake on a little trolley in front of her and placed a knife in her hand.
“Don’t forget to make a wish,” whispered Great-Aunt Greta.
Karila sighed again as she placed the tip of the knife in the center of the vanilla cream. Her wish would be the same as it was every year. She closed her eyes and wished with all her heart.
Please make me whole. Make me like other children.
She pressed hard with the knife, feeling it sink into the soft sponge. The children cheered.
Then a bolt of star-blue flame flashed through her mind. Suddenly she was burning hot.
“Child, my child . . .”
“Drakhaoul!” she whispered. “You’re alive!”
The knife clattered to the floor, spattering her dress with specks of cream and jam. And she felt herself falling, falling—
The Tielen soldiers tore down through the gardens of the Villa Andara, their search for Lukan abandoned.
Elysia and Palmyre watched them from the salon, amid a snow of feathers from the slashed cushions.
“Nothing I can’t fix with a good upholstery needle,” Palmyre said. She sat down abruptly on the ripped sofa. Her face was white underneath a glisten of sweat, and her breathing was shallow and fast.
“We both need a glass of brandy,” said Elysia, going straight to the crystal decanter on the salon table.
“What was it?” Palmyre said faintly as she sipped her brandy. “What was that creature? It just flew down from the skies and destroyed them.”