The Emissary glanced at Corajidin’s prosthetic with a smile. “I can make you whole again, Corajidin. All you need do is ask.”
“Another debt?” The lump of his artificial limb became the center of Corajidin’s attention. He pulled the sleeve of his over-robe down to hide it. When he looked up, the Emissary was gone. Her cold chuckle came from nowhere, until he turned his head. She had moved into his blind spot. But that is where you have always been, neh? “I don’t know that I’m wealthy enough to pay what you’d ask.”
“You always have something to give, Corajidin.”
Corajidin stalked the camp, plagued by the Emissary’s offer to make him whole. Though he had rejected her overture, he could taste the lie on his lips. Mēdēya walked with him, her fur-lined over-robe dragging in the slurry. She had said nothing since they had left the Emissary at the command pavilion, the weight of her silence growing with each step.
“What?” Corajidin rounded on her as they entered his pavilion. “You have something you want to say, say it!”
Mēdēya’s gaze was fixed on Corajidin’s hand. “Jidi, if the Emissary could make you—”
“Is there anything that woman says that you do not agree to?”
She looked baffled, and reached out a hand to tap his prosthetic. “You are my husband. And the most powerful man in Shrīan.” Her expression became ferocious. “You deserve better than this cold lump, where a warm hand should be!”
“The Emissary cannot be trusted, as I have learned through bitter experience. There is always a price for her help, Mēdēya. And always the price seems reasonable in the moment of anguished acceptance, yet the shine soon wears off her gifts, and the depth of the hole one has dug becomes all too apparent. I can barely see what is around me for the darkness of the debt I am into her, and her Masters.”
“And was my reincarnation such a tarnished gift?” Mēdēya’s voice was sharp edged with rage. “Have I not given you everything? I, who helped you plan the war against Far-ad-din? Was it not I who helped you murder your second wife, so that we could be together? And was it not I who died at Vahineh’s hands, because you killed her father? You owe me much, Erebus fa Corajidin!” Her eyes welled with tears. They trembled on the ends of her long lashes, bright as chips of diamond. “You dragged me from the Well of Souls, made me a Nomad in a country that can’t abide me. I hide in another woman’s flesh, speak with her voice, while you look into her eyes and ravage us both—”
“Enough!” he cried. His hands trembled and pain blossomed in his head. “Please, enough. I loved … love you more than any other woman I have known. I see you, Yashamin, in Mēdēya. It is you I love, not the flesh. But there is more in you than Yashamin. Something that speaks with the Emissary’s voice.”
“There is only I, Jidi. Only Yashamin. If it happens that you hear the Emissary’s voice in mine, it’s perhaps because I agree with her. She’s given much, and it’s fair she asks much in return. We’ve demanded the same of others, and our hands are far from clean.
“Do I think you should let her make you whole? Yes! I don’t want to be touched by that awful excuse for a hand for the rest of your life. Do I think your daughter is an ungrateful bitch who has betrayed her House, and should be used however is best to repay her debt to her bloodline? Yes! Put her in the Torque Spindle! Make her part of the Feigning! She was born to be used. The world is ours by right of conquest, my love. Such was clear to you once. Put aside your doubts about me, about us, about right or wrong. Lead your people the way they need to be led. You are Avān, and you were made to rule this world.”
Corajidin sat down hard on his couch. Were the room darker, he would have sworn the person before him was Yashamin in all her temper. The cadence and timbre of her voice, her stance, her words, were Yashamin’s.
He explored the cold thing that replaced his hand. For the rest of your life … To able to see properly again, rather than live half in darkness. To be able to face Näsarat fa Roshana and show her that she was powerless over him. He could still recover what had been taken from him.
Mēdēya curled at his feet, her head in his lap. Such a strong sense of Yashamin in the posture. Her hands were sure on his flesh with the years of their experience. “Do this for me, Jidi. I’ve lost the body I was born in, returned in this flesh that I’m still learning the feel of. But your body is yours. Make it whole again, for me. It’s your real hands I want to explore me, your real eyes I want seeing me. Please, Jidi.”
“Find the Emissary, Mēdēya,” Corajidin whispered. “Let us learn what her price will be, before I say no to something I may regret for the rest of my life.”
Mēdēya kissed him. Corajidin resisted at first, yet the movement of her hands, her lips, and her tongue, as well as the passion of her words, broke his reluctance. Still, he held part of himself back. Doubt lingered within him. Something only time, success, and the absence of the Emissary from his life would assuage. Mēdēya disengaged, her face a series of curved planes framed on backlit curls. “I shan’t be long, Jidi!”
She raced out of the pavilion.
Corajidin crossed the carpeted floor to where his writing desk stood. The carpet squelched under his feet and released a faint hint of must. As he sat he felt the legs of his chair sink a little. Corajidin perused the scrolls and journals that accounted for his war effort thus far. The novels and serials he had brought with him from Erebesq. And a copy of his first book, Our Destiny Made Manifest. It was a jingoistic piece, written when he was younger and filled more with piss and vinegar, rather than with the fire of his experiences. Beside it a leather-bound folio, the pages less yellowed with age, titled The Road to Tomorrow, which was supposed to have been a more mature narrative on the greatness of the Avān, and the benefits of militaristic and economic imperialism. He cracked the folio open, to little more than one page of dogmatic blather, then a vast and empty vista on which he should have written more.
Should have, would have, could have. “Will do,” he murmured.
The ceiling of his pavilion was backlit by a ball of lightning. There came the snap, crackle, and hiss of Disentropy Spools and Tempest Wheels. The ceiling of his pavilion sagged from the pressure as a ship flew low overhead. From what little Corajidin could see through the pavilion entrance, it was flying sideways, its stern wavering. He hurried outside in time to see the craft jerk in the air, then plough a deep furrow through the soupy ground. Its progress was arrested by tent ropes and several feet of flapping cloth. Soldiers assembled around it, weapons drawn.
Wolfram staggered to the rail of the skiff, helped by battered soldiers. Together they fell overboard into the mud. The Angothic Witch clutched at his head, then vomited into the filth.
“What happened?” Corajidin yelled. More soldiers had arrived. A squad boarded the wind-skiff and within moments the lightning flares stopped, wheels and spools spinning down into silent darkness. Two of the soldiers hauled the bloated carcass of Ikedion from the ship, the man’s figure slick with blood. It took one look to know his fate: No man bled so much and lived. Corajidin stood by the heaving Wolfram. “What. Happened?”
“The Rōmarqim,” Wolfram spat. “One of their advanced war parties. They came quiet out of the marsh, caused as much damage as they could, then disappeared before we could muster an effective resistance.”
“We knew this would happen,” Feyd said. “The armies are still too far away to cause us any harm. These skirmishes are to divert our attention. But I suggest, Asrahn, that we get you installed at Fandra sooner rather than later.”
Corajidin grabbed Wolfram’s shirt. “Tell me you managed to retrieve the treasures from the Rōmarq! Tell me this was not a waste of time, and that all may not be lost!”
“The Havoc Chair was already on its way to Fandra, Asrahn,” Wolfram said. “We sent as much as we could ahead of us. All is not lost.”
“But some?”
“Nothing that we can’t retrieve once we’re victorious, and nothing that I believe will give our enem
y an advantage in the war to come.”
Corajidin glared into the night. Best to take no chances. “Feyd? Order Tahj-Shaheh to expand her patrols, and retake the dig sites. The marsh beggars of the Rōmarqim will have fled back to their mud huts, no doubt content with their small victories. Tahj-Shaheh is to engage with prejudice when she has the chance, clear any opposition, but not to take any unnecessary risks. Soldiers can be replaced, but I will not tolerate the loss of a single ship. Somebody get me a wind-ship and crew. I would be in Fandra, to oversee the last of our preparations. And have somebody collapse the tunnels to the Weavegate. I’ll not have them used by the enemy, and we can clear the rubble when we need to use them again.”
Indris is behind this. Let him come. This time I have the advantage, and I will ensure that he does not walk away from the shot that should kill him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“I am who I am because it is all I know how to be.”
—Mahj-Näsarat fe Malde-ran, the Empress-in-Shadows, and last monarch of the Awakened Empire
Day 83 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
The trees sheltered Indris and his comrades from the wind, the ground to the north of the forest pale with frost. False dawn lightened the horizon and made the rest of the world darker for it. The warriors gathered around small pedestals of firestones, and huddled in their over-robes.
With his Awakened sight, Indris gazed out across the breadth of the Rōmarq in wonderment at the columns of energy that shot skyward from it, ghostly columns like the phantom ruins of a city nobody else could see. The ahm fountained upward in other places, curving gracefully through the air like a phosphorescent rainbow, to then splash back to the ground. Ahm shone from everything about him: The leaves of trees were backlit stained glass. The snow was fistfuls of diamond dust strewn across a blanket. The energy of the people around him flared and faded with their heartbeats. Their voices carried on the wind, resonant and heavy with meaning—
“Indris.” Chaiya turned to him, a jade-hued phantom etched in black ink. “You’re Awakening whether you like it or not.”
“I know.” Indris felt his new power coiled like a serpent up and around his spine. It ignited his energy centers. He glanced at her and the other Nomads that drifted between and through the trees. Friends both long and recently dead. Some he did not know at all. “Now that my eyes are open, there is part of me that desires this. But I’m becoming what I can’t be, and I don’t think I can stop it.”
“Most likely not,” Ariskander said. The man portrayed the image of himself in the prime of his life: lean, strong, and regal. “But it was meant to be this way.”
“Why have you come?” Indris asked. “There’s no need for the Nomads to be involved.”
“There are Soul Traders about,” Chaiya said grimly. “Traitors to their own kind. We will take care of them for you—you can rest assured the souls of your slain will not be harvested by them today. There is a tide of shadows rising in the Well of Souls, and the dead fear it greatly. We would have some answers from those we believe know more.”
“What do you think’s happening?” Shar’s question jarred Indris back. The leaders of their forces were with her. The Nomads remained, superimposed on the world, but silent, watchful, and unseen by any save him.
“Corajidin will know the Rōmarqim are on the offensive,” Morne said as he and Kyril walked up, hand in hand. “It’s a logical thing for them to do, and Corajidin’s generals will see it as such. If there’d been no reprisals, it would’ve raised suspicions. Last night was about giving him confidence he’s in control. Our allied forces have assembled at the Anqorat Bridge and on the Fandra Road, days away. He sees that our strength gathers, and should be confident that he can outmatch it.”
“Can we keep him confined?” Ekko asked.
“Breaching city defenses isn’t ideal at the best of times,” Kyril replied. “But it’s just as hard to get out of a fortified position as to get into it. He’ll realize that soon enough.”
Indris nodded in agreement. “Once he and his officers are in custody, the chain of command will fall to those less interested in dying for Corajidin’s cause.”
“And the treasures he’s stolen from the Rōmarq?” Ojin-mar looked surprisingly mundane in his weathered earth hues. He, along with He-Who-Watches, had been among the dozen or so who had been able to understand the translocation formula in the time they had available. “We’ll need to make sure what he’s taken from the Rōmarq is accounted for.”
“And returned to its rightful custodian, Rahn-Siamak,” Shar said.
“The Sēq will want—”
“Shar is right, Ojin-mar,” Indris countered. “The Sēq are a long way from demanding anything. If you want to play with Siamak’s toys, you’d best ask nicely.”
“And the hostages?” Morne asked. “From what we’ve heard, there are still civilians in Fandra.”
Indris glanced at Ojin-mar and He-Who-Watches. The tribesman was swaddled against the cold, only his pale eyes visible between the folds of his taloub. Indris pointed back into the forest with his chin. “How many Sēq Wraith Knights did you bring from Amarqa?”
“Twenty-three have gathered, in different simulacra,” He-Who-Watches replied. “They’re all war-shells, ranging in size from crows and hawks, to foxes, wolves, and mountain cats, to knights and armored warhorses. There are also twenty Iku, and about as many Katsé. The Iku and Katsé were deployed into the Rōmarq under the cover of darkness, and have been marking patrols all night: no contact, as ordered. We’ve a good idea of troop numbers, rotations, entrances, and exits. They’re ready to move against Fandra when we are.”
“Send in the smaller Wraith Knights and have them find the hostages,” Indris said. “If they get the opportunity, have the wraiths free them and lead them north out of the city. If they can’t free them without exposing us, have the wraiths hold position until we arrive. Once in the Rōmarq, I doubt many of Corajidin’s warriors will be keen on giving chase.”
“Can we attack all our targets at the same time?” Kyril asked. “We’re relying on the distraction.”
“Ojin-mar? He-Who-Watches? Are your scholars ready?” Indris asked. Both Masters nodded. Indris tried to relax. Kyril was right: Their timing would be critical. “The Sēq Knights will coordinate the attacks, and we’ll be in communication with each other. Each of them will lead small units of elite fighters from the Houses and Families, and cause as much disruption as they can at Corajidin’s excavation sites.”
Ojin-mar said, “Knowing he has days until the allied army arrives, we expect Corajidin to reinforce his dig sites in order to continue his tomb raiding up until the last minute. This will reduce the defensive capabilities of Fandra. He-Who-Watches and I will hide our own wind-ships behind illusions, and remain on overwatch over Fandra. If things turn ugly, we’ll be ready.”
“Can you maintain the invisibility charms around the fleet?”
“It’s a short enough distance,” Ojin-mar said. “If all goes to plan, they’ll not see us. But if we have to fight, we’ll not be able to hold the illusions in place for long. We’ll be focused on battle formulae, and protective wards.”
“If we have to fight,” Shar said with a grin, “you won’t have to be invisible.”
“It is a win-win, when you think about,” Ekko rumbled.
“I do believe you’re right.” Shar nodded solemnly.
“I’ll lead the retrieval team to capture Corajidin,” Indris said. “Morne and Kyril, you’ll lead the strike teams. Once inside, you and your crews from the Immortals are to take and hold the siege weapons. Please avoid killing if you can. Who else will lead your teams?”
“Leonetto and Tamiwa,” Morne said without hesitation.
Indris looked at those gathered about him, both the living and the dead. “Go to your teams and finish your preparations. Air crews to the wind-ships, strike teams to their commanders. Protect your scholars! They’re the ones who’ll get you in, he
al the wounded, and get you out again in an emergency. And please, no heroics! You being here is evidence enough of your caliber. There’s nothing more for you to prove.”
He walked with the others a short way into the wood. They came to a clearing where the Immortal Companions were sharpening weapons, attending to armor, and breaking down the camp. Warriors made their way to their staging areas, with three wind-frigates in a nearby field and a larger destroyer and two corsairs deeper in the forest. Others from the Houses and Families assembled about their brown-robed scholars.
Shar and Ekko joined Indris as he took up his Scholar’s Lantern. He missed Changeling already, used to her shape, weight, and length in battle. Yet his lantern would serve well enough as a weapon, as well as a focus for his disentropy. With his Awakening growing more pronounced, energy poured through his body like never before, making him restless.
The Nomads assembled, scores of spectral shapes invisible to the others. “We are with you, Indris,” Ariskander said. Hayden, Omen, Chaiya, Vashne, Daniush … and a host of others all nodded their assent.
Indris accepted the offer silently. He looked to Shar and Ekko, armored and armed. “You don’t need to do this. You’ve done enough, and Shrīan isn’t even your country. I’d not see you killed, and there’s a chance none of us will walk away from this.”
“You say that all the time,” Shar said. “But if I’m going to join the wind spirits, I’d rather my last moments be with the ones I love. Besides, we’ve come too far together to do something like this apart. I do wish Hayden and Omen were here, though.”
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