by Marc Turner
“Three cities that are accessible from the Ribbon Sea without having to pass through the Isles.”
“So is the whole of Erin Elal’s eastern seaboard, if you want to see it that way.”
Mazana smiled as if to concede the point.
The patio doors had been thrown open against the heat of the night, and the needleflies drawn inside now buzzed around the lamps in the room. A feathermoth careered round and down toward a flame like it was being sucked into a whirlpool, and Romany had to stay her hand against an impulse to reach for the knife at her waist. The emperor’s guards, she suspected, would not look kindly on a repeat of the display she’d given the Spider at the temple.
A fizz, a flicker of light, and the moth burned brightly before flopping onto the floor.
“Tell me,” Avallon said to Mazana, “has Senar Sol told you anything of Erin Elal’s history with Augera?”
“He has. More than I wanted to know, in fact.”
“Truly? I admit my people’s history with the stone-skins makes us the most likely target for their aggression. But I’d have thought you would want to learn as much as you could about a potential enemy.”
“Are we talking about the Augerans or Erin Elal here?”
The emperor gave her the sort of look a long-suffering father might bestow on his wayward daughter. Then he slid across the desk to her the book he’d been reading when she arrived. “Take a look at this.”
Mazana trapped it with one hand and glanced at it. “And to think they say history is written by the victors.”
“Oh, come now, we only found out the stone-skins were here when they hit you on Dragon Day. That was two weeks ago. You think we could have written a whole new history in that time?”
“Of course not. Just as you couldn’t have held back a book from your library if you thought it would harm your cause.”
With a scrape of wood on stone, Avallon pushed back his chair as if he meant to rise, only to remain seated. “That text,” he said, gesturing to the book, “dates back eight hundred years. It’s the history of a war between the stone-skins and some of their neighbors.”
“It’s also written in Erin Elalese.”
“There must be someone on your staff who speaks the language.”
“Someone sufficiently educated, you mean?” Mazana looked at Romany. “Well, priestess?”
Romany hesitated, reluctant to be drawn into the conversation, yet equally loath to deny the full measure of her learning. “I have a passing knowledge.”
“And?”
“And what?”
Mazana pushed the book over to her. “And what do you make of this?”
Romany did not look down. “It’s a book. Almost certainly.”
The emira raised an eyebrow.
With a sigh the priestess opened the cover, then stifled a cough at the puff of dust it released. The name of the book was written on the first page in the absurdly decorative style that seemed common to scribes the world over. A Military History of Augera. Catchy title, that. The author must have labored long and hard over it. Its pages crackled as she turned them. She’d read enough old books in her time to know the text was as ancient as the emperor claimed.
Avallon said, “I’ve taken the liberty of marking a few pages I think you’ll find interesting.”
“Don’t count on it,” Romany muttered.
“The first double page I’ve flagged”—he waited for her to turn to it—“shows the stone-skins’ empire in the eastern part of a continent known as Crayland. Erin Elal, you’ll see, is to the west, occupying an area greater than the one we currently control.”
“And you’re sure this map is accurate?” Romany said, peering at it. The coastlines seemed implausibly uniform, and whoever had drawn it hadn’t bothered to include something as mundane as a scale. More amusingly, “There’s a point inside Augera’s borders marked ‘The Abyss.’”
“I’m aware of it,” Avallon snapped. “I think it’s safe to assume the reference is merely figurative. Unless, of course, you believe the Void has taken root in the world, and the end of all things is upon us. Now, if I may be allowed to continue, the last double page I’ve marked shows the same continent just twelve years later. You’ll notice Augera has now swallowed up the nations on its northern and southern borders, along with the patchwork of states that separated it from Erin Elal.” He looked from Mazana to Romany to Jodren. “Twelve years it took them to annihilate an area the size of your Sabian Sea. And ‘annihilate’ is the word, since the stone-skins didn’t enslave the native populations, they exterminated them down to the last soul. Men, women, children.” He paused to let the import of his words sink in. “The writer of that book estimates the total dead at thirteen million.”
Romany frowned. Sobering statistics, to be sure, but unlikely to induce even a flutter from Mazana’s tar-black heart, or that of the blood-soaked mercenary commander sitting beside her. Particularly since there was no way of judging the mettle of the nations that had fallen beneath the Augeran sword.
Avallon rose and put his fists on the desk. “The Erin Elalese lasted a mere five years against the stone-skins before they were driven into the sea. Earlier, when the course of the war became clear, the then emperor ordered ships built in readiness for evacuation. Yet when the end came, it came so suddenly that only a fraction of the population escaped. You’ll be familiar with the reputation of the Guardians as warriors without compare. During the Augeran conflict there were hundreds of them, yet even they were unable to turn back the enemy tide.”
Mazana nodded gravely. “Yes, such a shame their numbers have fallen away in recent years.”
The emperor’s jaw clenched.
Jodren cleared his throat. “What’s so formidable about these stone-skins?” he asked in a voice that said, whatever it was, he wasn’t impressed. “What’s the basis for their military success?”
“A pertinent question,” Avallon said. “Every stone-skin—every damned one of them—joins a barracks at the age of six, and their place in society is dictated by how long they remain there. The first ones out spend the rest of their lives as servants. Only the very best last the course through to adulthood. Their elite division, the Honored, is probably bigger than Erin Elal’s entire army.”
“So it’s a numbers thing.”
“They had a few technological advantages over us when we first met—the quality of their steel, and so forth—though generally we had caught up to them by the end of the war.” He hesitated. “There are also suggestions that stone-skin warriors are able to forge a mental link between them when they fight, though as to precisely how this works, and what benefits it brings, we can only speculate.”
And why not? Romany thought. Speculation seemed to be far more prevalent among these Erin Elalese than actual facts.
Mazana gave a whistle. “A daunting foe, indeed. My commiserations to your people and anyone foolish enough to stand with them.”
“If there is to be another war, the result will be different this time.”
Romany snorted. The age-old cry of the habitual loser.
Avallon glared at her. “The circumstances of this conflict bear no resemblance to those of the last.”
“Absolutely,” Mazana said. “Your strength is down, while the Augerans’ has likely grown.”
“That’s not what I meant. The enemy will have to conduct their campaign across an ocean, with all the challenges of transportation and provisioning that will bring.”
“And yet I suspect their commander didn’t wake up one morning and choose to invade because his coin flip landed heads. The stone-skins will have been planning this attack for a long time. Far longer, I’m sure, than you will have to plan a defense.”
Avallon waved a dismissive hand. “There are risks in war no amount of planning can guard against. The Augeran fleet will be vulnerable when it crosses the Southern Wastes, particularly if we can persuade you to sell us your remaining stores of dragon blood. And if we have the stronge
r water-mages, of course.” He threw back the remaining wine in his glass. “The stone-skins will know this too; hence their actions on Dragon Day. Clearly they were concerned enough by the Storm Lord threat that they chose to make a preemptive strike against you. Though why they should feel the need to do so when our two peoples are not allied—”
“Please,” Mazana interrupted, holding up a hand. “I’ve heard this argument so many times from Senar Sol I can make it for you myself: Why would the stone-skins risk the enmity of the Storm Isles unless they knew their plans for us would make such enmity inevitable, yes?”
“If you’ve heard the argument before, you’ll have had time to think up a response. So tell me, how do you explain the Augerans’ actions on Dragon Day?”
“Their commander is obviously not a man who likes to gamble. He must have wanted the Storm Lords out of the picture to ensure we didn’t interfere in his war with you.”
Avallon appeared to consider this, his gaze not leaving Mazana’s. Then he gave a smile that suggested he wasn’t as irritated as he’d been making out. A smile that left Romany wondering whether, somehow, he had orchestrated the conversation so it arrived at just this point. “Ah, but there’s the crux, isn’t it? There is no war between Augera and Erin Elal. We’ve had nothing to do with them for eight hundred years. Yet suddenly their commander wakes up and—how did you put it?—throws a coin that lands heads?”
When Mazana next spoke, it was more warily. “You were enemies once; why not again? Clearly your previous war left scars slow to fade.”
“Those scars would be on our side, surely. And even if you are right, why wait eight hundred years to come looking for redress? My people fled across an ocean, not the Abyss. The Augerans must’ve known we were here. The gods know, we’ve sailed enough ships along their coast over the years to keep an eye on them. It stands to reason they’ve done the same to us. So, I ask again, why have they come now?”
The room had gone still. All about, the Alcazar was so quiet they might have talked into the dead of night. Why now? A question so simple it was a wonder Romany hadn’t considered it before, but its true import was only evident now that the emperor had spoken. Mazana’s face remained expressionless, yet under the desk—out of sight of the Erin Elalese—one of her feet was tapping. She was plainly too proud to ask Avallon the next, inevitable, question, so Romany sighed and voiced it herself. “You have a theory?”
The emperor’s gaze flickered to her before returning to the emira. “Maybe it has something to do with why the Augerans massacre the people they conquer. Maybe it’s because they need the land.”
“Maybe?” Mazana said. “You mean you don’t know? You were at war with the stone-skins for five years, watched them wipe out your neighbors for the twelve before that. And no one stopped to ask why the Augerans were attacking?”
“Doubtless they did, but the knowledge did not survive the ages.”
“Of course not.”
The emperor set his fists on the desk again. “In case you’ve forgotten, a few things happened over the last eight hundred years that might have caused us to misplace the odd book. Things like—oh, I don’t know—the relocation of our entire Shroud-cursed civilization! No doubt memories of the conflict were sharp for the hundred years after the Exile, but memories tend to fade when people die.”
Mazana wasn’t backing down. “And you think, what, the Augerans are here now because they’ve outgrown their homeland?”
“It fits, you must see that.”
“If the stone-skins breed like ruskits, maybe. But their breeding habits are probably just another detail that has been lost to the mists of time.”
Avallon leaned so far across the desk his chest almost touched it. “If I’m right, the Augerans won’t stop when they conquer Erin Elal. If I’m right, they’ll come for you next. Your only chance of survival—yours, and all the other nations this side of the Southern Wastes—is to unite against them.”
“Yes, you’re always looking out for the best interests of your neighbors. The Remnerol, the Maisee, the cities of the Confederacy.”
“And you have a better plan, do you? Maybe cling to the old hostilities, let the Augerans pick us off one by one?”
Mazana shrugged. “If you’re right.”
“If I’m right, yes.” And how could I be otherwise? his tone seemed to say.
He was an emperor, after all.
* * *
As the last light faded in the west, Amerel sat in the boneyard looking down on Bezzle. She’d seen more than her fair share of conquered cities. After the siege of Cenan there had been riot and revelry, fire and smoke, snatches of laughter and shrieks of horror. Amerel could still picture the bodies piled up in the streets, taste the grease at the back of her throat from the burning corpses, see the people dashing every which way—some seeking escape from the madness, others seeking more of it. Even the Deliverer’s dreams seemed bland by comparison. But weren’t sights such as these the lot of a warrior? Victors or vanquished, she wondered sometimes who were the lucky ones. At least the dead only had to endure the night once.
Bezzle was different. There were still bodies, of course—lots of bodies. But instead of Cenan’s nightmare cacophony, there was an oppressive silence broken only by an occasional scream or the crash of a splintering door. Groups of torchbearing stone-skins moved from house to house, dragging out survivors and butchering them. At Cenan, the besiegers had spent weeks camped outside the city, watching the walls turn red with the blood of their slain kinsmen. When they had finally overwhelmed the defenders, there had been a sense of release that had swept the Erin Elalese up and only set them down again several bells later. It didn’t excuse what was done in the city, perhaps—who judged these things, anyhow? But at least it explained it. In Bezzle, by contrast, there was no abandon among the conquerors; just a cold, deliberate precision that brought the hairs up on Amerel’s arms. An army capable of such a controlled display of ruthlessness was one to be feared indeed.
As the Guardian scratched a spider bite on her arm, she found herself wondering what had become of Talet’s son. Had he left the city before the stone-skin attack? Unlikely, since Talet would have planned for them to flee together. Why had Hex pressed the spy into revealing the boy’s location? Would he hunt him down now that he knew where he was? There seemed nothing to be gained by doing so, but would Hex need a reason? Thoughts of the boy made Amerel’s mind turn to Lyssa. Was she safe? Was she missing Amerel, or glad to be rid of her? Perhaps a bit of both—a mirror to the Guardian’s own feelings regarding her niece. After their first few tortured weeks together, it was hard to believe Amerel might ever come to miss the girl. But in time even the unspeakable can become routine.
Footsteps behind.
Noon drew up beside her and sat down on one of the gravestones. She could sense he was chafing to ask her questions about the Deliverer, but instead he said, “I didn’t get a chance earlier. To thank you for saving me. If you hadn’t—”
“I get it, you owe me,” Amerel cut in. “Don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten.”
The Breaker looked across at her, and she thought he would get up and leave. Instead he gave a half smile and turned back to the city. Truth be told, she was impressed at how he’d kept himself together after the ordeal at Talet’s house. Most men would have gotten surly or standoffish after having their pride pricked like that. But maybe Noon was just used to his enemies getting the better of him.
“Is that the White Lady’s Temple burning?” he said, pointing to a blazing ruin at the edge of the Old Town.
Amerel nodded. “While you were resting, the stone-skins gave the shrine a good pounding with the same sorcery they used at Dresk’s fortress. The priests held out for a while, but when their Beloved fell, the stone-skins barricaded the doors and fired the place.” She plucked a blade of grass from the ground and rolled it in her fingers. “Fair to say the Augerans aren’t believers.”
“It’s one thing not to follow a goddess
, another to spit in her eye.”
“Though if you are going to pick a fight with an immortal, the goddess of mercy and reconciliation is the one to choose.”
The Breaker grimaced. “The people in that temple weren’t a threat to the stone-skins. Just women and children, most likely.”
“You think the Augerans were heavy-handed? Are there acceptable degrees of brutality in war, then?”
“Gotta draw the line somewhere.”
“The people of Cenan will be relieved to hear it. You were there, weren’t you, when the city fell?” Amerel had read his file; he could hardly deny it. “How many survived that night of bloodletting?”
Noon wasn’t biting. He nodded toward the city. “This slaughter’s gonna make it harder for us to get to the harbor. No chance of the stone-skins mistaking us for locals if there aren’t any locals left breathing.”
“Or maybe their diligence will work to our benefit. The more thorough they are in clearing the city, the less reason they’ll have to patrol it after.”
“Always a sunny side, eh?”
“I try my best to find it.”
In the harbor a Rubyholt ship burned, perhaps as a beacon to guide in the rest of the stone-skin fleet. Even now, a three-masted galleon with patterned sails glided between the islets on a wave of water-mage. Light from the torches on the waterfront glinted off the armor of dozens of figures on deck.
Noon said, “Have you been keeping tally of the ships coming in?”
Amerel flicked the blade of grass away. “Yes. I make that fourteen.”
“Any transports?”
“No, all warships.”
The Breaker’s brow furrowed. “A ship like that will have a complement of maybe four hundred. Say two hundred of them soldiers. Could be as many as two hundred and fifty. Multiply that by fourteen and you get…”
“A lot of men,” Amerel finished. The Augerans would feel their loss keenly if she could make the Chameleons’ plan work.