by Tanya Huff
Only two walls of the cottage stood, less of the shed, and it looked like they’d burned it down with the chickens inside. Even the wellhead had been destroyed, stones smashed away and tossed aside, the destruction more evidence of viciousness than even the fires.
Boots had pounded the garden hard, bootprints crossing and recrossing crushed seedlings and stained earth.
They’d killed the chickens in the shed. Why had they dragged the rest of the livestock here?
Even staring directly at the blackened pile, Mirian couldn’t figure out what the bodies had been although through the unmistakable smell of lamp oil, she thought she smelled pork. She thought, at first, it was her eyes, then she saw the foreleg slightly off to one side, far enough away from the heart of the fire its shape had survived in spite of how small it was.
After that, it wasn’t hard to pick out skulls, shoulders, bones cracked and black.
There were Pack in the empire. Small family groups. Children.
Fur stank when it burned.
She couldn’t smell fur.
Killed. Skinned. Dismembered. Burned.
She only hoped it had been in that order.
“They can’t have gone far.” Black against the burned wood, she hadn’t been able to see Tomas until he rose to his feet. She could hear a whine and a snarl both in his voice. “I wanted to track them, but I knew you were following and…” He dropped again to four feet, threw back his head and howled.
Mirian felt something break inside. She backed up, nearly tripped as her heels sank into a patch of softer earth, didn’t stop until she reached Tomas’ side. With his howl sounding inside her, replacing the horror with rage, she pointed at the pile of smoldering bodies and then pulled her clasped hands apart.
If water could be parted, so could earth.
When the last body had tumbled out sight into the cleft, she brought her hands together again.
Knelt and laid her palms flat against the ground.
The bare earth turned green and wildflowers bloomed, covering the grave in a thick carpet of color, covering the ruins in a tangle of vines.
Mirian glanced toward the sunset as she stood. “Don’t get so far ahead I can’t find you.”
Snarling, Tomas took off to the south.
He was out of sight almost immediately, but somehow she never lost his trail.
She caught up to him just after full dark on the outskirts of a village. Together, they watched six men strutting down the road. They carried pelts, and they were laughing. Talking. Bragging. Two of them planned to head straight home. The other four were going to the pub to celebrate.
It turned out it didn’t matter if they still had silver shot remaining. They had no chance to use their guns.
The breezes stole their screams away.
And Mirian buried the bodies too deep to ever be found.
Chapter Twelve
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when a sleepy page led Reiter to a room off another nondescript corridor, set the lamp he carried on the small shelf just inside the door, yawned, and said, “This is yours now, sir.”
Left alone, Reiter discovered everything he owned had already been brought over from the garrison and stored neatly—uniforms hung in the large wardrobe, small clothes folded in the drawers underneath, and his shaving kit set out on the washstand under the mirror. No musket. No pistol. No knife. Only the soldiers on guard carried weapons in the palace. He hoped his were still in the garrison armory.
After a day standing silent in a fluctuating cluster of distant relatives, sycophants, and courtiers—Tavert, the emperor’s mobile secretary had been the other person with him the entire day—Reiter was almost certain he’d rather have been court-martialed. Not to the point of execution, but a few years of hard labor had started to look good. If he’d been given Major Halyss’ old job, he was clearly missing something. But then, Major Halyss was Intelligence and he was Infantry, so that didn’t surprise him.
The room was about twice the size of his room back in the garrison’s officer quarters but shabbier, the furniture both worn and mismatched, probably salvaged when the rooms of those with higher rank were renovated. Besides the bed and wardrobe, there was a desk with a filled inkwell, three iron-nibbed pens and a pad of paper, and a fairly comfortable chair. The heavy brocade drapes covered a tiny window, the thick glass beaded with rain. Given the hour and the weather, he couldn’t tell what the window overlooked although he doubted he’d been given a room with a view. Too small to fit through, he supposed he should be thankful that if he couldn’t climb out, no one wandering the roof could climb in. On the wall across from the bed, a scuffed door led to a water closet so narrow his shoulders brushed the walls on either side.
Giving thanks the room was painted, not papered—in one day he’d seen enough appalling wallpaper to last the rest of his life—he wondered if this had been Major Halyss’ room. Probably not. Halyss’ birth no doubt rated him a repeating pattern of bright green fishermen.
The door didn’t lock, but Reiter had spent his entire adult life in the army and had long since lost any need for privacy. More importantly, the bed was comfortable and he was exhausted from keeping his mouth shut. He’d never suspected running an empire could be so inane—although given Lieutenant Lord Geurin, he supposed he should’ve had a clue. His last conscious thought involved the whorehouse he’d planned on visiting had he survived this morning’s debriefing…
“Captain Reiter.”
His eyes snapped opened, and by the time he’d focused on the private standing just inside the door, his hand had closed around empty air where his pistol should have been. “Who…?”
“Linnit, sir. I’ve been assigned to you.” He crossed the room, threw open the drapes, then returned to the door and picked up a pitcher. “I’ll deal with your boots while you shave, sir.” Distant bells sounded six. “Breakfast in the guard mess in half an hour. I’ll be back.”
Reiter missed waking under artillery fire. At least then he knew what the flaming fuck was going on. Hopefully, the emperor wouldn’t take long to tire of him and he could go back to the safer prospect of being shot at. He sighed and got up.
His window looked due east, directly into the rising sun. If he’d been a religious man, he’d have seen that as a blessing. As it was, he blinked away the sunspots, noted a maze of roofs and chimneys, and in the distance, rising above the edge of the building, an arc of gold almost glowing in the sunshine. At first he thought it was the roof of some kind of garden pavilion, then he recognized it as a balloon although it was larger than what they used for reconnaissance in the field and more oval than round. Had General Loreau demanded the Shields have their own balloon corps just because the other two divisions did?
He was shrugging into his tunic when Linnit returned with his boots.
“I’d best lead you to the mess, sir. It’s your first morning and this place is a rabbit warren.”
“Country boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
Until the emperor said differently, he was to be housed and paid like a captain of the guard. The largest difference being he took his orders directly from the emperor and when the 6th Shields—currently the company on Palace duty—rotated out, he wouldn’t.
“Breakfast here, all other meals with the emperor’s staff unless you’re released, then do what you flaming well please.” Major Meritin swallowed his last mouthful of coffee and set the mug aside. “You get lost in the palace, and you will, ask a page, that’s what they’re hanging around for. Don’t bother the servants. And don’t piss the servants off because they’ll make your life shit. You’re going to need at least one full court dress uniform, probably two. Court dress,” he added when Reiter opened his mouth. “If you were an officer of the guard, you’d be fine in the kit you’ve got on.” It was, differences of rank insignia aside, identical to the dress uniform the major had on. “But you’re not. The field gear in your room fit you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll hav
e Linnit deal with it, then. You won’t be given time to see a tailor.” He paused, a piece of gravy-soaked biscuit halfway to his mouth. “You okay with half shares on Linnit or you want to bring over your own ranker? He’ll have to be vetted if you do.”
Reiter thought about Chard, if only to have a familiar face around, but he doubted the private would be able to keep his mouth shut—on any number of sensitive topics. Best the boy be free of this clusterfuck like Armin and Best. “Linnit’s fine.”
“Good. Emperor’s staff gathers in the staff room at eight and goes over his schedule for the day.”
“Do you know what I’ll be doing, sir?”
“Other than whatever His Imperial Majesty tells you to, I haven’t the faintest flaming idea, Captain. The only information they sent me is that the staff gathers at eight, and you can thank Tavert for that. That one’s got her head out of her ass, but I can’t say as much for the rest of the hangers-on.”
Even with limited exposure, Reiter could have said a number of things about the rest of the hangers-on, but he knew better than to open his mouth. The palace was just a better-dressed, better-fed version of a garrison town, and in a closed system, words always found their way to the wrong ears.
Although he left in plenty of time, he was almost late when he finally found the staff room. Linnit was right; the palace was a rabbit warren and the rabbits who’d built it had been insane. No wonder the emperor’s father had added a few hidden straight lines. The page he’d finally managed to grab had slipped behind a tapestry—“It’s just a copy made by the new machines, so don’t worry about touching it or anything. It’s not historical.”—and out through a small door into the empty room next to the staff room.
Reiter slipped into the last vacant seat at the table, recognizing most, if not all of the men and women who’d surrounded the emperor on his first day. Half of them, he wouldn’t trust at his back in a bar fight—they’d still be smiling when they stabbed the knife in. The whole lot of them ignored him. He studied them in return, paying particular attention to those he seemed to have most annoyed.
At eight thirty, Tavert stood, slipped her arms through the shoulder straps of her desk and led the way out of the room. About half the pack peeled off on assignment, the rest jostled for position as they joined the emperor in his morning assembly room. Reiter practiced being invisible. He followed and stood and kept his mouth shut. He started a mental map of the halls behind the halls. At noon, he ate a surprisingly bland meal at the lowest table in the Imperial dining room. In midafternoon, he heard the emperor say, “Captain Reiter, you’re with me.”
Reiter glanced at the sunlight spilling out through a window at the far end of the corridor, adjusted the map in his head, and realized they were, if not entering the north wing where the disgraced Lord Master of Discovery had been sent, heading to the north side of the palace. He followed the emperor behind yet another machine-made tapestry—although this one didn’t seem to be a historic copy; Reiter thought he recognized the Battle for Nirport as he ducked under the stiff fall of fabric.
The short hall behind the tapestry led to a narrow flight of stairs that ended in a small room draped in Imperial purple. The room contained only a high-backed chair and a wolfskin rug.
The emperor paused, turned to face Reiter who stood between the two rear fabric panels, and spread his arms. “You were Seen standing beside me in a purple square. And here we are.” He smiled and lowered his arms. “Fascinating how accurate they can be, isn’t it? Especially when you consider how their prophecy starts out sounding like mad babbling. This room, it hadn’t even been built when we were Seen in it.”
So a purple square had been built after it was Seen. Did that count as assisting a prophecy? Where would they have stood together had the emperor built a yellow square instead?
“You’re thinking about the implications of prophecy, aren’t you?” The emperor looked pleased.
No, not just pleased, pleased with him, and Reiter felt himself respond—his shoulders straightening, his chin rising slightly. It was another unconscious reaction to Imperial approval. This time, he was certain he didn’t much like it.
“Was this Seen because it happened or did it happen because it was Seen?” the emperor continued. “Everyone does ask those questions, Captain, but speaking as someone who has been around Soothsayers for his entire life and who now has the largest collection of anyone in the known world, I advise you to let it go. Someday, possibly someday soon, Imperial scientists will work out a rational explanation for how the Soothsayers function, but until then, leave prophecy to the Interpreters and the Voice. You’ll be happier. Unless…” He leaned forward and Reiter had to stop himself from leaning away, pushed by Imperial intensity. “…you’re familiar with the latest research into electromagnetism?”
“No, sir.”
“Of course not, you’re a soldier.” He sounded as though he understood but, just for an instant, looked so disappointed Reiter vowed to find someone who could explain it to him. “And discussing the cutting edge of scientific discovery is not why we’re here, is it?” Smile back in place, the emperor moved past the chair to the far wall and…
…pressed his forehead against it?
“Captain.”
Reiter moved forward and found himself standing close enough to His Imperial Majesty that he could smell a soft, pleasant scent rising from the other man’s hair.
Stepping away from the wall, the emperor tapped the edge of a small brass ring set into the plaster. “Go ahead, Captain. They can’t see the lens from the other side.”
He had to bend to bring his eye to it, he was that much taller, and, after a moment adjusting his position, found himself looking down into a large windowless room. Ten men in dark gray uniforms stood in pairs along two of the walls. It looked like a military uniform, but it wasn’t one Reiter had ever seen and he couldn’t make out insignia. They carried pistols. Not holstered; the weapons were in their hands, ready for immediate use. Seated around the round table in the center of the room, were five women who looked vaguely familiar.
“My mages.”
He turned to see the emperor beaming at him, his blue eyes wide, pupils enormous. Another glance down into the room and Reiter realized why the women seemed familiar. The last time he’d seen them, they’d been kneeling on the Trouge Road. These were the five mages he’d left with Lieutenant Geurin while he’d chased down the sixth. The blonde had been the woman who spoke Imperial fluently, spoke to him as though she weren’t kneeling in the dirt, captured by the enemy. The tall, very young woman with the light brown hair had been sick and the gorgeous redhead was the Healer-mage who’d gone to her. He had no specific memory of the other two.
A soft clank, metal against metal, pulled his attention back to the emperor in time to see one of the panels of fabric fall back into place. Reiter heard a woman’s voice ask a question—obvious from tone even without understanding the content—and another voice answer.
“Do you speak Aydori, Captain?”
“No, Majesty.” At least half of these women spoke Imperial, but surely the emperor didn’t need Reiter to tell him that.
“Pity. I have transcribers and translators working on everything they say, but it’s mostly been fairly innocuous. They complain, particularly the small, dark-haired one, then the blonde, who is clearly their leader, calms them down. She reminds them of how much worse it could be…”
How much worse had it been? Reiter wondered.
“…and she reminds them that they have more than only themselves to think of. She’s much more intelligent than I anticipated, and I’m certain it’s been due to her influence that they’ve settled into captivity so easily. Although, it is also an understanding of how to use their own biological imperatives against them. The abominations rule by strength of tooth and claw, and I’ve proven to them that my strength is much greater than anything they’ve left behind.”
“But they’re not…”
“Abominations?�
�� The emperor smiled as though Reiter had said something particularly clever. “You haven’t the background to understand their physiognomy, not yet, but you must admit that the abominations define the socialization these women come from. And they carry abominations in their bodies. Well, some of them carry abominations. Some may carry mages.” He frowned thoughtfully. “It’s a pity they don’t whelp litters actually, although, if it were possible, that would certainly change the interpretation of the prophecy. Mages are dying off in the empire, Captain, although not in Aydori. Fascinating place, Aydori: outwardly civilized, inwardly bestial and clearly unable to stand against science and technology. I know what you’re thinking,” he added, his smile broadening. “You’re a military man and you’re thinking science, technology, and several thousand highly trained soldiers armed with silver shot. You’re right, of course. All the science and technology in the world is useless without strong hearts to wield it. The guards in there are part of my personal security force and have been trained for my specific needs. I’m very cognizant about bringing this threat…” He waved toward the spyhole. “…into the heart of the empire. I’ve read the old texts and…You can read, Captain? My apologies, of course you can,” he answered his own question. “Or you’d never have been promoted out of the ranks. Well, as you can read, I’d appreciate it if you could familiarize yourself with some of the mage histories. Another set of eyes, particularly eyes that have faced mages in the field, could be useful. And speaking of eyes, take another look at my mages and tell me if you see any weakening of the artifacts. I’d rather not have a repeat of what happened with your sixth mage happen here. I have every faith that we could contain it, but best to not have it occur at all.”
Reiter saw women eating, smiling, looking sad. He saw Mirian’s pale gray eyes and hoped the Soothsayers were wrong. Or that their babbling had been interpreted incorrectly. Why would she come here when he’d freed her?