The Skyfall Era Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Matt Larkin

  Chandi left the Lunar dhow and continued down the boardwalk. And there, Revati sat, dangling her legs over the side of a pier, leaning against a line. Her mother stood nearby, talking to another Lunar captain. Perhaps Ratna thought he could spirit her away to freedom. But surely no captain would take that risk.

  Ratna hadn’t invited Chandi along, but if her cousin brought Revati here, Naresh would be nearby. She saw him staring out over the sea, glancing down at Revati every few moments. Ratna, oddly enough, appeared to offer a brief exchange with Bendurana, before the Serendibian returned to his dhow. Chandi hadn’t thought Ratna even liked the man.

  Not that she was here to see Ratna. Chandi blew her breath out through her teeth and waited for her heart to slow. When that didn’t happen, she walked down the pier to join them.

  “Chandi!” Revati called, waving.

  “Hello, Revati.”

  The girl climbed up from the edge as Naresh turned around, his mouth open. Revati leapt into Chandi’s arms and she spun the child around once before setting her back down. Ratna looked over, then turned back to talk to the captain without so much as a nod. So be it.

  Revati dragged her back to the lines and pointed down into the clear waters. A dugong swam about beneath the pier, exciting giggles from the girl every time it came into view. The sea cows didn’t often come near the busy harbor, though Chandi had seen them as a girl when her father had brought her down from their mountain home to the seaside. This lone dugong, apparently unafraid though surrounded by Solar ships and fishing boats, gave her pause.

  “Where are the rest of its kind?” she asked Naresh.

  “Away, farther offshore. They usually travel in herds. This one must be lost, or very brave.”

  “Maybe both,” Chandi said as Naresh turned away. She watched the dugong for a time before she spoke again. “Please Naresh, I need to talk to you.”

  “I have to watch them.” He glanced at her, his eyes unreadable, then turned back to the sea. The dugong had swum out of view, so Revati leaned forward, searching for it.

  “There are a dozen watchmen in easy reach. And I’m not going to give up, no matter how much you try to hide.”

  He hesitated, then turned to face her again and slipped his hand around her wrist. She followed as he pulled her away, down the pier, away from Ratna and Revati. They couldn’t have true privacy here, but the side of a net-maker’s stall gave the closest they could hope for.

  Though she had rehearsed it a dozen times in her head, she didn’t know where to start. “Rahu,” she began, watching his reaction. “My uncle, you can’t trust him.”

  Naresh folded his arms over his chest, then leaned back against the stall.

  How could she tell him this? She loved him, she couldn’t let Rahu destroy him. “When the Moon Scions overuse their powers, they go lunatic. They become paranoid, power-mad, addicted to the Moon Blessings.”

  Naresh pushed off the wall and put his hand on her shoulder. “Your uncle?”

  She nodded. “He’ll never let the Astral Temple go. Never.”

  Tell him. Tell him about the Amrita. Chandi reached for the vial tucked into her baju.

  “I spoke to my mother,” Naresh said while Chandi debated. “She forbade my ever being with a Lunar, much less breaking off the engagement to Landorundun.”

  Chandi’s face flushed. “Then you do want to be with me!”

  His hair swayed as he shook his head. “What I want doesn’t matter. I have my duties. Landi might have agreed to end the engagement, but my mother won’t allow it. And I have to respect her wishes.”

  “What in Chandra’s name are you talking about? She doesn’t respect your wishes, so why should you respect hers? What does duty mean if you’re miserable? I did my duty and it cost me everything. You think you can have happiness if duty always comes first?” She glared at his sudden smirk.

  “Sorry. You sounded like someone else who once spoke on the subject.”

  “I love you. And you feel the same, but you’re marrying someone else.” She put her hand on his cheek. “Please, Naresh. You won’t be happy with someone you don’t love. Don’t waste your life in a loveless marriage.”

  For a moment he took her hand in his, then drew it down from his cheek and released it. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but then shook his head and walked by her.

  Damn him for walking away from her. And damn her if she’d let him. “Naresh!” she called, chasing him back down the pier. “Wait.”

  He stopped then, but he didn’t turn around. “You have to let it go, Chandi.”

  “Maybe when the ridiculous Solar wedding is over.” Ratna was looking at her, but she didn’t care. “Maybe when it’s all over. Until then, I might surprise you.”

  “You won’t surprise me.”

  She drew her Potency Blessing and shoved him off the edge of the pier. For a moment he flailed his arms and cried out. Then from midair he vanished. The sudden shove on her own back was all the warning she had.

  None of her Blessings would help her when she was already falling through the air. The impact smacked her like a fist. Saltwater rushed in her nose, burning her throat and sinuses. The water was only a dozen feet or so deep, so she kicked off the bottom and surfaced, coughing and sputtering the seawater from her throat. While treading water she looked up at him, watching her from the pier.

  “Maybe you did surprise me,” he said, his eyes full of sympathy, “but you’re the one who fell because of it.”

  After catching her breath, Chandi swam to the pier ladder. Ratna looked down at her, then just shook her head and dragged Revati along behind her, the child giggling all the way. Water streamed down Chandi’s face. How dare he?

  Naresh had followed Ratna and Revati off the pier, away from the harbor. They left her standing there, dripping and alone.

  So he would turn his back on her? The one person she thought she could trust. Now she knew she was alone. Only she could stop the madness of both Empires. With lunatics and fools guiding them, no wonder they had reached this point. But she would fix it all.

  She climbed out of the sea, then wound her way through the city, back to the palace. Damn it. Damn it! Fools. She was a fool. No, he was a fool! Why on Rangda’s freezing ass would the prick not just listen to reason?

  “Oh, pricks don’t talk reason,” she mumbled under her breath as she climbed the stairs. “Pricks only speak prick.” A servant in the hall offered her a towel, and Chandi snatched it away from her. “What? Never seen a woman pushed in the ocean by a prick before? Maybe you want him for yourself?” She drew up close to the trembling woman’s face, until she realized the girl was an Igni, and probably no more than fifteen years old. Not a threat.

  Chandi shoved the towel back at the girl, then stalked through the palace until finally spotting her weretiger bodyguard in the palace’s rooftop garden.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Chandi said as she approached Malin. The tiger leaned against a palm tree. Chandi might once have thought of this as a place she shared with Naresh, though she had seen Malin here more often.

  “I like the fresh air.” He waved at the ground before him, so she took the offered place, sitting with her legs crossed.

  Well, then let Malin have the garden. Naresh didn’t deserve it. If he couldn’t see something good when he had it, he didn’t deserve any of it. But then Malin could never show her the wonders Naresh had here.

  The sun would set soon, closing the first sunny day in weeks. By the look of the clouds, rain would come tonight. Soon.

  “Tell me about my uncle.”

  “I tried to offer you alliance before. You slapped my hand away. If I help your father oust the War King, will he treat my people any better? His ambition rivals even Rahu’s. Worse, he’s a religious zealot who thinks the Moon Scions deserve to rule all other beings.”

  Chandi scowled, then turned to face the sea. “I know who my father is.”

  She felt Malin rise behind her. Her shoulders tremb
led when he put his hands on them. “Do you?” he whispered. “Can you promise me a better place for my people in the new Lunar Empire?”

  If she couldn’t, if she refused him, they might never unseat Rahu. Her mind’s eye revealed the Solar and Lunar Empires ablaze, destroying each other in war. No, she would save the Skyfall Isles. And Malin would help her do so.

  Malin was right. More right than he knew. She had her Blessings because something was done to her. Malin was the same. At last she nodded and pulled Malin back to the grass beside her. “I will see your people liberated, Malin. Now tell me about my uncle.”

  Malin took her hand. His touch was rough. “He’s not your uncle.” Chandi cocked her head, but didn’t interrupt. “Rahu came here before the Fourth War, at a time when Lunars held the Astral Temple. Same year as me. Your father saw Rahu’s power as the road to his own. With no House left but himself, he claimed Rahu as a brother.”

  And Rahu had arranged everything, from his own marriage to Calon, to the marriage of Chandi’s parents, to the creation of the Macan Gadungan. Everything to get himself named War King. So he could shatter centuries of peace. Because alternating years holding the Astral Temple wasn’t enough for him?

  “Wherever he came from, Rahu lost something there. It made him obsessed with conquering the Skyfall Isles. I don’t think he’ll stop there, though.”

  And Kala … Had he come here from wherever Rahu had, looking to settle some old score?

  Rahu had lied to the entire Empire. Ratna wasn’t her cousin. And Malin was just one more victim. The vial tucked into her baju felt like an anchor. All his life, they had lied to Malin, told him he was made, that they were born superior to him. With one move she could reveal the truth. He deserved to know the truth.

  A bird of paradise alighted in the nearby tree. She told herself it couldn’t be the same one Naresh had called to her that day in the garden, but she couldn’t shake its chirping from her mind.

  “He’s not going to marry you, you know.”

  She jerked at Malin’s sudden statement. What did he know?

  “It’s not their way,” he said. “Their rules and traditions define them.”

  “Now you give me advice on love?” She kept her eyes focused on the sunset.

  “I didn’t tell your father about your infatuation. You might show some gratitude.”

  Chandi bit her lip, tried to keep him from seeing her face. “And you know so much of the heart?”

  “I know mine.” He cupped her chin in his fingers, gentler than she had ever known him, and turned her face toward his. “I’d be good for you.”

  Chandi trembled in his grasp. Here, in the garden, for one moment, she needed to connect. And Malin had always been there for her. When he leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t pull away.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  An Igni servant came to clean Ratna’s chambers and left a sealed letter on her desk before she departed. Ratna scowled. Inciting these Ignis to rebel had suddenly become much less of a plan now that her father was … was breaking. An Igni rebellion might still give her the cover she needed to escape with Revati, but she’d have to plan it very, very carefully from this point on.

  Malin was, in fact, her only real hope. In the chaos, maybe he could get her to the harbor and find a ship that would take them away. But if they couldn’t slip away from Naresh, they would never even reach the harbor, much less escape it. Much as she hated entertaining the idea, her best chance might be to have Malin kill the Solar. The thought made her stomach sour. Naresh had been nothing but polite to her, and, in fact, Chandi seemed to actually like the man. Or she had before Naresh had pushed her off the pier. Not that the foolish girl hadn’t deserved it for trying to do the same to him.

  What had prompted Chandi to attempt that, Ratna had not had the chance to ask. With the developing war between their fathers, it was hard to talk to Chandi at all. Besides, that would mean admitting her cousin had been right about Ratna’s father going lunatic. And even thinking such a thing ripped a hole in Ratna’s chest that made her want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world.

  If not for Revati, maybe she would. Maybe it would be easier to just end her cursed life and return to the Wheel. But she would never, in a thousand lifetimes, abandon her child.

  She grabbed the letter from the desk, popped the seal, and spread it out on her lap. More reports about the weapons she’d helped smuggle to the Ignis, about their plans to ambush Solar patrols. And about their intent, as soon as Lunar ships were spotted, to launch an attack. It was everything she and her father had talked about. The Solars would face the Lunar assault from without while the Ignis destroyed their capital from within. And in the end, Kakudmi would leave this place in chains.

  The mental image did nothing to settle the acid rumbling in her stomach. It should have been what she wanted for that bastard, for the man who barely acknowledged her existence unless she was doing something to earn his ire. And still, even telling herself he had earned his fate did not fully abate her guilt at imagining it. He wasn’t a bad man—not exactly—even if he was a pretty damn poor husband.

  She continued skimming through the Igni plans, the signals, the intent to destroy the city by cracking the domes. That gave her pause. The Ignis were engineers, craftsmen. Her father had had her inquire with them about the strength of the crystal barriers that held back the sea, but she hadn’t really thought they’d be able to break them.

  If they did so, it wouldn’t be a question of who would die in the battle. It would be a question of who—if any—might survive.

  Ratna shut her eyes. A quarter of a million people lived in this undersea city. Most of them were innocent.

  But the destruction of Kasusthali would finally grant the Lunars the chance at victory. Most of the Arun Guard would be wiped out in one swoop. The Solar’s entire center of government. For every Solar who died, many Lunar lives would be saved. Because war was inevitable, had always been inevitable. She knew that now.

  And, beyond all of that, the chaos would give Malin the chance he needed to get her out of Kasusthali. Maybe the only chance she would ever have.

  Chandra forgive her for the countless deaths that would fall on her conscience. She scribbled a quick missive approving the plan, then sealed it. Poor Bendurana would have no idea what he was delivering. She’d have the servant girl send him the message, and he’d take it to the Igni District for her. If this paper left here, there would be no turning back.

  Ratna stared at it for a long time.

  So long that the Igni girl poked her head back in to see if Ratna had a reply. Her hand shook as she passed the letter to the teenaged servant.

  There had never been any turning back.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Sleep had eluded Chandi most of the night, so she’d set out to run through the city earlier than usual. Despite the early phase, the Igni District seemed awash with activity, its people more wary. Tension showed in their brows, their shoulders, the way they watched her without the welcome she once felt.

  It took her a moment to recognize the quiet. No children ran through the streets chasing balls or playing with ultops. As she made her way through the district, she found herself casting glances over her shoulder every block, expecting to find children. Those she did see didn’t play, only worked alongside their parents.

  The district grew more crowded around the Shrine of Sacred Flame. Patrons and worshippers came in such a steady flow it took more than a phase before she could catch Semar alone. When her time came, she found herself unsure quite what to say. Semar was just one of many mistakes she’d made. She needed to fix it, before the trouble she’d stirred up led to war.

  “Come, Chandi,” Semar called. He sat on the far side of the fire pit, eyes closed. “You lurk as though spying. Something troubles your mind, child,” he said when she did not speak. “You come and say nothing to me. Am I a stranger?”

  So he knew she had seen the Stranger, then. “Sometimes I think
you strange indeed, Semar. You talk of peace, but see benefit in war. You claim to want independence, but your people spend their days washing Solar homes. And you keep strange company.”

  “So says the Lunar spy living in the palace of Solars.”

  With his eyes closed at least he couldn’t see her cringe. “Speaking of the Solars, I wonder how you advise the man who advises the emperor.”

  “I give all men the same advice.”

  “And that is?”

  “Only ask questions for which you truly want answers.” More of his games. She waited. “Sometimes the advisor has as much to learn as the advised.”

  “The Stranger and Rahu know each other. Do they come from the same land? Rahu’s skin is not so fair as the Stranger’s. His hair isn’t the red-gold, either. And I know you know Kala, too.”

  “Kala?”

  “That’s his name, the Stranger. Now tell me. I want to understand the connections.”

  Semar opened his odd blue eyes. The intensity of his gaze reminded her of the Stranger. “It’s not your place to understand every connection, Chandi. What do you think would drive a man to come so far? What would be enough to make you pursue an enemy across such a gulf?”

  Chandi bit her lip. All this made her head hurt. Kakudmi had brought in a foreign warrior with the power to challenge Rahu, and a reason to hate the War King. Small wonder Rahu had acted so erratically upon seeing him.

  “Perhaps you had better concern yourself with the situation you helped create with the Ignis. They will soon rebel.”

  No. “I came here to stop that. I said I wanted their support if war came. Not that they should start a war.”

  “Once you light the flame, it’s too late to worry about whether you dug the fire pit in the right place.”

  Chandi rose, pointed a finger at the priest. “You can stop them.”

  “I am not their master. If it’s not war you desire, perhaps you should decide what you do want. Tarry too long in finding what matters, you risk losing it all.”