Reign the Earth

by A. C. Gaughen

  She raised her hand, and Calix made a choked noise.

  “Calix?” I cried, jumping from my chair. I ran to his side as his face flushed darker and his hand clawed at his throat.

  The quaesitor threw the liquid on her, and nothing happened.

  She laughed. “You will die by an Elementa hand,” she snarled. “Isn’t that your fa—”

  Calix dropped, and so did she. The guard behind her withdrew his sword from her chest with a disgusting crack. I stared at her in shock—she had landed on her knees, and she held there for a moment as blood bloomed on her chest, and she looked at me.

  But then she fell, crumpling to the floor, and the spell was broken.

  Shaking hard, I reached for Calix, who was gasping and coughing. I touched his face, but he sat up and pushed me. I fell back onto my hands as he stood, wiping spittle from his face as he went to the guard who had killed her and yanked a knife out of his belt.

  The girl was dead, unmoving and quiet, and still Calix launched on her, stabbing her over and over and over again.

  “Calix!” I sobbed, covering my mouth and trying to push away as her blood caught on my skirt and her body was mangled beyond recognition.

  Calix threw down the blood-drenched blade and strode over to the quaesitor, grabbing the front of his black coat and dragging his face close. “Your elixir couldn’t stop an insect! You think this is a game?” he snarled. “You think I am joking about this? Next time you come to me with imperfect results I will take your head—do you understand me?”

  “Yes, yes, my king!” the man cried.

  “Get this scum out of my sight!” he roared, shoving the quaesitor toward the Elementae.

  A loud sob escaped me, and I covered my mouth as my husband seemed to notice me. “Stop crying!” he roared. “Get up!”

  I struggled to my feet, and as soon as I did, he grabbed my arm, dragging me into the hall with blood-drenched fingers. He stormed through the hallways, flinging open a door and pounding down a dark stone staircase echoing with chains and distant cries.

  “Who else is with the Resistance?” he bellowed. I tugged against his wrist, too frightened to cry, too aware of the rocks around me that wanted to answer my fear with power. It felt like nausea, my body desperate to give in and desperate to resist in the same awful moment.

  The quaesitori down here skittered to open more doors, and Calix yanked my wrist, turning me to face him. “You think I’m cruel, wife? You think I’m cruel because I try to eliminate enemies who try to murder me? They work on your brother’s command!” he roared at me.

  “You’re hurting me,” I whimpered, trying to pull away.

  He let me go, and I stumbled back against the rock as he turned to face the quaesitori. “Execute them,” he snapped.

  “My king, it will destroy the validity of our information—” one protested.

  “Your information is already invalid,” he snarled. “Now. So my wife can see.”

  I screamed as they slit the throat of one middle-aged man, and I didn’t wait to see another. I turned and fled back the way I’d come, my heart pounding.

  I kept running until I hit the open garden. A section of the garden was built around a large boulder, and the moment I fell against it, I felt stronger, and the revulsion brewing in my stomach eased.

  Then I hated myself, that I could breathe easily again after watching those people murdered before me.

  And worse, the fear that shook every bone and every bit of me wasn’t for them. I saw my face in their stead as I relived the murders I had just witnessed. My face, streaked with blood. My body, feeling the pierce and crunch of the blade that I was supposed to be able to control.

  If I couldn’t get rid of this power, it would be my fate.

  And if I couldn’t sway his heart, it would be the fate of hundreds of others.

  It was a long while before Calix emerged. I had struggled to my feet and thought better of it, sitting down again on a bench and looking at the closed gates. As little as I wanted to, I knew I had to wait for him. I had to compose myself and put my fear behind me. I had to convince him to see the madness of his actions.

  Then he appeared. He looked at me and moved past without touching me. A soldier brought his horse, and he waved it away, cutting a sharp look to me. “You like to walk, don’t you?” he snapped.

  I nodded, silent, and he waited for me to step beside him before he started walking at a punishing pace. I kept up with him.

  “Thrice-damned incompetent fools,” he said after a long while. “If their work weren’t so important, I’d kill the lot of them.”

  “So they will be punished,” I said. “Put on trial for imprisoning people like that. That’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?”

  He stopped, wheeling on me. “Who? The quaesitori? They aren’t imprisoning people; they’re imprisoning traitors and sorcerers.”

  “Who are people!”

  “They are not people,” he growled. “You saw what they can do. They’re dangerous, and this could lead us to controlling them.” He shook his head at me, disbelieving. “I thought you understood why this work is so important!”

  “I understand why you might want to find this elixir,” I told him. “I want to help you do that. But you are torturing people!”

  He jerked away from me. “We aren’t torturing them. We just use their blood and their abilities.”

  “That isn’t all you do!” I cried. I was shaking, and I felt hysterical, dangerous, uncontrolled. “You killed them, and you killed them all years ago! You—you—all this, it’s because of you!”

  “What did you say?” he snarled at me.

  “You did it,” I told him. “You killed the islanders. I knew, when you told me you were tricked, something wasn’t right—you killed them, and it wasn’t just in the past. You’re still killing them.”

  “Yes!” he shouted at me. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  I turned around, wildly looking for a way out of there. All I saw were white stone walls and the guards standing farther away than usual. How could I leave this place?

  He grasped my arms, and I shrieked at the unexpected contact. “You know nothing about that day, Shalia! I was the one who was betrayed, not her. I can’t change what happened, but what I did—I acted out of emotion, and that has never happened again.”

  He had just stabbed a dead woman more than twenty times because of the depth of his hate, but he was too wild, his hands too tight, and I couldn’t say the words.

  “I was secretly engaged to Amandana. We were going to marry and stop the war. But your brother was there, and she decided she’d rather have a desert man. So I put the elixir on every weapon we had, and for the first time, they couldn’t stop our arrows. They couldn’t control our swords. I broke the islands, and I made them all pay for her cruelty.”

  He was shaking me, his eyes boring into mine, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Rian had something to do with this? Rian had been in the islands, offering aid, but—

  Calix pushed me away and shouted, “Water!” at one of the guards, who came trotting up with a skin. He handed it to Calix, who gave it to me. “Drink,” he growled. “Before you faint.”

  I did as he commanded with trembling hands, and Calix stalked around me, restless and scowling.

  “The elixir,” I breathed. “You used it before?”

  He nodded.

  “How did you get it?”

  “The trivatis who made the prophecy. He found it in Sarocca and offered it as a way to protect me.”

  And you killed him for it.

  “I never intended to use it. I was bringing it to the islands—to Amandana—as a show of faith.”

  “Who was Amandana?” I asked. I knew I had heard the name before, but I didn’t think he had said it—it felt like it was from a very distant memory.

  “The daughter of the high priestess,” he grunted, and I felt the blood drain from my head.

  Kata’s sister. Calix had been engaged to K
ata’s sister—which was why he thought he’d seen Amandana the night of our wedding. But if she was Kata’s sister, that meant—

  “She was an Elementa,” he said, nearly under his breath, just as I thought it. “Fire.”

  I shook my head slowly as the pieces fell into place. His hatred for Elementae, it all came from a broken heart?

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “How could you possibly go from loving her to treating Elementae like that?” I asked.

  Red flushed high in his face, and his gaze on me burned. “It is because of that. That is the reason for all of this. And don’t you dare speak to me again of this, or I swear to the Three-Faced God, I will make you regret it,” he snarled.

  We stared at each other for long moments as his ugly threat settled between us, his breath ragged and unchecked, his eyes wild.

  “Do you regret it?” I asked him, my throat working. “You said you can’t change what you did. Do you even want to? Because what I saw today—I think you would do it all over again if you could.” My voice got quieter and quieter as I spoke, and I risked a glance at his furious face before looking away from him.

  “I refuse to regret,” he growled at me, his voice low and hard. “And it wasn’t enough. You saw what that sorceress did today. What she said to me! An Elementa will cause my death, and the Resistance is rounding them up like sheep. Both the Resistance and all sorcerers need to be cut down before they have the chance.”

  I nodded slowly, and I knew why I had waited so long to confront him about what I knew. I could never learn to live with what he had done, or accept it.

  “Shalia,” he growled, and I saw his hand reaching for me.

  I ducked away from his touch. I couldn’t even look at him. I felt ill.

  “Wife,” he snarled. “You will—”

  “My king!” I heard, and I looked down the wide road to see a figure on a horse and several soldiers behind him. Even from this distance, I knew it was Galen, and Calix cursed as he stopped again.

  Galen was upon us in moments, swinging down from his horse easily. “My king,” he said, bowing his head.

  “Brother,” Calix grunted.

  “Why would you leave the Tri City without my protection?” Galen asked, his eyes rushing over Calix, stained with blood, and the blood streaked on my arms and skirts.

  “Do not think to question me, Commander,” Calix snapped, but his eyes cut to me and I felt pinned by his gaze. “Do your men not inform you? I assumed that, as you have not previously seemed wildly incompetent, you would be close behind, and I had urgent business to attend to.”

  Galen looked to me, and I crossed my arms around myself, turning away from his gaze. “And your business—” Galen asked.

  “Concluded,” Calix said sharply.

  Galen dropped his head to Calix. “Yes, my king. Would you prefer to return to the Tri City now or in the morning?” he asked.

  “The morning,” he said, taking the reins to the horse. “Escort my queen back to the Summer Palace, and we will have a meal.”

  “No,” I said, and everyone looked at me. “I won’t go back there.”

  “It is my palace. Where else do you suggest we go?” Calix sneered at me. Then his head moved, and he looked toward the tall tower looming up above the center of the city. “Fine. Galen, escort her to the Oculus.”

  Galen’s eyes shifted toward the tower, like he barely dared to look at it. “You wish to take the queen to the Oculus?” he asked.

  “Without further delay, Commander. I will join you shortly.” Calix mounted Galen’s horse and wheeled it around, going back toward the Summer Palace.

  A soldier dismounted and offered Galen his horse, but he waved it off. “The queen prefers walking,” he said, and this sounded resigned. “Three of you follow the king; the rest fall back.”

  Galen nodded to someone, and I turned, seeing Theron ten paces behind us. He nodded back to his commander.

  Galen waited for me to start moving, and he clasped his hands behind his back and fell into step with me. I kept my eyes pinned to the ground, watching my feet shuffle quickly over the gray stone. Galen led us down the wide avenue, and when we turned between two white stone walls, he asked, “What happened?”

  I shook my head, but suddenly tears welled up in my eyes. I kept my face down, and they fell from my eyes unchecked. I didn’t dare look up to see if Galen noticed or not.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, his voice soft.

  I shook my head, though perhaps that was a lie.

  “Did he hurt someone else?”

  I halted, and suddenly the tears were sobs and I couldn’t hold them back.

  “Wait,” he murmured, pressing a hand to my back and urging me forward. He brought me to the spire, ordering guards away from us. He opened the door and urged me inside, and it was instantly dark, and cool, and secluded. I felt Galen’s arms come around me, tight and comforting, pressing me into the shelter of his shoulders, his neck, his arms. He whispered, “Go ahead. No one can see.”

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that, wrapped in darkness and something forbidden, though I wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t be touching me or I shouldn’t be crying—perhaps it was both.

  As the tears slowed, Galen’s hand was following the path of my hair down my back, his head pressed against mine, and it was so gentle. It made my heart warm and full in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time, and while I could feel the threads, they weren’t desperate and demanding like at the coronation.

  “You’re ruining your reputation as a tough soldier,” I said.

  He laughed, the sound a rumble against my chest, and I suddenly deeply regretted not being able to see his face. He smiled so rarely—seemed happy so rarely—that it seemed like a terrible thing to have missed what he looked like laughing.

  “It’s all an illusion,” he told me.

  I sniffed, pulling back from him and wiping my face. My whole face felt swollen and sore, and I shook my head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to have to do that.”

  “I didn’t have to,” he said. His hand lingered on my arm for a moment, and I could sense his eyes on me, but I didn’t look up.

  His hand fell away from me, and he opened the door again with a sharp flood of light. “Theron,” he said, and turned back to me. “Are you ready to go up?” he asked.

  I nodded. An endless staircase curved along the wall of the tower. In the center, a wide basket rested on the ground with ropes that disappeared upward.

  Galen flipped open a door on the side of the basket, holding it for me. Without being given an order, Theron started trotting up the stairs.

  “My queen,” Galen said, and I stepped into the basket.

  Galen got in before shutting the door. It was very close; our legs were pressed together, and the only way my whole body wasn’t mashed against my husband’s brother was by leaning backward, gripping the edge of the basket.

  I gasped as the basket lifted, twisting hard once it was in the air. I was unsure if I could reach for him now that I wasn’t crying, if his arms around me had been a desperate act or something that would become part of our friendship.

  The motion was swift but uneven, and I wondered what poor soul was hauling us up on the other end of the rope. We moved up through the middle of the tower, quickly passing Theron as we rose.

  The basket stopped, and Galen unlatched the door, motioning that I should go first. We were in the top, the broad square perched on the narrow tower. The room we entered was filled with sunlight, and I could see the distant mountains through the windows. Awed, I went closer to them, opening a wooden door that led onto a balcony.

  “Shalia, you shouldn’t go—” Galen warned.

  My breath caught, but it was not for the natural beauty of this place.

  The enclosures—there were hundreds of them, filling the valley between the oculus and the mountains with endless gray squares. More, maybe. Some were larger, with long buildings in the center. They seemed an en
dless block of stone, with no grass, no space, no air. In many of the enclosures, as if prompted by a clock striking a certain hour, long lines of people were being led from one building to another. They were all moving slowly, evenly, like the shipbuilders. They had no fight, because they had nothing—no choices, no chances, no hope. Just stone and guards, and one building and then the next.

  “Slaves,” I said, turning to Galen as he came out to the balcony.

  “I didn’t want you to see this,” he said, his voice soft.

  “You … they’re all slaves.”

  “Calix won’t call them that,” he said, his back straight and body tense. “They are laborers. Very skilled laborers for the most part.”

  “So they can leave? You pay them?” I demanded.

  “According to my brother, they serve the Three-Faced God. What higher purpose is there?” He passed a hand over the view, his voice bitter. “We feed them. We clothe them and house them—we go to great expense to see they are taken care of. He believes that is a fair wage.”

  “How can he do this?” I asked. “How can he do any of these things?”

  “Calix believes stratification is a natural part of civilized society. There must be soil so the tree can take root. There must be a working class to drive industry.”

  “Slave labor is not the same thing!” I cried. “And those bodies hanging in the harbor. And these quaesitori?” I asked. “And the islands. How long will this list become before you believe he’s a monster, Galen?”

  I looked at him, and he was tense and still beside me. “Do you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, resting my head in my palms.

  “Maybe he is,” he said softly. “You spoke to him about the islands?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He admitted it. I thought I could accept it.” I shook my head. “I thought—maybe, in time—but I can’t. I won’t. Not after today.”

  “What happened today?” he asked again.

  “I realized that he hasn’t changed. It would be one thing if he regretted it. He doesn’t. He says he refuses to regret.”

  Galen nodded. “He’s a king. If he were to admit a mistake, his enemies would use it against him. He was such a young king—he didn’t have the luxury of being wrong.”