Empire Ascendant

by Kameron Hurley

  “Go,” Ahkio said, and slapped his bear forward.

  They made a breakneck run across the melee of militia and screaming refugees. A sweeping vine swung past Ahkio’s head and caught one of the militia behind him. She screamed as she was hoisted a hundred feet into the air and neatly dropped into one of the poisonous bags at the top of the tree.

  Ahkio gritted his teeth and circled back behind the figures that had come out of the gates. He recognized Ghrasia immediately. She was shouting orders to three jistas who broke away from the group. He saw the little feral girl with her, the one from Raona, barking madly at her side.

  On seeing him, something in Ghrasia lit up, briefly, before going out, like watching a candle flame flicker and die. He didn’t understand it.

  “Fire!” he said.

  “We have no sinajistas,” she said. “We’re loading fire archers on the wall. We need to herd them together. Take your party back around the other side and flank them. I’ll come up behind them. I have parajistas who can help contain the fire. I can’t risk it catching the woods.”

  Ahkio relayed the order to his group and circled them back around to the north. The trees were spread widely now, grazing at random all across the broken encampment. He rode with Caisa and their companions in a long line, seeking to herd the trees back against the wall. The big tree nearest them turned its attention away from feeding and lashed at them with its sinewy appendages. Ahkio clung tightly to his bear. He wrapped his wrist around the reins twice, hoping he and the bear together would be too massive to draw up into the waiting pods.

  The air was heavy, and a strong wind blew from the east. He glanced over and saw Ghrasia at the head of her party, and two parajistas coaxing vortexes to come up behind the herd.

  Ahkio waved Caisa and the others closer to the tree, yelling at them to keep up the long line of their formation. Just as the big tree began to move inward, the smallest made a break between the two at the center, trying to run diagonally at them.

  Ghrasia broke formation and charged after the littlest one. Ahkio raced to meet her, hoping they could pin it back in with the others.

  He saw a few dozen fiery arrows flame across the sky from the parapet. One landed just ahead of his bear. It spooked and veered out of control, nearly colliding with Ghrasia. Two of her people had caught up to her. Ahkio’s charging bear enraged the other two, and they broke.

  Above them, the trees’ appendages snapped and shivered. One grabbed hold of Ahkio and pulled. He clung to the bear. The resistance seemed to dissuade it. It lashed away and plucked one of the parajistas from his mount. The man screamed. A heavy whump of air slammed into Ahkio, nearly taking him from his seat.

  “That’s my parajista!” Ghrasia yelled. She urged her bear forward and reached up for one of the lashing vines. Ahkio watched in a mixture of awe and horror as she grabbed the vine and started climbing it toward the pods in the treetop.

  He took a great breath and yelled at his bear for another burst of speed, but the bear was already running at full tilt, slavering. Ahkio raised himself up in his stirrups and took hold of a swinging vine. He was tough and slippery, but he found purchase, and began a stuttering climb after Ghrasia. As the tree tried to tip him into the lip of the pod, he hacked himself free with his machete. Ghrasia perched on a pod opposite him, sawing away at it. She firmed her mouth when she saw him, but said only, “Don’t cut open the pods. Cut them loose. The stuff inside will cushion the fall. We may be able to save a few.”

  Ahkio swung back onto the long branch from which the pod dangled and began to cut. It was hard and fibrous. He glanced back at Ghrasia. “Why did you open the gates?” he said. “All these people drew the trees.”

  “Are we honestly going to talk here?” Ghrasia said. Her bundle came free, spilling to the ground. She jumped to the next.

  “Exile, Ghrasia! You put me in a place to exile you!”

  “You haven’t seen her,” Ghrasia said, but Ahkio had no idea who she was talking about. “Your world is good and evil. But mine is far more complicated than that.”

  “How do we know they’re dajians and not Tai Mora?”

  Below them, the feral girl was barking.

  Ghrasia gestured to the girl below with her dagger. “I’m responsible for her now, too. Should I kill her as well, like some trash because of what someone else did to her? Those refugees were shaped by Dorinah. She was shaped by the Tai Mora. People aren’t born monsters. Monsters are made.”

  The pod Ahkio worked on finally came free, dropping its contents. He dodged one of the tree’s knotted appendages. Smelled smoke. Turned. Some arrows had found their mark, but the fire wasn’t taking hold. “I think the wood’s too wet!” he said. “Do you have oil?”

  “We’re out,” she said. “Used it all to fuel the refugee fires.”

  “Curse that, Ghrasia!”

  “Exile me or don’t,” she said. “I can put Arasia in charge of the militia in addition to Liona. But you must make that decision now.”

  “After all we’ve–”

  “Don’t you bring that up. Don’t you dare.” The vehemence in her voice surprised him.

  “But aren’t we–”

  “No,” she said. “I made a mistake.”

  “Ghrasia–”

  “We need to get off this tree,” she said. “We’re almost at the woods.”

  He glanced back. The other four walking trees were still well behind them, circled together now by their combined forces. “This isn’t working,” he said. “We need sinajistas.”

  “I would conjure one for you if I could,” she said.

  As she said it, one of the trees behind them burst into brilliant flames. “Oma!” he said, pointing.

  Ghrasia gave a determined little smile. The other two trees went up. Ghrasia’s smile faded. “Off the tree!” she yelled.

  “But–”

  “Off the tree, she’ll light it up!”

  “Who?”

  Ghrasia grabbed the vine next to her and swung out toward Ahkio. She caught him around the waist and yelled, “Let go, for the love of–”

  The tree’s crown burst into flame.

  Ahkio let go.

  They slid more than seventy feet before the vine began to wave frantically. It came alive again, and curled around them while the smoking detritus of its crown fell all around them in ashy whispers. Ghrasia cut them free. Ahkio held her tight. They fell another fifteen feet to the soft, loamy ground, and landed with a huffing thud.

  Ahkio lost his breath. He turned just as the flaming tree crashed into the woods.

  Ghrasia crawled to her feet, yelling for parajistas, but they were at the far end of the encampment now, at least five hundred paces from its edge.

  “Ghrasia,” he said, scrambling to his feet, still winded. “If there was anything between us–”

  She rounded on him. “It was a mistake. I know I can rely on you to respect that I’ve made my decision and leave it be.”

  “I thought–”

  “You thought incorrectly,” she said. “When I made the decision I did to open the gates, I also made a decision about our potential future. If you don’t know it now, you will.” She gazed back at the tree. It crashed into the great rooted trees of the woodland, thrashing. It emitted a terrible hissing sound as its sap bubbled. “We need to contain that fire.” She started back down to the encampment, limping.

  He ran to catch up with her, and reached for her arm. She yanked it away.

  “I revoke consent,” she said.

  He stopped dead still, as if struck. “It’s done, then?” he said, still not understanding.

  “It’s done,” she said. “You’re Kai and I lead the militia, and no more.”

  They strode down into the camp as Ghrasia called for doctors and tirajistas to help cut out the people they had released from the pods. Ahkio was still confused and breathless, uncertain as to why Ghrasia had wanted to change their relationship so suddenly. Yes, the world was mad, but that was a good
reason for two people to stay together, not break apart.

  Another line of people walked across the battered ground toward them while the great blazing mass of the dying trees guttered at the center of the camp.

  A small, hunched figure limped along at the head of the group. Beside her was a very tall Saiduan person who looked very familiar.

  “Faralis!” Ghrasia said to one of the men beside them. “That tree in the woods–”

  “We’re containing it,” Faralis said. “I have two on it now.”

  “We freed people from the kill pods,” she said. “I’ll need doctors to care for them, if they lived.”

  Faralis turned and sprinted back toward the hold. All around them the survivors of the attack milled about with glazed eyes. Some shrieked, but most wandered around in shock.

  Ghrasia said to the limping girl, “There were people in those kill pods. We could have cut them free.”

  “There’s a reason they’re called kill pods,” the girl said.

  “You’re welcome,” the Saiduan said, and Ahkio realized why the figure had seemed so familiar. It was Taigan, the Saiduan who had visited the temple and carted away a scullery maid almost a year ago.

  Ghrasia grimaced. She turned to Ahkio. “Here she is,” she said.

  Ahkio still wasn’t sure who she meant. The little limping girl had scars on her face, and a serious, graven expression, though she could not have been very far into her teens. Her hair was tangled with frayed white ribbons that matched her dirty dress. She wore an oversized coat that made her look even smaller than she was. When she squinted at him, he felt as if he were being weighed and measured like one of the trees. Burn him or save him?

  Realization dawned, then. “You’re the scullery girl,” he said. “Oma’s tears, you’re the one who brought these people here?” He looked at Taigan. “What have you done to her?”

  Taigan shrugged. “She did this to herself.”

  More people were crowding up behind the girl. Some were grinning and whispering.

  “You’re a sinajista?” Ahkio asked the girl. “You took out those trees?”

  “I’m more than that,” she said.

  “She’s Faith Ahya reborn!” some young man from the crowd yelled, and a little cheer went up. Ahkio felt more fearful then than he had halfway up a blazing tree. This could get out of hand.

  “There’s something else,” Ghrasia said as the crowd swelled.

  He wasn’t sure he could bear any more surprises.

  Ghrasia gestured to someone from the crowd who began to wend her way forward. “Your wife is here,” Ghrasia said.

  Mohrai cut between Taigan and the scullery girl. She was as Ahkio remembered, a plump, soft-faced woman with a gaze that told him she was used to getting her way. Her low brow and pinched features put him in mind of an owl. She wore a knee-length purple tunic cinched with a leather belt and embroidered with silver stars. The extravagance was not lost on Ahkio, especially when paired with her flamboyantly curled hair.

  “Catori,” he said.

  “Kai,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you for days. My family’s closed the harbor gates.”

  They all stared at her, including Ahkio, and he wondered if this was the best place to relay this news. “We need to go inside,” he said.

  “The Tai Mora have blocked the harbor,” Mohrai said. He caught a hint of fear in her voice then, “and they are making demands for our immediate surrender.”

  3

  Zezili fought death. She thought, for a time, that she had won. But her body still failed her.

  Zezili’s face and hands and torso swelled. The wounds inflicted by the Empress’s cats oozed a thick yellowish pus. A fever shook her body and left her sweaty and delirious. Zezili remembered the Empress picking up Zezili’s bloody severed thumb and painting her own white lips with it. The doctors said Zezili raved for three days and screamed that the Empress had eaten her whole.

  Zezili’s sisters clustered around her body, warbling in sticky voices as tangled as Zezili’s dreams. The room smelled of shit and morbid flesh. When she roused herself for a few stolen moments, her youngest sister, Sorana, said they believed they sat at her death bed.

  Her sisters had gathered to watch her die.

  Taodalain, the last of her sisters to hover at her side once living seemed a possibility, asked if Zezili wanted her to read the letter the Empress had sent to her bedside.

  Half of Zezili’s face was bandaged, one eye shredded or swollen shut, she did not know which. She kept her hands beneath the heavy folds of her bedding. Even bandaged, she did not want to see what had become of the hands that once held her sword.

  She nodded to hear the letter.

  Taodalain read:

  * * *

  Zezahlia, my dearest;

  As of the thirty-eighth of Seara, I have released you from sworn service. I allow you to choose, upon this unbinding, to retire to your estate until the end of those days my cats have left you, or – upon your renewal – I grant you leave to return to me, to renew your oath to Dorinah, and let us see what we can make of you.

  Tordin is next, my love. It’s your campaign if you’ll take it.

  Forever I am,

  Empress Casanlyn Aurnaisa of Dorinah–

  * * *

  “Et cetera, et cetera,” Taodalain said. “She is kind. She offers you a way out of service.”

  Zezili closed her good eye, and slept.

  It was three weeks before the doctors allowed Zezili out of bed. By then she had seen what remained of her right hand. The doctors had stitched the thumb back on and covered it in leeches. They coaxed the wound closed with organic salve and the help of some backwoods tirajista of middling talent, but she could not move the injured digit. She could barely feel it. The swelling was so bad her hand looked like nothing so much as a discolored hunk of meat. The first joint of her index finger was missing, and the nail and most of the flesh had been ripped from her middle finger. The other wounds she did not look at.

  Her housekeeper, Daolyn, and Taodalain removed her from the public infirmary in Daorian to her estate. She rode for hours in the back of a dog-pulled cart. Zezili asked where Dakar, her loyal dog, was, and Daolyn reminded her he had been slain in the dajian camp at the pass into Dhai.

  “And my husband?” Zezili asked. “Where is Anavha?”

  “We have heard nothing of him,” Daolyn said. “His family has declared him dead.”

  Zezili cried, then – the first time she had cried since her mauling. It was all gone. Everything was ash. What use was saving the world when you had nothing?

  The journey was painful. Zezili saw her estate from a strange vantage, lying prone on her stretcher. She gazed up at the tiles of the roof and turned her bruised head to look in through the round gate. A stir of shadowy dajians shifted quietly about the grounds.

  Daolyn washed and dressed her wounds. The Empress sent a doctor from Daorian each week to prod at her. It was another kindness, Taodalain reminded her. The Empress could have left her to some rural surgeon.

  When Zezili could sit up without blacking out, she hobbled to her wardrobe. She pushed open the door with her good hand. Daolyn had left a coat draped over the door, shrouding her view of the long mirror on the inside. She saw her bandaged hand, the end of her torso, but her face and chest were obscured. She took hold of the end of her tunic, and tugged at it awkwardly. She stretched and strained and shrugged her shoulders until the tunic came free. The exercise left her panting, shaky.

  Stripped to the waist, she reached forward and pulled the long coat from the mirror.

  The coat trembled down the glass.

  Zezili gazed at an alien face, the rent visage of a stranger.

  The right side of her face was a morass of bluish-red swelling, distorted, the right eye like a dark wound. Four long red gashes quartered the face. The longest mark ran from the inside of the eye to the jaw, catching flesh again along the shoulder. A series of slashes had loosened the skin from
muscle and bone. That side of the face would sag and weep, and heal into a twisted parody of a face. Her torso was worse. Two cats’ bites had left punctures along her stomach, and on her upper arm. Another had gnawed meat from the top of her rib cage, tore and twisted at the breast, left behind a pool of scarring tissue. The partner of the claw that rent her face had taken her along the chest, scoring deep lines from the ruined left breast to her navel. There were lighter scratches, bites, claw punctures, but by now those had all but healed, and left their own shiny scars.

  She had been eaten by a god. She had pulled herself from its belly. Now she had to find out what it had left of her.

  Zezili shuffled to the doorway. “Daolyn!” she called. “Bring me my sword.”

  Daolyn did. Zezili picked up the sword in her left hand. She moved through defense positions, slowly, agonizingly slow. Had her sword always been so heavy?

  She went through the forms again, until sweat poured from her face and her wounds throbbed, threatening to spill open. She lay back in bed, resting with her sword beside her, and called Daolyn for tea.

  After tea, she stood. Brought up the sword again.

  It was three days of this haphazard dialogue with her new body before Zezili stepped into the cold courtyard and ran through forms on the bare stones. She had the dajians lay out her armor in her room so she could see it each morning as she rose. Before bed, she spent time examining the helm and breastplate. The cats had gnawed at the leather straps and relieved her of her armor before they ravaged her. She called in the armorer from Dryan and had her hammer out the dents and repair and polish the scratches until it shone. That week, the doctor’s visit consisted of the woman’s barely concealed horror at the idea that Zezili had had the wherewithal to be out of bed and walking, let alone training.

  “Pardon, Syre,” the doctor said, “but you have come back from death itself. Your body needs–”

  “My body needs to live,” Zezili said. “I am in service to the Empress of Dorinah. She owns this body, and a dead thing in bed is of no use to her.”