Embers of Empire

by Michaela Strauther

  “So I shouldn’t go to the castle?”

  Sathryn shrugged and hoped that she was giving him the best advice she could. “We can still go, but only to scout around. We shouldn’t try to kill them yet.”

  He frowned. “We?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Julian, we. I told you that I’m not just going to stay behind. Besides, now my entire family is in the hands of those kings—what do I have to lose?”

  “But,” Julian began, wiping at the wetness of his eyes to make room for his budding smile. “But you can’t even use the basic weapons.”

  She stood and crossed her arms over her chest. “I need to wash.”

  Sutra

  utra had not weaned himself off the drug alone. But he wasn’t about to tell Nya that.

  When Anya had first begun working for the kings, she was nothing out of the ordinary. Just another maid to have about the house.

  He had first seen her in the library. He’d entered the large room and didn’t notice she was there until she turned her page. She hadn’t known he was there either, for when he looked up and gasped, she looked up and gasped, and they stared at each other for a moment before she stood and left her table.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m not supposed to be in here, but you have so many books—”

  “Just get out,” Sutra muttered. At the time, he was still vile and under the spell of the drug.

  The woman hurried out, but she was back soon enough. It was on a night when Sutra couldn’t sleep, so he wandered into the library, tired and irritable, and saw her sitting at that same table again, in the same chair, reading the same book as before. When the door behind him shut, she jerked up and saw him. There was fear in her eyes.

  This time she said nothing, only stood to hurry out again.

  This happened many times after, each time ending with her leaving as soon as she saw him, and him, for some reason, not getting as angry as he could have. If he were Iryse, her head would have already been on a pike for repeatedly entering a room that wasn’t authorized to her. But her incessant interest in novels was intriguing.

  On the tenth night he caught her, he stopped her before she could run out. “You do realize that after the second time, you should’ve been punished.”

  She was midway to the door and froze. “Sorry.”

  “You must not be if you keep doing so.”

  “I lose track of time.”

  He made his way to a sofa chair in the corner of the room. Grabbing a book from the nearest shelf, he said nothing more until she’d left again.

  As she opened the door, he said, “You’re allowed in the library now.”

  She didn’t answer, but the next day, she was sitting in the same chair at the same table once again.

  It went on like that for a while. Neither of them spoke to each other, but both noticed the other quite frequently. He would steal glances to her and find her looking down at her book, but other days, he would look over at her to find her looking back.

  The first time he kissed her, they were in the medic room. She was healing both Tyru and Sutra, both of whom had been injured in a raid from Deadland, and Tyru was asleep.

  She was leaning over Sutra and stitching a gash along his arm, as such a deep wound would not heal easily on its own. He was half asleep himself and had just drunk a tea she’d made—it made him loopy and drowsy. Within a few minutes, she was finished.

  “There.” She then wrapped it with gauze. “You are just about finished. You can sleep now if you would like.”

  “What—what, um, books—that’s it, books—do you like to read?” His voice sounded funny to even him.

  She laughed as well. He might as well have been drunk. Anya told him later that she’d put a few special herbs in the tea to dull the pain of the sutures, even if that meant making him seem drunk. “I like books about everything.”

  “Books, they are your—your favorite?”

  She finished wrapping the gauze. “Not quite. My favorite thing in the world is music.”

  He’d quirked up a drowsy eyebrow, making her laugh again. Her laugh was even more beautiful than her face. She had a very beautiful face, though some may have disagreed. Her darker skin made her light eyes look like they didn’t belong to her, and those eyes were too big for her face anyway, but he thought it was beautiful. If not right then, he did later. “Music?”

  “Yes. Music.”

  “What is your favorite? Instrument?”

  “The harp.”

  “The harp?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you play the harp?”

  “Not quite,” she said with a small, sad smile. “I want to learn, but I have never gotten the chance.”

  Sutra, in his “drunken,” half-sane stage of sleepiness had suggested, “I have plenty of harps you can learn to play in the music room. Play your music there.”

  This made her smile widen. “Really?”

  He nodded.

  Then, she did what he didn’t quite expect. She hugged him. Despite the slight pain in his arm, he hugged her back.

  When she pulled away, he kept her close. Her face wasn’t far from his, and after a few seconds more of staring into each other’s eyes, she kissed him.

  Or he kissed her. He couldn’t tell which.

  It was hard to pretend it had never happened. In the day that followed, he didn’t see much of her, as a new medic came in to assist him. The new medic was a male Faerie—not someone he had any desire in kissing. But the day after that, he saw her again, this time in the music room that she’d somehow found on her own. When she saw him this time, she was a bit more cautious.

  “Good afternoon.” Her hands were, indeed, wrapped about the harp.

  “Good afternoon.” He entered the room and sat.

  He listened to her play in silence. It wasn’t very good playing—at least, not in the beginning—but he sat and listened anyway.

  Nya was the one that first noticed the way Sutra sat in the library or music room with her, the way he watched her whenever she walked by in the halls. He asked him about it, but Sutra assured him he was just fooling around with her—nothing serious. Since taking the drug, none of the brothers had had anything serious with anyone.

  And perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t. As always, his underlying anger bested him.

  Sathryn

  eing clean became a euphoric moment for Sathryn as she stepped from the marbled tub of warm water and dried herself off with a towel in Myrna’s bathroom. Though the tub water itself was now brown with dirt and whatever else that had settled onto Sathryn’s skin during her and Julian’s long journey, Sathryn felt clean and refreshed. She’d even mixed scents into the water—dozens of scents she’d never seen before, ones that weren’t available in Pomek unless you had nothing but money. The scents were oils in fancy glass vials, and many of them looked like they were hardly used. But Sathryn couldn’t help herself. She saw all the oils and perfumes and couldn’t help but mix them in. Myrna’s bathroom even had a little drain at the bottom of the tub, which Sathryn pulled and watched the water go down once she was done.

  Plaiting her dripping hair into a tangled, curled, messy braid and wrapping it into a bun, Sathryn exited the bathroom, a towel wrapped tight around her torso. She walked toward the guest room and closed the door behind her. As soon as she did so, she heard Julian closing the door to the bathroom.

  In the closets of the guest room, there were several dresses, all different colors and materials—silks, linens, wools, and even a few cottons—and a line of a half dozen pairs of shoes. Sathryn pulled from the extensive collection a simple lavender dress. It was too big once she put it on, scraping the floor and sliding from her shoulders if she moved too much, but it was also the nicest dress she’d ever worn.

  She slid on a pair of flat, white shoes, then went to the sitting room, waiting for Julian.

  He walked into the sitting room a while later. She’d been dozing while waiting for him
, but now that he was here, she was wide awake. He was dressed in new, clean clothing too, a silken, loose top and a pair of black pants.

  Meeting her eyes, he spun in a circle. “Well? How do I look?”

  “Clean.”

  By nighttime, Myrna was still at her shift. Sathryn realized this after waking from hours of sleep. She’d fallen asleep on one velvet couch, and Julian on the other. They both woke up shivering, with Myrna still gone and the fire almost burnt out.

  “We can go into town.” Julian pulled a coat over his new clothes. “The markets are open all night.”

  The suggestion was enticing. Ever since she’d walked into the beautiful region, she’d wanted to see more of it despite the rude villagers wandering its streets in their big, warm fur coats. “Yes.” The drowsiness still plagued her voice. “Yes, I want to go.”

  Julian grabbed a handful of gold pieces and placed them in a small bag, then stuffed the bag into his pocket. “Ready?”

  She grabbed a coat from Myrna’s closet—a thick one without dirt or holes from fires—then followed Julian out the door.

  At night, the bright-gold atmosphere of the region was transformed into a deeper, richer gold outlined in silver as the warm glow of torchlights and fires along every corner illuminated everything, accented with the silver sliver of moonlight. The moon hung in the inky-black sky like it was a cut of paper teetering on a loose nail, and above a region thriving with light and music and shops and dancing, it was the loveliest she’d ever seen it.

  Julian was infatuated by it too. When she looked over at him, he was smiling.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.

  It was strange to think that such a beautiful thing could belong to such a region—one ruled by five wretched kings.

  Julian and Sathryn wandered through the crowds of people, crowds very unlike those in Deadland. People smiled, which was new, and they were satisfied with their products—dragon eggs from hatcheries and breeders, books from the book stalls, and art pieces from art galleries. A line of young men was selling warm, caramelized bread and boxes of chocolates, apples stacked on sticks, and goose legs.

  On a platform to the right, a cluster of musicians played a melody that sang over the noise of the crowd. Golden harps played by gold-dressed harpists, golden flutes played by gold-dressed flutists. Dancers twirling to the thrum of the music swayed through the crowds, circling around commoners and making them drop their party foods to dance with them. Sathryn yanked at Julian’s sleeve.

  “Julian, Julian! We should go dance!”

  Julian, looking around for a place selling blankets, shook his head at Sathryn like he was chastising a small child, but there was a smile on his face. “We’re looking for blankets, Sathryn.”

  She stared up at him. “I’ve never been to a place like this before. Pomek isn’t at all like this.” She pulled her mouth into a frown. “It’s so grand and beautiful! Don’t you miss it?”

  Julian sighed and looked away from her. Again, he was smiling.

  “Please?”

  No answer.

  “Please?”

  “Please?”

  “Ple—”

  “Okay, fine!” he shouted, but he was laughing as well. “Fine. We can dance. But we have to at least get the blankets first.”

  They bought two wool blankets from a stout old woman at the end of the street. She was also selling coats and pillows, which she tried to sell to them, but Julian turned her down. She didn’t look desperate for money—at least, Sathryn didn’t think so.

  Julian carried the bag of wool blankets in one hand and led Sathryn through the crowd with the other. She tried to ignore the fact that he was holding her hand. He’d grabbed it so casually that it hardly seemed as big a deal to him. When they reached the front of the stage, his hand still around hers, they watched the dancers once circling throughout the crowd gather back onstage. They were taking a break.

  “Aw,” Julian said with mock disappointment. “Looks like we missed the dancers.”

  “Of course not. They’re just taking a break. They’ll be dancing again soon.” The musicians resorted to playing slower music to fit the lack of dancers, who stood in the corner of the platform conversing and sipping wine. “Then, we can dance.”

  Julian rolled his eyes for what seemed like the millionth time in the past few days. “I don’t dance.”

  “Why not?” asked Sathryn. “It’s fun.”

  “You dance?”

  She shrugged. She wasn’t watching him, but rather the musicians onstage and wishing for the thousandth time that she could play an instrument. “I enjoy dancing. In Pomek, we had all sorts of festive house parties. My father, he invited friends and family over, and we would just dance.” The ease with which she talked about her father in that moment was unexpected.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julian smile. His hand was still around hers. “I don’t dance.”

  Sathryn was watching a harpist now, the way his fingers glided over the strings like water. It reminded her of the harp in Julian’s room back in Deadland. “You can play the harp.”

  He laughed. “Yes, you’re right. I can play the harp.”

  Sathryn looked over at him. The way he was smiling, she could see his teeth. It was hard to hate the teeth when they belonged to Julian. “You should get up there and play her harp.”

  Julian met her eyes and shook his head. “That would be rude of me.”

  “Not if you’re good. Unless . . . you’re afraid?”

  “Why would I be afraid of anything? Have you forgotten why we came here in the first place?” He’d tried to make it sound light and carefree, but it sounded sad more than anything else.

  The song was ending, so Sathryn nudged him. “Go get up there since you aren’t scared.”

  He stared at her for a second, contemplating whether he should succumb to her teasing. Then, he let go of her hand. As he climbed onstage, the musicians watched him with curious eyes. Though she couldn’t hear what he said to the harpist over the noisy crowd, the harpist handed him her harp, then lent him a chair. At the sight of this, many people in the crowd quieted, and eventually, the entire street was silent and looking up on stage.

  Julian’s eyes widened. His hands, positioned over the instrument’s strings, trembled.

  “What tune?” a flutist asked him.

  Julian hesitated. The man on drums behind everyone rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t know any.”

  “‘Urmuna,’” Julian said. His voice was timid but loud enough that everyone could hear it. “The melody for winter.” Sathryn gave him an encouraging smile. He rewarded her with a scowl.

  The musicians onstage nodded, the flutists bringing the flutes to their faces, the drummers setting their mallets, the lute players positioning their hands over their strings. And they were all watching Julian.

  Julian began to play. It started soft, slow, and simple, and though his hands still quivered, his closed eyes made it seem like he was at least trying to relax. Sathryn had never heard him play before, so listening to him astonished and delighted her so much that he could have played all the wrong notes and rhythms at wrong times, and she would have still been satisfied.

  The piece picked up pace. The second harp joined in, paired by the flutes, later drawing in the lutes and the drums to form one beautiful melody. For a while, nothing could be heard throughout the crowd other than comments of satisfaction coming from those around her. For a while, the streets rang with tranquility.

  In the moments following, they rang with panic.

  As the piece was reaching its climax, an arrow shot through the air, sailing over the crowd as if from a platform, and landing right into Julian’s harp.

  The ensemble stopped playing, and it was only then that Julian realized an arrow was stuck in his instrument. He stood in frozen fear for a second, just like the crowd below him and the musicians beside him, then everything erupted into chaos as more arrows rained from above and scattered along the st
age. Sathryn peered up, noticing an ink-black being soaring across the sky like a fish in water—except the being was huge, and would have been dismissed had Sathryn not noticed the way it cut out a chunk of stars and blanketed the moon . . . which meant it was a dragon.

  Julian leapt from the stage, the bag of blankets in his hands, and grabbed Sathryn’s hand, but this time, rather than standing around to watch the musicians and dancers, they plunged through the crowd to escape the arrows scattered among the people hurrying from the street.

  Sathryn, who on any other occasion couldn’t have run nearly as fast, raced alongside Julian, who, under the pressure of arrows, might not have slowed down for her convenience. They were heading straight for a line of tall evergreen trees shaded by the darkness behind a row of shops.

  As soon as they broke through the barrier of leaves and long branches, Julian slowed to a stop, panting and bending over his knees. Sathryn did the same, trying—and failing—to cough as quietly as she could.

  “Who—who—” she tried, but her lungs would not cooperate. “Who was that?”

  Julian struggled too despite his athleticism and agility. He held up a hand, silently asking her to wait, then sat on the ground. “I think they were Red Arrows, though they could’ve been guards.”

  When he pulled the blanket bag closer to him, she noticed an arrow was stuck into its side. Unable to speak, she pointed at the arrow, and Julian pulled it from the bag, frowning.

  He flipped it over in his hands as though looking for something. The arrow didn’t look special—long, narrow, and wooden. The tip was glass, which was strange, but not improbable, but by the way Julian was staring at it, there was something wrong with the arrow’s tip.

  “It’s poison.” He broke the arrow in half and tossed it to the ground in resentment. “They were trying to—” He stomped his foot, cursed, then stood and stared around himself to peer through the trees. “Trying to kill me.”

  “Did you see the dragon in the sky?” Sathryn asked.