Embers of Empire

by Michaela Strauther

  Colette looked over at Sathryn, who tried hard to ignore them all and throw her knives, and shrugged. “No offense, but she isn’t doing well.”

  Navier called from across the room, “Would you maybe try not saying that in front of the girl?”

  Sathryn pulled her knives from the wall and stared down at them in disbelief. Maybe they were faulty.

  “Sathryn, are you offended by me?”

  This time, Sathryn did ignore her and continued throwing her knives. The first one got closer to the center and she silently cheered for herself.

  From the corner of her eye, Sathryn saw Colette shrug. “See. She isn’t offended. It’s important for her to know when she isn’t doing well. How do you expect her to fight the kings with us when she can’t even take some criticism?”

  When no one said anything after that, Sathryn turned around. Julian had pulled Colette aside and was talking to her too softly for Sathryn to hear. Navier was still standing beside her, though, watching her last knife.

  “Navier.”

  He glanced up and smiled. “Yes?”

  “Can you listen in on them for me?” She hoped she wouldn’t come off as nosy.

  But Navier didn’t think much of it. He walked over to Colette and Julian as if he wanted to pipe in. Sathryn went back to throwing knives, chancing intermittent glances toward their hilariously conspicuous gossip.

  At first, Colette was laughing and playfully pushing Julian, but when Julian’s face got serious, she hardened herself. By the time they were finished talking and all walked over to Sathryn, none of them were joking. Colette passed her without a word, and Julian patted her shoulder, then went back to the center of the room to pick up his sword.

  Navier waited until both were gone to say something. “I didn’t know your father was in prison. Is he already on trial?”

  Sathryn, midway through another round of throwing faulty knives, stared at him. “You aren’t supposed to know that. Julian said that? Julian was telling her my story?” Julian had no right to tell anyone Sathryn’s story—especially not that pale Colette girl.

  “Oh—sorry—I didn’t realize . . .” He scratched his neck. “He only said it to make a point.”

  “Oh, well then. What was his point?” Sathryn dropped the knives to the ground and crossed her arms, glaring at Navier. “And tell me the truth.”

  Navier’s voice lowered. “He said that you are undertrained, and he knows you aren’t of much use now, but this mission is important to you. Then he talked about your mother and your brother and your father. How all of them are . . . missing. How you used to live in Pomek.” Navier looked uncomfortable.

  Sathryn tossed what knives she had left on the floor and slipped away into the guest wing. Navier watched her go. Julian practiced sword wielding with Colette.

  Sutra

  s he’d done yearly before he became independent from the drug, Sutra had been about to use it (which he’d neglected until then, when he was a week or two off his due date) when Anya entered his room.

  She had knocked while he was just about to slice open his skin. “It’s open,” he called. He had expected it to be one of his brothers.

  Anya entered holding a fire striker and a large chunk of flint. “I’m just lighting the fire.” She went to the fireplace and lit what remained of the wood with the sparks from the flint and steel. Anya had begun to leave when she finished, but then she caught sight of the way Sutra was holding the knife—against his own skin and almost hard enough to draw blood—and stopped to stare at him.

  “Should I be worried?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “No,” Sutra snapped. He’d been a bit irritable—even more than usual—because he was a week late on his drug and the animal of withdrawal was gnawing at him.

  She frowned. His short fuse, for some reason, drew her closer. “Yes,” she corrected.

  Before he could stop her—his drug-deprived muscles were weak—she had snatched up the little glass vial he kept his drug allotment in and was examining the contents. The drug was bright red in color, like blood. “Is this blood?” Her voice shook.

  “No,” he said and snatched it back. “It’s too thick to be blood.” He held up the vial and moved it around to show her; it moved like molasses. He set the bottle down on the table.

  “Then what is it?” Normally, had a maid been meddling in his business like this, he would have sent her to prison, or fired her at the very least. But this was Anya, so of course he did none of what he should have.

  He did nothing other than shake his head and wave her away. The knife, however, was still in his hand. He was waiting for her to leave. Replenishing the addiction had a strange effect on all the brothers, and he didn’t want her to see it. Like Iryse’s first time taking the drug into his blood, Sutra felt intoxicated for hours each time after he applied the drug to his cut, and he knew what his capabilities were under the influence. “You can leave now,” he muttered.

  With any of the other brothers, she would have followed his orders. She had gotten too comfortable with him now. She stared down at him with her arms crossed. “What is it?”

  “It’s none of your concern, is what it is! Now go!”

  He slammed his fist down on the table, making the vial teeter, fall, and strike the ground. The bright-red liquid pooled on the floor among shards of glass. He let out a growl and fell to the ground, swiping at the liquid with his fingers and trying to salvage what little he could. “Look what you’ve done!” he cried out. He was already feeling the effect of the lack of the drug, especially when he saw it staining the floor instead of tainting his blood.

  Anya had fallen beside him, and wrapping her arms around his torso, tried to pull him up, but he was too heavy for her. He felt the tears running down his face, felt the twinge in his bones at the sight of the beautifully merciless liquid that was hooked into his skin as if he were a fish. And she had ripped that hook right out of him.

  When she leaned down to help him again, his movements became mechanical. He jerked his head to face her, glaring into her moistened eyes, threw his hands around her throat, and squeezed.

  “Do you know what you have done?” His massive, strong hands squeezed harder. “What am I to do now?”

  Her hollow screeches racked his eardrums. Her fingers fluttered up to clutch at his hands, trying and failing to pull them from her neck. Her cheeks reddened, pigmented against her warm, brown skin, and when he finally let go, her body jerked underneath him and gasped desperately for air. Both of them were covered in the bright, thick drug.

  “That was my share of it,” he shouted. He could hardly see her from the haze of blackness beginning to coat his eyes, but from what he could see, she was scrambling away from him, still coughing and thirsty for air. As soon as she reached the door and ran out, Sutra collapsed on the ground, the black consuming him whole.

  When Sutra had woken up again, he was lying on a bed in the infirmary of the castle, naked under the blanket lying atop him, and he could hear voices coming from just outside the door.

  The first voice was loud and boisterous—not Iryse, but Tyru. “You will do as I say!”

  He heard the soft voice’s reply just as clearly through the door. Exquisite hearing was yet another “benefit” of the Lucifer’s Phoenix drug. “You know I always do as you say, and I never disobey any of you, but I can’t go in there—”

  “Why can’t you?” Tyru’s voice grew soft. Brewing.

  “Because—because he wouldn’t want me in there.”

  Sutra had a terrible headache. The throbbing in the very center of his heavy head had been unbearable and had made his head impossible to lift. He tried to bring his arm up from where it lay, but his arm was equally as heavy.

  “Why not? Would it have to do with you two fooling around?” There was a pause. “You think I wouldn’t notice? You think you’re sly enough to deceive my watchful eyes? You think that you can get away with that? Then you’re stupid! You’ll be punished! G
o in there and tend to him!”

  His voice, by the end of his short speech, had been too loud for Sutra’s sensitive condition, so he shut his eyes and willed his cloudy consciousness to do him a favor and block out the din.

  The door creaked open after a long period of silence. He kept his eyes shut, dreadfully knowing that it was Anya opening the door. He heard her light-footed steps padding across the squeaky wooden floors to his bed, felt her gentle hands check his pulse, then place a cool, wet cloth over his forehead. She was insufferably silent.

  “It was a drug,” he whispered past his hazy mind, his eyes still closed. “I’m not human. Did you know that?”

  When she didn’t respond, he opened his eyes. The lighting in the room was low, but enough to see Anya standing by the fire and stirring something in a big, iron pot.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Okay. Well, anyway, in case you weren’t aware, I’m not human. I look human—I used to be, in fact. But humans are mortal. I’m not. I took a drug a while ago, hundreds of years before now, and it changed me.” He didn’t know why he was telling her this. Perhaps it was his dazed mindset, staggering along the edge of the cliff of consciousness, which spoke against his will. “It changed me. I need that drug—it’s Lucifer’s Phoenix. I don’t need it anymore—if I stopped, I would still be as immortal and inhuman as I am now—but I need it because when I forget to take it on the same day every year, I go mad.” His yearning skin itched now, but he couldn’t raise his hand enough to scratch it. “It’s—it’s an addiction. It feels nice. So when you dropped it—when I knocked it over—I can’t remember . . .”

  She approached his bed again, silencing him, and handed him a cup of something warm, fragrant, and brown. Tea.

  Except he couldn’t hold it. “Can you put it to my lips? I can’t lift my arms.”

  It sounded like an excuse for her to do something for him, which was probably why she huffed and set the tea on the table. When he didn’t reach for it after a long time, she pulled him so that he was sitting up, and then she held the cup of tea to his lips. It was liquid lava down his throat, but he said nothing about it. He’d given her enough suffering—it was time he took on his own.

  When the last drop of tea hit his stomach, she set the empty cup on the side table and removed the cloth from his forehead, tossing it on the floor. Then, she sat in the chair by the bed, crossed her legs, and stared at him. Faint purple bruises mottled her neck.

  The intensity in her eyes and the color at her throat was too much for him. He turned away from her and prayed she would leave, but she didn’t. And she didn’t seem like she wanted to speak either.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured, still facing away. “Truly.” The tea was already making him feel better.

  “I’m not here to talk.” Anya’s voice was strong and unwavering. “I’m waiting for King Tyru to bring you a new vial of the drug. I’m supposed to give it to you.”

  Her last words were cold, as if she now despised all thoughts of the drug.

  He closed his eyes in shame, for even though his prickly skin and his dry mouth and his heavy head still wanted the drug in his veins, he now despised all thoughts of it as well.

  So by the time Tyru barged into the door, handed Anya a new, full glass vial of the Phoenix, and left, slamming the door behind him, Sutra was determined not to take it.

  Anya had the knife near his arm.

  “No,” he said as forcefully as he could, but in his weakened state, it wasn’t very strong at all.

  She rolled her eyes. “I thought you said you need it.”

  “I don’t want it anymore. I don’t like the way it makes me.” The words slipped from his mouth.

  “If I don’t give it to you, your brothers will not like it. They’ll know something is wrong and they’ll blame me.” She brought the knife near his skin again.

  The tea had helped just enough for him to pull his arm away and block her knife. “No,” he said again. “No, no, no . . . no . . .”

  “Fine!” she shouted. The sound ricocheted around his hollow head. She threw the knife on the floor and turned away. “You think—you think that you can fool me into thinking you’re something you’re not and then—you choked me!” she screamed, whirling back to face him. “I thought for a second that you were the only one out of your brothers that—but you—”

  “It’s the drug.” He had to say something that would make her stop yelling. “Help me quit it,” he said, and he meant it. “Help me quit it.”

  She was breathing so heavily. “I have a husband. And a child . . .”

  “Help me quit it. I’ll make sure my brothers don’t know.”

  He didn’t think she would agree. But maybe she saw something in his eyes—honesty, adamancy, desperation—because after a minute of staring at him once again, she nodded and sat back down in the chair by the bed.

  Sathryn

  erhaps it was pathetic that Sathryn had resorted to lying on her bed and doing nothing productive instead of staying out in the training room and throwing her knives, but she was no longer in the mood to practice. And even though she didn’t want to admit that Colette was making her so pathetic, it was at least mostly true.

  In a way, she was being productive—she was reading. It was the book that Julian had given to her the second day they got to his old home, before she knew of a Colette or a Navier. She hadn’t started it yet; training and her mother’s absence had cluttered her mind too much for a book, but perhaps the book would do more uncluttering than she thought.

  Sathryn cleared around ten pages before the door to the room creaked open, revealing the tall figure of Navier, still holding his shiny silver sword. He was smiling.

  The bed sank in as Navier sat, leaving a comfortable block of space between them. “What are you reading?”

  She held up the book to him.

  “Sises and Eruma,” he said with a wide smile. “One of my favorites.”

  “Seems to be everyone’s favorite,” Sathryn muttered. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “It depends on where you’re from. It’s a popular story in Kingsland. Where are you from?”

  She set the book on the side table. “Pomek.”

  He nodded. “I’ve never been. Then again, I haven’t been anywhere besides here.”

  She waited for him to say more, say something that might allude to why he’d come to the room to begin with. “So . . . Why did you come in here?” She hoped she didn’t sound too rude.

  “Oh!” He laughed as though remembering something. “Right. Julian wanted me to come in and ask if you were okay. Well—I was going to come talk with you anyway—you know, just to talk—and he asked to me to make sure you were all right on my way out.”

  The gesture, she guessed, should have flattered her, but instead, she overthought it. “Why couldn’t Julian come ask me himself?”

  “He’s with Colette.”

  Sathryn picked up her book again in exasperation. “Oh. That’s fine, I guess.”

  Navier laughed at her expression, nudging her teasingly. “No, not like that. They’re training.”

  That didn’t make her feel any better, so she said nothing.

  “Julian and Colette—they’ve known each other a long time—”

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  He rolled his eyes. “They aren’t even interested in each other like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like romantically. Like what you’re so jealous of.” The smile took the accusation off his words.

  Sathryn set the book back down on the table and frowned at him. “I’m not interested in him like that. I came with him because I’m trying to reach my family. Plus, I didn’t have a choice. Why would I be interested in him like that? That is ridiculous. We are friends, and that’s all I want, and—”

  He wasn’t persuaded. “Whatever. My point is that he and Colette aren’t like that. At least, I don’t think . . . They�
�ve known each other since they first learned to walk. No children would play with Julian because of his tiger teeth—she was the only one that would talk to him. She was kind of made fun of too for having skin as pale and hair as red as hers. So they became friends.”

  Sathryn couldn’t hold back her laugh. “Tiger teeth?”

  “Yeah,” he said with that untethered smile, “you know what I’m talking about. He used to be so insecure about those things that he was always quiet. Didn’t talk unless he needed to.”

  “That’s amusing because all he seems to do now is talk.”

  When Navier smiled again, it was tinged with a hint of sadness. “Yes. That’s now. Before, he was quiet, mellow. You can still see it in him sometimes, but after his mother died and his father became—well—what he is now, he kind of realized that he had to start speaking up. Especially once he moved to Deadland and became ‘Mr. Ajasek.’ Colette and I haven’t seen him in at least nine years, perhaps more, perhaps less, but regardless, they miss each other.”

  Sathryn still wasn’t sure if she liked Colette—her haughtiness, her perfection—but at least she knew a bit more. Now, she felt like a fool for dragging attention to herself while Julian was busy rejuvenating his relationship with lost friends. “I feel like an idiot.”

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “Do you want to go back in there and train?”

  “No. I feel too much like an idiot.”

  “Do you want to read your book?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you want to read it alone?”

  Sathryn didn’t want him to leave. His smile was so contagious. “No.”

  She grabbed her book from the side table and sat close enough to Navier that he could see the words too.

  By the time Julian and Colette were done training, Sathryn and Navier had fallen asleep across her bed. Sathryn was on her side, Navier was on his back, and the book was lying between them. Sathryn cracked open her eyes when she heard Julian’s elated voice as he barged into the room, laughing and talking with Colette, who spoke loud enough to deafen the dead.