Embers of Empire

by Michaela Strauther

Her own wounds?

  Sathryn didn’t even feel anything until Colette brought it up, but once she revealed it, the adrenaline ebbed away and left her with a stinging pain in her forehead and along her arms. All along her sleeves, the fabric was tattered and cut through to her skin, which was now littered in red slits. They stung, but they were also small and shallow and didn’t need any of Julian’s painful cream to heal them. She then put a hand to her forehead. Her fingers were wet and sticky with her blood.

  “Come here,” Julian said. He was sitting up now against the doorway with his legs stuck straight out in front of him.

  Sathryn shot him a look, but went to sit beside him anyway. “Shouldn’t you wait until that dries?” She pointed at the salve covering his wound.

  He shrugged. “I’ll be all right. Now come closer so I can look at that.” He indicated her forehead.

  She leaned into him and tried to look anywhere but his face, which was alarmingly close and focused on her. He rinsed his hands with Colette’s canteen and then cleaned Sathryn’s forehead free of blood. He laughed when it dripped down her nose and dried her face with a dry piece of his vest, then used his hands to tilt her head and inspect the cut.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It stings a little.”

  “A little?”

  “Yes, Julian, a little. What do you want me to say?”

  “Why are your eyes flicking around like that? Are you doing that? Or is it your injury—”

  Sathryn rolled her eyes and then stared pointedly at Julian. He was still close. “My eyes are fine.”

  He smirked and grabbed the green salve. “You need this.”

  “No—Julian, I don’t want it—no—no—”

  He managed to wrestle her arms down and tilt the liquid into her cut. It didn’t burn like she thought it would, but Julian said that was because her cut was shallower than his and Colette’s.

  Now when she brought her fingers to her head, they came away green. “Thanks. A lot,” Sathryn muttered.

  “My pleasure.”

  “That was sar—”

  “Can we figure out where we are?” Colette grumbled. “Then you two can go back to flirting.” She was wrapping her leg with a cloth ripped from her shirt while staring at Sathryn and Julian as if she were sick of them both already.

  Sathryn’s face boiled. She squirmed from Julian’s grip and at least three feet away from him.

  Julian, however, seemed entertained, and he laughed so hard, Sathryn feared he would start bleeding again. She chanced a glance at him and then whipped her head away the second he caught her. Then, he pointed straight opposite of the door he sat against. “That’s a tunnel,” he said, still chuckling. Using the wall as leverage, he struggled to his feet and pulled on his shirt so that it was still open in the front. “Let’s follow it.”

  He didn’t seem scared at all.

  But Sathryn was. “Maybe we can eat first,” she suggested, pulling an orange from her coat.

  “Eat it while we walk.” He grabbed a torch from the wall and his bow and quiver from where they lay strewn on the floor, then he began walking. “Is telling Sathryn to eat flirting too, Colette?” Sathryn wanted to grab a torch and light herself on fire. Colette rolled her eyes and limped after him.

  The walls of the tunnel were bare and made of orange clay. Chandeliers made of plant roots instead of gold dangled from the wall, and every so often, a bug skittered across the unpaved dirt floor. The ground declined as they walked too. Sathryn thought she was imagining it before Colette pointed it out and suggested it was an escape passageway. The farther they walked and the longer they descended, the ranker the odor of stale moisture and stagnant air got, eventually becoming so strong against Sathryn’s nose that her stomach threatened pushing up the orange she’d just eaten.

  The narrow walls of the tunnel widened at a fork in the pathway. There were no clues as to where each path would take them, or at least none that Sathryn saw, and if Colette and Julian saw anything, they didn’t say much to let her know.

  Julian leaned toward the tunnel to the left, which was just as dark as the one to the right; the light of his torch only illuminated so much. “Which way?” he asked.

  A pair of rats scampered from the left tunnel. “Right,” Sathryn said.

  Julian smiled, but he made his way to the right tunnel. “Right it is.”

  The tunnel was just like the one they’d walked through before for a while. Or maybe time only ambled along because Colette’s wounded leg slowed them down.

  Then, when the entrance to the right tunnel was far behind, and not much could be seen ahead save the glow of the torch and opaque darkness after that, Sathryn heard something.

  It was so soft that she almost disregarded it, but the sound kept going—kept growing—with each of her steps. She paused and whipped her head around for the source.

  Julian turned to look at her. “What?”

  “I hear something.”

  He sighed and marched back over to her. “I told you, that head wound is more serious than—”

  “No,” she said and swatted his hands away. “Listen . . .”

  He and Colette paused and craned their ears up and toward the other end of the tunnel.

  “I hear it,” Colette said. She glanced over at Sathryn and smiled, but then she looked away as if smiling and being nice to Sathryn were a mistake.

  Julian rolled his eyes. But as they walked farther into the tunnel, the noise became too loud for anyone who wasn’t deaf not to hear, and Julian perked up, eyes widening. “I hear it,” he said, but then his enthusiasm died down as quickly as it had come. “But—what is it?”

  Now, in the distance, they could see a light shining opposite them. It wasn’t moving, which meant there was no one coming toward them, which—hopefully—ruled out Julian’s suggestion of the noise being guards. So they walked farther.

  But now, there was a new stench mixing in with the must of the air—it was the musk of bodies. Sathryn could recognize the smell from anywhere now, as it was one of the first things she had noticed about Deadland. Hordes of bodies, unwashed for quite a while, crammed together in a tight space—that was what she smelled now, except, unlike Deadland, there was no heavy smoke and mountain air to dampen the scent from her nostrils.

  When they reached the peak of the sound—and the peak of the stench—they also reached the peak of the other light, which revealed rows and rows of cells lining both sides of the tunnel. And within the walls were people—everywhere—perhaps hundreds (thousands?) of people bursting from behind the thick, iron bars of the cells. Each cell would have been plenty for perhaps two dozen people, but instead, at least fifty people were packed into a cell lined with iron walls and an iron floor. Their bodies were thin with malnourishment. Their hair was like feathers. They were all sweating and wailing across the room, some of them throwing themselves against the thick bars until their thin skin tore and they collapsed against the floor with a hollow thump—perhaps unconscious, perhaps not. The noise she had heard earlier was this—the cries of hundreds of people, fetid and close and miserable.

  “We’ve just entered the prison,” Julian whispered.

  Sutra

  he door to the prison slammed shut before Sutra could get to it, and just as he pushed against it to throw the door open, it locked from the inside—he could hear the light click—which meant no one would be able to open it from the outside.

  Iryse would be furious that they had gotten away.

  The guards reached the door seconds after he did, the one guard in front of the rest a tall man with curly, red hair and pale skin. He’d been the one to call out to the invaders to go right—right, which led them into the prison. The prison that could not be opened from the outside if the inside were locked. From the outside, it just looked like a simple stone wall.

  Sutra looked down at the redheaded guard. He had three options: He could punish the guard himself for letting the invaders escape, as it seemed obvious to Sutra
that he was working with the invaders and therefore was a traitor; he could excuse the guard; or he could turn the guard over to Iryse and let him decide what to do. Of all his options, none of them seemed like good ideas, especially since no matter what he did, Iryse would find out one way or another—through General Thoro, perhaps, or by the other dozens of guards that now stood behind General Thoro, waiting for further instruction from him. The redheaded guard peered up at him anxiously, but not quite remorsefully.

  “Who were they?” Sutra asked.

  The man shook his head. He was trying to play clueless, and it almost made Sutra laugh. “I have no idea, Your Majesty.”

  “Then why did you tell them to run into the prison?”

  “I never did su—”

  “Save your lies,” Sutra muttered. He would have to compile a story for Iryse, and he was still debating whether he wanted to tell the truth. He could not have more guards going against them, that was for sure. And Sutra didn’t know the intention of the invaders—if they were here to kill, or just to take gold pieces and jewels, because both had happened before, and if they were here to kill, Sutra needed to stop them. But if he turned the man in . . . he couldn’t even imagine all the sick things Iryse would do to the man.

  But he couldn’t just let the guard get away with treason, could he?

  If Sutra didn’t turn the guard into Iryse himself, he could imagine what Iryse would do to Sutra once he found out through General Thoro, who looked as though he already wished to do nothing more than tell Iryse of what happened. Iryse couldn’t hurt Sutra, not really. Iryse had this idea in his head that he was stronger and more powerful than any one of the brothers, which may have been true for Nya, the youngest and—even with the drug—the least confrontational. But it wasn’t true for Sutra, the second oldest, the one who was just as strong as Iryse was on any given day. No, Iryse would not hurt him or try to kill him, but he would undermine him by doing little things that he knew made Sutra angry—like torturing prisoners. Like opening the Phoenix Arena during the Spring Festival. Like making rulings without him.

  “Thoro,” Sutra began, “take our friend to Iryse, please. Tell him what he did. Tell him accurately. And then tell him I want to help decide the punishment.” He felt slightly guilty, especially when he looked down at the desperate guard’s face again as he was dragged away by Thoro and two other men, but Sutra let them leave down the hallway anyway.

  The other guards stared up at him, waiting for instruction. “As far as I know,” said Sutra, “there is no way to get into the prison other than the main doorway. Iryse may know another way through, so a dozen of you may report to him. The others—just rest for now. There isn’t much we can do until Iryse comes.”

  Some of the guards left, but the others stared speechlessly at him, as if they couldn’t believe they were doing nothing while infiltrators wandered the castle. But Sutra said nothing more, instead walking back into the library and closing the doors behind him.

  Sathryn

  ulian walked farther into the light. The prisoners didn’t seem to care much, not even when Sathryn and Colette followed him, staying far from the rusted bars and stretching hands. It wasn’t as if the prisoners didn’t see them—their eyes tracked Sathryn down as if she were their next meal—but it was like most didn’t care enough to pause their droning voices.

  It was like that for a while. But then, as though realizing something, the prisoners quieted—some of them still sat in the corner and mumbled to themselves, but Sathryn imagined they weren’t lucid and sane enough to realize the rest were quiet.

  A woman tried to grab Julian, but he dodged the hand and grappled for the sword at his belt. The woman, a scrawny, old figure with a shaved head and ashen skin, laughed and stuck out her hands through the bars again.

  “Where are they?” she asked. One of her eyes was clouded over. “They’ve come to eat us!”

  “Who?” Julian was still staring warily about the room for stray hands.

  “The kings! Who else?” she cackled, showcasing a few brown, lonely teeth. Then her face went blank as she switched her head around the room. “Where are they? They never bring new prisoners alone—where are they? Where are they? Where are they? Where—”

  “We aren’t new prisoners,” Colette said. She had gone whiter than she already was with disgust. “We invaded.”

  Now all the prisoners were laughing.

  “No . . .” whispered the woman. “No one invades. How crazy—crazy—crazy do you think we are?”

  Very.

  The woman stared at Julian again, her one visible pupil dissecting his face. “Invaders . . . you all look too young—why would you invade with two girls with you, anyway? What’s your name, young, handsome man, and what are you really doing here?” Her voice broke into a harsh, dry cough for a minute, and by the time she pulled her shaky, knobby hands away from her lips, they came away speckled with blood. She didn’t seem bothered by it at all, instead wiping them against the bars of the cage and all over the rags she wore as clothing.

  Julian watched the woman in disgust. “Uh—Julian. Ajasek.”

  The prisoners whooped out again. “Lies!” they shouted in broken voices. “Lies! Lies, lies, lies!”

  “Be quiet, be quiet!” called a man. He was in a large cell opposite the half-blind woman, surrounded by too many others and wearing nothing more than a pair of torn pants and an assembly of interlaced scars across his chest. It was his turn to speak, and his eyes rested on Sathryn. All their eyes, in fact, were resting on Sathryn. “You haven’t spoken yet,” the man said. “What is this? Are you new maids? Where is your uniform? New guards? Where are your gray cloaks?”

  Sathryn shook her head. “We aren’t maids or guards. We invaded.”

  The man narrowed his eyes. “Okay. Fine. Maybe you aren’t lyin’ there, but that boy isn’t no Ajasek—no way. All the good ones died after Anya and the ones left ran off to Deadland. Now they’re all crossbreeds—those aren’t the good ones.”

  Sathryn saw Julian flinch, but he quickly recovered. “Anya—you know that name?”

  “Who doesn’t?” croaked the woman from behind, sparking voices from the rest of the prison.

  “We miss her like hell.”

  “She was supposed to save us.”

  “She was my mother,” Julian said.

  But the man wasn’t convinced. “I told you. Aren’t any more good ones. They all up and left the minute poor Anya died.”

  Colette laughed. “Don’t mind them. None of the people here are sane enough to know much of anything.”

  Julian still looked upset, but he took Colette’s advice and stayed quiet.

  That’s when Sathryn remembered. This was the prison. And if her family were anywhere, shouldn’t they have been in the prison? Could her father be one of the foul, dirty, sickly people here?

  Sathryn pulled at Julian’s shirt to get his attention. He glanced down at her. In front of them, Colette was arguing with the man who insisted that Julian wasn’t Anya’s son, as the man had never stopped rambling on about it.

  My father. She mouthed the words to Julian, who nodded, glancing about as if trying to find her father himself. Or maybe he was trying to find the sanest person to ask. Neither way was working well for him.

  So he called out to all of the prisoners. “Are you all awaiting trial? Or are you awaiting your . . .” His voice trailed off. Executions.

  “Trial!” shouted the blind woman, along with many others around her. “The real prisoners are back that way.” She pointed back the way they came. The fork in the path.

  When Julian glanced back down at her, Sathryn shook her head. Etzimek had told her that her father’s trial was in three weeks. It hadn’t already been three weeks—had it?

  “Are you going to tell us how you all got here?” asked someone lost in the masses.

  Colette rolled her eyes, sighed, then relayed the story of how they snuck in, beginning with the infiltration of the back wall of the castle
and ending with them all being chased into the prison. She left out Navier—no point in including him if he wasn’t here now—but she did add detail of the castle itself, probably because no one would believe them otherwise. But by the time her story was finished, Sathryn was getting impatient. They needed to find her father and leave before the kings found a way to break through the locked stone door leading to the prison, and once the kings were inside, Sathryn imagined there weren’t many places to run to if they were deep underground.

  At least most of the prisoners believed them now. The damp underground chamber was filled with cheers and claps by the time Colette finished, and she bowed in response, receiving more thunderous applause. The old man who had been unconvinced that Anya was Julian’s mother was unconvinced of their whole story, but Sathryn couldn’t hear him over the prisoners’ raucous shouts.

  But Sathryn was also not paying much attention. She was peering over heads of the crowd, hoping to see a familiar face somewhere. After all the noise quieted down, Julian called out again.

  “We are looking for a few people by the name of Bassira,” he said. “An older man, a young man a year or so older than me, and a woman. Have you seen anyone like that?”

  “Etzimek, the younger man, he is tall with skin a little darker than mine, and he has black hair and gray eyes and—”

  “Nope!” shouted the half-blind woman. “Nope, nope, nope! And believe me, if he were down here awaiting trial, I would know him. I got a lot of time to kill getting to know people. But if he is done with his trial, he’s farther down that way, like I said. But be careful down there. They’re the real crazies back there. Some of them been back there since they were as young as you and now, they’re old as me or older. Real crazy. Mad—mad—mad—mad—crazy, crazy, crazy . . .”

  She kept muttering about the prisoners, who were apparently much crazier than her, even as a shriek erupted from far down the tunnel and reverberated through the walls, pinging in Sathryn’s ears. In fact, none of them seemed surprised.

  “Crazy—crazy, crazy . . .”