Embers of Empire

by Michaela Strauther

  Although her words did not do much to help, Sathryn smiled and nodded anyway. For a while, as long as the fear of the torture chamber somewhere around them would allow, Sathryn sat there, resting her weighted head against Julian’s warm chest, right where his heart and lungs paired for a soothing lullaby that would have lulled her to sleep had another scream not racked the tunnel again. Sleep wasn’t much of an option.

  “We have to go,” Sathryn whispered.

  They ran again until they reached the stone doorway leading back out of the prison, the door that Julian had locked from the inside. “Wait.” Julian put his face flat against the door so that an ear was pushed against it.

  Colette chuckled bitterly. “Do you seriously think that you will be able to hear anything past that stone doorway?”

  Having obviously not heard more than rock particles, Julian shrugged and backed away. “It was worth a try.”

  Colette rolled her eyes and handed him the torch as she approached the door. “I’m going to open it,” she whispered. But just as her hands rested on the latch, Sathryn spoke.

  “Wait—what if there is someone behind the door, even if we cannot hear them?”

  “I think I would rather take my chances with whatever—whoever—is out there rather than the kings torturing that poor woman back there. Wouldn’t you?”

  Sathryn hesitated, but nodded anyway.

  As soon as the door swung open, the only sound preceding it the click of the latch and Sathryn’s heavy breathing, a horde of guards flew into the entrance like a swarm of armed and ready hornets, all their swords scraping from their metal sheaths as they stepped into the tunnel, which was now awash with light from the door’s opening. Kicking and screaming and at the brunt of it all, Colette was thrown over the shoulder of a thick guard with sausages for hands and a melon head, someone who wasn’t at all affected by Colette’s attempts to punch or tear at him with her teeth and nails, as the swords at her belt were inaccessible to her. The man, to Sathryn’s alarm, cut off her breath with one hand at her throat.

  Unable to see or hear Julian in the masses, she rushed through the crowd, slipping under and chopping at arms that tried to grab her, and jabbed at the man holding Colette with the sharp blade of her sword. But he was too quick. His free hand was a viper, darting out to snatch the sword from her grasp while his foot knocked her to the ground. She grabbed the throwing knives at her waist and aimed for the man. Two of the three hit two people—although neither one of the people was the man with Colette over his shoulder, who was receding farther into the tunnel and almost out of sight. She rushed after him again, but someone from behind grabbed both of her arms and wrenched her back so hard and so abruptly that she fell to the ground.

  The last thing she saw before blacking out was the hilt of a sword raised high above her head.

  Sutra

  t was Nya who confronted him this time.

  Having long since left room KH4 and dealt with wandering sentries, Sutra was in the music room, a room on the fourth floor of the castle, playing—or trying to play—the harp. Anya had taught him—or tried to teach him—years ago, but he never got used to the small, too-close-together-for-his-large-hands strings, and therefore had trouble playing it very well. But he’d been trying anyway when Nya burst through the music-room doors with a smile stretched across his face. Sutra didn’t stop plucking the strings.

  “What is it, Nya?” he asked his youngest brother impatiently. Did he ever get time alone anymore? Someone was always barging into the room he was in just as he was beginning to immerse himself in being alone.

  “What is it, Nya?” he repeated.

  “We caught the intruders,” Nya said. “They opened up the prison doors and the guards flooded through and caught them!”

  Now Sutra stopped playing. “Wonderful,” he said. “Where are they?”

  Nya walked farther into the room. “The guards took them to Iryse, as were the orders.”

  Sutra’s eyes widened. Orders? Sutra had told them to come to him if something happened, not Iryse. Then again, Iryse had told the guards and all the brothers to report to him if the intruders were found—and they’d chosen to listen to Iryse.

  Sutra placed the harp on the seat next to him and leaned forward, now worried for the outcome of the intruders. “Isn’t Iryse in the prison?”

  Nya nodded. “In the torture chamber.”

  “Nya! Do you not realize what this means? He is going to torture the prisoners! This is why I told the guards to report to me.” Sutra stood and made his way to his brother, who, even after four hundred or so years, still found a way to be dependent and naïve.

  “What does it matter? They are intruders . . . Why do you worry?”

  “You act as if my distaste for torture confuses you. We have been over this too many times, Nya. You know how I feel about Iryse and his torture. There are better ways to punish.”

  Nya rolled his eyes and shook his head as if it were all a joke to him. “Sutra, if we do not exert our power through punishment, the people may think we are softening and try to overthrow us more.”

  Sutra could swear he’d heard those same words from Iryse before. “But does that mean we must be cruel? I thought you felt the same way I did?”

  “I have been thinking about it all lately,” Nya muttered. “I have been thinking that maybe you are wrong, not Iryse. Iryse has been providing solutions to the rebels, and all you do is go against him. I think you are just opposing him because you can, not because you have any real solutions—”

  “Do you think we would even have rebels if Iryse were not so vicious—”

  “I wasn’t finished!” Nya boomed. He’d never spoken like that before, especially not to Sutra. “For four hundred years you have gone along with us and our plans. Sure, you have hung back a little bit, just as I have, but you have always come through at the end. But in the last decade or so, you have become so insatiable in your quest for resistance that even I cannot agree with you anymore. And you have weaned yourself from the drug . . . You go back and forth and back and forth, and it is hard to keep up, Sutra. Iryse—he’s stable in his ways—he knows what he wants. He has always wanted the same things. You once asked me why the rest of us brothers follow in his footsteps rather than in our own footsteps. Well, Sutra, I will tell you: Iryse is reliable. He’s headstrong. And we are still living in this world because of him and the Lucifer’s medicine he gave us. But you . . . you are just trying to tear us all apart.” It was silent after that for a quick moment. “You are softening,” Nya added.

  “And you are hardening.”

  Nya turned away and stood in silence for a long while. Then, “This is all beside the point.” His voice had lowered and relaxed. “Iryse wants you to lead in inquisition.”

  Sutra tried to give Nya the blankest and driest stare he could muster, but Nya would not even give him the satisfaction of looking at him. “I will not participate in torture.”

  “You don’t have to,” Nya responded through clenched teeth. “Inquiring means asking questions, in case you were unsure. You may choose on your own if you would or would not like to force out the answers. Is that okay with you?” Nya’s voice had a heavy concentration of condescension.

  “Do not speak to me as if I’m a child.” Sutra grabbed the harp again. “I’m older than you.”

  Nya rolled his eyes. “Are you coming or not?”

  Sutra did not reply, only plucked more notes across the harp. He heard Nya sigh and begin walking from the room. “Then I better hurry back down before Iryse gets carried away with that Ajasek boy . . .”

  Sutra stopped playing and looked up. Nya had said it partially to himself. Perhaps Sutra had heard him wrong, but even as Sutra thought it, he knew he’d heard him perfectly. “You said Ajasek.”

  Nya kept walking toward the door. “I did.”

  Sutra followed him.

  They entered the doors of the prison, where Sutra could see what carnage was left of the capture of the invader
s—though carnage seemed a strong word. There were puddles of blood and broken arrows and chipped blades strewn along the floor, and there was one dead guard lying slumped in the corner, but other than that, not much lay left to prove there had been any real struggle.

  Nya grabbed a torch from a wall and led Sutra through the tunnel in silence. Sutra always avoided the tunnel to the prison at all costs, more so in the last decade than in the years where he still leaned on the drug as his rock. It was just as he remembered it, though—the same dank, musty dirt walls and floors, the same decline farther into the earth, the same radiance of heat the farther they went.

  At the fork in the tunnel, Nya turned right. “What is so special about the name Ajasek?” Nya asked.

  Sutra still had no intention of telling Nya anything about his romantic affiliation with Anya Ajasek. “They are a famous rebel family,” he said instead.

  Nya eyed him suspiciously but continued walking.

  Sutra glanced over at him and smiled. Even if they had just argued, even if Nya was becoming disconcertingly more and more like Iryse, Sutra still felt an overpowering sense of love for his young brother. It was rare that Sutra thought back to his childhood—too long ago, too painful—but when he did, the memories always brought with them a satisfying nostalgia to soften the pain.

  He felt that now as he remembered all his brothers as young, naïve, and carefree little boys, especially Nya. Iryse had always been a bit of a commander—always wanting the highest horse or the reddest apple or the shiniest pair of shoes. Rowyn and Tyru were always together and were therefore content as long as the other one was. They were usually quiet and reclusive, but they also liked dancing and loved to put on their own shows for Mother and Father. Sutra, though he was five years older than Nya, got close to his youngest brother very quickly. Nya wasn’t like the others, somehow. Always sweeter than the rest. Before Nya was born, Sutra tried keeping up with Iryse, who loved having his own worshipper already. But as soon as Nya was old enough to run around and talk and be more than just a baby, he meant a lot more to Sutra than Iryse did when it came to which of his brothers he wanted to play with. Nya was whom he chased after whenever they played in the yard surrounding the castle. Nya was always beside him whenever their mother scolded them for getting mud on their new and expensive clothes. Nya was the one giving sweets to him whenever he was sick. Nya was the one that giggled at his jokes. Nya was all smiles. Nya was all happiness.

  And now, Nya was walking beside him four hundred years later, one of the five fierce rulers of all six regions, a Dragon King. Now, Nya was all austerity.

  They passed through the long stretches of large, iron cells crowded with reeking bodies, the most notable quality of all of them the morose expression they wore. As Sutra and Nya hurried through, the noise the prisoners had made before they saw the kings died down to a strong, loud silence.

  Then, they passed through the single cages of those awaiting torture.

  Somehow, seeing individual faces hit Sutra much harder in his conscience than seeing the masses of prisoners.

  The door to the torture room was a simple, oak door with the Dragon King insignia carved into it—a circle of five crowns and a dragon rising out of the center.

  Nya opened the door.

  It took Sutra a moment to realize what was going on.

  From where he stood, everything looked the same as it had when he last came down years ago—the same strange torturing contraptions, the same tubes of various substances lining a wall.

  And then there was a sharp scream, and Sutra knew that everything was just wrong.

  The rest of his brothers stood in the room. Iryse stood near a young man on a wheel, Rowyn stood over a young woman with bright-red hair on a blunt-spike iron table, and Tyru stood next to another young woman dangling from the ceiling in cuffs around her wrists.

  In complete shock, Sutra watched Tyru, whip in hand, slap a long, leather strap across the dangling girl’s back, releasing a loud, sharp crack. The girl looked as though she had gotten to the point of half consciousness, as she wasn’t screaming. Silent tears streamed down her face, and every time Tyru whipped her, she tensed and let out a weak sigh.

  The red-haired girl on the table was the source of the screaming. Rowyn was by her leg with a short, thick knife and was pricking her skin with it over and over and over again, creating a bloody mess that would soon become a mean set of scars.

  The young man—the Ajasek boy, perhaps?—was strapped to a large, wooden wheel and spinning. Iryse had the wheel whipping around ridiculously fast, and when it slowed to a stop, Iryse laughed while the boy retched. Iryse then took up a set of tubes with blades stuck in the bottom, which he slid over each of the young man’s fingers, causing him to cry out and squirm his body about the wooden wheel.

  Sutra wanted to retch too.

  “Stop!” Sutra commanded. His voice cracked, but he did not let the strength in it waver. When none of the brothers stepped away, he tore through the chamber, pulling his brothers away from the intruders. He ripped the tubes from the boy’s fingers, then snatched the whip from Tyru’s hands, and then yanked the knife from Rowyn.

  He turned to the four of his brothers. “What is this?”

  His brothers stared at him for a long time, as if it was news to them that Sutra did not approve of any of their torture methods. “What is this?” he asked again, harsher this time.

  Having found his words, Iryse replied, “What does it look like, brother? You are perfectly capable of deducing what your eyes see.” His words were paired with a smug grin.

  “Are you going to do the inquisition or not? This is how we do inquisitions. This is how we will continue to do the inquisition, and if you do not approve, you will not lead the inquisition, and Iryse will instead. He was trying to give you a chance,” Tyru said.

  “A chance for what?”

  “A chance to prove you haven’t become a rebel yourself,” said Rowyn.

  Sutra huffed out a laugh. “I will do the inquisition, but I will not do it like this. If that means that I’m a rebel now, a traitor to myself because I’m ruling too—then so be it. Burn me at the stake for treason, if you must. Because I will do it my way.”

  Marching forward, Tyru seemed ready to refute, but Iryse hauled him back. Iryse was staring at Sutra as if calculating in his mind how he should deal with him, and he carried on like so for quite a while.

  Then, his mouth quirked up at the corners. “Of course, brother. Do you remember when I told you I would not doubt your word as long as you didn’t challenge mine? This is me doing so. I trust that you will handle this well, yes?”

  Iryse seemed a bit too gracious. “Yes,” Sutra responded.

  “All is well then.” He turned to the other three brothers, all looking at him and waiting for his next word. “Sutra will lead the inquisition.”

  “And I want the rest of you out,” Sutra added. If Iryse was going to be gracious, Sutra was going to take advantage of it. And how was he going to get a chance to talk to the Ajasek boy if they were in the same room? He wanted to talk to the intruders, not torment them. From the sound of the groans and cries coming from behind him, they had already had enough torment.

  Iryse raised an eyebrow, but he acquiesced regardless. “And he will be alone as he does so. We trust him, correct?”

  The other brothers nodded. Their eyes rested on Sutra as they filed out the door, slamming the oak behind them.

  Sutra waited a while before he moved from where he stood. Part of the reason he waited was because he wanted to make sure the brothers were far away enough not to hear him, but it was also because he had no idea what to do next. He was in the room, alone, as he’d wanted, but the three people behind him in agony made him want to melt away in the heat of the room out of pure guilt.

  He worked up courage to turn around. All three of the intruders were too dazed to look at him. Sutra walked to the corner of the room, where a string threaded through the ceiling hung down. He pulled it
, meaning a bell was ringing throughout the medic’s bedroom and was therefore signaling him to come down to the torture chamber and tend to some poor soul. For now, Sutra knew he had to do all he could. Maybe the invaders were trying to kill him, but it wasn’t as though he couldn’t understand why.

  He walked to the young man, perhaps an Ajasek, and worked his fingers through the knots at his wrists and ankles. When it was all untied, the man’s limp body slumped against Sutra’s. He was still breathing, but his unconscious state signaled that his breaths would not last long. He carried the boy out of the torture room. Instead of going back into the prison, he went through a door that lead to a room Iryse had built with the intention of it being a room for resting—apparently, torturing others was exhausting work. He laid the boy, dripping with—black?—blood and sprinkled with vomit, onto the bed, then went back into the chamber to grab the girl dangling from the wall. Her head fell languidly against her collarbone while tied up in the air, as did her purpling hands from being the bearers of the rest of her weight. He untied the ropes. Her body did just as the boy’s had, slumping against his own.

  The last girl, the one who had been screaming and shaking her ginger hair, was, unlike the other two, still awake. Sutra approached her and tried to untie the ropes that bound her, but she lashed out with her teeth and head—the only things unencumbered by ropes. Whenever he tried to approach her again, she yelled out hoarsely and flailed again.

  “I’m trying to help you,” he said tenderly. “Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” she croaked. “Are you not the vile, horrid, despicable, abominable monster that I know you are?”

  She had a point, as the majority of his life, he had been.

  “Please,” he insisted. “I have a medic coming up to treat you. Your friends are in the other room on the bed—”