by Devin Madson
“Yes, Your Majesty. At once, Your Majesty.”
They were gone on the words, and Gideon gripped my arm. “You had better go too,” he said. “Fast. Put as many orders in place as you can for the journey before he finds you.”
“Yes, but… will you be all right?”
“No,” he said. “But that’s something both of us have to accept. Go. Fight for us all.”
I stared at him, hating that it had come to this, hating that there was no other way. This was not the future we had dreamed of. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“So am I.”
I left, not daring to look back lest the sight of him stole my resolve. I had to get as much done as I could before Leo discovered what had happened, so I ran, keeping to the narrow passages and the servants’ stairs.
“His Majesty travels to Kima,” I called as I walked through the barracks, sharing Gideon’s plans with as many Levanti as possible to force Leo’s hand. “All his imperial guards will travel with him, leaving first thing in the morning. Be sure you’re ready.” I would find Keka later, but for now I sped along, through the barracks and up the stairs to the yard, repeating the words over and over and leaving a curious commotion in my wake.
The yard was already full of noise. Massama was climbing down from the low stage Leo had used for the defender ceremony, and all eyes turned my way. Grateful I’d left my mask off, I strode out. There was no time for second guessing, no time to doubt or even to care what they all thought of me. This was our chance to rip away some of Leo’s power.
“As ambassador of His Majesty Gideon e’Torin, I have orders to ensure everything is ready for His Majesty’s departure tomorrow morning,” I said. “We travel to Kima to meet with the Chiltaen envoy.”
Captain Dhamara hurried over amid the chatter, and I was glad to see her unharmed. “He goes?” she said, seeming to need more assurance.
“He goes,” I said. “You and Captain Bahn will stay to ensure nothing goes wrong in our absence. We take Keka and his guards, as well as Empress Sichi and Nuru. Oshar stays with you.”
“That works well. I don’t know what you said to him, but thank you.” She walked away on the words, speaking to the Swords gathering around her.
“So wise of His Majesty to have named you his ambassador.” Leo stood in the doorway, eyes glinting through his mask. “I ought to have thought of it myself. My, my, quite the busy little bee you are, Dishiva, Defender of the One True God.” He pointed at my throat. “Careful. Your mask has slipped.”
Without another word he walked past me, anger in his every step. And although a part of me cheered to have so enraged him, to have achieved something, I couldn’t but dread the outcome.
We found Captain Dhamara’s body the following morning, hanging from the rafters in the stable as though she had taken her own life. Maybe she had, but it was my fault. I knew in the same way the deaths of the horses had been my fault, my every transgression eliciting a greater consequence until at last, he would come for me.
I sat nearby while her second took her head, every slice of the blade seeming to dig into my own flesh. I tried to tell myself that meeting with the Chiltaen envoy was more important than a single life, but as I watched her soul be released to the gods I couldn’t believe it.
10. CASSANDRA
We could see them through cracks in the gate—a gathering of soldiers on the drive and before them, Leo. Leo who I had travelled with. Had laughed with. Had killed. I had to remind myself he wasn’t really the same Leo at all.
“Shit.” Captain Aeneas ran his hand through his hair. “Shit.”
Gripping his sleeve, I dragged him away from the gate. “We need a plan.”
“What plan? We’re stuck here,” the captain said. “We’ll have to fight or give him up. That’s at least a dozen soldiers, maybe more, but if we bottleneck them somewhere and—”
“No.” An idea was forming in my mind, slowly coming into focus.
“No? There’s no other way, Miss Marius.”
“Yes, there is. Listen.” I glanced around to be sure no one could hear us. We were in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by mossy Errant boards carved into stone, a smattering of puddles, and nothing else. Even beyond the gates the soldiers had yet to make a sound. “Can you carry Septum? Without the box, I mean.”
Captain Aeneas frowned. “Yes, I suppose so, as long as he stays calm.”
“We’ll have to hope so, because this is the plan. You take him out of the box and carry him the fuck out of here. There are so many back ways in and out of this place they can’t be guarding them all. While you escape, we’ll hitch the ox up to the cart and drive the box out to Leo. If we waste enough time trying to make some sort of deal, which is exactly what Empress Hana would do—”
Excuse you.
“—it could be ages before he realises Septum is gone.”
“But what about you?”
“I need my body and Leo has it.”
The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Your Majesty?”
I let the empress take control of her own skin. Her words might damn my plan, but he would refuse without her assurance. “As we have agreed that attempting to get inside Septum is too dangerous,” she said, “it seems this really is the best thing we can do to help you, Captain. In this state we are little more than a dead weight ourselves. I don’t know where you mean to go or what you mean to do, but do what you feel you must and get Septum out of here. We’ll play decoy.”
He drew a deep breath and let it go in a gust, squinting up at the sun as though seeking strength from his god. When he lowered his eyes again, he nodded. “If that is your wish.”
“It is the only way. But we have to move fast.”
Leaving no time for him to change his mind, we hurried back toward the stables. He had backed the cart into the main building, but the ox was in the little yard chewing feed that looked none too fresh. “You get him, we’ll hitch this boy up to the cart,” the empress said, nodding to the captain and striding on toward the animal like our knees weren’t aching and our arms weren’t heavy sacks of grain.
“I should—”
“No, thank you, Captain, I know how to hitch an animal to a cart.”
He nodded and ducked in through the stable door.
He thinks I’m talking.
“Yes, probably, but do you know how to deal with animals, Miss Marius?”
No. I’m a city girl and you’re an empress; we’re both fucked.
“Not at all. I’ve told you I wasn’t born an empress. I grew up on a farm in the Valley, in secret so no one would know I was still alive and come after me.”
So Emperor Kin wouldn’t know you were alive and come after you, you mean. That worked out well.
She didn’t answer, but little flashes of memory filtered into my mind. Standing before the hated Emperor Kin upon his throne. A beautiful man with violet eyes like Saki’s, except where she often looked blank, this man mocked. They were there together for a moment, the man with the violet eyes and the emperor, before they faded into the damp stable yard where the ox munched away without a care in the world.
Who was that?
She busied herself getting the ox moving toward the gate. She could have pretended not to know what I meant or ignored me completely, but once we had the animal out of the yard, she said, “Lord Darius Laroth. The last owner of this house. It’s been a long time, but being here… There are a lot of memories.”
And a lot of regrets. I felt them, each like a little blade in my heart, except I could not understand the pain. They were not my memories. Not my regrets.
“So many.”
The words were whispered as though even she did not want to hear her own truth, and blowing out a heavy gust of breath, she hustled the ox into the stable.
At least regrets were something I was fast coming to understand.
Captain Aeneas emerged as we reached the door. He had Septum slung over his shoulder, a sack tied over his head. A good idea,
but I couldn’t tell him so. He had been the hand of the hieromonk, but somehow we had developed enough mutual respect that parting like this felt wrong. Fortunate perhaps that there was no time for long goodbyes. No time to linger at all.
“Good luck,” the empress said, and I was glad of her steady voice as she handed him the book about Memaras we’d found. “Take this. It might help.”
“Thank you.” He tucked it into his belt as I had done. “And good luck to you as well, Your Majesty. Miss Marius. May we meet again soon under better circumstances.”
A nod. A bow. And he strode away toward the house.
We returned to the task of hitching the ox to the cart. Our arms trembled with the effort of lifting things, and our fingers felt fat and slow and stiff at every knot, but I had to admit the empress seemed to know what she was doing. She must have really lived on a farm.
“You think I would lie about it to look interesting, Miss Marius? Make up a story that gave my enemies fodder to throw against me? ‘What more can you expect from a common farming woman?’ ‘There are probably more bastards all over the Valley. She had to learn her promiscuous ways somewhere.’”
People are awful.
“Yes, Miss Marius,” she agreed, tugging tight the last knot. “They are. Which is why we have to find the ones we love. The good ones. And fight for them with every last breath in our bodies.”
She was speaking of her daughter. I had no such person. It had been just me for so long, and when I had lived at the hospice, I had only ever wanted people dead. Monsters, all of them, though it had been me they gave that name. Yet by the light of her determination, I could see what it might feel like to have something to fight for. To have someone to fight for. It looked frightening. A determination built on a foundation of fear she had to carry around, a fear she had to breathe every moment of every day. She could fail. Her daughter could die. And she would have to live with that.
Empress Hana pulled our body up into the cart and took the reins. Glad to think of something, anything else, I said, You know how to drive a cart too?
“Of course. Don’t you?”
City girl, I repeated. I can ride a horse and I know how to flag down a sedan chair.
“You are more high-class than I am, Miss Marius. You ought to be the empress.”
She set the ox walking, jolting the cart out through the big stable doors and into the courtyard. We glanced back to be sure we still had the box, its presence unsettling despite being empty. There was no going back. This had been my idea, but it was starting to feel like the stupidest idea I’d ever had. Would Leo really be tricked by us stalling for time?
“Probably not,” Empress Hana said. “But we have to try to give the captain what time we can however it turns out.”
At the gates we stopped and jumped down to open them, knees aching. A quick peek showed they were still out there, waiting calmly, though it had taken us some time to get the ox hitched up and the cart moving.
The lock on the gate looked new, as did the hinges, so well-oiled the ancient doors made not the smallest squeal of protest as the empress pulled first one open, then the other, one eye on the unmoving soldiers. None had drawn weapons. They just stood like statues, only their clothing shifting with the breeze.
The empress climbed us back up into the cart and took the reins, our hands shaking. Leo was standing close enough we could have shouted a greeting. Instead we let the ox carry us on toward an inevitable sense of doom.
The back wheels jolted over the divot at the gates and onto the drive. Out on the gravel, with his white robe eddying around his legs, Leo Villius raised his hand. A gesture of welcome. He was smiling. Just like my Leo had smiled at me.
My Leo. What a pathetic thought. He had never been the friend I had started to think him.
Behind him two dozen soldiers drew their bows.
Are they going to…?
They nocked arrows. Leo still smiled. Still had his hand in the air, the other behind him. “We request a—”
The soldiers lifted their weapons.
“Shit!”
I dropped the reins and rolled off the box seat as two dozen arrows thudded into the cart like the furious hammering of a woodpecker. I hit the ground hard, all breath knocked out of me, and for a stunned moment could only lie face to the damp dirt and struggle to draw breath. More arrows clacked as they left their quivers to be loosed into the air, falling like rain.
Finally able to move, we scrambled under the cart as they fell, hitting the wood overhead and sticking in the dirt. The ox bellowed. Its hooves stomped as it backed, the wheels scraping past us. And with a low of pain, it bolted. We threw our hands over our head as the cart tore away, wheels grinding upon either side. As soon as sunlight struck us, we scrambled up and ran. They could have loosed arrows into our back but they didn’t, whether by choice or because they were too busy dealing with a frightened ox bearing down on them as it bolted down the drive.
I closed the first gate and ran for the second, all the time expecting soldiers to push through. The second slammed hard, making my fingers tingle as I fumbled with the lock. It clicked closed and I dropped to my knees, breath coming fast and ragged through our gaping mouth.
And outside, nothing. No movement. No arrows. Not even the lingering sound of the cart in the distance.
I pulled us up with the help of the gate, legs shaking, and peered through a crack in the old wood. For all the activity outside we might never have gone out there. They stood in the same formation, Leo at the front. He tilted his head as though to better meet our gaze, and I pulled back.
Did he read our mind? the empress asked. You said you wondered about that at Koi, but… we weren’t even close this time.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. I don’t understand him at all, but we need to find another way out.”
I could not calm our breathing and staggered away across the courtyard, chest heaving. We had woken feeling well rested, but now our legs were dead weights against which we fought to keep moving, and fatigue was like heavy armour, a cloak of steel weighing us down at every step.
By the time we reached the manor door there were still no sounds beyond the gates.
“What are they waiting for?” I said, turning back.
For us to surrender, perhaps.
“We could have been about to. We had the box with us and everything.”
Then perhaps we are merely a mouse for him to enjoy teasing before he eats us.
“Lovely. You know I didn’t get into this business so I could be chased around Kisia by a madman,” I said as I stepped through the door. “Or get stuck in a god-man’s house. Or walk around in the body of an empress.”
It was dim and chilly inside despite the sun bearing down on the courtyard. The last time we had fought for our survival in this house it had been dark, but at least we hadn’t been alone. Knowing it was just us was far more frightening.
You know how we went upstairs last time, the empress said. To climb out through the window in your room.
“Yes, but I don’t think we could manage that again without the extra body.”
And we’d probably just break a leg. No, I was thinking about how we saw Saki and Kocho and Lechati up there, heading the other way along the passage. Do you think… maybe there is a secret way out of here? They did mention a door more than once, and not like it was an ordinary door. But… a Door.
They had. And they had been up there though the second floor of the manor couldn’t own a way out.
“It’s worth looking. I don’t have a better idea.”
Having taken a moment to steady ourselves upon the wall, we pressed on into the house. At first I couldn’t get my bearings, could only follow the passage, its shadowy boards a trail from which I could not venture, but the smell of the tree soon drew us toward the stairs.
So why did you get into this killing people business?
“What?”
You said you didn’t do it to get stuck here
, but I imagine the list of reasons you didn’t do it for would be rather long.
“I—” Why had I? It had been an expedient use of my talents and interests, a way to earn money, but a younger, naive Cassandra had dreamed of better things. Of being able to change the world with the slip of a blade. Of making a difference. Before all such thoughts had slowly been ground down beneath the wheels of the everyday reality that was life in Chiltae. “I… I don’t really know.”
You should know by now you can’t hide your thoughts from me.
Ahead, a growing echo of footsteps saved me from answering. Just one set of steps, but they were drawing closer.
Leo?
I shook my head slowly and dared not speak, dared do nothing but hope as a figure appeared, silhouetted against the bright light of the tree hall. A figure carrying something large over its shoulder.
“Captain,” I said, not caring that the relief was palpable in my voice. “What are you doing? Why are you still here?”
“Majesty? Well, it looks like neither of us was successful. There’s no way out that isn’t guarded. I’ve been all around this damned pile and out into the gardens, and there’s nothing.”
I pressed a finger to my lips and nodded at Septum’s legs, caught to the captain’s chest by one strong arm. “You ought perhaps not say that so loud.”
“I don’t think it matters now.”
“Well… we have… an idea, maybe, I don’t know, but…” I grimaced at Septum and the captain nodded, seeming to understand.
“After you, then,” he said, nodding, his usual bow impossible with the heavy weight of a man slung over his shoulder.
A man who cleared his throat. And spoke. “Are you hiding yet?” Septum said, the words muffled by the sack over his head. “Shall I come find you?”
Distant thumping rose upon the end of the words. The battering of many weapons upon wooden gates.
“Fuck, he’s coming.”
“Yes,” Septum said in that same dead voice. “I am coming, Cassandra. Aren’t you hiding yet?”
Captain Aeneas turned on the spot, swinging Septum with him. I jumped back rather than get hit in the face with the young man’s swaddled head, but I almost overbalanced and was only saved by the existence of the wall.