Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

His father regarded him with mild surprise. “Yes. It seems you do have some ability, after all. You can see why I took the deal, my son—the Empress never stipulated whether the results I shared had to be successful. The siphon I shipped recently to Cyrilia broke en route, with its weak-minded bearer driven mad.” Admiral Farrald looked thoughtful for a moment. “I imagine it to be quite overwhelming, to be a siphon bearer exposed to multiple magek at once. It requires an individual strong of will and strong of mind.”

  With a chill, Ramson thought of Linn’s encounter with the blackstone wagon, the Affinite with two Affinities. “Why would you give Morganya a siphon?” he asked.

  “I didn’t,” the Admiral replied with a shrug. “I would never. The entire point of the siphon experiments was to bolster Bregon’s defenses against the growing threat of Cyrilia.” He paused. “Nor would I be able to give her a siphon, even if I wanted to. Currently, we have only one perfected version, and it rests with my own lifeblood.”

  Something didn’t fit in this picture—something was missing. His father had been purchasing—trafficking—Affinites from Cyrilia, under an agreement he’d struck with Morganya. Kerlan had been working with Morganya to provide the shipments and sneak his forces in…yet Admiral Farrald had vehemently denied any involvement in this scheme with his old enemy, Alaric Kerlan.

  Which meant…

  There was a third person involved in this picture, a traitor in their midst. Ramson’s mind hurtled forward, but it felt as though he was coming to the realization too late.

  Crisp footsteps sounded outside, and the next moment, the doors to the study opened.

  “Oh, how interesting.”

  He would have recognized that sharp, lilting voice anywhere.

  Ramson turned as Sorsha sashayed into the room. “Did I miss the summons for our little family gathering?”

  Admiral Farrald stood. “What are you doing here so soon?” His lips curled, his tone turning dismissive at the appearance of his daughter. “Do you have the Blood Empress?”

  Sorsha sank into a bow. Somehow, she made it look mocking. “I certainly do, Daddy Dearest.” She stalked up to him, and that was when Ramson caught it: a flash of a band around her wrist, the color of ocean, of searock—the same that Bogdan had worn.

  Everything around him seemed to slow.

  “Well, Daddy Dearest,” he heard Sorsha tease, “do I get my reward now?”

  The Admiral had just opened his mouth to reply when Sorsha lifted a blade and plunged it into their father’s heart.

  Scholar Tarschon was dying.

  As Kaïs released Ana’s Affinity, the sense of blood came flooding back into her awareness. She dropped to the scholar’s side, sweeping her Affinity against the blood seeping from his chest. Even as she did, she could sense that there was too much of it, and she was too late.

  The man’s face was drained of color. His lips were pale, and it took Ana a moment to notice that they were moving. She leaned her face close to him.

  He was speaking to her. “The siphons must be…destroyed.” His voice was a whisper. “Our subjects…fell sick. Those whose mageks were taken from them died…within several moons.” His eyes clouded with desperation, memories of horrors. “Those who bore the siphons’ mageks…their bodies…rejected the change. All died. All…but one.”

  Ana felt sick. “Sorsha Farrald,” she whispered, and the scholar closed his eyes in resigned acknowledgment.

  “Who else was involved?” Ana demanded, but a large shudder convulsed the scholar’s body. Blood bubbled from his mouth, too much of it flooding her senses. He was slipping away. “No, Scholar Tarschon, stay with me—”

  “The siphons…can be…destroyed.” Tarschon’s voice was fainter than the wind now, and the words sent chills down Ana’s spine. “Restore…the natural…order…” His eyes widened as he drew a large, shuddering breath, and then fell still.

  For a moment, it felt as though all their hopes had vanished with the scholar. Ana stayed by his side, looking at his face, at his empty eyes, wondering what other horrible secrets the man had carried with him to the grave.

  Behind her, Kaïs had wrapped an arm around Linn’s waist and stood, gently lifting her to her feet. “I’m sorry.” His words echoed around the empty hall. “Forgive me.”

  Ana closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm. She thought of striking him, of shaking him with her Affinity, of screaming at him. But she also thought of Shamaïra, of the desperation in Kaïs’s eyes as he’d spoken of his mother. I do it to survive.

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Linn said flatly. “We must work together to put a stop to Kerlan and Morganya’s plan.” She held Kaïs’s gaze. “If you truly wish to make amends, you’ll tell us everything you know.”

  Kaïs bowed his head. He drew a deep breath, and when he looked up again, something in his face had set—something that reminded Ana of the fierce resolve she’d seen on Shamaïra’s face. “Then there is no time to waste,” he said. “Alaric Kerlan has been working with Sorsha to infiltrate the Blue Fort. His and Morganya’s joint forces arrive soon to conduct an invasion and take the siphons. They plan to leverage your meeting tonight to assassinate King Darias and have Kerlan crowned as King.” His face tightened. “I was meant to escort King Darias to Godhallem tonight.”

  Ana thought of the boy king, helplessly surrounded by Sorsha’s guards. “Is he safe?”

  “For now, yes. He is under guard by Captain Ronnoc of the King’s Guard.”

  If they kept Kerlan’s forces concentrated in Godhallem and put up a good enough fight, then the King should remain untouched. “How many forces did Kerlan bring with him?” she demanded.

  “He has at least twenty of his men stationed around the Blue Fort,” Kaïs said, “half of which are Affinites. His plan is to take control of Godhallem with them.”

  Even with Ana’s blood Affinity, they would be outnumbered. Ana shook her head. “We’ll need reinforcements, if we want to have a chance at a fair fight.”

  Kaïs looked thoughtful. “Kerlan has been trafficking Cyrilian Affinites to Bregon,” he said. “Some are still locked in the dungeons of the research wing, waiting to be tested on. If we can free them, there is a chance they’ll want to fight on our side.”

  Ana recalled her encounter with the imprisoned Affinites back at the Playpen in Novo Mynsk. The image of May’s eyes, fierce with resolve, would remain indelibly carved into her memories. I want the whole Empire, every single Affinite, to know how it feels to have hope.

  An ache bloomed deep in her chest. She’d made a promise to her friend; May had been the beginning of the reason why Ana fought. “We’ll free them, whether they wish to join our fight or not,” she found herself saying.

  Linn nodded, taking a step forward. “I will go,” she said. “Ana, you must stop Sorsha. She has a second siphon that she plans to take to Morganya tonight.”

  Ana looked to Scholar Tarschon’s body. “Sorsha is the first successful bearer of a siphon,” she said. “Admiral Farrald repressed her power with a blackstone collar.”

  “She plans to seize the key,” Kaïs said suddenly. He looked to Ana, his gaze sharpening with urgency. “You must stop her before she unlocks her collar.”

  Linn paled. “I saw Sorsha and a scholar unlock an Affinite’s collar in the research wing,” she said. “Is the key there?”

  But Kaïs shook his head. “She would have taken it already,” he said. “It must be somewhere she cannot easily reach.”

  A sense of dread spread through Ana’s veins, along with the inevitable answer. Power cannot be fettered forever, Sorsha had said as she spoke of her father—the man who had put that collar on her in the first place. The one person who had control over her, the one person against whom Sorsha could not raise a hand, no matter how much he mistreated her and no matter how much she resented him.

  “Ad
miral Farrald,” she croaked. “He must know where it is.”

  “Go,” Linn said. Resolve shaped her face. “We will ensure that the King and his guard receive warning.” She hesitated. “And we will free the Affinites kept in the dungeons.”

  Ana looked to Kaïs. “If anything happens to her, yaeger, I’ll kill you myself.”

  His response was a grim smile. “We will join you at Godhallem. Take caution. Kerlan’s forces are here already.”

  Ana turned and made for the exit of the Livren Skolaren, the grand paintings of the gods of Bregon blurring into a whirl as they silently urged her onward.

  Roran Farrald blinked. For a moment, he looked stunned to see the hilt protruding from his chest.

  Sorsha stepped back and their father slumped over her, head on her shoulders like a newborn. “See, Daddy Dearest,” she crooned into his ear, “your greatest invention. You raised me with only the capability to destroy. To ruin. And you never thought that one day, the little girl you made into a monster would come back to destroy you.”

  Ramson would never forget the look on his father’s face. His expression opened, the hard planes softening to pure, raw emotion as he beheld his daughter. Regret. Sadness. And something else that Ramson didn’t dare name, a glimmer so brief it might have been sunlight in a storm, a shooting star, an illusion of the greatest kind.

  Love makes us weak.

  But then the Admiral spoke, and Ramson understood. “I’m sorry,” Roran Farrald whispered, and Ramson could have sworn he was speaking to him.

  Sorsha tilted her head back and laughed. “I won’t fall for that again,” she said. “Good-bye, Daddy Dearest.”

  And with that, she yanked the blade from his chest.

  Blood darkened Admiral Farrald’s uniform, staining the gold of his badges, the bronze of his buttons. Ramson stumbled back.

  Sorsha cast him a sharp glance. “In a minute, Brother Dearest,” she snapped, catching their father’s body. She fumbled for a moment, then held something up. It was the large gold ring that their father had worn on his left hand. Sorsha lifted the ring to the light, beholding it as though it were a sacred relic. Their father’s corpse fell to the floor with a thud.

  Blood pooled onto Admiral Farrald’s smooth searock floor.

  Sorsha pointed the ring at her neck, hesitating only briefly before jamming it against the black collar resting at her throat. She twisted, and with a neat click, the blackstone collar opened, leaving behind a pale band of flesh. The collar clanged against the floor.

  Ramson felt it: a tremor rippling through the air, as though the earth itself shook. Sorsha’s head was tilted back, her auburn hair and clothes rippling as though in a gale of strong, unrelenting wind. Only, instead of wind, it was an invisible energy, a force, that swept through the chambers, knocking over books and shattering glass.

  Sorsha leaned against the wall. For several moments, she was motionless, and Ramson wondered whether whatever she had done had actually killed her—gods, he hoped it had killed her—

  —and then she drew a single, shuddering breath.

  When Ramson’s sister sat up, everything and nothing about her had changed. Her features were the same, yet everything about them seemed clearer, sharper, as though before he had been looking at her from behind fogged glass. She stood and crossed the room, and the air around her trembled as it would around a flame, and Ramson himself felt it as she swept past him.

  She looked to the gold ring in her hand. A laugh bubbled from her as she tossed it to the floor.

  Then fire erupted from Sorsha, a wreath of flames so hot they were blue, engulfing the ring. Her eyes were wide with glee; her mouth parted as she watched the ring melt into a puddle of gold at her feet.

  She lifted her gaze to Ramson.

  He ran for his life.

  Her screaming laughter followed him as he sprinted out of his father’s chambers. The hallway outside was empty but for the bodies of the four guards Sorsha had slain. It all made sense now—painfully obvious sense—how everything pieced together. Who else would be able to clear the guards across the entire Blue Fort but the Lieutenant of the Royal Guard? Who else possessed the motives for revenge and ruin?

  Ramson grabbed a sword from the body of the nearest Royal Guard as Sorsha’s steps sounded behind him.

  “Your turn, Brother Dearest!” she called in a singsong voice.

  Ramson chanced a look back and wished he hadn’t. As Sorsha swept her hand, sections of stone tore from the walls. They hovered behind her in midair.

  Anticipation filled Sorsha’s face. With a laugh, she flung her hand, and the first boulder shot at him.

  Ramson dodged. He heard the rock smash against the wall behind him. He’d barely scrambled to his feet when the second piece came at his head. The third one caught him in his stomach, knocking the wind out of him as he fell onto the searock floor. His sword clattered against the ground.

  Ramson spat blood. He pushed himself to his knees, snatched the hilt of his sword, and glanced back.

  “Do you know what the scholars called me, Brother Dearest?” Sorsha held out a hand, and the swords of the dead guards began to rise into the air. They soared to her, splintering as they did into smaller fragments of metal, like needles. “The Iron Maiden.”

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  The pain in Ramson’s stomach throbbed as he pushed himself to his feet. Clenching his teeth, he threw himself forward and turned around the bend of the next hallway. He glanced back to see splinters of sword pelting the wall behind him.

  “Oh, come now, Brother Dearest,” Sorsha called. “Don’t run from me! Though, if you’d like to play a game, I’m more than willing to engage in a round of hide-and-seek!”

  Panting, Ramson straightened himself as best as he could and began to hobble forward. The end of the hallway looked insurmountably far away, and he could hear the jagged clicks of his half sister’s footsteps as she stalked him, a cat hunting a mouse.

  Ramson let out a stream of curse words as he wiped blood from his mouth, his other hand gripping the sword—now functionally useless against Sorsha’s magek.

  “I see you!” Sorsha’s words echoed down the length of the hall in a mocking lilt.

  The walls were crumbling around him beneath Sorsha’s magek. A portrait of the Three Gods intertwined smashed against the searock floor, and even as Ramson leapt over it, he knew he’d run out of time. The end of the corridor was too far away.

  Gritting his teeth, he flung his sword down the end of the hallway as far from him as possible before turning to face Sorsha. She looked like a creature out of a nightmare. Her eyes bulged from her face in glee, her hands were splayed to either side of her, and dozens of fragments of metal hovered at her back.

  Ramson thought back to the magek he’d seen her use. Fire first; then stone. And iron, her specialty.

  His eyes caught on the fallen portrait in front of him. Gold and wood, he thought.

  It would have to do.

  With a prayer to the gods, he scrambled forward and heaved the frame from the ground, placing it before his body like a shield.

  He heard Sorsha cackle with pleasure. “Oh, clever,” she shrieked. “In that case, let’s play target practice!”

  The iron spikes whistled forward, thudding against the wood of the frame. Some more clacked against the wall at the end of the hallway.

  But then the ones embedded in the portrait began to shudder, morphing into thinner, longer projectiles.

  Ramson uttered a curse and flung the painting aside just as the spikes wrenched themselves free. They turned to him.

  Ramson hauled himself to his feet and began to run, but he heard more whistling through the air, followed by an explosive pain through his shoulder that knocked him to the floor. Warmth pooled on the fabric of his sleeve. He didn’t have to look to know the metal had b
uried itself deep, but just shallow enough to have avoided severing a muscle.

  He’d been through worse. Kerlan had forced him to become well acquainted with pain. Even Jonah, Ramson thought, had given him worse beatings during sparring practice back at the Naval Academy.

  Ramson gritted his teeth and pushed himself back up. “That all you got?”

  Sorsha laughed in delight. “Oh, I love the attitude! Unfortunately, that’s not going to save you.” She lifted her arms, and the remaining iron spikes turned toward him. “Good-bye, Brother Dearest.”

  Utterly defenseless, Ramson raised his bare hands. After an entire lifetime spent running, he’d never thought he would die fighting on his own two feet. Yet as he adjusted his position, he realized that there was something holding him up that was stronger than fear, stronger than any impulse or desire he’d harbored in his life.

  In this moment, he thought of Ana, and waited for the spikes to come.

  They didn’t.

  There was a shriek as Sorsha was lifted into the air and sent hurtling down the hall. She slammed into the wall and rolled, her iron fragments clanging to the floor around her.

  “He’s mine,” came a familiar voice. “And I don’t share.”

  Ramson turned to see Ana striding toward him from the other end of the hall, her arms outstretched, her irises ringed red. Her hair was tangled and wet, the dark blue gown she wore now mud-splattered and torn.

  Ramson didn’t think he’d seen her look more beautiful.

  Down the corridor from them, Sorsha snarled. As she lifted herself from the ground, however, a familiar ringing chimed across the fortress grounds.

  The bells were chiming the hours.

  Sorsha stilled, her head cocked.

  Ramson counted. By his side, Ana froze, their eyes interlocked as they silently counted the beats.

  Eight bells. Ramson saw the realization bloom on Ana’s face. The Three Courts would have gathered, prepared to begin their negotiation with her.

  Kerlan’s coup had begun.