Kyra helped Taro up. “Are you all right?”
Taro spit blood. “I’ve been worse.”
“You should’ve stayed put.”
As she checked to make sure Taro’s prosthetic hadn’t been damaged, one of the apparitions lunged out of the darkness and sliced Kyra’s shoulder. When it pounced again, Taro stood in its way. At the last moment, it veered away and grunted.
It circled around, looking for a clear area to strike, but Taro matched its movements until he was within reach of Sullen’s sword on the ground. When the creature attacked again, Taro summoned every ounce of his templar and slashed at it, chopping off a dozen tendrils. It whined and slunk back into the darkness.
Kyra clutched her bleeding shoulder. “That was incredible.”
Taro tore the sleeve off his shirt and wrapped it around Kyra’s shoulder. “We need to get you to the infirmary.” Taro helped her up by the other shoulder.
“We should go to the Curia instead,” Kyra said.
It took only minutes to get around the circular hallway into the Curia. The chamber was set up to be a makeshift command center.
Taro helped Kyra onto one of the benches, and a medic sliced the cloth off her arm, looked it over, and slathered a mixture onto her cut. Kyra squeezed Taro’s wrist so hard that his hand went numb.
“Will she be okay?” he asked.
“It’s just a flesh wound.” The medic rummaged through his instruments and moved to a patient in a more severe condition.
Magister Ross entered the Curia, sweating like she’d just run a marathon. She grabbed the back of a bench, and her grip sent cracks through the backrest. “I shouldn’t have left her alive.”
“That was a void apparition, wasn’t it?” Taro asked. “Like the ones in the book I showed you.”
Ross nodded. “Vexis must’ve summoned it, somehow.”
“I’ve never seen something like that from a first-year artificer,” Kyra said. “He drove it off.”
Ross tilted her glasses down and stared Taro down. “And what, exactly, were you doing so very far from your class? Eleven hundred hours, Artificing.”
“You know my schedule?”
“I know everyone’s schedule.”
“I was curious and followed Kyra. The corridors kept shifting. By the time they stopped, I was completely lost.”
The Curia doors swung open, and the Sun King and a small entourage entered. The king looked much more frail than the last time Taro had seen him. He went right to Kyra’s side.
“She did this to you?” the Sun King said.
Kyra sat up. “I’m okay.”
“Be still.” The Sun King glanced sideways at Ross, without taking his hand off Kyra. “How close are you to restoring power?”
“It’s difficult, sire. We’re not sure exactly what caused it. It’s our first priority, of course.”
The Sun King’s legs wobbled and he nearly fell, but Taro quickly helped him. “Are you sick, sir?”
“Just dizzy.” He looked to Ross again. “See it done.”
Ross bowed and left, but not before shooting Taro a particularly nasty look.
Taro helped the Sun King to a bench, and when he sat down, the Sun King patted him on the shoulder. “Would you give us a few minutes?”
Taro went to the edges of the room while the two talked. When the Sun King left, Taro came back and sat next to her.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“Better.” She pointed to the paste on her shoulder.
There was a long, awkward pause.
“So...he’s your father, isn’t he?”
Kyra looked like he’d just punched her in the stomach. “Who told you?”
“You did, just now.”
Kyra didn’t look at all amused. “You can’t tell anybody.”
“Fine, I won’t tell.”
Kyra grabbed him by the collar and jerked him toward her. “Promise me!”
“Cross my heart.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Noble Secrets
The runner boy that knocked on Taro’s door late that night looked wholly out of place. His clothes were rich and regal, and he looked like he wanted nothing more than to stick the letter under the door and get back to a more civilized part of town. Still, he did his duty and handed a wax-sealed letter to Taro.
The seal on the front was unmistakable, as it was the same seal that was on every coin issued in the realm: the seal of the Sun King.
Dear Mr. Taro,
Your presence is requested as a guest of his most venerable majesty. Please allow Axel to escort you.
Yours,
Alastair Morgaine,
Chief Secretary and Royal Chequer
Taro glanced up at the runner boy. “You’re Axel?”
The boy had a posh high-Endran accent, so thick that he could’ve said practically anything and sounded like a pompous ass.
“I am.” He spoke his words like he had a mouthful of sand and was afraid it would spill out.
“I guess we can leave now,” Taro said.
Axel gave him a significant look. “You’re going to appear before the Sun King dressed like that?”
Despite getting it only a month prior, Taro’s artificer uniform was frayed and blotched from his work in the Artificium, not to mention a rather nasty run-in with Veldheim’s caged firegeists.
“I guess I am,” Taro said.
Axel shook his head like he’d just heard the most painfully ridiculous thing in his life. “Let’s get this over with.”
Taro had seen the palace every day he’d been in Endra Edûn, but it had long ago become little more than a backdrop to the Magisterium. It was a tall, curved building, and its perfectly smooth marble walls wrapped halfway around the tower. Its position to the Magisterium was no coincidence; the implication was that the Magisterium was the Sun King’s property and all therein was his to command. However, for practical matters, the Imperator had more power.
Axel brandished a look of profound disinterest when the warders stopped them at the palace courtyard. “He’s with me.” The warder ushered them along after a short glance.
At the palace gate, Taro and Axel brushed the snow off their boots before stepping on the tiled marble. The floor was like a sea of shimmering glass, all connected with beautiful rivets and flourishes of gold. Handwoven tapestries hung from the many high arched windows lining every room and hallway, and statues of the past Sun Kings adorned the grand gallery.
One thing that stood out was just how warm it was. The palaces had the luxury of heating pillars in every room and magistry lanterns hanging high on the buttresses. The entire complex smelled of potpourri and old leather furniture. As he and Axel walked through the decorated hallways, Taro couldn’t help but feel small.
“About the way you speak...” Axel said, as if he’d been preparing some long speech.
“What’s wrong with the way I speak?”
“Many things,” Axel said. “Someone of your standing should avoid speaking at all, unless asked a direct question by His Majesty.”
At this, Taro’s irritation hit a boiling point. “I’m Endran, through and through, and every bit as highborn as you.”
“I doubt that. My family’s bloodline can be traced—”
“Just because my great-grandmother didn’t screw the king’s cousin doesn’t make me any less Endran.”
Axel couldn’t have looked more surprised if Taro had slapped him on the face. And it only got worse when Kyra spotted Taro from the end of the hallway and stopped just shy of running into his arms.
“Taro! I was wondering when you’d get here. New prosthetic working out just fine?”
“It’s a dream!” Taro said, and then gestured toward Kyra. “Axel, I’d like you to meet my good friend, Kyra Termane. Crowned princess and such.”
Axel slunk away with a look of sheer shock in his eyes, and Kyra guided Taro the rest of the way to the Sun King’s chambers.
“How is your dad?”
Taro asked. “He wasn’t looking well last time I saw him.”
“The medicine’s been helping, but the doctors want him to stay in the Magisterium infirmary for a few days. He refuses to be confined to a bed.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?”
“I told him what you did for me.”
Kyra navigated the palace with ease, skirting past warders and pushing the Sun King’s study open without preamble.
The study was remarkably subdued, compared to the rest of the palace. Certainly regal, but it seemed to be built more for function than for form. There was a long desk beside a fireplace, and high, clear windows overlooking a greenhouse surrounded by snow.
Taro tried not to stare as the Sun King hobbled to a walking stick and pulled himself to his feet. Kyra tried to help him, but he waved her off.
Taro bowed, nice and low, and waited for the Sun King to acknowledge him before looking up.
The Sun King coughed, furiously, and he hacked up blood onto his white sleeve.
“I can come back later if you—” Taro began.
“No, no,” the Sun King said hastily, then called for Axel, who quickly came to him.
The Sun King slumped on a couch. “My medicine, Axel, did you get it?”
Axel moved quickly to a tea kettle, sitting on a magistry burner in the corner. He picked the porcelain lid off and tipped a small vial of red liquid into it.
When he’d finished, he brought a cup to the Sun King, who took a gentle sip. “This tastes different,” he said.
“I told Magister Ross you were having trouble keeping it down, so she improved the formula, to help it go down easier,” Axel said.
“Did I ask you to talk to her on my behalf?” the Sun King said with a twinge of annoyance, but quickly backtracked. “I’m sorry. You were only trying to help.” The Sun King ushered Taro to sit beside him, which Taro did. “Kyra’s elaborated a great deal on your bravery in the face of Vexis. Remarkable.”
“Just doing my job.”
“I’d hoped to give you some sort of a reward, but I find myself at a loss as to what would suit you.”
“I don’t need a reward.”
“There must be something I can do. You saved my daughter’s life.”
Taro thought for a long, hard minute. “There is one thing.”
“Name it.”
“It’s not for me, but for someone else that I was dishonest to.”
“Oh? Would you care to elaborate?”
Taro wrung his hands. What followed was mostly the truth, intermixed with some white lies. “I was entrusted with a valuable book by a woman named Moira, she works in the Librarium—”
“I know of her.”
“I was desperate and pawned her book along with my aurom, so I could pay my tuition.”
“I see,” the Sun King said, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And how much was this book worth?”
“A sov and a half,” Taro said. “But I pawned it and my aurom for thirty-six crowns.”
“And you wish for me to purchase them back for you?”
“Just the book. I can live without the aurom, but I want to do right by her.”
The Sun King clasped his hands together and wobbled a bit on his walking stick. “I’ll send Axel at once. What was the name of the establishment?”
“Leek’s,” Taro said. “It’s in the Lower City.”
The Sun King called Axel in and told him that he wanted him to return to Lower, to a pawn shop no less, and buy back Moira’s copy of The Witch of the Well.
Axel couldn’t have looked more miserable, but he begrudgingly nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
_____
While they waited for Axel to return, Kyra showed Taro around the palace. He got the impression that with her parentage, a secret amongst her peers, this was something she didn’t get to do often.
Kyra thought it was funny that of all the wondrous rooms he’d been shown, the area Taro was most fascinated with was the kitchen. It had fourteen ovens. Fourteen! And it serviced entire court banquets, on a regular basis.
“You grew up here?” Taro asked in amazement, just as they were exiting one of several small libraries. This one was dedicated to lineage records (presumably so nobles could have some hard, gloating evidence of their exceptional breeding).
“My whole life,” Kyra said.
“Any brothers or sisters?” Taro asked.
Kyra shook her head. “Nope, just me. My mother died just after I was born; she never had time to have another.”
“I’m sorry,” Taro said, in entirely the wrong tone. “I mean—”
“It’s okay. It happened way before I can remember. Dad says she was a remarkable woman. A magister, too.”
“Is she the reason you enlisted?”
Kyra smiled. “Not a bad guess. I’d like to say no, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t have any effect. But even if she wasn’t a magister, I’d still have enlisted. I love working with my hands. I love magic. I love knowing.”
“Why keep it a secret?” Taro asked.
“Because I want to advance on my own,” Kyra said sharply. “And I don’t want people to think I got somewhere because of my father. Do you think anyone would duel me, if they knew I was the Sun King’s daughter?”
“I can understand that.” He glanced up at the high ceiling. “Still, I think I’d take this place over the Magisterium, any day.”
Kyra’s smile seemed to light up the room. It was only at that moment that Taro realized how closely they were walking, just close enough for their fingers to graze. Taro pulled away and felt his face turn red. “I...eh...any word on when the Magisterium will be back to normal?”
“Magister Ross was here this morning, delivering my father’s medicine,” Kyra said. “She said they tracked down the problem, but they needed more time to ‘investigate the available facts.’”
“What does that mean?”
Kyra shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
As they entered the next room, her voice became suddenly somber, as if she’d been waiting to ask him a question since he’d arrived. It was barely bigger than a closet and completely empty. From the coats and packs hanging from evenly spaced hooks on the wall, Taro supposed it was for the waitstaff.
Kyra shut the door and pulled Taro into a corner. “Can you keep a secret?”
“I already promised you I wouldn’t tell.”
“Not about that,” Kyra said. She took one step forward, so that their bodies were touching. Taro felt like his lungs had seized up as she ran her hand along his side and his back. Then, she kissed him. When she finally pulled away, she gave a sly smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “I just figured you deserved a better reward than some musty old book.”
Taro returned to his inn in Lower, after an entire evening with Kyra. Tucked tightly into a bound satchel was Moira’s book. Taro would’ve given anything to see the look on Leek’s face when the Sun King’s courier came to buy it back from him. He’d even retrieved Taro’s gold aurom.
Taro was on top of the world. Were this not the case, he might’ve noticed the hushed voices filling the Lower City. Perhaps he would’ve seen the subtle movement of people that accompanied the turnings of a devious plan. Perhaps he would’ve felt the awkward changes in the personalities of those he’d passed by a hundred times before. Perhaps he would’ve heard the coughs and cries of the sick, becoming more pronounced.
But his mind and heart were full of only cheerful things, and so he noticed none of it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Stirring up the Masses
Over the coming weeks, stories spread through Endra like wildfire. The south borough was the place to go for gossip and news; Leorin was always there, perched on his stool, surrounded by curious listeners.
“Aye, I saw it. Power’s back on,” a thin man said to Leorin. “I heard that Helian girl sabotaged it.”
Leorin coughed hard into his hand and sipped some water. “A
pologies, I’m not feeling well.” He rattled his coin tray. “Donations go a long way toward curing ailments.”
“I heard she took on three magisters without breakin’ a sweat. It’s about time someone dealt with those bastards on their level.”
“They say she’s a murderer,” Taro said.
“They say a lot of things,” the man replied. “Or maybe she’s just their Helian scapegoat.”
There were certain background noises in the Lower City that Taro had become deaf to. The water dripping from the grates, the steam hissing through the pipes, the continuous chatter of the crowds. It wasn’t until the people around Leorin went silent that he noticed any of it.
It didn’t take long for him to see the reason for their silence. Vexis had crept her way through the crowd and sat on the back of Leorin’s wagon. Her feet just reached to the ground, and she kicked the black slush with her tiptoes. She’d cleaned up since Taro had last seen her. The bruises on her face were gone, her straight blonde hair was tied back, and she even wore her artificer uniform.
Taro realized that the uniform was the reason for the silence, as none of these people could possibly have known who she was.
She patted Leorin on the shoulder. “I’m here for a story.”
Leorin gave an uncomfortable wince. “Vexis.”
Whispers erupted from the crowd, and Vexis hopped off the wagon ledge. “Have we met?” Vexis pulled her collar down a bit, exposing her magistry tattoos more clearly. “It’s these, isn’t it? If we’re patient, maybe we’ll have some company, and I can show you what they do.”
“What do you want?” Leorin said.
“I already told you. A story.”
Leorin crossed his fingers. “And which would you like to hear?”
“I don’t want to hear one. I want to tell one.” She crossed her legs and sat on a dry patch on the ground. “Once upon a time, there was a pretty artificer named Vexis. One day, she uncovered a wicked plot by the Magisterium. When she threatened to expose them, they locked her away.
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