House of Rage and Sorrow

by Sangu Mandanna

  “I’m a very good architect,” Maya Sura replied when Esmae repeated this to him. “I left no detail to chance.”

  “The honey cakes,” Esmae said quietly. “They told me they got the honey cakes from a local woman.”

  “Honey cakes? Prince Abra probably made them himself. Your younger brother likes to cook.”

  I heard the catch in her breath. I had no idea why she was upset. Wasn’t this good news? We had real information we could use against Alexi.

  Of course, if this was true, it meant her brothers had lied to her for months. They were supposed to have been on the same side then, but they had lied. Even Bear. And Rickard must have known the truth, too. Not at the start, perhaps, but he must have surely found out at some point? Before Rama’s death, he had gone to Arcadia every week to teach her brothers. He could not have visited their palace without getting past the shield and seeing beyond the illusion, but he had never said a word to her.

  Yes, I suppose I can now see why Esmae was upset.

  Eventually, Esmae said, “Why? Why such an elaborate deception?”

  “How did the rest of the star system react to the news of Arcadia’s existence?” Maya Sura asked.

  Esmae understood. “Kali was afraid. And everyone else was impressed.”

  “Yes. To be cast out of your home and kingdom only to land so spectacularly on your feet is quite an achievement. Arcadia makes your brother look powerful. To build a thriving city so fast makes it appear like he has more money, power, and influence than he actually does. He needed people to think of him as a warrior, not a victim. He needed other leaders to think he was a worthy ally.”

  “It saved his pride,” Esmae said. “It gave him more of the glory he’s chased all his life.”

  “It worked. How many allies does he have now? His illusion of power has given him real power.”

  Tapping her fingers on the table, Esmae said, “I wonder how many of those allies would still trust him if his deception was revealed.”

  “If you want to expose him, you’ll have to deactivate the illusion from inside his palace,” the architect replied. “The generator is simple tech and it won’t be guarded, but it doesn’t need to be. You’ll have to get past the city’s shield to get anywhere near the palace. And only someone with the codes can get past the shield.”

  “I’ll find a way. Thank you.” She reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and retrieved another white data card, which she handed to Maya Sura. “Your ten thousand silvers, as promised. Settle your debts, Maya. Go live your life. Build thousands of beautiful things.”

  Maya bowed his head, took the card, and left the tavern.

  “Do you believe him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It makes too much sense, and I was stupid not to see it sooner.” And then she said under her breath, bitterly, “That blind spot gets me, every time.”

  “Let’s go home,” I said, “We can talk about this some more on the way. The sooner you’re out of the open, the better.”

  As it turned out, it was too late. When Esmae walked out of the tavern, she walked right into General Saka and her two dozen mercenaries. And at the general’s feet, his eyes frozen open and his shirt soaked in blood, was the body of Maya Sura.

  Esmae’s voice shook with fury as she said, “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “He knew too much,” General Saka said. She didn’t sound pleased, but she didn’t sound sorry either.

  “I know too much, too.”

  “What you know is irrelevant, Princess. I never intended to let you leave this city alive. Why do you think we’re here? For an architect? No, he was unlucky. A loose end I took the opportunity to tie off. We came here for you.”

  Esmae considered the mercenaries, the deserted street that had previously been so busy, and calculated how many of them she could fight and how quickly she could get to me. For my part, I left my position and tried to get closer to her, but the narrow streets and busy markets made it impossible to get lower that the rooftops. I couldn’t even see them beneath the canopies and shelters.

  “How did you even know to find me here?” Esmae wanted to know. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You didn’t have to.” General Saka looked amused. “You have a truly beautiful bow on your back. Forged by a goddess, wasn’t it? Utterly beautiful. Powerful, too. And yet so easy to attach a simple tracker to.”

  I hissed in Esmae’s ear. “Who could possibly have gotten so close to the Black Bow that they were able to plant a tracker?”

  “Alex,” she said softly. “I took it to Arcadia with me one time to show him.”

  “Yes,” says Leila Saka, assuming Esmae had spoken to her. “If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to trust you, but I persuaded him not to let emotion get in the way of reason. After the competition, how could we be sure of you? After all, all the tracker would do is tell us where you were and where you went. If you were truly on our side, what would that matter? On the other hand, if you weren’t, wouldn’t it be better to know?”

  Esmae didn’t answer. General Saka raised a hand. All two dozen mercenaries aimed their loaded crossbows.

  “More than twenty against one?” said Esmae. “The gods won’t smile kindly on you for breaking the laws of righteous warfare.”

  “You know, I’ll take that chance,” said the general. “I trusted in the gods for most of my life, but then I saw with my own eyes how fickle they are. How they bestow and withhold their favor on a whim. Our worship of them is not faith, Princess, it’s fear. And the saddest thing is that we don’t even need to fear them. They cannot lay a hand on us without losing their precious immortality, so why do we still bow? The gods may have tricks, but they have no teeth.”

  I listened in dismay. I am capable of more atrocities than any mortal can comprehend, and righteous warfare is the reason I will never commit those atrocities. The laws are simple, but everyone knows them. Fight when you must, not before. War must not be waged after the sun goes down. The only weapon a mortal may hold in battle is a weapon sanctioned by the gods. The weapons built into chariots and spaceships may be used against other chariots and spaceships, but must never be used against people. If a warrior is outnumbered by more than five to one, they must be allowed to withdraw from the battle if they choose. Only mortals may fight other mortals.

  It is pompous and even a little ridiculous, but it is what holds this star system together. When compassion and mercy fail, and they inevitably do, it is what prevents countries from reducing one another to dust with the press of a button.

  So it was upsetting to hear General Saka speak so passionately about why she was untroubled by an act of unrighteous warfare. It made me wonder how many others think like she does. It made me wonder what would come next.

  I did not think about this for long, for it was only a moment later that I heard the clang, the chilling sound of crossbows firing.

  “Esmae!” I cried out.

  Had there been fewer of them, she might have escaped unscathed. Like a dancer, she leapt in the air and twisted, arcing gracefully over and around several of the arrows. As she moved, her hands reached for the Black Bow and her own arrows. By the time she landed on the ground again, six of the mercenaries were dead and she was out of arrows. She took down three more mercenaries with her bare hands before two of the crossbows found their mark.

  One arrow hit her in the chest, the other in the leg. A sound came out of her, reverberating down the earpiece, a scream that sounded like it had been inside her for a long, long time.

  She fought them, as best she could, her hands sticky with blood and her teeth clenched together to silence the scream. When she couldn’t fight them anymore, she ran.

  No, she limped.

  Eight mercenaries and General Saka remained, and they chased after her. I swooped overhead, trying desperately to reach her, but there were too many rooftops and too many twists and turns. Those twists and turns may have saved her lif
e, however, because she was able to turn a corner and duck behind a market stall.

  She hid there until they passed her. The woman who ran the stall was too shocked to move, possibly afraid of what might happen to her if she intervened in any way. Esmae snapped off the ends of the arrows, leaving the heads inside her, and limped out to find me.

  “Go left,” I urged her, “Left, left again, and then right! There’s a market square there with space I can land in.”

  She said nothing, but I saw her go left, then left again.

  She never turned right. Halfway down the narrow alley after the second left, she stumbled and fell. I said her name down the earpiece, but there was no answer.

  I hovered helplessly thirty feet above her, unable to get any closer because of the tall apartments on either side of the alley. I used my tech to zoom in so that I could at least get a better look at her. Her eyes were closed. The arrow in her chest had just missed her heart, but it had torn a hole in her lungs. Her vitals were poor, her heartbeat weak, her blood loss catastrophic.

  That was where Sybilla found her, just a few moments later. I assume I was the beacon in the air that led them to her. That, or the blood.

  Sybilla started screaming for Max over her own earpiece. He had been tracking General Saka, entirely unaware that Esmae was even on this planet, and he came running.

  I don’t think I will ever forget the look on his face when he saw her.

  He looked up at me, and I immediately swooped up and away, toward the square I had tried to guide Esmae to. Max scooped up Esmae and followed me. She lay like a doll in his arms, lifeless but for that faint, persistent heartbeat.

  When they got to the square, Max and Sybilla got Esmae on board and I directed them to the pods in my rear wing. They ended up choosing the pod that had replaced the one we sent Rama out into space in, but I did not tell either of them that.

  As soon as they closed the pod, I switched on the robotics inside and got to work on staunching the blood loss and stabilizing Esmae’s vitals.

  As I worked, I shut my doors and took off into the sky. Sybilla got on her earpiece to the others they’d come to Shloka with and told them to get back on their own ship and return to Kali. I noticed her hands shook. I set the kettle in the galley to boil.

  It took Esmae well over a week to get out of her hospital bed after that day, but once she could, she went back to her maps and her plans like nothing had happened. She wouldn’t talk about Shloka; she refused to talk about the fact that she had almost died or about the architect whose death she blamed herself for. She just went right back to her war. She was a storm sweeping across the galaxy, and there was no stopping her.

  But that day, on the way home, Max stood by the pod with his bloody hand on the glass. He didn’t move the whole way back. He didn’t take his eyes off Esmae once.

  He spoke to her, too, but she couldn’t hear him. And I never told her what he said.

  I wish I had told her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I don’t know how I expected to feel when I woke up the morning after the Lotus Festival, but in pain wasn’t it.

  It’s in my neck, sharp like a needle, but then it’s gone and I can’t move.

  I can’t move.

  My eyes go wide in panic, the only movement I seem to be capable of. What’s happened to me?

  I’m still in my dress from last night, still in the tower, still curled up on the blankets Max tossed onto the floor of his workshop. The windows are bright with light from the sun lamps. The palace is unnaturally quiet. Of course, it is the day after the Lotus Festival, the one morning of year when the entire kingdom sleeps in after a full night of festivities, so that does make sense.

  But this, this paralysis, makes no sense. Why can’t I move?

  Someone moves in front of me and crouches down so I can see them. “Please don’t panic,” a male voice says calmly. “The serum will wear off in a few minutes. We just need you unable to interfere for the moment, that’s all.”

  As my vision adjusts to the light, his face comes into focus. I’ve never seen him before, but the three vertical streaks of blue paint on his forehead fill me with cold dread.

  He’s a Blue Knight.

  He has a sword in one hand and an empty syringe in the other. That pain in my neck must have been the needle, quickly injected while I was asleep. How did they get into the palace? How did they open the door and walk in without waking me?

  My heart stutters. Max. Where is he?

  I try to speak, but my vocal chords are mostly frozen. “Mmmm,” is all that comes out.

  “Esmae.” It’s his voice, alive. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

  Okay? Nothing’s okay!

  The Blue Knight lifts me, like I’m little more than a puppet, and props me against one of the bookshelves. I can see now that there are three more of them. Max stands between two of them, his face stony, and I watch in horror as one of them cuffs his wrists together with a silver band.

  “Good,” the Blue Knight who spoke to me says to him, slanting his sword inches from my throat. “No one needs to get hurt if you cooperate.”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Max says, his eyes on me. On the sword at my throat. The top two buttons of his shirt are still undone and he’s barefoot. He must have been asleep when they came in too.

  I try to shake my head, but of course I can’t. I can’t do anything. I seethe silently, uselessly.

  All that time scheming against Yann, and I missed this. The Blue Knights. They hadn’t been trying to hide their path across the star system because they hadn’t wanted us to know they were going to Arcadia; they had been hiding because they hadn’t wanted us to know they were coming here. And the Knights already here, the dot on the map that never moved? I’d thought that maybe they had chosen Kali over Kirrin, but it was simpler than that. They just hadn’t needed to move. They were right where they needed to be. They had waited for the Lotus Festival, fully aware that it would be their best chance to slip into the palace unnoticed.

  And I missed it. As always, my brother found a way to hit me in my blind spot. Amba will be so disappointed in me.

  But this is wrong. Why go to all this trouble and then inject me with a serum? Why not kill me and be done with it? I know Kirrin takes no pleasure in the idea of my death, but I also know he’ll see it done because he thinks it’s the best way to protect Alex. So why am I still alive?

  One of the Knights puts a hand to his ear, then says, “We’re clear to get out,” he says. “The festival guests from Shloka have permission to get past the shields in a few minutes, so we should be able to slip out with them.”

  “Good,” the first Knight says, turning away from me and sheathing his sword. “Let’s go. Prince Max,” he adds, indicating the open window, where the second knight is now standing, “Follow my companion, please.”

  Outside the window, I finally see it. A starship. That’s how they got in without us hearing them. They never used the door at all! I try and fail to grit my teeth. I used that window for my own plans last night. They must have been watching me at the dance. They must have seen me come up here and realized it was a much easier way to get in than searching the entire palace for me on foot.

  No, not me. Panic seizes me as I realize what the Blue Knight meant when he told me he had temporarily paralyzed me to stop me interfering. They didn’t come here for me. They came for Max.

  I try to shout, but my lips don’t move and barely any sound comes out of me. Max, mindful of the first Knight’s sword, complies with the order and follows the second Knight to the window. The Knight scrambles onto the sill and uses a thick, muscled arm to grip Max’s manacled wrists and pull him up with him.

  “Mmmm,” I cry, futilely.

  He looks back, and his eyes are anguished. “They want you to come after me,” he says, “So don’t. Don’t play their game.”

  Then he’s gone, out the window and into the starship hovering outside. The other Knights follow.


  And I can do nothing but watch.

  It must only be about a minute before I feel my jaw loosen and my hands twitch, but it feels like forever. Sensation comes back slowly, but as soon as it comes back to my legs, even only partly, I move. I stumble to the window and activate my earpiece.

  “Titania, I need you!” I plead. “The Blue Knights took Max.”

  She answers immediately. “Where are you?”

  “The same window from last night.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

  She makes it in twenty-seven. I don’t waste time climbing inside her control room, but instead leap barefoot onto her tail, race down her arrowhead body to her left wing, and seize hold of one of the grips there as she takes off towards the shields. The Knights said they needed to slip out with the guests from Shloka, which means they’ll have to wait for the Shlokan ships. We might still get to them in time.

  By the time we reach the inner shield, the Knights’ ship is about to cross over.

  “Esmae, I cannot fire at their ship,” Titania says in my earpiece. “Not while Max is still on board.”

  “I know. I’ll have to go.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Titania replies. “How will you stay on their ship? They must have chosen it to blend in with Shloka’s travel ships and it was clearly not built for wing war. Look, there aren’t any grips anywhere on its surface!”

  “I have to try. I can’t just let them take him.”

  “But you don’t have the blueflow—”

  Everyone thinks I don’t care that I’ve lost the armor Amba gave me, but that’s not true. I do care. I do care that I can be hurt and killed like anyone else now. I’m always afraid.

  I swallow the fear and jump.

  My body slams against the side of the Knights’ ship and my hands instantly search for something to grab hold of. My nails grind into a section of decorative metal over the sealed doors, shaped like lotus flowers, but the screws whine in protest and an instant later the metal flowers break off.

  The ship flies away, and I fall with the flowers.