Empire of Rust

by Chambers, V. J.

  * * *

  Leah was still awed by the scope of Gabriel’s study. She’d spent the last five minutes staring up at all of the books, even as Gabriel scurried around, lighting lanterns and pulling books off the shelf.

  The guards were all outside the door. They’d keep anyone from entering and alert Gabriel to danger. But they were far enough away that they couldn’t hear them.

  Leah threw herself down in a chair. “Do you really know how to stop the necromancer?”

  “No,” said Gabriel, paging through one of the books.

  “Then why did you say that?”

  “I’m going to figure it out,” said Gabriel. “Now that I’m in here, I have all my resources, I’m going to come up with a solution.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Great. So, we’re just relying on your thinking of a good idea.”

  “I thought of the thing with the revenants, didn’t I? Back at the inn?”

  “Well, I guess that was good.” She bit down on her lip.

  “See? It’s going to be fine.” He stopped paging through the book. “This is the earliest book of records that we have about the necromancers. If there’s information on how to stop them, it’s going to be here.” He glared down at the page.

  Leah watched.

  Time passed.

  Gabriel read. He turned pages. He kept reading.

  Leah fiddled with her fingers. “Is there something I could do to help?”

  Gabriel looked up at her. “Help?”

  She nodded.

  “Can you read?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.’

  “Not really.” He went back to his book.

  More time passed.

  Leah stared at the ceiling. There were cracks up there, and she did her best to find patterns and pictures in them.

  “There’s nothing here.” Gabriel threw the book down on the floor. He started to pace. “It’s as if they’re invincible.”

  “Necromancers? Well, yeah, I could have told you that.”

  “No, there’s got to be something.” He walked back and forth, rubbing his face.

  “There isn’t. You’re going to have to tell those guards—”

  “Stop being negative.” He pointed at her. “I’m going to figure this out. Now, maybe if we just go over everything we know.”

  She sighed. This wasn’t good. She and Gabriel needed to get out of the city. That was the only solution she could think of. But she guessed she’d wait until he got this crazy idea of fighting the necromancer out of his system before she tried to break it to him.

  “Okay,” he said. “The necromancer is powerful because he controls the revenants, right? He has all these revenants out there, and he just turns them into his mind slaves. And the revenants, well, they don’t die easy, and they never get tired.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He looked up at her. “Right?”

  “Really? You need me to confirm this?”

  He shook his head, looking back at the floor as he paced. “His strength is the revenants. Without the revenants he’s nothing. So, if we could disconnect him from the revenants…

  “But,” he continued, “we don’t know how to do that. Why don’t we know? Because we don’t know how he controls them.” He took a long breath. “But in order to control them, he’s got to communicate with them. How would he communicate with them?”

  It was quiet except for Gabriel’s footfalls.

  Then he stopped pacing. He kicked the leg of one of his tables. “Oh, this is ridiculous. How would we know how they communicate? We’d need to study the necromancers, and, of course, no one studies anything, because that would be questioning and that would be sinful and fuck.”

  Leah cleared her throat. “Maybe if you rounded up some coin, you could pay the guards to smuggle us out of the city.”

  He glared at her. He resumed pacing. “All right, all right, let’s try something else. What is the necromancer? He’s like a revenant.”

  “Is he?” said Leah.

  “Yeah.” Gabriel stopped and addressed her. “The necromancers are made from the same viral concoction as the revenants. But there have been some adjustments made to it so that it doesn’t affect the cognitive functions in the same way.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Well, after the Scourge, they were able to trace the outbreak to a batch of a beauty cream,” said Gabriel. “It was, um, at the time, really revolutionary. It promised to rejuvenate old skin—make it new and young again.”

  “Huh,” said Leah. “Well, it worked.”

  Gabriel laughed. “Yeah, the revenants do have great skin.”

  Leah laughed too. “But how did that make necromancers?”

  “I don’t think the idea was to make necromancers,” said Gabriel. “Some of the scientists from the corporation continued working on the infected batch. They wanted to be able to cure the revenants. So, they created a batch that didn’t destroy the brain’s ability to think, but it still had certain side effects. And then their work stopped.”

  “How come?”

  “The cult of the Life took over. Their beliefs are the basis of our religious beliefs. They were a group that didn’t rely on electricity or modern comforts to survive, so, when society broke down, they were much more capable of survival. They didn’t hold with science. They shut down the experiments. But that batch of cream—the necromancer cream—they found uses for it.”

  “So necromancers are really just revenants who can think.”

  “That’s right,” said Gabriel. His eyes lit up. “That’s right.” He grinned. He grabbed Leah in a big hug.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “The revenants can communicate,” he said. “It’s how they make hordes, how they gather up. You know how if you’re out in the wilderness, and you come upon a few revenants, common knowledge is that there will be more along soon?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So, they communicate,” he said, “but it’s not like the way we communicate. It’s through smell. It’s a mutation of the bee pheromones that were in the cream that caused the outbreak. It’s just primitive things like direction. They do it by smell.”

  Leah still wasn’t following.

  “Look, what Darius is doing to communicate with the revenants, it’s got to be a smell he’s secreting. If we can block that smell, then we can stop him from controlling the revenants.”

  She nodded slowly. Okay, in theory, she followed that. “But how are we going to block a smell? It travels long distances, doesn’t it? I mean, the revenants outside the walls can smell it.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s like a network. They send the smell to the nearby revenants, and the nearby revenants make the smell too and send it to the ones near them and so on. If we cut off the source, then none of them can communicate.” He sprinted for the door to his study, where the guards were waiting.

  “Where are you going?”

  He flung open the door and began pointing at guards. “You. I need you to find incense. Lots of incense. And you. Get messages to all the people in the mansion to bar themselves inside their rooms. If what I’m planning works, the revenants won’t be controlled anymore, and they’ll be looking for their next meal. You. Go to the dungeon and gather up heavy chains.”

  Leah hung back, watching him give the orders. Was it possible that they wouldn’t have to leave the mansion after all?

  * * *

  Gabriel and the guards slunk through the hallways of the mansion. One of the guards carried a large wooden box of incense. Two others carried chains. The halls were empty except for the revenants, who stood like statues, empty-eyed and pale-faced.

  According to the guards, Darius and Michal were in their bedchamber. They’d take them by surprise there.

  Each time that Gabriel went by one of the revenants, he peered anxiously at its eyes, afraid that it was seeing him and somehow passing the message on to Darius. At every second, he expected to the revenan
ts to turn on him, reaching out with their dead hands to pull him close enough to sink their teeth into his skin.

  But it never happened.

  They reached the outside of the door without incident.

  The guards looked at him, waiting for permission. They all knew what to do once they were inside. They’d gone over it several times.

  Gabriel nodded, his heart starting to thud against his chest. This would work. This had to work.

  “Enter,” called Michal’s voice from within.

  The guards pushed open the door and they all burst in. The last guard bolted the door behind them.

  “Darius the necromancer,” said Gabriel, “you have committed treason against the empire, and this crime cannot go unpunished.”

  Michal stood up from the sofa she’d been reclining on, her eyes wide.

  Darius stalked out from behind her, his head down, his eyes narrowed.

  There was a pounding noise on the door they’d just come through, and the sound of wood straining against its hinges.

  “Now,” said Gabriel.

  The guards with the chains and the incense lunged for Darius.

  Darius tried to evade them, but there were too many of them.

  They looped the chains over his torso, binding his arms to his side. They struck flints and lit the incense. The incense burned in small metal boxes, each suspended with a chain for easy carrying or hanging. They hung the incense on Darius’s chains.

  The straining at the door stopped.

  Gabriel grinned. It had worked.

  “What are you doing?” Michal glared at him, her eyes flashing.

  “Taking away his advantage,” said Gabriel. He eyed her. “I know that you were only trying to protect the man you loved, sister, but most of this is your doing, isn’t it? It was your idea to steal my throne.”

  “You will release him,” said Michal.

  “I will do no such thing,” said Gabriel. “And I’m afraid that you are to be held as responsible for this crime as—”

  He broke off because Michal had taken off running. She unbolted the door, and a slew of revenants streamed inside.

  She turned, standing within them, her arms outstretched, her teeth bared.

  The revenants were coming, but it wasn’t the lumbering, disorganized way that revenants usually moved. No, these revenants were still being controlled by the necromancer.

  Gabriel looked back at the burning incense, surrounding Darius in a cloud of smoke. But-but—

  There was no time to think about it. The revenants were on him.

  Gabriel drew his sword. He slashed at the first revenant coming for him, cutting off its arm, sending a spray of black blood over the bedchamber.

  Around him, the guards were fighting too, hacking at the revenants as they came.

  The revenants were concentrated. They seemed to want to get at Darius, to free him. That made sense, Gabriel supposed. But again, he didn’t have time to think.

  He plunged the tip of his sword into a revenant’s face. It went down.

  He turned and brought up his blade just in time to block another revenant who was reaching out for him.

  There were so many revenants. They were coming at them from all sides. He and the guards made a ring around Darius, their backs to the necromancer, the pungent smell of the incense tickling Gabriel’s nose.

  He couldn’t understand why the incense had stopped working. It had seemed to work at first.

  He slashed instead, cutting off a revenant’s head. Pivoting to skewer another through the mouth and out the back of its head.

  He caught sight of Michal, still at the door, her expression fierce. She was watching everything. She hadn’t run away. She cared about Darius, that much was clear. She wouldn’t abandon him.

  But looking at his sister cost him ground. He hadn’t been paying enough attention to the revenants, and he retreated, stepping back closer to Darius.

  The revenants that had followed him seemed to lose cohesion. They were still reaching for him, but now their had opened their mouths wide and they were stumbling and clumsy.

  Gabriel drove his sword into one of them, right beneath its cheekbone.

  The incense was so intense here that his eyes were watering.

  It was working.

  He looked back at Michal, her nostrils flared, her jaw set.

  Oh God. The realization went through him like electric shock. She’s a necromancer too. He froze in horror. His sister. His nearest relative. The person he’d been closest to for most of his life. She was a monster now.

  A revenant seized his arm.

  Panicked, Gabriel tried to shake it off.

  The revenant held on tight.

  He could see the revenant’s glassy eyes, its open jaws, its rotting teeth, all the way down its dark gullet. He thrashed.

  The revenant’s fingers dug into his skin.

  Sword, you idiot, he remembered. And he brought up the weapon, taking the monster’s head from its shoulders. He raised his voice. “Peter! Jonathan!” he yelled, recalling the only two of the guards’ names he could manage. “After Michal. She’s controlling the revenants. Incense on her as well.”

  Michal turned to run.

  The guards darted after her.

  She ducked out the door.

  They caught up with her. Seizing her by the shoulders, they dragged her back into the room.

  “Chain her and put incense on her,” said Gabriel. He rushed forward and bolted the door against any further influx of revenants.

  With the number of revenants limited, the guards were able to mop up the remaining force of revenants. And once Michal was surrounded by incense as well, the revenants had no real sense of purpose or organization. They were slower, easier to kill.

  Michal stared at him with eyes full of hatred.

  He shook his head at her. “My sister. How could I have let this happen to you?”

  “You never cared about me,” she said. “No one did. I’m nothing but a woman. Nothing but another potential wife. But I showed you, didn’t I? I showed how important I could be?”

  “You were always important to me.” He wanted to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The mansion still wasn’t fully rid of revenants, but Gabriel couldn’t risk having Michal and Darius in there anymore. The incense worked, but they didn’t have an unlimited supply, and he was never sure that they wouldn’t get free and start controlling the revenants again.

  The remaining revenants had been herded into two different places. One was the receiving room. There were a lot of them there. Another large group was up in one of the wings that wasn’t used anymore. They were bolted in, and there were guards on the doors. It wasn’t ideal, and it was still dangerous, but Gabriel knew he had to deal with Michal and Darius before doing anything.

  The head of the council had come to him to ask how the traitors would be executed.

  But Gabriel didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to kill his sister. And he disliked the public spectacle of an execution. It always put a bad taste in his mouth, the common people screaming for blood and the garish, carnivalesque atmosphere of the entire ordeal. No, he wanted to avoid that at all costs.

  So, still chained and surrounded by burning incense, he and a group of guards escorted Darius and Michal out of the city, beyond the gates and down the shore. They traveled far and long, even taking a boat across a band of water to get the two of them to an island key off the coast.

  Then he sat down with the two of them to talk.

  “I’m sparing your lives,” he said. “I give you exile instead of death, which is what the law demands for your crimes.”

  Michal shook her head. “This isn’t exile, Gabriel. We’ll die out here.” She looked around at the gray sky and the stretch of land. There were crumbles of ruins in the distance, the leftovers from before the Scourge. “You’re easing your own conscience, but you’ve as good as killed us.”

  “We won’t die,” said Darius, giv
ing her a small smile. “We don’t need to eat anymore, remember?”

  Gabriel looked back and forth between the two of them. “If you come back, if I ever see you again, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  “If we came back, we’d crush you,” said Michal.

  “Michal,” said Darius. He looked into her eyes.

  She stared back up at him, and something went through her. She seemed to calm down, to give in.

  “I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispered. “This isn’t what I wanted for you, sister.”

  She looked back at her brother, her eyes glittering with tears. “Just go.”

  He left.

  * * *

  When Gabriel returned to the city, he had trouble getting back through the gates. It seemed that in the interim, between his leaving and returning, a group of rebels had barricaded the gates and wasn’t allowing anyone in or out.

  Upon arriving, Gabriel immediately recognized Zachariah and the rest of the group that Nathaniel had traveled with. They were on top of their carriages, chanting together, “Down with the empire, up with the people!”

  And the people inside the city had gathered on top of the walls to look down them and cheer them on. The people were chanting as well.

  Gabriel’s guards wanted to arrest them all. They figured they could easily subdue the ragtag group. But Gabriel stopped them. Instead, he approached Zachariah himself.

  Zachariah peered down at him from the top of the carriage where he was standing. When he recognized Gabriel, he stopped chanting. He leapt down to face the emperor. “Well, well. Look who’s managed to get his empire back from the nasty necromancer.”

  Gabriel folded his arms over his chest. “I could have you all killed, you know that.”

  Zachariah looked him over. “You could do that. You could silence us. But we’ve infected the population of the empire, from here all the way stretching north. The people won’t take this kind of abuse for much longer. The empire needs to be destroyed. If you kill us, more of us will rise, and if you kill them, even more will rise. You won’t be able to fight us, not forever. We will prevail.”

  “Right.” Gabriel cocked his head to one side. “Well, that does sound like a problem.”