by David Estes
“Wait,” Fire said, drawing her sword. Flames leapt from her fingers onto the weapon. A sigh of awe rose up from the crowd. The Beggar watched with interest. He’d never seen someone with a tattooya use their power. Well, except for himself, and he had little control over the plague, which seemed as wild as a chest full of snakes. The way she flaunted her power captivated him.
“Wait for what?” Whisper asked. She can’t see me, the Beggar thought. Not really. None of them can, save for Fire.
“Princesses,” a man said, striding in front of the sisters. He was garbed from head to toe in leather armor marked with the royal sigil, a silver dragon over a rising red sun. The shiva, the master of order in Calypso. His dark eyes roamed the crowd, passing over the Beggar like he didn’t even exist. “We cannot tarry here. It’s not safe.”
“I am only following the empress’s orders,” Fire said, scanning the crowd once more.
The Beggar didn’t wait for her gaze to settle on him, he stepped forward again. Closer, closer. He wanted to say something—tried to say something—but his words were swallowed by a sudden wave of emotion that crashed through him.
Relief.
From there, everything happened quickly. Fire leapt forward, her sword blazing. She kicked him in the stomach, knocking him over. The Beggar closed his eyes, waiting for the flames to consume him.
He felt nothing. Something was cast over him, thick and warm. He opened his eyes to darkness. A blanket, he realized.
Voices were there, too, but they were like the sound of individual drops of rain in a thunderstorm—impossible to isolate.
Anyway, he didn’t care what they had to say about him, not anymore. Soon, he’d be killed.
And then he’d be free.
Three
The Southern Empire, Phanes
Jai Jiroux
None knew of his mark, and it was better that way.
Though those bearing a tattooya were generally revered, almost worshipped, in the south-eastern land of Phanes, Jai Jiroux knew such adoration wouldn’t apply to him. No, not when his mark went against everything the current emperor, Vin Hoza, the Slave Master, believed in.
Standing in front of Emperor Hoza now, Jai was acutely aware of the mark on his heel. Though it was hidden, he could see it in his mind’s eye, the scales of justice gleaming like a lit candle.
“Master Jiroux,” the emperor said, “what do you have to report?” The emperor stroked his dark mustache and goatee, which reminded Jai of an arrowhead. Hoza’s face was powdered with the finest sifted chalk dust, a stark contrast to his black hair. His dark, tight braids were piled atop his head in a honeycomb formation. Tied within his hair and beard were diamonds, sparkling in the natural light streaming through an ornate, beveled windowpane. Gaudy jewelry—rings—adorned all ten fingers, studded with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. The wealth on this man’s fingers and hair alone could feed all the slaves in Phanea. As if that wasn’t enough, the emperor had jewels sewn into his skin in the typical Phanecian manner—his chest, his arms…even his forehead glittered with two lines of jewels, replacing his eyebrows, which had been permanently removed.
Vin Hoza sat comfortably in a plush chair, leaning back slightly. Behind him were the Great Pillars of Phanea, three black marble columns so wide around it would take a dozen men to surround even one of them. On each was engraved a symbol, representing the Three Great Pillars of Phanes: the Fist; the Sword; the Whip. The Fist was for brothers, used both to settle disputes and to slap one another on the back when the brawl was over. The Sword was for enemies, to cut throats and stab hearts. The Whip was for slaves, its lash a constant reminder. The emperor governed his kingdom by these three tenets, and no others.
Emperor Hoza’s eyes generally appeared to be pulled too tight, as if they were incapable of blinking, and yet they did. His mouth was almost always open a sliver, the tip of his pink tongue protruding. Most of his muscular chest was bare, save for a panel of leather secured by two straps. The panel was painted with the Phanecian sigil—the four-eyed lioness. A sleepy spotted pyzon lay curled around Hoza’s chair, its long sinuous body so thick that no man would be able to wrap his hands around it. Yet, even a pyzon this large was relatively small for the species, which had been known to grow as large as the dragons that patrolled Calyp. Living underground in the desert, there were rumors that some red pyzons could grow as long as the tallest trees in the Tangle. In its sleep, the enormous snake’s thin, forked tongue hissed from its mouth intermittently. Several guards stood beside the emperor at attention, but even they were too far away to be of much use.
I could draw the knife from my belt and plunge it through his heart before—
Jai blinked away the thought, for he knew the emperor could enslave him with naught but a touch. After all, Vin Hoza bore a tattooya, too. The slavemark. And unlike Jai, he didn’t hide his mark—torches burned all around his chair, illuminating the symbol on his neck and upper chest:
Four lengths of iron chain, linked in the center.
Instead of killing the emperor, Jai said, “Garadia Mine is producing at full capacity.” “Diamonds flow from the chutes like a river.” Of course they do, Jai thought. Anything less would mean the slaves get whipped, and I cannot allow that.
“Good. Increase production by ten percent,” the emperor said, waving his hand casually, as if to say Now be gone.
Jai didn’t move, his jaw set. “That’s impossible,” he said through gritted teeth. He could feel a film of sweat begin to form beneath his own layer of face powder.
He knew it was a mistake to question a direct command from Hoza, but he couldn’t help himself. Not when the slaves under his command were already so broken. Not when his justicemark flared at the thought of the injustice of their very existence.
Jai stood, waiting to be punished for his insolence. To his surprise, however, the Slave Master only laughed, his tongue flicking out like the spotted pyzon’s. “Master Jiroux, all my life’s experience has taught me one thing: nothing is impossible. Once I would’ve thought it impossible that my wife, the light of my life, could ever leave me, and yet she did, all for a bunch of dogs.”
The Calypsian Empress, Sun Sandes, Jai thought. When their marriage union was shattered, civil war exploded in the south. A war that had lasted for a dozen years already. Evidently, Empress Sun was against the use of slaves. Dogs, as Vin Hoza liked to refer to them as.
The emperor continued. “I have great power, and I won’t waste it. Not when there is land to be conquered, people to be enslaved, wealth to be obtained. Did you know that there is an attempt on my life every day? Sometimes more than one. And it’s not because the people hate me, no, nothing like that. It’s because there’s a superstition that my power will go to the man”—he paused, thoughtfully—“or woman, who kills me. You see? Everyone wants what I have. But I won’t die easily. And as long as I am emperor, as long as I bare this mark”—he gestured to his chest—“I will demand the impossible. And I will get it. Especially now, when my enemies are destroying so much of what I’ve built. The Black Tears are worse than the Calypsian plague.”
Jai had trouble controlling his expression. Over the last few years, the rebel group known as the Black Tears had been gaining in strength and boldness. Twice they’d released slaves from their mines. The first group were caught and killed, and now the mine continued to lie vacant, not producing; the second group, however, had disappeared somewhere along the southernmost tip of the Spear. Jai hoped they’d managed to cross the fast-moving river and escape into Calyp, but the emperor was certain they had drowned. Lost resources, he called them.
Not much was known of the secretive rebels, except that they were thought to be supporters of Sun Sandes before her feud with her husband. And that they etched permanent markings of black tears on their cheeks, each of which were supposedly meant to represent someone they had killed. A death tally, so to speak. Also, according to rumor, every member of the Black Tears was a woman.
“The Black Tears,” Hoza said again, practically spitting the name out in disgust. “May they rot in the Void.” The emperor paused again, licking his lips and studying his rings. His gaze traveled sharply back to Jai, and he changed the subject. “I have heard whispers of your methods as a mine master. They are decidedly…unorthodox.”
“And yet I get results,” Jai said. He’d had trouble with several of his underlings who didn’t agree with his methods. Almost certainly it was one of them who had whispered in the emperor’s ear.
“Some say the slaves are the masters of the mine, rather than you and your comrades.”
Jai didn’t like the way this conversation was going, but he remained silent, letting the emperor choose the course.
“What would you say to your critics?” Hoza finally asked, when it was clear Jai would not speak.
Jai clenched his fists at his sides. “That results are results, and the means aren’t important. My mine is the highest-producing in the empire. Now I know that it’s not my slaves who are spreading my secrets, so it must be one of my mine masters. That is unacceptable behavior that must be punished.”
The emperor stared at him with eyes as dark as unlit coals. For a moment, Jai feared he’d been too brazen with his words. That his people would suffer as a result.
But then the emperor laughed again, and said, “Indeed. Insolence must be met with strength. Bring him in!”
On command, two bare-chested guards dragged in a man. At first Jai didn’t recognize him, such was his transformation in appearance. Wearing nothing but a ripped beige sackcloth, the man was a mess of bruises and cuts. His previously long hair had been shorn to the scalp. His eyes wore a vacant, wild expression. His face was without powder for the first time in Jai’s recollection, the skin beneath brown with a hint of orange.
But the man was Phanecian, not Teran, like most of the slaves.
Master Axa, Jai thought. He was one of his most outspoken and violent mine masters. On multiple occasions Jai had to punish this man for beating one of his workers within an inch of their lives. Jai wasn’t surprised it was this snake of a man who’d betrayed him.
“What shall I do with him?” Hoza asked Jai now.
“Please,” Axa said, dropping to his knees and knitting his hands together. His narrow eyes locked with Jai’s, full of fear and something else. A request. For mercy. For forgiveness.
In his current state, Axa seemed penitent, and yet he had plenty of his own small jewels sewn into his skin—a reminder of what he once was, what he still represented.
Violence. Oppression. Arrogance. Wealth.
And yet something about his plea for mercy rang false—Jai’s justicemark told him as much. But why would the man lie? Axa really was at Jai’s mercy. He considered his options. The emperor respected swift and harsh punishment, but something told him killing the master would be a mistake. Also, it wasn’t the way Jai did things. As usual, when faced with a decision such as this one, his justicemark flared on his heel and provided the answer, as clear as a spoken word in his mind. “Give him to me,” he said. “His mind, his body, his soul.”
“No,” Axa breathed. Again, the word itself was false, but Jai didn’t have time to consider what that might mean.
The emperor smiled—Jai had chosen wisely. “As you wish.” The emperor touched Axa’s scalp and the tattooya on Hoza’s chest flared to life, shimmering with red and gold and orange light.
Axa screamed and began to shake as a similar marking appeared on his own chest, the chains wrapping around his neck, tightening, releasing, and then settling in. The whites of his eyes turned to darkness, like a sky upon the onset of night.
He stopped screaming. Stopped shaking. Stood stiffly. “What is your command, Master?” he said to the emperor.
Hoza’s lips curled up on one side. “I give you to Master Jiroux, from this day forward until I command otherwise. You will obey his every command. Is this clear?”
“Yes, Master.”
Though it was what Jai had requested, watching the creation of another slave by the Slave Master himself twisted his stomach into knots. He hated the dark, glazed look in Axa’s eyes, the flat, obedient sound of his voice, the stiffness in his movements.
Once more, Hoza flicked his fingers, and this time Jai spun on his heels and departed. Axa trailed behind like a well-trained dog.
One of the emperor’s sons was waiting outside. Falcon, the oldest—and meanest—of the Hoza brood. His scalp was shaved to the skin, save for a long stripe of hair down the center, pressed together to look like a blade. On either side of the Mohawk were emeralds sewn into his powdered skin to look like eyes. Diamond earrings that likely came from Garadia Mine studded each earlobe.
Falcon was known to be a master of phen ru, the art of attack, the most popular martial art amongst the Phanecian elite, including most mine masters and soldiers. Like all the masters, Jai had also been trained in phen ru, but it wasn’t the style of fighting he preferred. No, his father had taught him phen lu, the art of defense, as a child. Now he was a master of both, something no one knew about him.
“Master Jiroux,” Falcon grunted.
“Falcon,” Jai said. The two brushed past each other without a second glance. It was no secret that Falcon wanted command of Garadia for himself. It was the most valuable mine in the empire, after all. Jai shuddered to think what would happen to the slaves under the future emperor’s control.
Then again, with Vin Hoza’s decree to increase diamond output by ten percent, it didn’t much matter who was the master of Garadia. Worked to the bone, most of the slaves would die anyway.
Unless I do something about it, Jai thought.
He shook his head, ignoring the dark stares of the other two white-faced Hoza brothers, Fang and Fox, as he passed. There was nothing he could do. There were five thousand slaves in Garadia—far too many to escape with. And even if he did, they’d be hunted down and killed for desertion, one by one, along with him.
He wouldn’t let them suffer more. He couldn’t.
Maybe there’s another way, he thought. An idea appeared and then vanished, evading him. It had to do with a story his father once told him. A story about the Southron Gates.
He squinted as he left the palace and emerged into the oven that was the city of Phanea. He’d once heard someone say that the sun was different in the south. Fierier. That the brazen sun rose earlier in the south than anywhere else in the Four Kingdoms, assaulting the horizon like an invading army of fire-bearing warriors.
To Jai, however, the sun was just the sun, an oppressive, sweltering yellow orb.
And there was nowhere hotter than Phanea, which was formed of stone canyons cut in perfect corridors beneath the surface of the desert, creating underground blocks. Although the canyons were straight and narrow, connecting into large squares, it was said the city was built by the gods, not men or nature, cut into the earth long before the Phanecians arrived in these lands.
If so, thought Jai, the gods are trying to cook us alive. Although the tall cliffs provided plenty of shade, the stone canyons tended to trap the heat rather than deflect it, creating a superheated box where everything seemed to move slower.
He cupped a hand over his brow to block the sun, and made his way to his chariot, which awaited his return. Along the way, he passed dozens of statues lining the pathway, which was constructed of crushed crystal, scattered underfoot like gravel. The Phanecians loved their statues, which were carved in the images of their past emperors, including Vin Hoza’s father, Jin. On the walls of the canyons were even larger statues, cut into the face of the stone wall itself, massive busts of the Hoza dynasty. Jai ignored their stares, which seemed to burn right through him.
When he reached the chariot, a slave driver stood ready, expecting orders.
Jai climbed aboard. “To Garadia,” he said, and the driver cracked his whip. He glanced back at Axa, who was trying not to choke on the dust left in the chariot’s wake. “You will walk back to Garadia Mine
,” he commanded.
The new slave began to walk.
Palace slaves toiling in the heat looked up as he passed, but, fearing the lash of their masters, just as quickly lowered their heads. Each were branded with the same chain marking Axa now wore. Most of them were full Terans, having been taken from the southern nation of Teragon, which was located across the Burning Sea. The Teran slaves’ skin was red and their black eyes were round. Once they likely had bright blue eyes, but not anymore. Probably never again.
The women had long coppery hair, while the men’s hair was shorn to the scalp. Traditionally, it was the opposite: Teran men wore their hair long, usually braided, while the women preferred shorter hair. However, as soon as the Terans were enslaved, the Phanecian slave masters forced them to adapt to their own customs.
Mixed amongst them was the occasional Dreadnoughter, the strange folk from the Calypsian islands, with their broad, flat foreheads and grizzled gray skin. There weren’t as many of them, however, as ever since the Southron civil war had begun twelve years earlier, Vin Hoza no longer had naval access to the Dreadnoughts due to the blockade enacted by Empress Sun Sandes.
Jai tried not to think about the slaves, though his heel was on fire.
Ever since he’d been a young boy, Jai Jiroux had known the meaning of truth and justice. It was bred into him, into the mark on his heel, into his head, his heart. He could tell when someone was lying. He could sense when a great inequality was being dealt. In Phanea, in the presence of the slaves, he sensed it all the time.
Void, he’d felt it in his own household, which had had several slaves, including…
Her.
The thought made him grit his teeth and clutch the side of the chariot harder.
After his father was killed, Jai had come up with an insane plan. He’d trained to be a master of slaves, working his way from field lord, to house lord, to mine master. And then, because of his success, he’d been promoted to Master of Garadia.
