The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle

by H. O. Charles

  condition. Talia’s housekeeping had been as chaotic as her mind, and he had heard that she had been disciplined over it on several occasions. Now that he was able to contemplate it, it seemed that her unpredictability had been something entirely different to Morghiad’s. Aside from his momentary madness, the former king’s had been more calculated, designed to keep his plans secret from anyone who might stop him. Talia, on the other hand, was the sort of person who simply wouldn’t have been aware of what she wanted to do next.

  He circled the room twice,

  looking for things that were upset in a manner that was unexpected. But everything had been turned out of drawers and pulled from cupboards. Clothing lay strewn across the floor, books lay scattered upon the bed and all of her soldiers’ riding gear, knife sharpeners and food kit had been piled in the centre of the room. He bent down to examine one of the books. One Hundred Ways to Seduce aMan. He really should not have been the one to do this sham of an investigation!

  A strange smell touched his nostrils. It was like... the scent of burnt wood and old wine. His eyes

  immediately darted towards a fireplace. But, of course, there were none of those to be seen in any room of the palace. He stood and walked the perimeter of the room again. If he had wanted to burn something... There was a small bin in the corner, which he swiftly paced toward. Inside it he found the remnants of whatever had been torched. There were few fragments of anything that looked recognisable, but he reached his hand inside and gently extracted what contents he could.

  Most of the pieces looked like they had once been paper. Silar rose from his knees to fetch an oil lamp

  from the wall, and lit it to hold beside the burned slivers. Some had evidence of handwriting upon them, though most of it was a letter here, or the ends of an unidentifiable word there. “-emi,” was written in slightly larger letters on one piece. Semi? Hemi? Artemi? The latter was far more likely. Talia had written something to her sister, something that had subsequently been destroyed. He turned the paper over and tried to read the reverse. “-aw that h-” and below that, “-ell Si-”What could that have been?

  The general sighed and leant back against the wall. None of the

  other fragments were remotely legible. Had Talia wanted to tell Artemi of their night together? Or had there been something else? Was the Si part of Silar? And why would either Talia or her killer have been interested in burning any evidence of that message? He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, now rough with a full day’s growth.

  He turned his head as light from the opening door illuminated the furniture beside him.

  “My queen, Kahriss Medea.” He stood to address them properly.

  The two women walked in as if gliding upon some unseen wave of air.

  Not a sound came from either of their movements.

  “You’ve found something?”

  He nodded. “I think she tried to write a letter to you; there was something she had to tell you.”

  The queen glanced at the burnt remnants and sighed softly. “Can you get anything from this?”

  “You know how impossible I found her.”

  Medea seated herself on the bed and gazed around at the mess. Her stoop appeared to have deepened further. “Do you think she found something on her last patrol?

  Something that someone doesn’t want us to know about?”

  “That is one possibility,” Silar admitted. But her last patrol had stretched over several hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. He could try speaking to the other soldiers that had been with her. Presumably she had not told them anything, but perhaps they could identify when and where her mood had altered. “I will speak to her squad tomorrow.”

  “Silar?”

  “Yes, Medea.”

  She leaned forward, her green eyes burning. “Could this have

  anything to do with the third sister?”

  Artemi’s brow furrowed. “Whose sister?”

  “She means Mirel’s. The other one from The Crux.” Silar pondered upon the idea for a moment. There was no doubt that such a woman existed somewhere in their world, but he did not especially wish to ask Mirel about her. Five years of imprisonment had reportedly made her even more deranged than before.

  Medea pressed on: “Don’t you think we ought to find out where she is, or what she wants at the very least?”

  “She has never troubled me or

  any of us before. Why would she do so now?”

  “We have locked up her sister, and now you have lost yours.”

  The general’s forehead creased as he attempted to put the ideas together. No... it was elegant, but it did not fit with Talia’s murderer. And Talia would never have trusted someone with ties to Mirel. “Talia knew the person who killed her – enough to trust them. I think the answer is more complex than you suggest... and closer to home.”

  They talked a little longer over the possibilities, and then the time came for them to wander to their beds and attempt to glean what sleep they could. But, just as Silar had predicted, Artemi stayed at his side.

  “You know what I am going to ask.” Her big, dark eyes were drowning in sorrow, and the creature in her mind was undoubtedly prowling.

  He nodded.

  “Will you do it?”

  He sighed. If he did not, Artemi’s demon would feed off her sadness and she would lose control of it once more, perhaps forever. “You know I will.”

  She smiled a weak smile.

  “Thank you. I would be lost without you.”

  “We should not use either of our rooms. There is an empty one in the guest quarters. No guards will be there tonight.”

  “Alright.”

  When they arrived at the empty chambers Artemi removed her coat, weapons and boots, but remained mostly dressed. Silar did the same, and came to place his arms around her. She was shaking a little, and he knew that she felt a mountain of guilt over this small moment of closeness just as he did. He pulled the soft, thin sheets

  across them both, and they lay there together for the night. It would not happen again, of course - he knew that. Definitely not ever again.

  browned leaves and snow-filled flurries in four more cycles of extremes following Talia’s murder, and still her mystery remained unsolved. Silar did not discern her secret in spite of his tireless efforts to uncover it, and her killer remained elusive. But in those four years her family lost hope that anything would be realised about the event, and Artemi accepted it as another loss like the thousands she had known before. She was ready to leave. She had decided not to pack anything away, nor put any affairs into order. She certainly had not made her goodbyes. That had been Morghiad’s

  approach: practical and thoughtful. She had grown far too weary to summon the energy to do such things, and knew they would only have caused more hurt than they prevented. All she had with her were her swords and the dagger her husband had given her. Those were the only things she required. The queen tightened her weapon belts, and stepped into the warmth of the hallway.

  A swell of guards moved to accompany her but she waved them away. “Please remain at my apartments for today. I would like to be alone.”

  Orwin’s nod was barely perceptible. “As you wish.”

  She forced a smile and turned to walk away from her army friends. A queen could not have wished for better soldiers, and Artemi had known few she trusted so deeply through her millennia alive. It was a strange thing, she considered, to know that she would not exist in the future. There would be outcomes she would never see, wars she would not fight in. She would never discover whom her children would marry, or if they would produce children of their own. But she was confident they would do well without her. Tallyn had never been a concern and Silar had promised that Medea

  would find her strength again. The decider, of course, was that Kalad no longer needed her. He had made that clear enough in their recent conversations, or more commonly, arguments. Really, it had been their practice session the day before that had awoken her
to the truth.

  “You must ensure the cadets’ equipment is properly cleaned and stowed,” she had instructed between strikes.

  “I’ve already done it, mother.”

  She parried his awkward downswipe. “And the patrols for tomorrow need to be finalised. You need to

  ensure-”

  “That there is at least one blades master per group,” he completed, diverting one of her attacks and stumbling to the left. “It has all been arranged.”

  “And the city guard?”

  “Expanded by two-hundred men for the winter.”

  Artemi had called a halt to their fight then, and they had stopped there, blinking at each other. She was breathless from the exertion, she realised, while he looked as calm as a mountain lake. Kalad would never improve as a swordsman or come close to matching his siblings; he had given up trying in that respect. And he certainly required no more instruction on leadership, which was something he excelled at. He no longer needed her. It was a peculiar mix of emotions she had felt upon realising this fact. There was pride at his achievements - that her youngest son had finally become a man, and regret that he had failed to meet some obvious expectations. That his balance was so poor could only be attributed to the poison in him; her own stupid fault for getting injured! But she also felt sorrow, as if she were about to be tossed onto a spoil heap of mothers

  who’d outgrown their usefulness.

  Her duty may have been completed with flaws, but she knew that there was no more to be done about it. She was ready to join her husband now, and become part of the great fires that made the world turn. Artemi quickened her pace through the corridors as they varied in width, breathing in the Crux-powered air that filled it. A few more steps brought her to a window that faced the gardens, and she stopped for a moment to gaze at them. Her eldest son and daughter were there, wading through the deep snow with dusted cloaks that dragged

  across it. They were laughing about something, smiling. The scene warmed Artemi’s heart immeasurably. She tore herself away from it, and continued to make her way to the infamous cave of light. The Law-keepers would be more than happy to see to extinguishing their greatest disappointment, she was sure. Another three twists, forty steps and four guards passed before she made it to the base of the central spire. The area here was illuminated in a different manner from the rest of the castle, and shared some of the darkness with the tunnels below it. The change in light reminded her of the old Gialdin

  and her visit to it in the decades before. Often she wondered about the two sons she had left behind in that other world, and often she imagined them all living as a contented family.

  A tall man was walking away from her at the far end, whom she instantly recognised as Kalad. He was supposed to be patrolling the woodlands about the city today. Perhaps her duties as his mother were not quite over yet.

  She marched up to him with her teeth gritted. “Kal.”

  The man continued to stride away from her with his long, graceful

  “Kalad!” she thundered, her voice echoing down each of the surrounding hallways.

  He turned around slowly, a vague sort of puzzlement across his face. Only, there was something different about his features. Something was not... He spoke, “I am not Kalad.”

  “No,” she whispered. Nor was his voice the voice of her son.

  He shifted his stance slightly in frustration, and the change in light caught his eyes. Green. Brilliant, summer-leaf green.

  Artemi forgot to breathe. She

  could not feel her fingers, or her knees or shoulders or face or any other part of her body. How was this...? Had she stumbled into another foretelling dream? “Who are you?” she croaked.

  “My name is Morghiad Zennar.”

  That was not the response of a dream sprite. Artemi turned the name over in her mind. “Zennar,” she repeated. He was very young, perhaps about the same age as Kalad. Maybe younger.

  “Yes,” he said with some impatience. “I’m looking for Lieutenant Skyward’s offices. Do you know where I can find them?”

  “You’ve come to join our army?”

  This time he frowned at her. “Yes. Though if it’s filled with soldiers as slow-witted as you, I might be having second thoughts.”

  Artemi failed to stifle her laughter at his insult, and immediately regretted her outburst. He seemed even more irritated by her reaction. “Forgive me,” she said with a slow smile. Blazes alight, it really was him! “Would you permit me to...?” She reached up to touch the skin on his face, but he caught her by the wrist.

  “Permit you to what?”

  “To test your ability. You are kanaala, aren’t you?”

  His brow furrowed. “How do you know that?”

  “You look like one.”

  “You’re not even a wielder.”

  “Yes. I am,” Artemi said quietly. He released her hand then, and allowed her to move her fingers to his cheek. The fire that she felt from him was more welcome to her than a thousand deaths would have been in the moments before. Her skin burned with the contact, and it fizzled with the spark only they shared. It was his fire and it was life. The sensation made her ready to embrace another thousand such lives.

  Morghiad’s reaction, however, was quite different. His emerald eyes had widened the moment she had touched him, and the surprise only seemed to darken his mood. “What sort of accident of nature are you?”

  She grinned and withdrew her hand. “I’m the sum of many accidents.” Had they shared more than The Shade through their link? Had she somehow made him this way by tying him to her? Bloody blazes! If he was vanha-sielu, then they had eternity together. That was assuming he would

  want her, of course. But would he desire her again? If Tallyn Hunter’s theory was correct, his personality could take millennia before it settled into something constant. “Walk with me. I will take you to Tortrix.”

  His glance at her as they moved off was not a trusting one, but she was too overjoyed to notice it. By a combination of instinct and habit, she very nearly reached over to place a hand on his arm. But she remembered at the last minute that they were strangers. As yet, Morghiad had no memories of her or her children, and he wouldn’t for some years. He could

  only be nineteen at the oldest, and that thought made her feel very confused indeed. She was not some sort of cradle-thief! Then again, that particular issue had barely discouraged her husband when she had been a memory-less girl of eighteen.

  “Tell me, Master Zennar, where did you grow up?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  Oh, light of Achellon! Did this mean he had reverted to the same, impenetrable man she had met all those years ago? It could take years to unravel him again! She studied his clothing as best she could without

  looking directly at him. It was basic and well-worn at best. Clearly he had not grown up in comfort. “Do you have your own sword?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see it?”

  He gave her a look of neardisgust, but withdrew and roughly handed her the sword anyway.

  Artemi turned it over in her hands. The balance was off by two full inches, and the metal was very cheap. Several deep nicks had already bent it out of shape in the past, and it looked to have been hammered straight again by an idiot. “We shall have to get you

  something better than this.”

  “It was my father’s,” he said, snatching it back.

  The queen decided to remain quiet to avoid upsetting him further, and they strode into the corridor of army offices. They were a hive of activity as always, with greenuniformed soldiers pacing rapidly between the rooms and barking orders at one another. Several of the guards there walked past them with only a courteous nod, clearly mistaking his identity as she had. But Jarynd did not make the same error. He gawped, open mouthed, for a full ten seconds before

  Artemi’s glares caused him to stop. “Lieutenant Farpike,” she said in her most commanding voice. Or the best she could attempt. �
�This young man wishes to join our army. Would you be so kind as to locate Lieutenant Skyward for me?”

  The full complement of the hallway’s crowd ground to a halt at her words, and every face turned to stare at the new arrival.

  “Blood on a blazed – oof!” one of the soldiers blurted before being elbowed sharply in the stomach. It was the confirmation Artemi had hoped for. She was not dreaming this, and she

  allowed her small smile to broaden. Morghiad, on the other hand, looked somewhat abashed by his newly found attention. He turned to look at her questioningly, but she managed to avoid his gaze.

  “Yes, my lady.” Jarynd made a much deeper bow than usual and scurried into an office to the right. It wasn’t long before Tortrix stepped out with the scar-faced lieutenant at his side, his eyes blinking and glazed.

  What was Morghiad going to think of them all? Artemi decided to soften the situation before it became troublesome. “Yes, he does rather

  resemble my son, doesn’t he? Now, when you have quite finished your gawping, I would like you to assess Master Zennar for suitability.”