Rise Of Empire

by Sullivan, Michael J

  Everyone attributed Modina’s recovery to Amilia’s healing powers. What she had said on the balcony was the truth. Amilia had saved her, if saved was the right word. Modina did not feel saved.

  Ever since Dahlgren, she had been drowning in overwhelming terrors that she could not face. Amilia had pulled her to shore, but no one could call her existence living. There had been a time, long, long ago, when she would have said that life carried hope for a better tomorrow, but for her, hope was a dream that had blown away on a midsummer’s night. The horrors were all that remained, calling to her, threatening to pull her under again. It would be easy to give in, to close her eyes and sink to the bottom once more, but if pretending to live could help Amilia, then she would. Amilia had become a tiny point of light in a sea of darkness, the singular star Modina steered by, and it did not matter where that light led.

  Like most afternoons, Modina wandered the sequestered halls and chambers like a ghost searching for something long forgotten. She heard that people with missing limbs felt an itching in a phantom leg or arm. Perhaps it was the same for her, as she struggled to scratch at her missing life.

  The smell of food indicated she was near the kitchen. Modina did not recall the last time she had eaten, but she was not hungry. Ghosts did not get hungry, at least not for food. She had come to the bottom of the stairs. To the right, cupboards lined a narrow room holding plates, goblets, candles, and utensils. To the left, folded linens were stacked on shelves. Filled with laboring servants and steam, the place was hot and noisy.

  Modina spotted the big elkhound sleeping in the corner of the kitchen and immediately recalled that his name was Red. She had not been down this way in a long time, not since Saldur had caught her feeding the dog. That was the first day since her father had died that she could remember clearly. Before that—nothing—nothing but … rotten eggs.

  She smelled the rancid stench as she stood at the bottom of the steps. Modina glanced around with greater interest. That awful smell triggered a memory. There was a place, a small room that was cold, dark, and lacked any windows. She could almost taste it.

  Modina approached a small wooden door. With a shaking hand, she pulled it open. Inside was a small pantry filled with sacks of flour and grain. This was not the room, but the smell was stronger there.

  There was another place—small like this—small, dark, and evil. The thought came at her with the force of a forgotten nightmare. Black, earthy, and cold, a splashing and a ratcheting that echoed ominously, the wails of lost souls crying for mercy and finding none. She had been one of them. She had cried aloud in the dark until she could cry no more, and always the smell of dirt penetrated her nostrils and the dampness of the dirt floor soaked into her skin. A sudden realization jolted her.

  I’m remembering my grave! I am dead. I am a ghost.

  She looked at her hands—this was not life. The darkness closed in all around her, growing deeper, swallowing her, smothering her.

  “Are you all right, Your Eminence?”

  “Ya think she’s sick again?”

  “Don’t be daft. She’s just upset. You can see that well enough, can’t ya?”

  “Poor thing, she’s so fragile.”

  “Remember who you’re speaking of. That lass slew Rufus’s Bane!”

  “You remember who you’re speaking of, that lass indeed! By Maribor’s beard, she’s the empress!”

  “Out of my way,” Amilia growled as she shooed the crowd like a yard full of chickens.

  She was in no mood to be polite. Fear made her voice harsh, and it lacked the familiar tone of a fellow kitchen worker—it was the voice of an angry noblewoman. The servants scattered. Modina sat on the floor with her back against the wall. She was weeping softly with her hands covering her face.

  “What did you do to her?” Amilia snapped accusingly while glaring at the lot of them.

  “Nothing!” Leif said, defending them.

  Leif, the butcher and assistant cook, was a scrawny little man with thick dark hair covering his arms and chest but absent from his balding head. Amilia had never cared for him, and the thought that he, or any of them, might have hurt Modina made her blood boil.

  “No one was even near her. I swear!”

  “That’s right,” Cora confirmed. The dairymaid was a sweet, simple girl who churned the butter each morning and always added too much salt. “She just sat and started crying.”

  Amilia knew better than to listen to Leif, but Cora was trustworthy. “All right,” she told them. “Leave her be. Back to work, all of you.”

  They were slow to respond until Amilia gave them a threatening glare.

  “Are you all right? What’s wrong?” she asked, kneeling beside Modina.

  The empress looked up and threw her arms around Amilia’s neck as she continued to sob uncontrollably. Amilia held her, stroking her hair. She had no idea what was wrong, but needed to get the empress to her room. If word reached Saldur, or worse, if he wandered in—She tried not to think of it.

  “It’s okay, it’s all right. I’ve got you. Try to calm down.”

  “Am I alive?” Modina asked with pleading eyes.

  For the briefest of moments, Amilia thought she might be joking, but there were two things wrong with that. First, there was the look in Modina’s eyes, and second, the empress never joked.

  “Of course you are,” she reassured her. “Now come. Let’s get you to bed.”

  Amilia helped her up. Modina stood like a newborn fawn, weak and unsure. As they left, excited whispering rose. I’ll have to deal with that right away, she thought.

  She guided Modina upstairs. Gerald, the empress’s personal guard, gave them a concerned look as he opened the chamber door.

  “Is she all right?” Gerald asked.

  “She’s tired,” Amilia said, closing the door on him.

  The empress sat on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. This was not her familiar blank stare. Amilia could see her thinking hard about something.

  “Were you sleepwalking? Did you have a nightmare?”

  Modina thought a moment, then shook her head. “I remembered something.” Her voice was faint and airy. “It was something bad.”

  “Was it about the battle?” This was the first time Amilia had brought up the subject. Details of Modina’s legendary combat with the beast that had destroyed Dahlgren were always vague or clouded by so much dogma and propaganda that it was impossible to tell truth from fiction. Like any imperial citizen, Amilia was curious. The stories claimed Modina had slain a powerful dragon with a broken sword. Just looking at the empress, she knew that could not be true, but Amilia was certain something terrible had happened.

  “No,” Modina said softly. “It was afterward. I woke up in a hole, a terrible place. I think it was my grave. I don’t like remembering. It’s better for both of us if I don’t try.”

  Amilia nodded. Since Modina had begun speaking, most of their conversations had centered on Amilia’s life in Tarin Vale. On the few occasions when she asked Modina about her own past, the empress’s expression darkened and the light in her eyes faded. She would not speak any more after that, sometimes for days. The skeletons in Modina’s closet were legion.

  “Well, don’t think about it, then,” Amilia told her in a soothing voice. She sat next to Modina on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through the empress’s hair. “Whatever it was, it’s over. You’re here with me now. It’s getting late. Do you think you can sleep?”

  The empress nodded, but her eyes remained troubled.

  Once she was certain the empress was resting peacefully, Amilia crept out of her room. Ignoring Gerald’s questioning looks, she trotted downstairs to the kitchen. If left to themselves, the scullions would start a wave of rumors certain to engulf the entire palace, and she could not afford to have this getting back to Saldur.

  Amilia had not visited the kitchens for quite some time. The moist steamy cloud that smelled of onions and grease, once so familiar, was now oppressiv
e. Eight people worked the evening shift. There were several new faces, mostly young boys fresh off the street and girls still smelling of farm manure. All of them worked perfunctorily, as they were engrossed in the conversation that rose above the sound of the boiling kettles and the clatter of pans. That all stopped when she entered.

  “Amilia!” Ibis Thinly boomed the moment he saw her. The old sea cook was a huge barrel-chested man with bright blue eyes and a beard that wreathed his chin. Blood and grease stained his apron. He held a towel in one hand and a spoon in the other. Leaving a large pot on the stove, he strode over to her, grinning. “Yer a fine sight for weathering eyes, lass! How’s life treating you, and why don’t you visit more often?”

  She rushed to him. Ignoring his filthy garment and all courtly protocol, she hugged the big man tight.

  The water boy dropped both buckets and gasped aloud.

  Ibis chuckled. “It’s as if they plum forgot you used to work here. Like they think their old Amilia died er sumptin’ and the chief imperial secretary to the empress grew outta thin air.” He put down the spoon and took her by the hand. “So, how are you, lassie?”

  “Really good, actually.”

  “I hear you got a fancy place up there in the east wing with all the swells. That’s sumptin’ to be proud of, that is. Yer moving up in the world. There’s no mistaking that. I just hope you don’t forget us down here.”

  “If I do, just burn my dinner and I’ll remember who the really important people are.”

  “Oh, speaking of that!” Ibis quickly used the towel to lift the steaming pot from the stove. “Don’t want to be ruining the sauce for the chamberlain’s quail.”

  “How are things here?”

  “Same as always.” He hoisted the pot onto the stone bench and lifted the lid, freeing a cloud of steam. “Nuttin’ changes in the scullery, and you picked a fine time to visit. Edith ain’t here. She’s upstairs hollering at the new chambermaid.”

  Amilia rolled her eyes. “They should have dismissed that woman years ago.”

  “Don’t I know it, but I only run the kitchen and don’t have no say over what she does. Course, you being a swell an’ all now, maybe—”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have any real power. I just take care of Modina.”

  Ibis used the spoon to taste the sauce before replacing the lid.

  “Well now, I know you didn’t come here to jaw with me about Edith Mon. This have sumptin’ to do with the empress crying down here a bit ago? It wasn’t the pea soup I made for her, was it?”

  “No,” Amilia assured him. “She loves your cooking, but yes, I did sort of want to explain things.” She turned to face the rest of the staff and raised her voice. “I just wanted everyone to know the empress is okay. She heard some bad news today and it saddened her is all. But she’s fine now.”

  “Was it about the war?” Nipper asked.

  “I bet it had to do with the prisoners in Ratibor,” Knob, the baker, speculated. “The princess from Melengar done executed them, didn’t she? Everyone knows she’s a witch and a murderess. She’d think nothing of slaughtering defenseless folk. That’s why she was weeping, wasn’t it? ’Cause she couldn’t save them?”

  “The poor dear,” the butcher’s wife declared. “She cares so much, it’s no wonder she’s so upset with everything she has to deal with. Thank Maribor she has you taking care of her, Lady Amilia. You’re a mercy and then some, you are.”

  Amilia smiled and turned to Ibis. “Didn’t she always used to yell at me about the way I cleaned her husband’s knives?”

  Ibis chuckled. “She also accused you of taking that pork loin a year ago last spring. Said you ought to be whipped. I guess she forgot about that. They all have, I ’spect. It’s the dress, I think. Seeing you in a gown like this, even I have to fight the impulse to bow.”

  “Don’t do that,” she told him, “or I’ll never come back here.”

  Ibis grinned. “It’s good to see you again.”

  In her dream, Modina saw the beast coming up behind her father. She tried to scream, but only a muffled moan escaped. She tried to run to him, but her feet were stuck in mud—thick, green, foul-smelling mud. The beast had no trouble moving as it charged down the hill toward him. To Modina’s anguished amazement, Theron took no notice of the ground shaking from the monster’s massive bulk. It consumed him in a single bite, and Modina collapsed in the dirt. The musty smell filled her nostrils as she struggled to breathe. She could feel the damp earth against her body. In the darkness, the sounds of splashing told her that the beast came for her too. All around, men and women cried and howled in misery and fear. The beast came for them all. Splashing, cranking, splashing, cranking, it was coming to finish the job, coming to swallow her up as well.

  It was hungry. Very hungry. It needed to eat.

  They all needed to eat, but there was never enough food. What little they had was a putrid gruel that smelled awful—like rotten eggs. She was cold, shivering, and weeping. She had cried so hard and for so long that her eyes no longer teared. There was nothing left to live for … or was there?

  Modina woke in her darkened room shivering in a cold sweat.

  The same dream haunted her each night, making her afraid to close her eyes. She got up and moved toward the moonlight of her window. By the time she reached it, most of the dream was forgotten, but she realized something had been different. Sitting in her usual place, she looked out over the courtyard below. It was late and everyone was gone except the guards on watch. She tried to remember her nightmare, but the only thing she could recall was the smell of rotten eggs.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE HORN

  After the first few disorienting days, life aboard the Emerald Storm settled into a rigid pattern. Every morning began with the scrubbing of the upper deck, although it never had a chance to get dirty from one day to the next. Breakfast followed. The watches changed and the scrubbing continued, this time on the lower decks. At noon, Lieutenant Bishop or one of the other officers fixed their position using the sun and confirmed it with the captain. Afterward, the men drilled on the masts and yards, launching longboats, boarding and repelling, and practicing archery, the ballista, and hand-to-hand combat. Not surprisingly, Hadrian won high marks in sword fighting and archery, his display of skill not lost on Grady, who nodded knowingly.

  From time to time, the men were drummed to the main deck to witness punishment. So far, there had been four floggings, but Hadrian knew the victims only by name. In the afternoon, the men received their grog, a mixture of rum and sugar water, and in the evening, the master-at-arms went about making certain all fires were out.

  Most days were the same as the one before, with only a few exceptions. On make ’n’ mend day, the captain granted the crew extra time in the afternoon to sew up rips in their clothing or indulge in hobbies such as wood carving or scrimshaw. On wash day, they cleaned their clothes. Because using freshwater was forbidden and there was no soap, shirts and pants usually felt better after a day working in the rain than they did after wash day.

  By now, everyone knew his responsibilities and could perform them reasonably well. Hadrian and Royce were pleased to discover they were not the only novices aboard. Recently pressed men composed nearly a quarter of the crew. Many came from as far away as Alburn and Dunmore, and most had never seen the ocean before. The other men’s bumbling presence, and Wyatt’s assistance, masked Hadrian’s and Royce’s lack of experience. Now both knew the routine and their tasks well enough to pass on their own.

  The Emerald Storm continued traveling due south, with the wind on its port quarter laying it over elegantly as it charged the following sea. It was a marvelously warm day. Either they had run so far south that the season had yet to change, or autumn had blessed them with one last breath of perfect weather. The master’s mate and a yeoman of the hold appeared on deck at the ringing of the first bell to dispense the crew’s grog.

  About four days into the voyage, Royce finally found
his sea legs. His color returned, but even after more than a week, his temper remained sour. One contributing factor was Jacob Derning’s constant accusations about his culpability in Drew’s death.

  “After I slit his throat, I can just drop the body into the sea,” Royce casually told Hadrian. They had collected their grog and the crew lay scattered about the top decks, relaxing in the bright sunshine. Royce and Hadrian found a cozy out-of-the-way space on the waist deck between the longboat and the bulkhead where the sailmaker and his mates had left a pile of excess canvas. It made for a luxurious deck bed from which to watch the clear blue sky with its decorative puffs of clouds.

  “I’ll dump him at night and he’s gone for good. The body won’t even wash up onshore, because the sharks will eat it. It’s better than having your own personal vat of lye.”

  “Okay, one more time.” Hadrian had become exhausted from the conversation. “You can’t kill Jacob Derning. We have no idea what’s going on yet. What if he’s Merrick’s contact? So until we know something—anything—you can’t kill anyone.”

  Royce scowled and folded his arms across his chest in frustration.

  “Let’s get back to what we know,” Hadrian went on.

  “Like the fact that Bernie Defoe was once in the Black Diamond?” Royce replied.

  “Really? Well, that’s interesting. So let’s see …We’ve got a cargo hold full of elves, enough weapons to outfit an army, a sentinel with a company of seret, a Tenkin, and an ex-Diamond. I think Thranic must be part of this. I doubt a sentinel is just taking a pleasure cruise.”

  “He does stand out like a knife in a man’s back, which is why I doubt he’s involved.”