Short Swords: Tales from the Divine Empire (The First Sword Chronicles Book 3)

by Frances Smith

  Summer smiled, and lied smoothly. “Of course I am.”

  Eyes shut one more, Summer reached out and, with a thought, plucked a thread from the tapestry of the world around her and gripped it tight, raising this single thread of ethereal yarn and threading it into the crystal like a seamstress thread the eye of a needle.

  The slumbering crystal leapt to wakefulness like a man whose house has been invaded by robbers, power greater than she could have anticipated surging all around and within Summer, singing to her like a lover’s serenade.

  Who are you that would break the boundaries of this world?

  I am Summer Phoenix.

  A name you give as though it has meaning.

  Hold on to it, it’s going to be famous one of these days.

  Perhaps. Perhaps not. Where would you go? What do you seek?

  The fulfilment of my ambitions, Summer thought, answering the second question. The realisation of my greatness, and all the acclaim that is rightfully mine.

  So it is earthly glory that you desire? Very well. A world of pride and pomp it shall be.

  And before Summer do or think anything else, she was being pulled...nowhere. Not upwards, not sideways, not downwards through the floor. It was as though the world was dissolving around her, Dawn and her room and her boxes and cases turning into nothing before her eyes, the air around her shredding like so much paper, and she was being pulled away from it all, dragged through the darkness and the cold on her way to...where?

  Summer didn’t know. But she did know that wherever she went, wherever the dark tunnel led, wherever this sphere of ancient magic took her... at least it would somewhere she could build anew.

  All the Trees in the Forest

  They made camp on the edge of the forest, where the shadows cast by the great and looming trees mingled with the gathering darkness as the sun set.

  They lit a small fire, the smoke rose lazily into the air as the wood crackled in its death agonies, and settled down to wait for morning.

  There were three of them, two for the unpleasant duty that awaited them within the wood and one to bring them to this place and, perhaps to take them back again. If the demands of filial piety proved not too strong.

  Michael kept that particular thought to himself. If he had spoken of it aloud then Amy would have mocked him and Metella would have refused to help him in this matter. And yet…he felt it as a possibility. He did not seek to walk with death, he did not court Tanuk’s cold embrace and fatal kiss; but if he were told that his sister was dead and he were confronted with the man responsible…much as he tried to put aside wrath, to turn away from Ellyria and her poisoned gifts, he doubted that he would be able to restrain himself.

  You say that because you stand in need of grace, and it is only the blessing of the Empress that separates you from the beasts, Michael thought. These dryads are a gentle people; they do not have your rage.

  And yet do they not love? Was Fiannuala not beloved of her father and her sisters and her people? And, since they love, can they not also learn to hate? Did Meinir not hate, and did that hatred not drive her to murder? And did Fiannuala not hate Meinir in her turn?

  We mortals have the stuff of gods in us, and the common clay that lesser beasts are made of. So as the gods we love and as beasts we will revenge when those we love come to grievous endings.

  Michael’s brow furrowed as he stared into the flickering yellow flames. He did not know whether to pray that the dryads would be merciful or not. He did not want to die. Even now, even after all he had learnt there was a part of him that felt weak and cowardly for phrasing it so baldly but there it was: he did not want to die. And yet, to pray for life to God, to the Empress, to pray for mercy, for deliverance…it did not sit right with him. Prayers, his mother had taught him, should not be used selfishly. It was improper to bother God with your petty troubles. Pray for life for others, pray for victory where that victory would avert great evil, pray for peoples and realms and family but not for yourself, no, never for yourself.

  Michael closed his eyes. Almighty Turo, lord of the seas and oceans, watch over our Amy in the shadow of these woods, through the trickle of the streams and trembling of the ponds. Beseech your sister Dala to watch over her through the whisper of the leaves and the shaking of the branches.

  Keep her safe. Let the wrath of the dryads fall upon me, not on her.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  Michael looked up into the face of Amy Doraeus, her mismatched eyes – one blue, one green and both as deep as any ocean and as gorgeous as any sea-view vista, in his eyes anyway – wide with curiosity as she stared at him from the other side of the flames. The firelight flickered off the gems embedded in her magnificent armour, and made her hair seem even redder than it did usually.

  Michael clenched his fists in his lap. “Nothing. I have no troubles, our Amy.”

  Amy folded her arms, the plates of her armour ground against one another as she did so. “You do realise I can tell when you’re lying to me? It comes from knowing you so long.”

  Michael smiled. “I suppose the knowledge ought to teach me honesty. I regret that it has not.”

  “Yes, yes, out with it,” Amy said sharply. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Michael said firmly. “I…I simply wonder at the reception we shall receive.”

  Amy gave him a look, indicating that she knew full well that he had not told her the whole truth, but that for the moment she would let the matter lie.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you, my lord?” Metella asked. In the gathering darkness, her fair skin seemed even paler than usual, like a light snow had settled upon her.

  Michael glanced at her. “That will not be necessary, thank you, Fi…lieutenant, I apologise.”

  Metella smiled, and like all her smiles this one had a faint touch of sadness to it, like a winter frost that, although beautiful, contained behind it the reality of chilling cold and death for all the green it lay upon. “It’s quite alright, my lord.”

  “You have no need to call me lord,” Michael said softly.

  “Are you not created one by decree of the Princess Imperial?”

  “Are we not more to one another than master and servant?” Michael replied. Filia Metella Kardia had been, once, the bodyguard and most skilful servant of Quirian of Aureliana, the man who had plotted to use Miranda, Michael’s own sister, to bring down the Empire and wreak his long-gestated vengeance on it. And yet, for all that fate had made them enemies across the field of battle for the Empire’s survival, Metella had saved his life four times, and twice she had known exactly who he was and saved him anyway.

  And, when the battle was at its height, she had abandoned Quirian, and stood aside so that Michael might make an end of him and save Eternal Pantheia from his insatiable malice. Having saved Michael so often, and helped to save the Empire in the end, he had eagerly enlisted the aid of one who was not only a powerful spirit warrior but a kind and virtuous woman, and a good friend what was more. Where once she was Quirian’s bodyguard now she was his adjutant, and with her spirit magic – Michael’s own mastery of the art was still too in its infancy, and his command of it outside of battle too erratic, to have performed the task himself – she had torn open the veil into the shadow lands and enabled Michael and Amy to reached the eaves of Eena in less than a single day, what would have been months of travel by more ordinary means.

  “My…Quirian was once as a father to me, or at times it felt so,” Metella murmured. “And yet still he commanded me, and all the Lost, to call him Lord before we called him Father.”

  “In public before the other lords of the Empire that might be excusable, but in private it seems like egotism to me,” Amy said. “Anyway, Michael isn’t Quirian and has no need to be bound by the strictures of a dead man.”

  Metella’s eyes of icy blue flashed with a touch of anger at the casual dismissal of him that she had served so long, but she said nothing to protest. Instead, sh
e cast those same eyes of blue downwards toward the ground. “I still feel as though I should accompany you into the forest.”

  “It is a kind offer, Filia Lieutenant,” Michael began, before realising what he had just said and cringing a little at the absurdity of it. “Once more, I apologise.”

  “What he’s trying to say is thank you, but this is something that we must do without you,” Amy said. “We’re grateful for you helping us get this far, but Fia was our comrade, not yours, so we must bear the news of her fate to her kin without you. This is a sacred duty not to be shared with outsiders.”

  Metella bowed her head. “As you wish, Ser Amy. I will wait here and return you to Eternal Pantheia when your business is concluded.”

  Amy nodded. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  Michael felt it a little rude that Amy should force Metella to stand on ceremony with her knightly rank, but on the other hand he supposed that she had worked hard for it, and was as entitled as anyone to laud the fruits of her newfound importance and the honours given to her by Princess Romana over other people. Still, Metella was more than a servant, and it did not sit entirely right with him to treat her as such.

  “Thank you, Filia, for assisting us in this,” he murmured. “It is very kind of you.”

  “You are my commander, how could I do less?” Metella asked.

  Michael was silent for a moment. “I hope…when I asked you to serve with me…I hope that you did not feel coerced into acting against your will.”

  Metella looked away from him, looking into the flames that illuminated her pale face, her black tunic, her leather cuirass and her raven hair, tied back into a severe bun at the nape of her neck. “After my parents died, Lord Quirian trained me to do one thing: to fight in his service and in his defence, using all the means at my disposal. Since fighting is my trade and skill, it makes sense to use it.”

  “But is it what you want?”

  “Had my parents and my village lived, I probably would have inherited my father’s fullers shop one day,” Metella said. “I don’t think what we want has much influence if what the gods have planned for us.” She looked at him. “But I am glad to have met you, and glad for the chance to know you better. And…” she smiled, briefly, with a little less sadness in it than before. “And if you wish to call me Filia Lieutenant, that’s fine. It has a pleasant sound.”

  Michael smiled. “As you wish, Filia Lieutenant.”

  “Metella,” Amy said. “This might sound harsh, under the circumstances, but would you give Michael and me a moment, please?”

  If Metella thought it sounded harsh at all, her expression gave no sign of it. She rose smoothly to her feet, clasping her hands behind her back. “Of course. Ser Amy, Michael. Call when you have need of me.” She turned upon her heel, and walked across the Deucalian moor, putting some distance between herself and the two of them.

  Michael watched her walk away for a little while, and only when she had become a small and distant figure did he turn his attention back to Amy. “Our Amy?”

  A soft smirk played across Amy’s face. “You know, if her father was still alive he might well ask you what your intentions are towards his daughter.”

  Michael frowned. “I know not what you mean, Amy.”

  “Really?” Amy asked. “’Are we not more to one another?’ I’m almost jealous.”

  Michael felt a rush of colour to his cheeks. “Even if your insinuations were not completely baseless…you would never have any reason to be jealous of anyone else where my feelings are concerned, our Amy.”

  “I know, that’s why I said I was almost jealous,” Amy said, allowing a touch of smugness to enter into her tone. “But still, I can see there’s something between you.”

  “I care about Filia Metella, care for her,” Michael admitted. “But I would say the same of you or Miranda or even Filia Elissa in Eternal Pantheia. What you are suggesting…the quickening of the loins and the base desires that dogs and cattle share in…I feel not such things.”

  “Not for Metella or not for anyone?” Amy asked.

  Michael looked down, clenching and unclenching his hands in his lap. “There was a moment, in these woods before us-“

  “The dryad dancing,” Amy said. “With Tullia, you’ve told me.” She drew the shining greatsword, Magnus Alba, that she wore slung across her back and planted it point first into the earth with one hand. Thus freed, she leaned back a bit. “You know, if it’s anything like siren song down under the ocean, then that will take control of your body…but it will also reveal what you really are. It can’t create feelings were none exist.”

  Michael nodded, a black melancholy settling upon his spirit and turning his tone to dark ooze as he said, “She kissed me.”

  “Tullia?”

  “Yes.”

  Amy frowned. “I don’t remember that. When?”

  “When I delivered her spirit into the Heavenvault,” Michael said softly.

  Amy blinked rapidly. “So…you’re talking about her spirit?”

  Michael nodded.

  “Hmm,” Amy mumbled. “I’m not sure how to…anyway, apart from that you don’t feel…anything?”

  “No,” Michael confessed. “Is that so strange?”

  Amy shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I mean, there are people that I see and I think ‘Yes, I might’. I don’t, because God’s law forbids it and I don’t need the consequences in any event, but I might otherwise. You’ve really got no interest?”

  “I sometimes think that is for the best that I do not,” Michael said. “I have wed the Empire, our Amy. I have plighted my troth to the Empress Aegea.”

  “The Empress Aegea won’t give you sons to carry on your line when you are gone,” Amy said. “And neither will Tullia.”

  “Are you telling me to marry, our Amy?”

  “I’m saying you might want to consider it.”

  Michael snorted. “So might you.”

  “I know,” Amy said. “Believe it or not I’ve got my eye on a couple of suitable candidates already.”

  Michael’s eyebrows rose. “I was not aware that you had been courting.”

  “I haven’t, I’ve just been sizing up possibilities,” Amy said. “A couple of wealthy equestrians, only sons, fathers in trade; not top draw, but that means that they’d be willing to take my name, which is a key point as far as I’m concerned. Rich, propertied. Good matches, both.”

  “And what of love?”

  Amy grinned mischievously. “If I wanted love, my Michael, I’d marry you. If you didn’t have a thing for duty-bound brunettes without much ambition.”

  “Amy,” Michael murmured reproachfully.

  “There’s nothing wrong with having a sense of duty,” Amy said. “It’s a very admirable sense to have. And it makes sense, since you’ve a great sense of duty and no ambitions of your own to speak of. I’m just saying that, amongst the class we are now, love doesn’t really enter into it when it comes to marriage.”

  “It should not be that way,” Michael said. “Marriage is a holy sacrament ordained by God to join man and woman…or man and man or woman and woman and so on and so forth as you like and that reminds me to send our Miranda a betrothal pearl when we return to Eternal Pantheia, ‘tis high time she and Filia Octavia were wed, that their fornications may be transformed from sin to celebration of God’s grace.”

  Amy looked at him.

  Michael cleared his throat. “Ahem. My point is that marriage is a sacred thing, a sacrament to join two hearts, two souls, two lives entwined together inseparably until death. It should not be treated as a variety of horse-trading or as a means of advancing squalid bargains over property and silver. Do naiads not have more respect for what God has joined to ne’er be put asunder?”

  Amy hesitated for a moment. “Do as God says, not as the naiads do, would be my advice. And I won’t tell you what naiads do, so that you can take my advice more easily.”

  Michael nodded. “As you say, our Amy.”
r />   Amy looked up, at Raphael blazing out from the heart of the moon to illuminate that great orb above and cast his light at the sky all around. “What do you think will happen, tomorrow? I mean what do you really think?”

  “I know not.”

  “I know you don’t know, that’s why I asked what you think.”

  “I have no thoughts.”

  “Come on, that’s a little harsher than you deserve,” Amy said, with a hint of a chuckle beneath her words. “I think…I think it will be hard upon the two princesses, and if their father lives it will be a miracle.”

  “I pray for a miracle then,” Michael said.

  “And I think that they will visit their own hurts upon us,” Amy said.

  “Does that frighten you?” Michael asked.

  “No,” Amy said at once. She shifted inside her armour, making the plates grind against one another. “Death frightens me, I will concede. I have so much life unlived.”

  “Fiannuala perished with much life unlived,” Michael replied. “Their highnesses may ask why we deserve what she has not.”

  “They may ask, but they cannot expect us to answer,” Amy said. “There is no answer for such a questions save to ask the gods.” She paused. “Jason should be here with us.”

  “He was not so close to Princess Fiannuala,” Michael said. “And his grief for Filia Tullia still runs raw.”

  “His grief doesn’t run so raw that he has been to see her sister yet,” Amy said. “He hasn’t taken that girl into his home, to be cared for by his servants at his expense, as his family, has he? That’s you has done all that.”

  “His Highness has no servants,” Michael pointed out.

  “You know what I mean,” Amy said sharply. “He should be here. And Wyrrin, too.”

  “There is no sense us all-“

  “We were all comrades,” Amy said. “If you want to argue for proximity then what are you doing here? I was closer to Fia than you. Why not let me go alone?”

  “Because I led the company, her death is on my conscience.”

  “Everything is on your conscience whether it ought to be or not,” Amy muttered.