The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  “I don’t know how anyone stands this,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “I feel like I’m rotting from the inside out. Like he’s scooping me hollow and smiling.”

  “I’m going to burn that wretch’s skull hollow and use it as a pisspot,” Zaira growled, and I knew she must be thinking about Terika. But my unease only deepened; neither Terika nor Istrella had ever described the potion’s effects that way.

  “I’ll help you do it.” Marcello’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “If they don’t execute me first.”

  I couldn’t help staring. I’d never seen such animosity in his face before. “They’re not going to execute you.”

  “I killed the doge, Amalia.”

  “You were magically compelled.” I started pacing, to use up the unpleasant energy coursing through me. “I won’t let them punish you. This was Ruven’s act, not yours.”

  “Was it?” Marcello’s gaze went vague, as if he stared at something miles away.

  “Of course it was,” I said sharply.

  “Part of me wanted to do it.” A shudder traveled across his shoulders. “I was… When I shot him, I felt… satisfied.” He savored the last word, something like wonder entering his voice.

  My pacing stilled, as if an invisible hand had reached out in silence to stop me. That smile, curving his lips, of wicked anticipation.

  “And now, when I think of it, I should be horrified. And I am.” He shook his head, with fierce vehemence, as if trying to dislodge something clinging to his hair. “But mixed through it, there’s this… this… Oh, Amalia, it was glorious.”

  His green eyes lit with an unholy rapture. I shuddered.

  “That’s not you,” I said sharply. “Marcello, that’s not you. Do you hear me? Those aren’t your feelings. They’re Ruven’s, leaking through somehow, while you’re magically linked.”

  But the words felt false in my mouth. There had never been any such leakage with Terika or Istrella, or any of the others who’d been controlled. They had remained themselves, hating Ruven’s orders and fighting them—never reveling in them. Graces help us both.

  Marcello blinked, focusing on my face, and the terrible delight faded from his eyes. The familiar, worried divot appeared between his brows in its place, and my shoulders sagged with relief.

  “I can’t believe I shot at you,” he said huskily. He reached a trembling hand to my cheek; I winced as he brushed the bloody line where the pistol ball had grazed me, despite the gentle warmth of his touch. “I never wanted to hurt you, Amalia.”

  “I know,” I said, my heart aching.

  “Never.” His eyes went suddenly hard and narrow. “Even when you hurt me.”

  His voice had changed, taking on a cutting edge. His fingertips dug sharply into my face.

  Horror trickled down my core, as if I’d swallowed poison. “Marcello, what are you doing?”

  “What I should have done a long time ago,” he hissed. His nails caught the cut on my face, and I jerked away.

  “All right, enough.” Zaira smacked his reaching hand away and pushed me back, stepping between us. “You can have this talk once the potion wears off.”

  But the potion didn’t change people like this. It didn’t make them cruel.

  I stared at Marcello over Zaira’s head, unsure who was looking back at me. He turned his face away, flinching as if I were suddenly too bright to look at. His temples shone with sweat.

  “She’s right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I told you—I’m not safe for you right now.”

  The pain in his voice pulled at me, but I wouldn’t have stepped close to him again even if Zaira hadn’t remained firmly between us. I felt as if I’d reached for a friend’s hand and found a scorpion cupped in it.

  “Come on,” Zaira said gruffly, tugging at my arm. “We can come back later. You’re only poking each other’s burns now.”

  Marcello still wouldn’t look at me. He jerked his head in a nod of agreement. But as I turned to go, a bare whisper slipped out of him:

  “Please don’t go.”

  I stopped, halfway to the door. Zaira gave me a warning glance and shook her head.

  I dreaded what I would see if I turned around. Marcello’s honest face, warm green eyes full of embarrassed desperation—or a mocking smile, and a stranger watching me with distant malice. I wasn’t sure which would hurt more.

  “What will you do if I stay?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said softly, his voice catching. “But I’m afraid of what will happen if you leave.”

  Zaira’s hand tightened on my arm. “Don’t,” she muttered. “I don’t know what in the Ninth Hell is wrong with him, but you need to get out of this room. You’re not making him better.”

  I didn’t dare turn around and see his face. “The Marcello I know wouldn’t ask me to put myself in danger for him,” I said at last.

  “No,” he said bitterly. “The Marcello you know would suffer in silence until he bled to death inside, and you would never notice.”

  I started to spin, but Zaira stopped me, grabbing my other arm as well, her hands strong as iron. “Don’t be stupid,” she hissed.

  The door swung open. Two guards peered in warily, flanking an out-of-breath page.

  “Lady Amalia,” the page panted, “La Contessa calls for you.”

  “I have to go,” I said, a confused wave of anguish, relief, and shame sweeping over me. “I’ll be back, Marcello. I promise.”

  I couldn’t help casting a glance over my shoulder at him as I followed the page out of the room, Zaira still maintaining a hold on my arm.

  The last thing I saw before the door closed between us was Marcello staring after me like a drowning man watching his ship sail out of sight.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My mother had moved to a small audience chamber in the public area of the palace, rather than trying to impose order on chaos from the cloistered Map Room. The doge’s throne stood empty; someone had brought my mother a chair, which she ignored, still on her feet in the same bloodstained gown she’d worn to vote on my Falcon Reserve Act a hundred years ago that afternoon. The stars had begun to fade in the sky outside, but La Contessa’s eyes remained bright and sharp despite the coming dawn.

  To nearly anyone else, she must have seemed unaffected by death, chaos, and injury, a radiant beacon of imperial serenity, indomitable and immortal. But a myriad subtle signs told me otherwise. She stood slightly off-kilter, favoring her side. She kept her hands busy, handling maps or cups, or bracing them on a table, so they wouldn’t tremble. Her face was too pale. I wanted to beg her to lie down and rest, to recover from her wound, or to at least sit down—but I knew exactly what she was doing, and why. The Empire needed her to be immortal now. Never mind that her daughter was all but shaking with the realization that she wasn’t.

  “Someone opened the ward on that window to let those chimeras in, whether they were controlled or an impostor,” she was saying to the captain of the Imperial Guard, her voice strong and clear as ever, if perhaps a shade more cross than it would have been under other circumstances. “If you can’t figure out who, quarantine everyone who could have done it.”

  “That includes me,” the captain objected.

  “Place the good captain under quarantine,” La Contessa commanded one of the officers standing guard at the door, before returning her gaze to the shocked captain. “Make a list of everyone who could have done it. Ciardha, get me a corroborating list from other sources.”

  Ciardha nodded. “It shall be done, Contessa.”

  As apologetic guards led the unresisting captain away, my mother turned to face Zaira and me. Someone who knew her less well might not notice the deep shadows of exhaustion beneath her eyes, but I did. “Amalia. And Zaira, too. Good. Come here.”

  For all that sometimes they had their differences, Niro da Morante had been her friend for twenty years, but she hadn’t let his murder shake her. I needed to be as strong. With a huge effort, I shoved Marcello’s face from my m
ind, ready to focus on whatever the Empire needed from me. “You called for us, Mamma?”

  “You will probably not be shocked to learn that Ruven combined this assault on our leadership and our Falcons with a military attack.” She gestured toward a clerk’s scriptorium on which someone had spread a map. “We don’t have the full details yet, but we’ve lost communication with one of the border fortresses north of Ardence. We need more intelligence on what’s happening on his side of the border. Can you send a message to the Crow Lord?”

  “If I can chase down one of his crows from the roof of our palace, yes,” I said.

  “Do it.” She looked me up and down, then, as if assessing my condition; a faint frown creased her brow, and her voice softened slightly. “And prepare for travel.”

  “Thought that might be coming,” Zaira said.

  “The entire Mews is under quarantine for at least three days.” La Contessa’s disapproval of this situation stiffened her spine. “I hate to send you away from Raverra now, but if this is a full-scale invasion and not some petty skirmish, we need to send magical reinforcements to the border. And you’re very nearly all we’ve got.”

  Zaira shrugged. “I’m a light packer. I can be ready in a few hours, if you want.”

  “Not quite that soon.” My mother passed a hand through her auburn hair, brushing it back from her face; for a moment, her weariness showed through. “I need you here tomorrow for the vote, Amalia.”

  “The vote?” I stared uncomprehendingly. The vote I had poured so much of my soul into had already happened. Surely the Assembly wouldn’t conduct normal business tomorrow, with the Empire under attack.

  “To elect a new doge.” La Contessa’s voice dropped low enough that no one standing farther away than Ciardha would hear her. “Ruven has struck us a heavy blow. We can’t allow it to be a crippling one. I’m insisting we hold the election tomorrow, and I’m putting forward the Marquise of Palova. She’ll be perfect in wartime, and she takes my advice in peace.”

  “I’m not certain the Marquise of Palova wants to be doge,” I said.

  “That’s why we’re speaking quietly. It’s a surprise.” My mother’s mouth quirked in a tired smile. “I shall have to think of some way to make it up to her. But I need to nominate a strong candidate before anyone thinks to nominate me; the last thing I need is to be bogged down in ceremony and politicking now. And I’m also concerned that Scipio will make a play for the crown.”

  I tried to wrestle my brain around to think of politics, but after everything that had happened today, it balked like a horse that only wanted to go back to the barn. “Scipio da Morante? Would he be so bad?”

  Zaira grunted. “I met him at a party. He’s a wet fish.”

  My mother nodded, appreciation gleaming in her eyes. “Precisely,” she said. “He always just backed his brother and parroted whatever Niro said. We need a real leader now, and Scipio means well enough, but he doesn’t have the mind or the charisma for it. But the da Morante family will fall in behind him, and they have a lot of influence. I’m afraid my good friend the marquise is the only one with the clout to challenge him.” She hesitated. Then her voice dropped even further. “Speaking of Scipio. You should know he’s been calling for your friend’s head.”

  That got my attention. A chill settled in my gut. “Marcello was controlled,” I protested. “You know he’d never—”

  “Of course I know.” La Contessa lifted a cautionary finger. “But you would do well to step back from the matter. Don’t make a fuss over Captain Verdi, for his own sake. If his life becomes a point of contention in this election, it will not end well for him. Better to keep him quietly confined and put off the da Morantes with vague assurances until we have a new doge; so long as it’s not Scipio or Caulin, it shouldn’t be an issue. None of the others who were under Ruven’s control are being held accountable, after all.”

  I nodded. “All right. I’ll try not to draw attention to him.”

  My mother resumed a more normal volume. “In the meantime, when you return Lady Zaira to the Mews, make sure they’re doing everything they can to get a courier lamp working so I can talk to them from the palace.”

  “I can do that.”

  She laid a hand on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “And then get some sleep, Amalia. You’ve had a long day.”

  “All right. But Mamma—” I dropped my voice almost to a whisper. “What about you? You’re hurt. You need rest.” Impatience flickered in her eyes; I quickly added, “You need to be in top form for the election tomorrow, after all.”

  Ciardha cast my mother a meaningful look. “Lady Amalia has a point, Contessa.”

  My mother sighed and closed her eyes. “Fine. I’ll get some sleep myself as soon as I’ve got things stable here. Now go home and rest. I’ll send someone to get you when it’s time for the vote.”

  As we crossed the lagoon in the pale cold light of dawn, I said quietly to Zaira, “Thank you.”

  She gave me a sidelong glance. “For stopping you from making stupid decisions? There was no way I was letting you stay with Captain Crazy Eyes any longer.”

  “I don’t…” I swallowed down a ragged surge of emotion and tried again. “I’ve been thinking about the alchemical side of this. I’m not imagining things, am I? He wasn’t acting like Terika and Istrella did, when they were under Ruven’s control.”

  “You weren’t imagining it.” Zaira hunched her shoulders. “They acted like dogs straining against a leash. For a couple minutes there he looked like he was holding the leash in his own teeth, still attached to a bloody severed hand.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shuddering. “You’re always so reassuring.”

  “Not my job.” She waved the idea off like an annoying fly.

  I pulled my jacket closer around myself. I was far too exhausted to make enough heat to fight off the chill in the air. “I’m worried that it’s not the potion.” I forced the words out, past the fear that speaking them would make them true. “I think Ruven might have… done something to him, when he attacked us at Lady Hortensia’s party. With vivomancy.”

  “Done something?” Zaira eyed me warily. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head helplessly. “I don’t know much about what Skinwitches can do. And if it’s not the potion, I have no idea how to undo it.”

  Zaira blew out a lungful of breath, frowning out over the lagoon toward the Mews. “Damn. He can be an ass sometimes, but he doesn’t deserve that.”

  “He begged me not to go.” His pleading voice, and that final anguished look, kept haunting every moment my mind wasn’t occupied with my mother’s injury, or some other terrible aspect of the various emergencies that faced us. “I need to help him somehow, Zaira.”

  She poked my arm with a sharp finger. “You’re not thinking of going back there, are you?”

  “Well…”

  “No.” She jabbed again, harder; I winced. “Don’t visit him again without me, you understand? Or bring your mother’s shadow, the one who took out all those chimeras.”

  “Ciardha.” I nodded. “She’d keep matters under control.”

  Zaira snorted. “She’d keep the Hell of Discord under control. You can visit him if you take her, or me. Otherwise, stay away. Promise?”

  I hesitated. “I don’t think he should be left alone for long. If I can’t get either of you—”

  Zaira sighed. “Look. Istrella’s bound to want to visit him, and I’m not going to let her go alone, either. If you promise me, and only if you promise me, I will make sure he gets friends visiting him from the Mews so you can get some sleep, and elect a doge, and whatever else your mamma needs you to do without fretting about how poor little Captain Murderface might be lonely.”

  Some portion of the tension drained from my shoulders. “All right. I promise. And thank you.”

  “Good.” Zaira hunkered down in her seat, seeming satisfied. “Now you drop me off and go get some sleep. You’re a wreck. Last thing I ne
ed is you half off your hinges when we’re getting sent off to war.”

  That night I slept in such dreamless oblivion that it seemed only seconds had passed when my maid Rica shook me awake, urging me to get dressed and hurry to the Imperial Palace; the vote for a new doge was imminent, and my mother had called for me.

  After the initial relief that she was well enough to be holding the vote, I realized with a wrench that I wouldn’t have time to visit Marcello beforehand. Had they left him locked overnight in that bare antechamber with its scenes of torment? But if they’d moved him, that might be worse; I was less confident of my ability to protect him if they whisked him off to some prison cell. What was going through his mind, abandoned and alone, with Ruven twisting at him somehow and nothing but the knowledge he’d committed regicide for companionship?

  But no, I reminded myself as I got dressed and gulped down a cup of chocolate, Zaira had promised to see that he had company. And my mother was right; if I showed too much concern for him before the vote, I made him a piece in the Council’s political games, to be traded or sacrificed. I would have to trust Zaira and Istrella and the others at the Mews to take care of him, and focus on my duty to the Empire until after the election. No matter how much that last look from his pleading eyes haunted me.

  Besides, my mother was hurt, too, and she needed me. After living nineteen years in her protective shadow, by all the Hells and Graces, when she finally needed me I would be there for her.

  Soon enough, I stepped back into the Assembly Hall of the Imperial Palace, one endless day after I’d walked in full of nervous hope to try to shift history in the direction of justice. I’d never seen it packed so full; every seat on the floor was filled by the time the officials closed the doors. An electric tension hung in the air, of fear and excitement, and whispers rustled around the hall like wind riffling the waters of the lagoon. Even the Graces in the ceiling fresco seemed to stare down with avid interest.

  The doge’s throne stood starkly empty. The Council, seated around it, couldn’t seem to bring themselves to look at it, and I found myself averting my eyes as well. Niro da Morante had sat there since before I was born. It was his seat. It seemed wrong, somehow, to elect someone else to fill it.