The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

  “Excuse me, Lady Amalia. Reporting for duty.”

  I turned, well aware I must be flushing bright red, to find a rangy young woman with a strong jaw and dark hair pulled back in a tight braid at my side. Her combination of sleekly tailored coat, twin knife belts, and an air of almost painful earnestness left me completely at a loss to determine whether she was a soldier, a clerk, or some minor courtier. On a closer look, she couldn’t be older than me; I’d guess seventeen.

  “And you are…?”

  She bowed. “Lucia of Calsida, my lady. Your new aide.”

  I blinked. “Right. My aide.” My mother had said something about that. By all the Graces, I couldn’t deal with this now—but I had to. The wheels of the Empire didn’t stop turning for anyone’s tears.

  “And your bodyguard, my lady. Ciardha assigned me.” Her eyes lit up, sparkling as if with tiny internal festival lights. “Of course,” she added breathily, “I’ve got a long way to go before I can be anywhere near as good as Ciardha. She’s a legend. Did you know—” She swallowed and bowed again. “But yes, um. Reporting for duty.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, wondering how this had become my life. But then I nodded. “All right, well, I’m heading back to the Cornaro palace to prepare for my departure tomorrow.”

  Lucia rocked eagerly onto her toes. “Yes, my lady. I’ll have word sent ahead to commence packing. Do you wish to select your own books, my lady, or do you want to dictate a list?”

  “I’ll, ah, pack my own, thank you.” I tentatively started walking; Lucia marched briskly along at my side. “I need to figure out what will be most useful in researching ways to overcome Ruven’s regenerative abilities.”

  “Do you want any volumes from the Imperial library?” Lucia asked, quivering and ready like a drawn arrow.

  “No. Wait—maybe Crespi’s Theory of Magical Energies.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Lucia waylaid a passing page, muttered a few quick words, and returned to my side. “Anything else?”

  I couldn’t help a stab of annoyance. All I wanted now was to be alone with my thoughts; the last thing I needed was someone hovering eagerly at my shoulder, like a gull waiting for handouts. I had a hundred worries balled up in my chest, and a great deal to do.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got to get home and catch a few hours of sleep, but I also need to prepare to leave at first light, make sure Zaira has everything she needs for our departure, find out if Istrella is all right—”

  “I’ll send someone to the Mews at once to coordinate with Lady Zaira and inquire discreetly after Istrella Verdi, my lady,” Lucia said immediately, procuring a small leather-bound notebook and a charcoal pencil from an inner pocket and making a note. “What else?”

  I slowed my stride for a moment, staring at her. She gave me a tentative grin.

  “All right.” I picked my pace back up, a strange energy surging through me at the giddy realization that I could simply declare things and expect them to be done. “I want overview reports on all incoming intelligence about Ruven’s movements and activities. And a briefing on Ardence’s current defense capabilities, and any special concerns we may want to be aware of before we arrive.”

  “Naturally, my lady.” Lucia scribbled more notes. She couldn’t quite constrain herself from giving a small sort of skip as we walked. “And?”

  “Send thank-you gifts to the major supporters of my Falcon Reserve Act.” Graces, I could get used to this. “I also want to keep a watchful eye on its reception, both in the city and throughout the Empire. How people are reacting to the law, what the mage-marked are doing with their new freedoms, that sort of thing. Can you arrange that?”

  “Of course, my lady. Anything more?”

  Yes. Something that sat in my stomach like a swallowed stone. I dropped my voice, glancing at a clerk scurrying past with an armload of documents. “Quietly watch the effort to find Captain Verdi for me. I want reports on any progress or sightings.”

  “Yes, my lady.” She hesitated, her voice losing its certainty. “If there’s news during the night, should I wake you?”

  “Please.” I cleared my throat of a sudden huskiness. “No matter the hour.”

  Lucia might not have quite Ciardha’s level of delicacy, but she possessed enough to leave me to my thoughts after that. It was strange, having her stick close as my shadow through the palace halls and all the way home in my boat along the Imperial Canal in the chill and sparkling evening. I was used to having servants and guards around, but there was something proprietary about the way Lucia hovered, as if I were her sole and overriding concern. I wasn’t certain I liked the idea that she might become my Ciardha, following me wherever I went and efficiently transforming my will into reality. The very need for such an aide implied that my chances for those wishes to be “leave me alone to read in the library for the next six hours” would be distressingly small.

  I didn’t want to be effective right now. I wanted to be alone—no, I wanted someone to whom I could pour out all my fear and grief and worry. Someone who could listen without judging, without wanting anything from me, and maybe hold me for a little while, so I could fool myself into believing that I was safe. That anything could be safe again, if the Mews and the Imperial Palace and even my mother were vulnerable.

  I wanted Marcello. Graces help us both.

  I had barely stepped inside my palace door, Old Anzo taking my jacket and exchanging assessing looks with Lucia, when our courier lamp clerk burst into the foyer, her eyes wide with agitation. “Lady Amalia! Come quickly! There’s a message for you.”

  My heart dropped through the marble floor. “From the Imperial Palace?” Horrifying possibilities burst through my mind, hot and painful as fireworks: my mother had succumbed to her wound, or Marcello was dead, or some other new catastrophe I could never have anticipated.

  But the clerk shook her head. “No. From a border outpost. It’s…” She licked her lips. “My lady, the clerk there says there’s a strange man there who just appeared inside the fort. No one knows how he got in. And he claims to be the Crow Lord, and he’s asking to speak to you.”

  Ragged wings fluttered in my chest. Kathe.

  I took the clerk’s hard wooden chair before the one courier lamp in the hushed, round chamber that glowed with a patient inner light. I barely breathed as I pressed two fingers hesitantly to the crystal.

  It’s Amalia, I tapped, the crystal winking on and off beneath my touch. Far, far away, I knew another crystal flashed, casting warm pulses of light across the smooth contours of Kathe’s face.

  The lamp stuttered with the rapid, skilled flashes of a trained courier lamp clerk. Lady Cornaro, this is Ensign Hamis. The Crow Lord is here and we are all concerned for our safety. Please advise.

  I put my face in my hand, letting out a shaky laugh. Of course, Kathe had terrified them. He probably thought it was funny.

  He won’t hurt you, I promised. Just give me his message.

  Yes, Lady Cornaro. I will relay his words. A pause. Then, Hello, Amalia. I gather you’ve been busy.

  I snorted at the lamp as if it could hear me. That’s an understatement. Why are you scaring innocent courier lamp clerks, Kathe?

  For a moment, the lamp remained dark. I could imagine the clerk flushing red as he translated for Kathe, and Kathe laughing.

  My crows gave me some reports strange enough that I wondered if they’d been in Raverra too long and learned to drink wine. A storm over the Mews, chimeras climbing out of the lagoon, murder at the Imperial Palace. With no message from you, I thought I should check to make sure you weren’t dying, controlled, or otherwise indisposed.

  I was so surprised my fingers slipped on the crystal. You were worried.

  I was not. A pause. I just like to know what’s going on.

  I leaned against the hard wooden back of the chair, smiling. He was worried, all right. But the grin slipped off my face as I tapped out a curt summary of everything that had befallen the Serene City in the pas
t terrible day and a half.

  There came another long pause when I was done. A knot formed in my chest, and I almost wondered if Kathe had wandered off, with the conversation having become so unamusing.

  The lamp flickered to life again at last. And here I thought my crows were exaggerating. But you’re well?

  No. How could I be well when my mother was badly injured, Marcello was taken by my enemy, and my world lay in shattered pieces at my feet? But he knew that. Kathe wasn’t one to talk about feelings, any more than I was—at least, not directly.

  Well enough, I said.

  Let me ask you this, the lamp flashed, at a more deliberate pace that suggested Kathe was thinking over his words as he spoke them. Which is more important now: to protect what is yours, or to strike back against him?

  I considered the question. All my instincts pulled inexorably toward defense: to retrieve and cure Marcello, protect Ardence, help and heal my mother. But if we kept merely reacting to Ruven’s attacks, he would break us a piece at a time.

  To strike back. I jabbed at the crystal hard enough to rock the lamp in its base. I have to keep him from taking Ardence first, but then I am going to destroy him.

  You’d make a fine Witch Lord. Something tentative about the flashes of the courier lamp expressed the clerk’s incredulity or reluctance to find those words passing beneath his fingers, and the compliment didn’t sit quite as easily with me as perhaps Kathe intended. I’ll see what I can do to help you. Be bold.

  That startled a short huff out of me. Marcello would have told me to stay safe. But I supposed that for Kathe, personal safety was never a priority. I’d say the same to you, but I doubt you need the encouragement. Especially given that he’d broken into an imperial outpost just to say hello.

  Ensign Hamis again, my lady, the lamp pulsed, a quick and subdued flutter. He’s gone.

  I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, letting loose a sigh like a bedraggled bird.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Well, that was odd,” I said to the empty courier lamp chamber. Still, I couldn’t help but feel inexplicably heartened.

  Kathe had wasted no time exclaiming over the horror of the situation. He’d gone straight to what to do next. I needed to do the same.

  I hurried to the library, filled with a sense of urgent purpose, and began combing my bookshelves for texts that might help me unravel the Ruven immortality problem. Old Anzo had to remind me gently that I should have dinner and get some sleep. I took a book down to the dining room to peruse while I ate. Kathe was right; I had to strike back. The first step was figuring out how to do it.

  I had only gotten a few bites into dinner and a few pages into my book, however, when Lucia bowed her way into the dining room to inform me that I had a visitor.

  I frowned. “I’m frankly too busy and too tired for visitors.”

  She nodded with her customary zeal. “I can tell her to come back another time, my lady, if you wish. But it’s Lady Zaira.”

  “Oh!” I nearly knocked my chair over rising to my feet. “Please, show her in.”

  “I hear you’re really important now,” Zaira greeted me as she sauntered into the dining room. “What should I call you? Your Nine-ness? Lady High Mighty Imperial Bilgesucker? Biscuit Cheeks?” She sat down opposite me, and without hesitation pulled my half-eaten dinner in front of her—cuttlefish in a thick black sauce of its own ink—and began consuming it.

  “Hello, Zaira. It’s good to see you, too. I’m doing as well as can be expected, thank you, and I imagine you’ll continue to call me whatever crosses your mind.” I eased back in my chair as if letting weariness take me, but it was really a rush of dizzy relief that she was here. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you and know that some things are still the same.”

  She gave me a strange look, almost pitying. “Don’t you know yet that nothing’s ever the same?”

  My eyes stung unexpectedly. I thought I’d pulled myself together. But everything was changing, slipping through my fingers like sand dragged off by the tide. Marcello gone, my life given over to the Council, the Mews fallen, my mother mortal.

  “Let me pretend,” I said roughly.

  Zaira shrugged. “You can pretend you’re the Grace of Bounty for all I care.” Her fork paused a moment then, and she sighed. “I came here because I heard the news about Captain Loverboy running off.”

  It was just as well Zaira was eating my dinner. Any appetite I’d had vanished. “Oh,” I said.

  “A curse on that pox-faced stingroach,” she said helpfully. “Ruven, that is.”

  I forced myself to keep my voice light, hiding the sickening mix of guilt and worry in my gut. “It’s true that every time I think I couldn’t possibly hate him more, he finds a way to exceed my expectations.” I hesitated, then asked, “Did you see Marcello at all today?”

  “I visited him with Istrella. Her arm’s doing better, by the way.” Zaira swallowed a mouthful of cuttlefish. “I hate to say it, but he was almost as creepy with her as he was with you.”

  “How did Istrella take that?” The thought of a wounded Istrella facing her brother when something cold and cruel kept glancing out of his eyes twisted a tight knot under my breastbone.

  “Well, she didn’t notice at first. You know Istrella.” Zaira licked jet-black ink off her lips. “But she caught on all at once, gave him a look like he was trying to sell her a batch of bad dream poppies, and said, ‘You’re not my brother.’”

  That didn’t help ease the snarl in my chest. Old Anzo came in with a glass of wine for Zaira and more for me. I took a long draft of the citrusy white before he left the room, and he returned without a word and filled my glass again.

  “I can’t imagine he liked that,” I said when Old Anzo was gone.

  “No, he didn’t,” Zaira said shortly. “We took Istrella home not long after that. I nearly punched him in the face for upsetting her, but I held back for you, in case you wanted him to stay pretty.”

  I leaned my elbows on the table and put my forehead in my hands. Nothing would make Marcello feel worse than upsetting his sister. “I shouldn’t have left him there.”

  “Yeah, I know. I didn’t like leaving Terika in Ruven’s castle, either.” Zaira stabbed her fork viciously into the black mess that remained of my dinner. “But Terika and Istrella were all right after Ruven got his claws into them, and he’ll be all right, too. He’s not as soft as he likes to think he is.”

  “I hope so.” I had to tell myself I believed it. I had a job to do, and no idea where Marcello was or how to help him. Focus on the problems you can solve. Was it my mother who had told me that, long ago?

  No, I realized. It had been the Marquise of Palova, of all people, bending over to help me when I’d knocked an entire tray of crostini onto the drawing room floor when my mother had had her over for drinks. My mother had added, lifting her glass, And then find solutions for the ones you can’t.

  “Yes,” I said more firmly. “He’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “How goes it at the Mews?” I asked, trying to wrench my thoughts away from what Marcello might be doing even now, and whether Ruven’s orders would allow him to find a place to sleep.

  Zaira grimaced. “It’s empty as the Hell of Despair with everyone locked up in quarantine. At least now I can leave whenever I want to—though the colonel did make me bring about a dozen guards.” She started counting on her fingers. “Terika’s busy as a dockside barkeep trying to brew all the potions for the whole damned Empire while she’s one of maybe three alchemists in the Mews not under Ruven’s control. Istrella’s making courier lamps day and night, with one good arm—that girl is unstoppable. Probably helps distract her from being upset about her brother. Aleki’s all right, because at that age, I swear, a brat could get eaten by a lion and coughed up again, and they’d just toddle off causing mayhem like nothing happened. Foss is helping take care of all the brats in quarantine and leading
them in little games and it’s so sickening you might as well just swallow a cupful of sugar.”

  “How about you?” I asked, taking a closer look at Zaira. She couldn’t have gotten much sleep; her dark eyes sat in hollows of exhaustion.

  “Me?” she snorted. “I’m the only Falcon free of Ruven’s control with nothing to do. Everyone else is working their arse raw, but I lounge around, waiting for someone to show up who needs to be on fire.”

  “You won’t have to wait much longer,” I said softly. “We’re not going to be able to talk our way out of using your fire in Ardence this time.”

  She let out a long breath, leaning back in her chair. “I know.”

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything more. She didn’t look away, either, not bothering to hide the trouble in her deep brown eyes.

  “Will you be all right?” I asked quietly. “You don’t have to do this, you know. The Falcon Reserve Act passed. You could quit active duty. They can’t force you to use your fire—not anymore.”

  Zaira picked up a table knife and twirled it slowly between her fingers, watching the reflected gleam of the luminaries slide along it as it turned. “I’ve thought about it,” she admitted. “I won’t lie, I’m not pulling at the leash to become the monster Vaskandran parents use to keep their brats in line.” She let out a humorless bark of a laugh. “Go to bed, or Zaira will burn you up.”

  I swallowed. “Well, in that case, I’m certain we can—”

  “Oh, stow it.” Zaira flipped the knife, catching it adeptly. “Of course I’ll do it. I’m not going to leave the entire city of Ardence on a wet rock with the tide rising. I’m just…” She trailed off, scowling.

  “Afraid?” I supplied quietly.

  “Hells take you, Cornaro.” She stabbed the knife into the satiny finish of our dinner table, leaving it quivering in front of her.

  I winced. “I only meant—”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Of course I’m afraid. I’ve spent my whole life keeping this demon locked in the cellar, while I stand on the trapdoor pretending everything is fine as it claws away beneath me.” She shook her head. “And now you want me to let it out. Damned right, I’m scared.”