The Unbound Empire

by Melissa Caruso

Jerith grinned. “Well done, then. Wish I could have seen that.”

  Zaira shrugged uncomfortably. “I was motivated.”

  “Now.” Jerith lifted a finger. “Why did you lose control?”

  “I told you, some chimeras—”

  “Not when,” he interrupted gently. “Why.”

  “How should I know?” Zaira frowned at him. “I guess I let it loose to burn the chimeras and it just kept going.”

  Jerith closed his eyes, as if he could watch what had happened on the inside of his lids. “Do you remember what I told you on the watchtower, when you asked me how I kept control while I was raising the storm?”

  “That you’d tell me if we both made it through alive.” Zaira took a long breath, as though bracing herself. “All right. What’s the secret?”

  “You have to stop fighting it.” Jerith opened his eyes again, and the silver rings of his mage mark stood out bright and keen. “Stop being afraid of your fire, and stop trying to beat it down. You need to embrace it.”

  Zaira stared at him for a moment in flat disbelief. Then she lurched to her feet, throwing an arm vaguely northward. “Did you see what’s out there, Jerith? Did you see what I did?”

  “It was hard to miss,” Jerith said calmly.

  “That’s what happens if I stop fighting it. Death feeding on death, until someone knocks me out and puts an end to it. And you’re telling me to hug it?”

  Jerith grimaced. “More accept than hug. But yes.” He rose to his feet, too, and put his hands on his hips. “I’ve watched you in training session after training session, Zaira, and every time you unleash so much as a spark of balefire, you’re fighting it every second.”

  “Yes, to hold it back from killing you!” Zaira threw her hands up. “Would you rather I let it burn you, and the whole Mews, and keep killing and spreading to the ends of the Grace-forsaken earth?”

  Nothing could compel me to intervene in this argument, but I couldn’t help but agree with Zaira. I’d felt the searing heat of her balefire’s pure, wicked hunger. It was beautiful, but the idea of letting it go unchecked was terrifying.

  Jerith jabbed a finger at Zaira. “It’s a part of you. You can’t treat it as an enemy, any more than you can treat your own arm as an enemy.”

  “Damned right, it’s an enemy!” Zaira stepped toward Jerith, fists balled at her sides. “That’s what I call something that kills my family and wants to murder my friends.”

  “Do you want to control it, or not?” Jerith snapped.

  “Not if it means I have to get friendly with that.” She waved toward the valley, invisible from here but looming large in my memory, a vast wasteland of bones and cinders. “I’d rather not unleash my fire at all. To the Nine Hells with it! I’ll move to the country and take up beet farming.”

  Jerith and Zaira glared at each other, a few feet apart, chests heaving, the air between them crackling with suppressed power. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I wouldn’t put it past either of them to start throwing punches; perhaps it was just as well they had jesses on.

  Balos cleared his throat. “My family are farmers, and I have to admit, I can’t see you raising good beets,” he said mildly.

  Jerith didn’t break eye contact with Zaira. “Well, my family are Loreician nobles, and they hid me from the Falcons until I was eight, when I lost control and murdered my best friend and three other children.” His gaze narrowed to intense silver slits. “And I still managed to stop fighting my power, for the sake of control. Because I didn’t want anything like that to ever happen again.”

  Grace of Mercy. I’d known Jerith had some tragedy in his past, as most warlocks did, but I’d always hoped with the small corner of my mind willing to think about it that it had been some narrow escape, ending perhaps in injury rather than death. But I should have known better. Lightning knew no kindness, and balefire no mercy.

  “Good for you, rich brat,” Zaira growled, but some of the fight had gone out of her stance.

  The tension eased visibly from Jerith’s spine, too. They were like two cats who’d decided not to fight after all, and now glanced around the room as if uncertain how they’d come to be facing off with each other, tails still lashing.

  “Ignore my advice if you want,” Jerith said at last. “But the fact that I followed it is the reason we still have a city to go home to.”

  “There you are. I was wondering where you kept disappearing to.” I leaned over the railing of the sending spire platform, my coat drawn tight around me. The air had gone quite still with the coming twilight, and soft gray clouds muffled the sky, seeming low enough over our heads that I could almost reach up and touch them.

  Kathe sat on the roof not far off, his arms resting on his knees and his feathered cloak spread out on the red tiles around him. Perhaps half a dozen crows had gathered to him, and he was stroking one’s glossy neck.

  “I’ve set up a meeting with the Lady of Spiders, as you asked,” he said, without looking up.

  “Thank you,” I said, though leggy memories of our last encounter crept up my spine. She’d said I’d need something from her someday. “You mentioned she’d want a price, and I suspect you don’t mean in ducats. Do you have any idea what she’ll ask for?”

  The feathers on Kathe’s shoulders rustled. “All the secrets you most wish to hide, scavenged from the shadows of your mind.”

  I swallowed. “Is that a metaphor, or…”

  “Oh, I’m being quite literal.” Kathe’s piercing eyes flicked up to meet mine. “That’s why she’s one of the most influential Witch Lords. She accumulates knowledge and secrets—magical and personal, ancient lore and buried shame.” His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Everyone comes to her eventually, when a question burns so brightly it outshines their better judgment. So no one dares go against her, because she knows the precise threads to pull on to unravel them.”

  The edge in his tone made me wonder if he was speaking from personal experience. “Can she be trusted?”

  He tipped his head, appearing to think it over. “She herself is unlikely to use the knowledge she gleans against you so long as you leave her alone. But others could trade their secrets for one of yours, if they wanted it badly enough. And the process itself is… unpleasant. It’s not a bargain to enter lightly.”

  I pulled my coat closer around me. “I’m not certain we have a choice.”

  “There’s always another move you can make,” Kathe said, tapping a crow gently on the beak. It nibbled his finger affectionately. “There may not be another one that will win you the game, though.”

  “So long as we can win and end it swiftly.” I leaned my elbows on the stone railing, looking out at the blasted wasteland below. The line separating life from death was so stark and sudden. I shivered. “I spoke to my mother over the courier lamps, and I have the full backing of the Empire, though it took some persuasion. We can leave tomorrow morning, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Of course.” A crow hopped onto his hand and he lifted it to stare into its beady black eyes, avoiding mine. “Let is on the way, as it happens. Will you visit my home with me?”

  “I would love to see it.” A certain unexpected fluttering occurred in my chest at the thought. “Though I fear we’ll be in something of a hurry.”

  “We can dally more on the way back.” He grinned and rose to his feet, without any apparent care for the rounded sloping tiles beneath him. His crows scattered to give him space as he paced toward me. “Assuming we’re not all dead, of course.”

  “It’s so kind of you to include yourself in that ‘we,’” I said dryly. “You’re far too clever a bird to get caught.”

  “Oh, I make my share of rash mistakes.” Kathe grimaced. “Just ask my Heartguard.”

  “Perhaps I will.” I stared out over the blackened valley. No traffic traveled down the River Arden or the road beside it from the north. No one moved across the scorched fields, searching for remnants of their lives among the homes that had burned the
re. It was a place the Graces had forsaken utterly, and all the bustling people of Ardence and the lands beyond looked away from it, as if to gaze upon it might be to become cursed. “I hear Ruven’s withdrawn northward,” I said slowly. “There were farms and villages and towns there, in the land he marched through coming down from the hills. I don’t have much intelligence yet on what state they’re in.”

  Kathe leaned on the stone railing beside me, from the other side. The platform I stood on gave me extra height, putting me slightly above the soft, black-tipped locks of his hair. A sudden urge to run my fingers through it possessed me, and I forced my gaze back to the valley, where dusk had begun softening the hills to purple.

  “I do have some news on that front, from my crows,” Kathe said carefully.

  Foreboding gripped my chest like an overtightened corset. “I miss the days when news was sometimes good.”

  “It’s not very romantic, is it? I didn’t want to tell you and spoil the mood.” He gestured grandly out over the desolate ruin of the valley.

  “You have a strange notion of what’s romantic. But go on.”

  “Well, the good news is that he didn’t kill everyone.” Kathe paused. “If you can call that good.”

  Somehow, I doubted it. “What has he done to them?”

  “Some he’s given his potion. Some he’s turned into chimeras.” Kathe flicked a chip of loose mortar off the railing and watched it go skittering off down the roof tiles. “And some died fighting, of course. But most of them he’s sending back to Kazerath, to make his own.”

  The winter air found a gap in my coat and slid its cold hands up my back. “We have to save them.”

  “I believe that is the plan, yes. By killing Ruven.”

  I stared north. The hills rose crowned with snow at the far end of the valley, lifting pure white heads above the black and gray waste of ash and cinders. Smoke and coming dusk hazed the air too much for the Witchwall Mountains to be visible beyond them, but I knew they were out there, looming against the sky.

  “This isn’t the world I wanted to build,” I said quietly.

  Kathe surveyed the scorched wasteland below us. “If it were, I admit I would have to question your objectives.”

  “I don’t want to always have to protect my people through killing.” I gripped the railing, the stone cold beneath my hands. “I want it to be more like when I passed the Falcon Reserve Act. Using my mind and my words to chart a course for the Empire by which justice and decency can prevail. But I have the tools for both war and peace in my hands now, and if I move with the wrong hand at the wrong time, everything will shatter, like glass in a crowded shop.”

  He laid his cool, elegant fingers over mine. The touch demanded nothing, but changed us instantly from separate lonely figures on a windswept roof to a pair standing together. “That doesn’t change,” he said softly. “It’s terrifying.”

  “What do we do, then, Kathe?” I asked desperately, searching the sharp, ageless lines of his face for an answer.

  “The best we can. And we hope it’s enough.”

  “I should be going with you,” Lucia fretted.

  She sat restlessly on the most comfortable chair in my guest room, only barely keeping herself from leaping to her feet and helping the servants who packed my things because the physician had threatened to send her back to bed if she did. Two days and the attentions of an alchemist and the Serene Envoy’s personal physician had done wonders; she didn’t look well, certainly, but neither did she appear ready to expire at any moment. Her regimen of potions and strict limits on activity would continue for some time, however, so accompanying us to Vaskandar was out of the question.

  Which was just as well, and not only because of my irrational fear that anyone besides Kathe and Zaira who crossed into Vaskandar with me would wind up dead.

  “I need you here,” I said sternly. “There’s too much work to be done, and I won’t be in the Empire to do it.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” She tried out half a smile. “My lady.”

  “Not in the slightest.” I dragged a chair directly opposite hers and sat down so that I could stare directly into her eyes. “The Falcon Reserve Act is just as important as stopping Ruven. More so, in the long run. I need you to defend it for me while I’m out of the country.”

  Lucia frowned. “Defend it, my lady?”

  “Yes.” I lowered my voice. “Its opponents may well attempt to sabotage it while I’m gone. Even if they don’t, this is a delicate moment. We need to make certain the transition happens smoothly—that the Mews and the Empire comply with the law. That there’s no retaliation against the mage-marked. That any Falcons who choose to leave active duty and join the reserve can live comfortable and safe civilian lives. That newly discovered mage-marked and their families understand their options. That no one attempts to capitalize on the system by gathering up mage-marked to create a power base.”

  Lucia’s eyes grew wider and wider as I spoke. “I see what you mean, my lady.”

  “I wouldn’t leave the Serene Empire now if there were anyone else who could do this,” I told her, and I meant it. “There’s too much at stake. I’m trusting you to handle this in my name until I return.”

  “My lady, I…” She hesitated. “I wish I could be certain I was worthy of your trust.”

  I squeezed her hand. “This is why Ciardha picked you.” I had to believe it. “Because you’re a scholar. Because you can be a leader. She could have picked anyone to be my aide if I only needed a bodyguard who could run errands for me. But Ciardha knew what I would need, because she’s Ciardha, and she’s basically perfect.”

  Lucia nodded vigorously, and I almost laughed.

  “And she chose you, Lucia,” I told her. “That’s how I know you can do this. Ciardha chose you.”

  “Then I’ll do it.” Lucia drew herself up, then winced and pressed a hand to her ribs. “I’ll have a full report for you when you return, my lady.”

  When I return. It was hard to think of coming back to Raverra. Even if we defeated Ruven, how could I come home, with a wake of death and ashes behind me? How could I come home without Marcello?

  But I’d given Lucia the answer already. I had done at least one good thing, by the Graces. And for the sake of all the mage-marked in the Serene Empire, I would see it through, for all the days of my life.

  I lifted my chin with resolve. “I look forward to it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  There was no avoiding the bones. They crunched beneath our horses’ feet, falling to brittle blackened shards. Our mounts stepped nervously, tossing their heads, snorting at the trailing clouds of ash that rose with the wind and settled again over the charred remains of several thousand soldiers.

  There wasn’t much left of them. The balefire had taken clothes and flesh and armor, faces and hair and the last screams from their lungs. The fragments of bone that remained could have been sticks and coals left over from last night’s fire.

  But they weren’t. And Zaira knew it.

  She bowed over her horse’s neck, looking pale and ill, her hands clenched on the saddle. She’d never learned to ride, but that wasn’t an issue with Kathe along; her horse followed his, well-behaved despite the uneasy shivers that sometimes crossed its shoulders when the ash blew past. I was hardly any better a rider, but the road wasn’t passable for a coach.

  Because of all the people we had killed.

  A certain queasy dizziness washed over me, and I wished I could close my eyes. But it wouldn’t be right to look away. I had done this, as much as Zaira had. I could have spared these people with one word, and I hadn’t.

  “I could give them flowers,” Kathe said softly.

  Zaira lifted her head, blinking as if she were coming back from far away. “What?”

  “I could give them flowers,” Kathe said again, looking back. “The seeds are there in the earth. It’s winter, so they would die before morning. But I could grow flowers along t
he road, at least, if you like.”

  Zaira seemed to think it over. “No,” she said, her voice rough. “No, don’t cover over the truth. The Grace of Bounty will give them flowers when those seeds are good and ready.”

  I tried to imagine green grass growing over the smoking mounds of ash, and flowers blooming all through the valley, coming out in a blaze as bright as balefire. It seemed impossible, now, but life was inexorable. It would always triumph over death in the end.

  That, I supposed, was what made Witch Lords so dangerous.

  We climbed up out of the valley into the hills, and soon our horses’ hooves fell on snow. With the smoky haze left behind us, Mount Whitecrown emerged from hiding, its glacier-mantled shoulders rising with breathtaking glory above the surrounding peaks. I pulled on a fur hat and mittens I’d made certain to acquire after my last trip to Vaskandar in entirely insufficient winter clothing, and turned up the collar on my fur-lined coat, the gold embroidery tickling my chin. My breath still made clouds in the air, and I wished I had a scarf to wrap around my cold nose.

  The three of us were completely alone on the broad trade road. We’d decided that with Kathe and Zaira along, an escort of soldiers would be superfluous and only slow us down—but the land itself was eerily empty. Farms and houses scattered across the hills, and the road threaded past villages and towns and wayside inns; all of them stood silent. This land had been evacuated as Ruven’s troops approached, and if anyone had been so foolish as to stay behind, there was no sign of them now. No smoke rose from the chimneys, despite the cold, and windows showed dark and still.

  “Quiet as the Hell of Despair,” Zaira muttered as we rode past another shuttered village. “I thought you said we were avoiding Ruven’s army.”

  “We are.” Instinct kept my voice low, even with no one around for miles to hear us. “His forces followed the west fork of the River Arden down out of the mountains, and we’re following the east fork, to cross into Vaskandar in my great-grandmother’s domain of Atruin.”