Song of Edmon

by Adam Burch

  MOVEMENT III: FINALE

  CHAPTER 25

  CODA

  The return to Meridian is a haze. I’m shoved into a sondi, barely able to stand upright. No matter. I’ll heal fast, and nothing will stop me. My rebellion was thwarted, but I’ll be led to the same place—face-to-face with my father. I’m no longer the helpless youth who was held down and watched while he murdered my wife and unborn child. I’m no longer a boy who is too small to stop the beating of his mother. Edric desired that I become a killer. Now, he has his wish, and there’s only one man in the whole universe I desire to kill. I summon my energies. I’ve little time to clear the neurotoxins from my cells. I shut out all other thoughts.

  Finally, my face is shoved to the floor at the foot of what I remember as the Wusong throne. Now, however, the chair’s golden sea monkeys have been replaced with resplendent silver leviathans. The man reigning is not Old Wusong, but a silver-haired titan.

  “Edric,” I murmur. One strike is all I will need. I look up, but the man on the throne is not the father I remember.

  He is wrinkled and haggard. Skin sags. Thick veins like bluish worms shine through its sickly yellow hue. The lustrous silver hair now hangs lank. His frame seems flaccid and rickety. His bones pop and creak as he stands. Edric Leontes is horribly changed. In my five years of exile, he has aged more than thirty.

  “Rise,” he whispers.

  My plans to murder fall away as I’m too shocked to react.

  “Strip him,” his voice rasps. Guards descend upon me tearing the rags from my body. I don’t resist. Edric’s pale eyes take me in from head to toe. “Alberich.” He gestures to his seneschal, who lumbers forward to help the decaying skeleton down the steps. He hands Edric a cane of whale ivory, a silver leviathan head for its pommel.

  My father shuffles toward me, the cane tapping eerily. He squints.

  The hate I’d been so long preparing turns to ash in my mouth. All I feel is surprise and pity.

  He takes in my smooth scalp and my emaciated physique. “You look terrible,” he croaks.

  “Take a look in the mirror,” I spit back.

  His lips curl into a sneer as he shuffles past me. “I’m not what you remember.” Several lung-bursting coughs rack the old man. Alberich quickly returns the old man to the throne and fetches him a drink.

  “Poison.” Edric gestures to the flagon in his hand. “Corocona. A rare herb scoured from the depths of some Theran jungle. Highly addictive. The doctors tell me the precursor was introduced into my blood not long after you left. You see, the drug needs multiple components in order to take effect. The precursor is harmless on its own. It only becomes deadly when bonded with a catalyst, making it all the harder to trace the source. The effects were subtle at first. Headaches, dizziness, loss of equilibrium. Most victims don’t know they’ve been dosed. Most are dead within weeks when the toxin’s removed from the diet. I’m not most.”

  “You’re one of the lucky ones?” I taunt.

  “I’m a two-time champion of the—” He doubles over in a fit of coughing.

  A dying two-time champion, I think.

  “I consulted physicians, top pathologists from Prospera’s academy on Lyria. They said removing the toxin from my body would cause instant paralysis and death. So I continue to take the contaminant and complete a slow downward spiral, watching myself wither into decrepitude.”

  “Your body now matches your soul.” I laugh at the bitter irony. I should kill him anyway. For my mother. For Nadia. Yet I realize someone has already done the work in a far crueler fashion than I could ever have dreamed. All I have to do is nothing, and I can watch him waste away in agony.

  I feel triumphant, and I feel robbed. I’ve lived for vengeance for so long, to have it yanked from me like this . . . I laugh to keep myself from crying.

  “I need you, Edmon,” he croaks. I laugh harder. “Edgaard is dead. Those who have sought to destroy our house by murdering him and poisoning me must be punished.”

  Tears stream down my face as I shake with amusement. “And what does that have to do with me?”

  “I’ve watched your progress, my son. You’ve faced challenges. You’ve become strong.”

  My laughter ceases. “You knew what happened to me in the Wendigo. You made sure I was kept alive in the event you needed me.”

  “If you died, you were too weak anyway. But you didn’t, and now, you’re ready. Take your place as my heir. Enter the Combat. Claim your place with the Electors. Stop the madness, this cult of Phaestion.”

  “I’ll never fight for you!” I gnash my teeth, cutting off his monologue. “You beat my mother in front of my eyes, then lobotomized her. You strangled my wife, the mother of my unborn child, while your men held me down. You slew all the people I held dear and condemned me to darkness. You think I’d raise one finger for you?”

  “You’ve no idea what’s at stake,” he whispers.

  “Nor do I care. I’d rather kill you right here!”

  “Do it!” he challenges. “Show me what you’ve learned. Commit the ritual patricide!”

  That’s exactly what he wants, isn’t it?

  I shake my head. “I’d rather watch you slowly wither.”

  “You’re still weak,” he accuses. “You think I’d let you kill me, while you still don’t understand?” The thick cords of his veins bulge. “You could never see past your own selfishness, Edmon, never one action further than the next—”

  “Says the man who bites the very hand he asks for help,” I reply.

  “What choice do either of us have now, son?”

  My scornful musing soars. “I’ve the greatest choice. I choose to do nothing.” I stand before him, naked, but fearless.

  “We will force you into the arena. Do nothing, you’ll die, and all the people you love, their deaths will go unanswered,” Alberich growls.

  “No one was talking to you, servant,” I snap. He still clings to his honor, and my words dare him to attack.

  Instead, he flicks his eyes to signal to a guard who enters the room and lunges at me from behind. I move without thinking. The world becomes like an orchestra as the skills Faria taught me take over. The guard touches me, a note on a piano. I counter with a rhythm of breaking his wrist. A gentle lyric as I duck the blow of his fist. A rising crescendo as my fingers lift to the spot in his chest where the energy flows. The crash of a cymbal as he falls, paralyzed. Drumbeats of another throne-room guard running to his aid. I howl in time as my kick casually punctuates a pop to his solar plexus. Chimes as he sails and a bell when I tap between his helm and neck to put him to sleep. I take a deep bow before the throne. My father and his seneschal sit unmoving.

  “Bravo! Bravo! Shall I delight you with an encore?” I ask. “I think not. I’ll not fight for you,” I answer.

  “It’s in your nature. It’s in every living thing that crawled from the muck to reach for the stars. You may be too dull to divine the disaster that confronts our race, or my reasons for why I’ve done what I’ve done, but if the pain I’ve caused you was truly so great, you would’ve let yourself die long ago. So stop whining about your mother and dead wife. Be man enough to kill me or kill yourself and join them. Otherwise, stop wasting your breath pretending you will.”

  Edric nods at the men crumpled before me, now twitching. “Get them all out of my sight.”

  I’m walked down palace halls flanked by Alberich and silent guards. We stop at a med bay where some minutes in a healing tank, combined with my own abilities, mend my contusions. All around I look for avenues of escape. I’m escorted to a small, but lavish room where a feast is laid before me.

  “Regain your strength so that we may resume your training tomorrow,” Alberich says. “There’s a uniform on the bed.” He gestures to a folded navy-and-silver garment. “The funeral is in one hour. All the great houses will respect the fallen. Phaestion of the Julii will light the pyre so that Edgaard’s sparks may join the ancestors among the Elder Stars.”

  “
Phaestion? Shouldn’t it be Edric?” I ask.

  “Phaestion’s Companions have become powerful forces within the government. Edgaard was the last credible threat to their triumph. The Julii prince insisted on this symbolic honor.”

  “Edric loses his preeminence. I care not. One thing I’ve learned, Alberich, great warriors don’t necessarily make great leaders. The strongest man isn’t always the better man.”

  “You think Phaestion is the better man?” he asks. “Put on the uniform. I’ll return in an hour.”

  The purple of Meridian twilight is lit with the electric brilliance of every fireglobe in the city. I’m heralded by silver trumpets. I can almost hear the aquagraphic telecasters commenting—

  Edmon Leontes, the once handsome and rebellious scion . . . what’s happened to him?

  “Eyes forward, Edmon,” my father rasps. He leans on his cane and beckons me to stand beside him on a balcony overlooking the city.

  “Hello, brother.” A woman with raven hair peeks from around my father’s shoulder.

  “Lavinia,” I mutter, meeting her violet gaze.

  “You look uglier than the last time we spoke.”

  “Prison requires disfiguration,” I allow. “I feel much more at home with you all because of it.”

  I lean on the railing and look to the lower balcony where Edric’s concubines—Lady Tandor, Rosalind Calay, and Olympias of House Flanders—as well as my sister Phoebe and her pudgy husband, Beremon Ruska, watch the sky procession.

  “Quit your bickering,” Edric says, coughing. “Were I blessed with children as obedient as they are proud, I might actually enjoy the last few years of pain before me.”

  “If you had children like that, they’d all be like Edgaard: dead.” I smile. Lavinia snickers.

  “Edgaard died honorably, husband.” A cold, clammy hand grasps mine from behind. I know the face to expect before I turn. The white-powdered, moon-shaped face and black teeth of Miranda Wusong, the last remnant of the imperial house, looks back at me.

  “There is no honor in death,” I say quietly. “Only ashes or food for worms.”

  Miranda doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m so happy to see you.” Then under her breath: “A word misspoken by an heiress out of favor quickly hastens her fall from grace. You did not better my position by incurring your father’s wrath. Though you saved me from having to endure your company.”

  I feel a pang of guilt. This woman no more desired to be a game piece in her forebears’ schemes than I did. Yet she has met the challenge with a dignity that I’ve rejected.

  Drums beat a tattoo, reminding me of the Eventide on Bone. This beat, however, is regimented, and portends the wails of riders.

  The black screamers round the avenue in trident formation, the black-and-purple capes of their riders whipping in the wind. The most handsome man you might ever see heads the pack. His smooth face looks carved of ivory, and he has high cheekbones, a square jaw, and lips perhaps just a shade too full for a man. His shock of thick, coppery hair floats behind him. A giant sondi circling above us broadcasts an enormous aquagraphic screen pasted to its flanks. I catch the close-up of Phaestion’s fierce gray eyes beneath his silver diadem. Voices erupt from the scraper windows, cheering for the handsome warrior. It’s beyond excitement. It’s worship.

  “They used to cheer for me like that,” Edric rasps.

  His cough turns into an uncontrollable spasm. He doubles over, trying not to spew spittle in front of the hovering camglobes. Miranda scrunches her face at the sour smell.

  “They never cheered for you quite like that, Father,” Lavinia says quietly.

  Alberich helps Edric stand upright and regain composure. “Our ancestors worshipped dying gods. Divine martyrs.” He laughs. “This boy wants to resurrect such cravenness in his own image!”

  “Make a man a god and they’ll do more than follow him,” says Lavinia. “They’ll sacrifice. Maybe Phaestion plies the very catalyst needed to galvanize our people to change.”

  War made civilization, Phaestion said when we were boys.

  “House Julii perverts the principles of arête and the Balance,” my father snaps. “They should be our only gods.”

  He’s only jealous it’s not him, I think.

  “They say he’s immortal, that his mother is a goddess,” Miranda chimes in.

  “He’s no more immortal than his old crone father, who was probably put in cold storage.” Edric spits blood into a handkerchief. “I doubt that old fool had the courage to truly undergo the patricide, though Phaestion now wears the orca tattoos.”

  The procession stops. Phaestion gracefully steps from his screamer onto a floating platform, flanked by three others wearing the black and purple.

  “What do you see?” my father asks.

  Phaestion’s honor guard removes their helms. I look up at the aquagraphic on the sondi to view them in close-up. The first is delicately boned, has pale skin and almost-white hair, and moves with a feline sensibility. On his left breast is the silver symbol of the orca pride. Hanschen.

  The second has hair of spun gold that hugs ruddy cheeks in tight curls. His body is tall, wiry, and athletic. His eyes flash a wild blue, and it seems he represses an insatiable grin even on this solemn occasion. He wears the symbol of the manta. Perdiccus of House Mughal.

  The last is huge. He looks uncomfortable in the black formal suit as if his muscles were going to burst from it. His blond hair is cropped close to his skull, and his face is broad beneath pale eyes. He stalks forward, on his chest the great toothed mako. Sigurd, of course.

  “My old friends all grown,” I say with disdain.

  “Did you doubt they’d be here? What else?” Edric hisses.

  This reminds me of sitting with Faria in the Citadel air vents listening to prisoners and answering his quizzing. A lone screamer enters view as it careens around the Wusong building. It pulls a coffin like a chariot dragging a fallen warrior behind it. The crowd hushes. Most fallen combatants are honored. This is beyond that. Edgaard is the heir of a house. That itself might warrant such ostentation. Still . . .

  “Edgaard must have put up some fight,” I murmur. I note my brother’s pale face, smooth behind the glass panel of the coffin. His thick blond hair is pulled into a ponytail. He’s dressed in a black uniform of House Julii, the silver medal of the leviathan pinned to his chest.

  “Edgaard is wearing the colors of House Julii.” I speak the thought aloud.

  My father’s eyes turn to me like a reptile’s.

  “All of them—Perdiccus, Sigurd . . . all houses swear allegiance to the Julii?”

  “The remarkable speed with which your brain works astonishes me, brother,” Lavinia says, dripping sarcasm.

  “All prominent families claim their heirs to be Companions now. House Leontes alone remains,” Edric says. “A few lesser vassals join us, but Edgaard was the last. Now in death, that fiend claims my boy as his.”

  “What of their fealty to House Wusong?” I ask.

  “Your blushing bride’s the last of the bloodline. What do you think?” Edric flicks a gnarled hand in Miranda’s direction. The emperor’s proud daughter bears the insult with feigned ignorance. She should have been Edgaard’s bride, but Old Wusong insisted that it be I who take her hand. Poor Miranda.

  Phaestion, Hanschen, Perdiccus, and Sigurd carry my brother’s coffin to a bier built on the center of the platform.

  “If he aligns all houses, there will be a united government, as in the days of the first emperor,” I say.

  “One world under an orca flag,” Lavinia muses.

  “Not the whole world. There’s an entire people who will not follow,” I add coldly.

  “You mean the mongrel islanders?” Edric laughs acidly.

  “Derides the man who fathered a half-breed.”

  “I wasn’t born noble, either, Edmon. I’m more liberal in thinking than you suppose. But islanders count little in the game of Meridian politics.”

  “Then why disparage
unity of the Pantheon other than for the reason it’s not you who’s doing it?” I ask.

  “If it accomplished a worthy purpose . . .” He nods.

  “You hoped Edgaard would slay Sigurd and claim the glory that Phaestion plans for himself?”

  “That would have been a start. At the very least, I prevented that little redhead whale shit from turning my own children to his cause.”

  “Did you?” I retort. “It seems that in death, Phaestion has cloaked Edgaard in his colors, not yours.”

  My father scowls, the corded veins of his neck writhing as he clenches his jaw. He knows I’m right. Edric’s political power has diminished to the point where he can’t even control the narrative of his own child’s death.

  “The son you bred from high blood failed,” I say. I can’t bring myself to truly hate Edgaard, though he was complicit in Nadia’s death. He had been brainwashed. Demeaning the old man, however, and the son he loved better is the only satisfaction I have now.

  “Today we honor the glorious dead!” Phaestion’s voice is amplified across the skyway. Edgaard’s coffin opens. Phaestion leans down and kisses Edgaard’s forehead with his own in the gesture of brothers. He’s not Edgaard’s brother; I am. Yet I stand so far away.

  “Rest now, son of Leontes.”

  Sigurd hands Phaestion a torch, and he lights the bier, which erupts in a blaze that smokes to the heavens. Edgaard Leontes joins the Elder Stars.

  The loss of knowledge, the loss of joy. Faria’s right—there is nothing beyond death. Death is the ultimate waste, and this place reeks of it. I promise myself I will never take another life from this world. Though if Father has his way, either I or Phaestion will soon be burning, too.

  CHAPTER 26

  CANZONETTA

  “Your reaction speed was point-oh-four-percent increase from standard of our last engagement,” the metallic voice of Mentor, the automaton program my father has purchased to train me for the arena, follows me as I head back to my quarters. My body is exhausted from the training session, but my mind is still on fire with the possibilities.