“Yeah, but I think you really want to know about this. See—”
“If you attempt to speak of it again, you will be thrown into a cell. Do you understand?” Vespir shrank a bit. She’d never heard the priestess this angry before, and she had certainly seen her mad. Ajax jutted out his chin but said nothing else.
“What should we do while we wait?” Lucian asked, trying to maintain the peace.
“The five of you are confined to the imperial palace, but you may go anywhere you wish.” Camilla settled her shoulders. “When a winner has been selected, you shall be informed.”
“But how—” Emilia began.
Hyperia cut her off. “Thank you, Your Graces.” As the priests walked back to the stone arch, Hyperia shot Emilia a withering look. “They’ll think you’re questioning their authority.”
“Why can’t I?” Emilia frowned.
“Would you like to spend your remaining hours in prison?”
Emilia didn’t reply.
“I don’t trust the priests, anyway,” Vespir said. She sensed Hyperia was about to respond with something scathing. “Not after what they did to me in the Race.”
“Well.” Even Hyperia had nothing to say to that. She sighed and pressed a hand to her forehead. “Is the Truth really that we’re going to die and the city fall?” The girl pinched the bridge of her nose. “My own death doesn’t matter, but I can’t stand by as the capital burns. I can’t.”
“It may not be hopeless.” Emilia edged into the center of the circle. “What if the other images we saw were a way to counteract that fate?”
“What do you mean?” Vespir asked.
“What if the Truth, or whatever it was, wanted to communicate with us? Tell us what could happen if we don’t do something. Maybe the answer is in those images.”
“Okay, I’m lost,” Ajax said.
“Shocking,” Hyperia muttered.
“Think about it like pieces of a puzzle. Like what you said earlier, Ajax,” Emilia continued. “Things have gone wrong from the beginning, haven’t they? The wrong people were called to this Emperor’s Trial. Then in the middle of the Truth challenge, the one that’s supposedly the most important of all, we’re shown a seemingly random set of images and a gruesome outcome. I don’t think this can be a coincidence.”
“Meaning what?” Lucian asked.
“Meaning I think the other images could be a way for…something to communicate with us. To warn us in order to keep that disaster from coming to pass.”
“A warning?” Lucian furrowed his brow. “But from whom?”
“The Dragon Himself?” Hyperia inhaled sharply at the idea.
“Maybe,” Emilia said, though she sounded doubtful. “I don’t know, but I’ve an idea where to start. The first image: the leather vial.” Emilia looked to every one of them in turn. “I’ll show you.” She started to walk away, but no one else followed.
After all, Vespir had no idea if any of this was true. She had no idea if Emilia was right. All she had was the lump in her stomach that told her she would die and the city would burn. Could she really do anything about it?
But what if she could?
“So you want us to freak out over a bunch of weird images, then spend our last few hours solving a puzzle that may not even exist?” Ajax crossed his arms, one hip cocked.
“You have other plans?” Lucian frowned.
“Uh, drink? Order too much food? Get a massage? Live like an emperor?”
“You disgust me,” Hyperia sneered.
“Love and disgust are practically the same emotion, you know.”
“I didn’t realize love also induced vomiting.”
“Frequently.”
Vespir didn’t want to watch this play out to its violent conclusion. She tried to look Emilia in the eye.
“I vote yes,” she said. “I want to know why I’m here, if possible. I don’t see how it can hurt, anyway.” Like Hyperia, seeing her own bloodied corpse had shaken Vespir to the root.
“I’m in,” Lucian said. “It’s damn better than sitting around doing nothing.”
Hyperia swallowed and looked aside. “Do you really think it’s a way to stop that abomination from happening?”
“I can’t be sure. But it might,” Emilia said.
Hyperia nodded.
“Then I have a duty,” she said simply.
“Since it’s no fun being debauched alone, I’ll join you,” Ajax grumbled. “Now. This leather vial thing. You know what it is?”
“Come with me,” Emilia said.
Emilia had spent five years locked in a room of her parents’ castle, with the sea and the wheeling gulls outside for company. Her parents had often traveled to their other estates, taking her brother with them. Emilia might spend half the year in utter solitude. The servants were instructed not to speak to her, to merely serve her table or clean her chamber and then hastily depart. Emilia spent most days with the rain outside and a single candle to light her reading, speaking the words in her books aloud to hear any kind of voice.
Now she had four other people crammed into her room. Given the circumstances, it probably shouldn’t have made her as happy as it did.
Hyperia and Vespir sat on opposite sides of the bed, with its purple velvet hangings and purple blanket. Emilia hated the color purple. Her family’s color, yes, but wouldn’t it be nice to have something in her actual favorite color, sea gray, for once in her life?
Lucian guarded the door, as if to block an unexpected attack.
Ajax slouched against her dresser, both legs vibrating with energy.
“Okay.” Ajax sniffed. “What’s this big secret?”
“You of all people should care about this,” Emilia muttered, sliding open her bedside drawer and palming the rough leather vial. “I received this during the Hunt. These are basilisk tears.” She tossed the vial to Ajax, who caught it one-handed. “They saved your life.”
Ajax had no smart remarks, though he made an unpleasant face as he uncorked the vial and took a whiff.
“Disgusting. What do these disgusting tears have to do with anything?”
“Lucian.” Emilia turned to the boy at the door. “You were with me when we found the islanders.”
“Yes.” He winced at the memory. Of everyone gathered in this room, Emilia believed—no, she knew—that Lucian would be able to follow her line of thought.
“Do you recall the word that boy repeated? Felash?”
“It meant ‘guardian.’ ” He nodded.
Emilia’s mind had been spinning over this bit ever since she was thrust out of the Truth. She’d considered it by the garden’s pond. She’d toyed with it when the priests had explained the delay. Now she felt increasingly certain.
“Well, that’s the archaic form. I chose it for the translation because the main bulk of my Hellinical studies consisted of classical literature. The sack of Troia? The three principal goddesses were all guardians of different—”
“Could we get to the point, please?” Hyperia asked.
“Let her finish,” Lucian said, pushing off the door. Then, to Emilia, “I remember the poem. The Troiaka.” He smiled at her. “Go on.”
Lucian’s smile made it a bit difficult to remember her point.
“The more modern translation could roughly mean a ‘protector, a wise person.’ ” She paused. “Or a ‘priest.’ ”
The others all regarded her with silence.
Ajax bolted upright. “Oh!” He then slumped back against the dresser. “I don’t get it.”
“You mean like the high priest and priestess?” Vespir at least was trying.
“It does seem a little far-fetched,” Lucian said, his tone conciliatory. “Wouldn’t the islanders have a holy person of their own?”
“But why would that vial appear
in the vision?” Emilia had to be careful, because she was getting excited. When she became excited, the pressure of her power could build. She had unleashed it inside the doorway—in fact, she might’ve been the one who’d broken the damn thing—and she believed that outburst would keep her stable for a while. But that could change. “Suppose the priests visited that island before sending us. Perhaps our hunt for the basilisk masked some ulterior purpose?”
“I have an idea.” Ajax raised his hand. “Maybe they decided to vacation on some island, and when they got there, they went ‘Shit, there’s a giant monster here, we should take care of that,’ and lo, here we all are.”
“That sort of makes sense,” Vespir admitted.
“But the islanders only began talking about priests when they gave me this vial,” Emilia said.
“Yeah. It’s an antidote,” Ajax grumbled.
“Only if you’ve looked the basilisk in its eye first. If someone drinks these tears without that, it’s poisonous.”
“How poisonous?” Hyperia asked. She appeared lost in thought.
“Deadly.”
“It’s still all a cluster of what-ifs, though.” The Volscia girl stood, smoothed her golden skirt. “I don’t see how any of this can be proven or what it’s even supposed to prove. I can’t see how it relates to Dragonspire.” She was testy. Hyperia, after all, hated wasting time.
She sounded strained. They all did, Emilia realized. They were coming up on the end of this Trial, four of them about to die. Perhaps all five, if that hideous vision held any truth. No one wanted to spend their final hours chasing a dead-ended mystery. If Emilia could tell them the truth of what had happened in that void and what she had seen and what she had felt…If only she could tell them of the power she’d sensed, as well as the doom. She palmed the vial again and set it back in her drawer with a sigh.
“Well, it was my first idea,” she muttered at last.
“It was better than any of us could have done,” Lucian said. Emilia felt her cheeks flush. A foolish, chemical reaction.
“What’s next?” Vespir asked.
“The imperial throne,” Lucian said. “I’ve been in His Excellency’s presence a few times. I know the throne room well.”
“When he commended you for your bravery in the expansion?” Hyperia’s honeyed voice was laced with bitterness. Emilia found she wanted to strike the damn Volscia girl.
Emilia prayed that no one else noticed the thin, spiderwebbing crack that suddenly formed in the wall by her bed.
“All right,” she said. “To the throne room.”
Lucian wasn’t sure that walking as a group was the subtlest way to go about things. He was not even sure why he felt the need to be secretive. A gut instinct, perhaps.
Shortening his stride to match Emilia’s, he spoke low to everyone, “Act naturally.”
“Right.” Ajax nodded. “If anybody asks, we’re going to drink and make out with each other.”
Lucian gave the deepest sigh of his life.
“You’re certain you remember the location?” Emilia asked. He understood her concern; it was two stories overhead, directly underneath the spire. The group followed a twisting stair to the second level, which was both smaller and more impenetrable than the main floors below. “A serpent’s knot,” Emilia called it, sounding impressed. The hallways coiled around and around the centerpiece—the throne room. There were multiple doorways that led to different “coils” of the snake, and someone who did not know the way could end up accidentally going in circles for hours.
“I remember,” he said. Lucian and his father had been led through these hallways by the old captain of the guard soon after the Vartl fjord triumph. Lucian had entered an egg-shaped golden chamber and knelt before Emperor Erasmus.
Lucian did not remember much of his audience with the emperor, but he remembered veiny hands that trembled as they settled a gold medallion about his neck, and he recalled eyes in a withered face, with hollow cheeks and a well-trimmed beard. Lucian remembered, also, that there’d been a little dried egg yolk at the corner of the emperor’s mouth. Lucian had wanted to wipe it away, feeling embarrassed for the feeble old man.
“When I saw the emperor,” he said to Emilia, “I thought it seemed strange to have a human being on that throne. It was like placing a piece of rotting meat in a golden box.”
“Well. One of us may soon be the rotting meat of choice,” she said flatly, but he caught the quirk of her smile.
Lucian brought them to a halt outside a golden door ten feet tall, ornately embellished with curls of abstract flame. The imperial seal—those five dragon heads in a star’s formation—hung directly in the center of the door. Before it, Rufus waited, wearing his horned black helm.
Upon seeing Lucian, the captain grinned.
“Sabel. Come to get a look at your future throne?” Rufus removed his helmet and held it against his side with one arm.
Hyperia stiffened. “How dare you be so informal, Captain,” she growled.
Rufus’s smile dimmed, and his gaze flicked to Lucian.
“Apologies, my lady. Lord Lucian and I are old comrades-in-arms.” Rufus resettled his helm onto his head. “Unfortunately, my lord, much as I would like to permit you entrance, the throne room is off-limits until the Trial is complete.”
Lucian glared at Hyperia, who refused to be cowed. You made our job more difficult.
“Rufus.” Lucian clapped the captain on his shoulder or, at least, the armored plate covering that shoulder. “There’s nothing to do until the priests get that final challenge fixed. It’s a bonding experience.”
Rufus snorted but didn’t remove Lucian’s hand.
“Bonding? How so?”
Ajax took the lead. “We’re gonna drink and make out with each other.”
Lucian froze. Both Emilia and Vespir made noises of disgust.
“I’d sooner die, you worm,” Hyperia growled.
“With tongue.”
“I will kill you.”
Rufus burst out laughing. He bent over, slapped his knee.
“Oh. You highborns are so bizarre.” He laughed harder, and Lucian joined in. Soon, all but Hyperia were chuckling.
“Only one of us can triumph. We all wanted a look before we meet our fate. Come on.” Lucian held up his hand. “Just five minutes?”
“For you…Ah.” Rufus tilted his head in Hyperia’s direction. “I’d hate for anything to get back to Their Graces.”
“We wouldn’t dare say anything.” If Lucian had to yank Hyperia aside and explain the concept of subterfuge, he would. Rufus nodded.
“All right. Five minutes.” With that, the captain stepped aside, and Lucian led the way into the imperial throne room.
The chamber was round, the walls arcing toward a point overhead—an egg, as Lucian recalled. Pure gold leafed those walls, with no windows to break the gilded absolute. Only a few candelabra dotted the edges of the room, while a great golden chandelier hung overhead, providing warm illumination. A few censers of pure gold, shaped like dragon heads with incense puffing from their jaws, lent the air a hazy quality and the smell of sandalwood.
“It’s like they expected us,” Vespir said in a daze.
“The candles and incense are lit every day, and the door guarded whether the emperor is dead or alive,” Lucian replied.
The floor was obsidian, a carpet of red velvet leading like a serpentine tongue to the raised platform at the room’s center. On top of that dais sat a golden throne. Two golden dragon’s wings formed the back. The red velvet cushion was cradled between great talons made of pure gold as well. The sides were scaled. The armrests had been designed to resemble a dragon’s clawed feet.
They stood in an ancient chamber, a space more sacred than even the white-pillared temple at Delphos. Everyone held their breath.
“H
uh.” Ajax audibly swallowed. “Little much, isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” Hyperia hissed. She ascended the steps, though she did not sit on the throne. Her fingers hovered mere inches above the armrest. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lucian saw, to his shock, that she had tears in her eyes.
“We have five minutes.” He gestured to the throne. “We should use them.”
The others had no problem touching. Ajax settled himself onto the cushion, wiggling his hips to get comfortable. When he leaned back, he grimaced.
“Not very cushy. Does the emperor have to sit here all day?”
“I believe it’s only required for formal audiences.” Emilia sniffed the air and rubbed her temples. “The incense would drive me insane.”
“I don’t see anything,” Vespir said, crouched behind the throne. She rose slowly, studying every inch. “I don’t even know what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
“I’m starting to think this is all crap.” Ajax stepped off the platform and strode toward the door. “Maybe the Truth or whatever flashed a bunch of things that we had on our minds before it broke. It’s the Truth, after all. Maybe it sensed we were all feeling anxious, so it made that freaky picture of the city. And of us.”
Lucian had to admit that it was a plausible explanation, and unusually sophisticated for Ajax. Sighing, he stood beside Emilia against the wall.
“But what about that strange symbol?” Emilia asked. “In that language.”
“What language?” Hyperia frowned.
“You remember.” Emilia traced her finger through the air in strange half-loops and swirls. Lucian remembered it as well:
“I’ve never seen it, either,” he said. To Emilia, “Is it ancient?”
“It could be an archaic form of the pictograph language from pre-empire Ikrayina, out toward the Temmurian plains. It could even be runic. There are old stones on the Hibrian Isles that predate—”
“I know what it is,” Vespir said.
“You know?” Emilia cleared her throat and tried to sound more polite. “I…I thought you couldn’t read basic Latium.”
House of Dragons Page 25
