by Chad Huskins
“Of course, Mistress.”
“Do all of you?”
The other servants all bobbed their heads, some of them even bowed low like she was still their lawful master.
“Then I have a request to make. None of you have to participate, but I beg you to consider it.” Drea began to pace in front of them. “I need half of you to visit all the Major Houses that donated these birds. I want you to pay a visit tonight, and tell the house servants to flee their homes.”
The ex-slaves looked between one another dubiously.
“And I want you to tell the servants—those ex-slaves—tell them to wake all the children, and sneak them out of their houses. Do not let the families know. As stealthily as you can, get all of the children out of their homes.”
“Why, Mistress?” asked one of the female servants.
“Because I don’t want them caught up in this.”
“In what?” Fengin asked.
“I can’t tell you yet. Do I have any volunteers?”
After a few seconds of thought, everyone raised their hands. With her hand, Drea divided the room. “You on the right side, go now and warn the slaves to leave, and make sure every child gets free. Go now.” They rushed away without another question, and Drea turned to those who remained. “The rest of you, we have work to do. I require all the parchment in the house.”
“Parchment, Mistress?”
“Yes. And, Fengin? Would you start a fire in the hearth in my cottage, please?”
: The Cleansin g:
It took a few hours to finish all preparations, but at the Hour of the Ocelot, Drea oda Syphen walked around the cages and inspected all the birds. From each of their feet hung tiny bundles of cloth, each bundle stuffed with wood shavings and punk.
Finally, Drea looked at her loyal servants, and said, “Do it.”
The embers had been retrieved from the fire that Fengin had stoked in her cottage. As each small ember was placed inside the bundles of punk, the bird carrying that bundle was released. One by one, they flew off into the sky.
It took an hour to have them all sent—there were hundreds of these birds, dozens sent by each Major House—and when they were all finished taking flight, Drea thanked her servants, and said, “Let us just hope that the others got the children out in time.”
Drea dismissed them, and then went inside the house and took a staircase to the top floor. She went to the large window in the gameroom, and flung open the shutters. She had Fengin bring her up some water, and there she sat.
For another hour, nothing happened.
Then, finally, at exactly the Hour of the Wyrm, Drea spotted the first billowing clouds of black smoke. A few minutes later, another cloud began to rise up. By the time Drea spotted a third cloud, bells were ringing all over the city.
Behind Drea, the door to the gameroom suddenly flung open, and in stormed Daedron.
“What have you done?!” he cried, rushing at her.
“I see that the vehl have finally informed you of my plan.”
“What—have—you—DONE?!”
“I’m surprised you didn’t see it earlier, husband. The sparrows have returned to their eaves, and the pigeons to their cotes,” she said. “They always return home. Always.”
Daedron was enraged, and he approached her like he might throw her out of the window. He stopped just short, and looked out the window with her.
Now there was another column of black smoke rising from somewhere further down the Avenue of Gods. Drea could hear people shouting, and she saw the bucket brigades starting to dash through the streets with their pails of water.
“Why?” he whispered. “Why did you do this?”
“I want them dead,” Drea said, somewhat astonished at the bluntness of her own words. But it felt right to finally say it aloud. “I cannot abide a world where the Thirteen Heroes live on as they have, killing who they want, making the laws we all live with. If the gods will not act, then I will act in their stead. I will be their instrument.”
“Drea, you’ve just instigated—”
“I’ve instigated nothing. I’ve kept my hands clean. All the birds I sent have either done their job or else been burned alive themselves, or else the packages of embers they carried were burned away. Either way, there’s no evidence linking me to this event.”
“Drea, you can’t know that all those Houses were involved with my uncle’s plans—”
“I know enough.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Drea looked at him. She told him nothing.
“Of course. The Third Precept. The book and its words held an allure for you, didn’t they? One you didn’t want to admit to yourself, but they’ve had their way with you. They control you.”
“Nothing controls me now. Power is an illusion, and I’m the wielder of that illusion now. Tomorrow the people will wonder how so many Major Houses were burned at once, yet not by any physical hand. ‘The gods!’ they’ll say. ‘The gods have punished the wealthy and the wicked in Drith!’ ”
“The wealthy will blame their own servants, their own ex-slaves—”
“And yet not one eye witness will have seen an ex-slave with a torch.”
“But they will have no doubt seen some of the servants you sent to spare the children!” Daedron shouted. “Oh, yes, the vehl have revealed this to me, also.”
“And yet, no torches, no candles,” Drea said. “What proof will they have?”
“Obstinate woman, they won’t need proof! These are the wealthiest people in Drith, and you’re messing with the way things have always been! You’re changing things too soon, too fast! Eventually, the very servants you employed to help you with this scheme will indict you!”
“They may,” she said.
“They will! It is an absolute certainty! Eventually, one of them will brag that they helped the great Drea Kalder with her insurrection against Drith’s wealthy elite!” Daedron turned and raked a seshqii board off the nearest table. “Foolish girl! You can’t trust a cabal of ex-slaves, no more than you can trust the rich and the powerful!”
“I’d rather take my chances with them than with the wealthy and the spoiled,” Drea said calmly.
Daedron raised his hand to hit her, but then calmed his fury. He turned and kicked over another table, then rounded on her. “We were moving so well, so slowly, so covertly. And now you’ve accelerated matters. Remember this, Drea. Remember this day, when you pushed the city of Drith beyond its capacity to cope with change.”
They heard more bells ringing out. Drea and Daedron turned to look over the city, and saw that, in the time they had been arguing, two more columns of smoke had risen.
There was now enough smoke to blot out the rising sun. Only Janus looked down on Drea in judgment, and even she was disappearing behind a cloud, as though sparing herself this shameful scene.
{Epilogue}
: The Man on the Roa d:
Six months later…
The carriage trundled along the Sacred Road, which led westward away from Drith. There were a few bumps and potholes, for the roads outside the city were not nearly as maintained as those inside the city. Even so, the Sacred Road went unbroken for hundreds of miles—it was said that after it brushed by the Sea of Leagues Uncounted, it turned northward, and speared straight for Mathysia.
Drea hoped to see that. She had rarely been outside the walls of Drith before, she hardly ever got to see the open fields of farmland that supplied the city with its food, cotton, and meats. They passed by the Necropolis, where hundreds of years’ worth of dead nobles had been entombed in the dark underground city that only the Priests of Uda got to venture into.
The day was appallingly pleasant, with a sun beaming down with more glory than it had any right to. The carriage’s top was down, so that Drea and Daedron could received the brisk wind and sunshine.
Behind them about twenty yards, Lord Hiss road in a carriage made of iron bars, pulled by six horses. He’d been their bodyguard these
last few months, awaiting the day that Drea could release him from his cursed armor. He’d accompanied them just this afternoon for their first meeting with the Aqueduct Cosortium’s Qoria.
The meeting had gone well, and afterwards Daedron determined they deserved a holiday away from the city. They were headed to an old Syphenus family villa thirty miles from Drith, in a tiny little hamlet called Whitefall.
“Do you think the rest of the Qoria will keep their end of the bargain?” Drea asked, watching the countryside slide by.
“They hardly have a choice,” Daedron answered. “If they don’t, their only alternative is a return to the slave caste system, and they’ve already committed too much to this course to turn back now. It would mean violence if they did.”
“Do you think it will hold? The Five-Year Law, I mean.”
“The Senate gave it a one-third approval, which keeps it in the trial phase. But in order to make it an official law we’ll need two-thirds support, which I think we can get. We’ll just have to use the rest of your inheritance to buy more favors.”
“And if money doesn’t work?” she asked.
“I have other ways of persuading them,” he said. Drea believed him. Daedron was proving to be a valuable ally, even if she did hate their charade as loving husband and wife. “Which reminds me, this came in this morning.” He reached into the folds of his robe and produced a scroll, which bore the mark of the Senate. He handed it to her.
As Drea read it, she found her heart racing. “But this is wonderful! You’ve been granted a place on the Triumverate—”
“A temporary position,” Daedron said cautiously. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m allowed to be an interim Triumvir, to honor the legacy of my uncle and the time he spent forming the Triumverate. They still want me to enter into the Trials of Honor at some point.” He looked at her meaningfully. “Which would mean leaving you for a period of two years while I go off and fight with the Legions of Drith on the front lines of war.”
“I would be in charge of all our assets while you’re gone?”
“Yes. And you would be alone. In Drith. Without many allies, political or otherwise.”
Drea ruminated on that as they rode on in silence. They passed by a rice field that stretched for several acres, then a massive cattle farm with a thousand head of cattle, maybe more. After that, they passed through a forest that had been hacked to pieces by lumber mills, men with axes and saws were out in force.
All this to keep the great machine of Drith moving, she thought. We see so little evidence of it inside the city, we forget who keeps the great machine fed with fuel. Just like the soldiers fighting a thousand miles from here, bringing us jewels and wealth.
It made her think of Thryis, who hadn’t answered any of Drea’s letters in a month. The last letter that Drea had received from her life’s greatest friend hadn’t been kind. Thryis had intimated that she suspected Drea of having something to do with the fires that had been set and burned down the homes of all the Major Houses. It was a rumor Drea knew was shared by some, and whispered in the streets of Drith.
Three people had died in the fires. No children, just two nobles—Senators Darian Falgrate and Grezzit Yorpus—and one man helping the bucket brigades to fight the fire. One innocent man. Drea hadn’t even learned his name. She didn’t want to.
Her revenge had been well planned. Daedron had even reluctantly called it genius, after he’d finished screaming at her, of course. It had destroyed the homes of all those Houses belonging to the Temple of the Hidden Door, and it had set their fortunes back. It had killed two of the Thirteen Heroes, two of the men that had killed Imperator Fedarus.
But it cost the life of one innocent man.
Was revenge worth the cost? Was it worth it to go after those that had wronged you, when, in the end, there was collateral damage? She had done it to liberate Drith from the ages-old tyranny of the Hidden Door. So were Drea’s actions any different than a general sending soldiers off to fight in a war, knowing that some of them would die?
And had it been worth it to lose Thryis?
You can have love. You can have power. You cannot have both. Drea recalled the first time she had heard Vaedris utter those words, and how ridiculous she had thought they were.
Now Drea sensed their reality, and she felt fresh tears coming on. She felt a little nauseous, too. “Can we stop?” she asked.
Daedron nodded. “Of course.” He called to the driver, who tugged the levers hard to the right and directed the horses to the side of the road. Here, there was a small market, where travelers going both to and from Drith could pause to get some drinks, treats, or some small trinkets fashioned by the locals.
Daedron helped her down. “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine. I just need to walk for a bit.”
She felt better standing up, without all the jumps and bumps from the carriage. Lord Hiss’s carriage also came to a halt, and the golem climbed out with a heavy sssssssss-chhhhhhuuuuuu, taking up a position behind her.
She walked around for a bit, fanning herself. The tiny market stretched for about a hundred yards, and Drea found herself walking among simple farmers in tunics, women in shabby stolas, and children that ran wild without any clothes on.
Drea grazed the tables that had been set up by the locals, she smiled politely at them and waved off their offers of cheap necklaces.
The wind was in her hair.
Drea felt eyes on her. Despite the fact that most of these people had never laid eyes on her, they had probably seen a portrait or two, heard her described by traveling traders in Drith, or else heard of her enormous iron-suited bodyguard. The Lady of Drith.
The Lady of Drith.
That’s what some were calling her now, as though there were no others but her. Sometimes it was said with appreciation, other times it was said with derision. Sometimes it was even that Lady of Drith—as in, “If it wasn’t for that Lady of Drith, we’d still have ourselves a proper slave system, one that works for the betterment of the Empire,” or “That Lady of Drith’s the one that set all those fires, you can take that safely to the grave.”
The wind was in her face. Drea tried to focus on that. The wind and the smell of jasmine. There was a field of tall grass and even taller reeds blowing off in the east. Watching the wind rippling through it made her remember the grassy field in her dreams…
“A new necklace for the Lady of Drith?” asked a woman, who leaned over her stall to offer her armful of jewelry. “Mathysian silver will bring out the Lady’s eyes, I think. Or perhaps pearl earrings from the Lost Isles? My supplier assures me they are the most authentic you are likely to find.”
“No, thank you,” Drea said with a polite smile.
As she walked away, she heard the woman muttered something just under her breath. It sounded like “evil witch” but she might’ve only imagined it.
That was something else the people had taken to calling her. Witch. Some believed that Drea possessed some strange power to seduce wealthy men. For evidence, they pointed to her bewitchment of Daedron Syphen, who, despite knowing that Drea had killed his uncle, had married her anyway.
Many of them will hate me forever, she realized, watching the eyes of a few other vendors turn away as she approached. Maligned forever, Drea would be a figure written of in history as a girl who had craved and seized power. Hers would be a cautionary tale to young girls seeking to better themselves.
She was so preoccupied with her thoughts of guilt that she didn’t notice the old man until she’d nearly bumped into him. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, stepping around him.
Drea barely caught his face, for the old man was wearing a black hood. But as he walked by, Drea thought she noticed something familiar about him. The part of his face she’d seen had been badly burnt. Yet still, there was something about him…
“Are you ready?” said Daedron, coming up behind her. “We need to get back on the road soon. The augurs are saying a fellstorm may
be brewing two days hence, and we need to make the most of this good traveling weather while we have it.”
“Yes…yes, of course,” Drea said, watching the old man walk away.
They walked back to the carriage with Lord Hiss in tow. The carriage stuttered getting back onto the road, but soon was back on its course, bumping and sliding just as before. Drea turned and looked behind them, to the east, where Drith was already fading into nothingness, the only sign of it being the hazy cloud of steam that caught the sunlight and made it appear to be covered in thin fog, like a city that existed only in the misty realm of dreams.
Drea looked at the road ahead of them, and just in time to see that they were passing the old man on the road again. He appeared careworn and feeble. He still had his black hood pulled over his face, and he walked with a limp and a hunchback. But, for just a moment, he glanced up at Drea, his eyes peering out at her from the hood.
In that moment, she knew.
“Stop the carriage!” she shouted.
“What—”
“Stop it! Now!”
Daedron sighed and called to the driver, and before it had even come to a halt, Drea leapt from the carriage and pulled up the hem of her stola so that she could run. She made it over to the old man, who was just about to turn onto a smaller path, leaving the Sacred Road.
The old man stopped short when Drea stood in his path. The two of them stood there in the silence. The old man kept his face down, the hood concealing most of his features. All Drea could see was a burn-scarred cheek.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why do you haunt me?”
“I do not haunt you,” the old man croaked. “I was merely traveling this way, and happened to see you.”
“You’re…you’re dead.”
“Now, Drea, you know better than that. You of all people should know the full meaning of our House’s words.” The old man lifted his head, and Drea then peered into the horribly scarred face of Phaedos Syphen. “Never shall we perish.”
Drea swallowed, and took a step back. “Have you…have you come back to…?”
