“So, Webster, tell me what has passed in the last ten years since I fell asleep.”
“It has been only eight years this time, Your Eminence.”
The emperor scratched his head. “Eight years? The shadows were restless, gnawing at my dreams, their bright eyes burning into me. That’s what woke me.” Darkness clouded in his eyes, and Webster braced himself. “Something has changed in the fabric of the world.” He stood, set his glass aside, and paced, unweakened by his lengthy sleep. “Something is out of order. Something has interfered.” He sniffed the air. “I smell an old god. An old god prying into affairs where it has no business.”
“But you are god,” Webster said.
“I am.”
Webster could not bear holding the emperor’s gaze of blue-black edged with flame.
“There were other gods before I defeated all,” the emperor said. “This one smells of rotting corpses, and I hear its tattered wings whispering upon the currents of the heavens.”
Before the emperor’s rise, the Sacoridians had worshipped seemingly hundreds of gods. This one sounded like the death god. Webster’s son, Ezra, would know. Ezra was very keen on the history. To Webster, the old gods were superstitious nonsense.
The emperor paused in front of the Eternal Guardian and tapped on his breast plate. “How are you, my statue friend?”
The Guardian inclined his head in a bow, leather and steel creaking. If he spoke, Webster did not hear it. Just as the Guardian’s face remained hidden, so did his thoughts. He shared few words with others.
“Do you remember the old gods?” the emperor asked.
The Guardian tilted his head non-committedly.
The emperor slapped the Guardian’s breastplate in a careless, friendly way, the coal-fire gone from his eyes. “They don’t make warriors like they used to. A true warrior is more lively, more drunk, more merry, more lusty.” He barked a laugh.
Webster, accustomed to the emperor’s abrupt mood swings, asked, “Do you wish to hear the news of the past eight years, Your Eminence?”
“Bah. I guess not. It can wait. I’ve got appetites, my lad.” He grabbed a bottle off the tray and drank from it. Amber liquid dribbled down his chin and stained his silk sleeping shirt. After several gulps, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “You’ve got some female flesh for me?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
Webster ordered the door guard to send the girls in, and when he saw the emperor happily occupied, he left the room closing the door behind him. In a matter of minutes, the emperor had gone from affable to dark, and from dark to coarse. He wondered if this last mood would persist, or if they’d be cleaning corpses out of the emperor’s chamber when he finished.
The moods of the emperor, his personalities, were distinct, but Webster could explain it no better than he could the emperor’s sleep patterns. He had heard of people who exhibited more than one personality, had even examined a few over the years, but this was very different, as if the emperor was inhabited by three different personalities, rather than that they originated from within him.
Webster had once questioned the witch about it. All she had said was, “Two I love, one I do not.”
Always cryptic was Yolandhe, no matter how they tortured her, but he got the impression that if they loosed her, she would kill the three despite her love of the two, because of her hatred for the one. In fact, when the emperor rose to power, she had turned on him, but was captured before she could harm him. The emperor must never learn she still lived, for he would go to her. Webster could not imagine the destruction and chaos that would ensue. It would unmake the empire. He had put too much of his soul into it for that to happen, and he was prepared to hold Yolandhe prisoner for all eternity if need be.
GOSSHAM
In the morning, while Cade made use of the tub, Karigan readied herself for the day, dressing once more in the rumpled clothes that had belonged to Luke’s son, the farrier. When she checked her pocket to ensure her moonstone was where she always kept it, it lit up.
“What?”
When she drew the moonstone out, it shone with a wavering glow. The whole room did not fill with silver moonlight, but the moonstone was brighter than the feeble glimmer it had emitted since her arrival in Mill City. It must be true that the closer they got to Gossham, the more etherea was present.
She replaced the moonstone in her pocket and decided to try another experiment. She reached for her brooch where it was pinned to her shirt, and wished herself to fade out. Like the moonstone, she wavered, flickered in and out. Cade, who had just stepped out of the bathing room, gasped behind her. Before she could explain, a fierce pain rammed through her head like a spike. She let go, fell to her knees, and vomited.
In a moment, Cade was crouched beside her with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He touched her arm as if to ensure she was real.
“Karigan?”
When she finished another round of retching, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. A dull pounding in her skull replaced the sharp pain of before.
“You—you were there, then only half there,” Cade said, sounding worried. “You came and went.”
“Etherea. My Rider magic,” she said wearily. “The empire’s etherea.” Not only had she tried to use her ability where the etherea was weak, but it was, as the professor had once explained, etherea pulled from Blackveil. It was “filtered” he’d told her, but she had the feeling it was not enough to purify it. It was not etherea in its natural form. It was tainted.
When she sighed, Cade sat there on the floor and drew her onto his lap. He pressed her head against his chest and stroked her hair. There she rested with her eyes closed, the thump of his heart soothing away the pounding in her head.
“My Green Rider,” Cade murmured, “you are full of surprises.”
“I surprise myself sometimes,” Karigan admitted with a smile. “But it worked, sort of. I still have my ability.” Though she had not reacted well to its use, the fact that it was still there was an enormous relief and gave her hope she could once again cross thresholds, return to her own time with both Cade and Lhean.
“You are light as a feather,” Cade said, shifting her on his lap, “and sometimes I think fragile as well, until I remember how well you can beat me in a bout of swordplay. And then I see you demonstrate an amazing power. I have never seen anyone fade out like that, not ever. Not even remotely.”
She understood. She’d grown accustomed to having that ability and living in a world where magic still existed, even if only in a much diluted form compared to what had once been known.
“We are apt to see etherea wasted on meaningless diversions when we reach Gossham,” Cade said. “But your ability, that is something wondrous.”
She did not bother to tell him how minor it really was. She was just glad it hadn’t spooked him, caused him to see her as something other than human. It was not every person who would react in such a positive way to someone who could do something so very strange.
“I suppose we should get going,” Karigan said with regret. As much as she enjoyed sitting in Cade’s lap, she didn’t think Luke would appreciate having to wait around for them. Sorely tempted as she was to whip off Cade’s towel, she restrained herself and rose. Evening would be soon enough, and she’d probably be feeling better by then, as well. Besides, she did not think he’d find her vomit breath particularly alluring.
• • •
The road grew continually busier as they traveled deeper into the Capital. There was less cropland and more habitation. Karigan saw nothing like the rectangular brick buildings of Mill City, but edifices of granite with masterfully carved embellishments around windows and doors. The finery worn by the people was more colorful, and she saw that, like at Dr. Silk’s dinner party, the women of the Capital wore their veils stylishly short, or perhaps provocatively short, depending on one’s point of view
. Many were followed by unveiled slaves, who appeared better dressed and fed than their counterparts in Mill City, although just as many of their faces were marred with brands. Well fed or not, they were still slaves.
The irrigation ditches widened into transportation canals with breadth enough to permit small boats, but too narrow for the wheel-sided chugs. One man poling a flat boat full of flowers beneath an arched stone bridge looked like a whimsical painting. Many rowed ladies from one landing to another.
Sometime after midday, Karigan surmised that they’d reached the entrance to Gossham proper when they were stuck in a long line of travelers waiting to be cleared by Inspectors. A pair of enormous bronze statues loomed overhead—surprisingly, not of Amberhill the emperor but of horses. One held its head tossed back in defiance, and the other stood with head bowed, its neck elegantly arched.
“Just like you,” she told Raven. He bowed his head at her words as if to imitate the one statue.
When they got closer to the Gossham city entrance, she saw that from the bases of the statues, walls ran off in both directions. As she recalled from the atlas map, the wall was a horseshoe around Gossham, with few entrances, open only at the shore of the Great Harbor. Once they entered the city, it would be difficult to exit.
It turned out that they very well might not even make it inside. Karigan craned her neck when she realized Luke was being questioned hard by an Inspector whose Enforcer emitted an angry red glow. Luke tried to appear as affable as usual, but she could see his act was showing signs of strain and that the Inspector was having none of it.
“We will have a thorough look through your cargo and your wagon. All travelers from Mill City are suspect.”
That was interesting, Karigan thought. If all travelers from Mill City were suspect, did that mean the uprising had met with some success after all? Did the Inspectors fear insurgents entering the city to commit some form of mischief? That would be the opposite effect Cade had intended, making Gossham more watchful, endangering their rescue mission before it had really begun.
“I am but a simple merchant of wine,” Luke protested, “with a letter of introduction to Webster Silk himself.”
At that point, another Inspector joined the first and whispered into his ear, then pointed at a sheaf of papers in his hand.
The first Inspector gazed up at Luke with keen eyes. “Mayforte, isn’t it?”
Luke nodded.
“Your papers are in order. You may proceed.”
Luke tipped his hat, and the wagon jolted forward. What had made the Inspector relent? Karigan wondered. Why did he allow them to pass without looking through their cargo? She did not like it. Remembering she was supposed to be sick, she sank back into the straw, and just in time, as she came beneath the eye of an Enforcer keeping close scrutiny of the wagon and its occupants.
She did not breathe freely again till they passed under the shadow of the horse statues and through the gates. Finally, they had entered the imperial city of Gossham.
Within the walls of the city there were more branching canals, and it was clear that they, too, were streets of sorts, with boats conveying goods and passengers. Many houses and businesses fronted the canals, not the paved streets. The interweaving of roadways and bridges and waterways must appear, from a bird’s vantage, like a sort of weird lace.
Business looked brisk in most shops and at the booths of street vendors. Children ran alongside adults in grassy parks and played with toy sailboats in fountains along the way. Some of the founts made impossible ephemeral shapes sculpted of water that plumed into the air—horses, dragons, and giant fishes—and made a pleasing, chiming sound as prismatic droplets rained back into their basins. Was this etherea at work, or some mechanical innovation denied the less fortunate regions of the empire?
Karigan glanced at Raven to see how he fared with all the activity. He looked around, ears flickering and tail swishing. He did not appear alarmed but definitely attentive. She noticed he received the occasional admiring gazes from those they passed. She could not swear to it, but Raven seemed to know he had an audience and tossed his long mane and made his gait high-stepping and showy. When they stopped at an intersection to allow other traffic to proceed, a man actually asked Luke if the stallion was for sale.
“He is a gift for the emperor,” Luke said. “Not for sale.”
Karigan started, for this was the first she’d heard of it. Surely Luke was saying it just to put the man off. She had not thought about what would become of the horse when she went home. Could she take him with her, along with Cade and Lhean?
“He is a fine specimen,” the man said, “and of course the emperor loves his horses.”
“Enough to have named the city after his favorite, I hear,” Luke replied.
Amberhill named his capital city after a horse? Karigan had thought the name “Gossham” odd. She shook her head. The Serpentine Empire’s fearsome leader could be so brutal to his own people, and at the same time so—so whimsical?
Finally it was their turn to enter the intersection, and Luke bade farewell to the man with whom he’d been chatting. Further surprises along their route included a drawbridge over one of the canals that lifted by itself to allow a boater to pass, buildings taller than any of those in Mill City, and a mechanical that looked like a modified Enforcer, playing sequences of musical notes that emitted from its central orb. Then wonder of all wonders, a little metal dog danced and flipped to the music. The adults and children who gathered around appeared delighted, but though Karigan liked the dog, she found the music tinny and unpleasant, not at all like the melodious, natural sounds her minstrel friend, Estral, could create.
As they progressed, the city sloped down toward the harbor. It heartened Karigan to look upon the blue of the ocean with gulls wheeling in the sky and the harbor dotted with so many boats, though few had sails, but instead, stacks billowing smoke. Less heartening was a missing landmark at the entrance of the harbor. The abandoned keep of Mordivelleo L’Petrie, a clan chief of old, had been replaced by a colossus of a statue.
“Amberhill,” she murmured.
She could not see its face for it looked out across the ocean, but she assumed it was Amberhill, carved of stone and seated in a throne chair. It reminded her that in this time, there was only one history, and it belonged to the empire.
Something else in the harbor caught her eye, as well: a small island, really too small to be an island. It was more of a rocky ledge with dead trees on it. She could not remember it being there. She’d grown up in Corsa, so she should have known all the islands and ledges in the harbor. Then she recalled how the land around Sacor City had changed, with a river created and redirected to flow past what was now Mill City. Then she pictured the ruins of Sacor City itself. Amberhill’s great weapon had unleashed unimaginable forces that had not only brought an entire city down, but had also caused changes in the landscape. Why not in the seascape?
She could no longer look at her home harbor so changed, so she looked ahead into the city. Rising above even the tall buildings of Gossham were the sky-touching spires that could only belong to the emperor’s palace. Before she could see more than the spires, however, Luke turned down a narrow side lane.
The lodging he found for them that evening was not the typical traveler’s inn to which she’d become accustomed. It was a rambling old house that looked like it might have survived from her own time or earlier, with newer wings added on. It was nice to know that not everything in Corsa had been demolished. It was fronted on one side by a canal, with a smaller entrance from the lane. The sign on the place named it Laughing Gull House.
The horses and wagon were led off to the attached carriage house and stable. When Luke finished conferring with the innkeeper, he led Karigan and Cade to an entrance on one of the wings where he’d reserved them a suite of rooms. There was a large master bedroom, a sitting room with fireplace, a bathing room,
and a very small servants room. Whether they wanted intimacy that night or not, that’s what they were going to get regardless. The rooms were not luxurious but had an austere tidiness that she appreciated, the low timbered ceiling, leaded windows, and a slanting floor with wide, painted boards. It reminded her of home. In a place where even the land had been dramatically altered, it was no small thing.
“Nice place,” Cade said. “Different, anyway.”
“There are many inns in Gossham,” Luke said. He stood by the fireplace surveying the sitting room and nodding with approval. “This was recommended to me by the keeper of the last inn we stayed at. He said it would be the proper place for a gentleman like Stanton Mayforte to stay when on business in Gossham. Not too lowly and not extravagant.”
“And what business does Stanton Mayforte have at this moment?” Cade asked.
Karigan was wondering the same thing, since it was not too late in the afternoon.
“I think,” Luke said, “it is time for Stanton Mayforte to send his letter to Webster Silk at the palace. So I shall be off to find a courier, and perhaps to hear what news of the city there is.”
“Be careful,” Cade said. He looked as if he wanted to say more but did not.
Luke nodded and, walking cane swinging at his side, he headed for the door. Before stepping out, he told them, “Probably best if you two stay inside. I do not doubt you’ll find some way to occupy yourselves before my return.” With that, he was gone, Karigan choking on laughter.
“Well,” Cade said, “the empire may not like two lads being together, but coming from Mr. Mayforte it almost sounded like an order. Speaking of which, let me see your hand.”
Karigan sat on a window seat looking out over the canal while Cade re-dressed the wound Luke’s whip had left on the back of her hand. It was an angry red, swollen and bruised, but the salve Cade had acquired the previous day seemed to be helping. She watched boat traffic on the canal as he bandaged it back up.
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