“Joran,” Father said, voice chill as the mountain air. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.”
I scanned the man’s cruel-looking face. Was this one of the Shard leaders expected to arrive today?
“Not soon enough, judging by what I’ve just been told,” the man said. “You brought a traitor into our midst. A spiritist traitor, no less. Not to mention, you’ve destroyed the Shards by bringing us together like this.”
“Destroyed, huh?” my father asked. His tone was light, but the tension in his body showed he was anything but amused.
“We remained separate for a reason. If we lose this offensive, we’ll never be safe. All the Empire will need to do is put a single, captured Sharder under argent mage interrogation. The argent will know the base of operations and leadership of every single Shard.”
The man rolled his shoulders inside his battered leather coat. A woolen scarf, stained and mouse-eaten, wrapped his neck, and his fingerless gloves were polished in the palm, most likely from the hilts of weapons. He was a bulky man, the slabs of his cheeks weighty with middle age. Still, I had no doubt he’d win most fights he picked.
Father stepped in front of me, cutting off the man’s stare. “Both the delay of Savra’s trial and the decision to unite the Shards were choices made by the attending Shard leaders. If you’d hastened to the summons, you’d have been welcome to voice your protests then.”
I swallowed. It seemed this man, Joran, was a Shard leader. And given his statements so far, I had little doubt as to how he’d vote regarding my fate.
Joran hawked and spat. “You’d have me answer a summons as if I were a common soldier. As if any Sharder has the right to command another. How quickly you forget our ideals when it suits your purposes.”
“Our priorities have changed, Joran.”
“Have they? Or is it you that’s changed?”
My father swept his arm to indicate the growing encampment. “You’ve often been slow to adapt. But the determination on our fighters’ faces proves how right this is. Before, we remained separate because we lacked the resolve for a determined assault. Now, Jalissmen and Anseli arms-women pitch their tents so close that the occupants of one can smell when someone in the other breaks wind. We are united in purpose—a righteous purpose—and that demands central leadership. Ironically, it was the new Emperor of Atal that convinced me of that.”
Joran’s upper lip twitched in disgust. “You’ve torn down everything we once stood for. Havialo would be so proud of you.”
After a deep breath, my father passed my practice sword into his off hand. His weapon hand fell on the hilt of his sheathed sword as he took a step forward. “I don’t think you meant that insult.”
Joran’s eyes gleamed; he wanted the fight. But something—perhaps the look on my father’s face—made him hesitate. With another long stride, my father drove a shoulder into the man’s chest, knocking him aside. Joran recovered quickly, turning a sneer on me as my father passed.
“Think what you wish, Evrain,” he said, “but Stormshard is not yours to command. We’ll have your convening of the conclave, and perhaps it won’t just be your daughter’s fate we decide.”
Though my heart was thudding in my chest, I kept my back straight as I followed my father. Men like Joran thrived on intimidating others. I would not give him the satisfaction.
“I’ll expose the truth about you,” Joran called as we stalked away. “You seek to use Stormshard for your personal gain and vendettas. You wish to dethrone the boy who humiliated you and to gain mercy for your daughter. It’s always been about you. Always.”
My father just shook his head and kept walking.
Chapter Three
Kostan
Emperor's receiving chamber, Steelhold
ALONG THE WALLS of the room, Maelstrom-gold wedged between the building stones like mortar. I doubted it went all the way through to the outside of the tower. More likely, the mages had used gold leaf to cover the ordinary sand and cement that bound the stones. Even for the Order of Aurums, hiding gold away between stone blocks was too much expense to bear.
Especially when that gold could be used to strengthen and quicken their bodies so far beyond ordinary human abilities, they seemed to become creatures from another plane of existence. Phantoms who could dart from one end of a banquet hall to another in the time it took an Atal elite to raise a toast to the Empire.
“We will see that you are not disturbed,” the Aurum Trinity said together, three voices joined in perfect unity.
I nodded as they closed the door behind me. A single member of the Trinity would have been a sufficient escort. Whether they’d come together to show respect or to impress me with their power, I couldn’t say. Like nearly everyone in Steelhold, they professed loyalty. But like nearly everyone in Steelhold, I had little trust in their allegiance.
I sat upon a throne of straw, just waiting for the spark that would reduce it to ash. But I had no choice but to keep pretending that somehow, I could turn straw to steel.
My boot heels clicked as I strode to the window, heavy cloak dragging the floor. The ornate clasp jabbed my throat, sharp-cut gems digging into my skin. The rest of my wardrobe was no better. Jewels studded the knuckles of my gloves and the hems of my tunic, designed to gleam in the candlelight and impress all who saw me. I hated the ostentation but had bowed to Vaness’s advice. She—my closest friend and the person I trusted most—demanded that I went nowhere beyond my chambers without looking every inch an Emperor. And since I refused to don Maelstrom-metals until I was certain I’d captured the metalogists’ loyalty—I remembered all too well the spell of infection my Scion’s cuff had worked on my flesh—gems were my next best choice for ornamentation.
The window was open to the mountain air. Setting hands on the sill, I breathed so deep my chest ached. For over three-score days, sixty-three to be precise, I’d been confined to Steelhold’s stuffy chambers and smoke-filled alleys. Scarcely a breath of fresh air had reached my nose. Even when I was a Scion, a prisoner in my own home, I’d made daily patrols along the outer wall, passing dull-eyed protectors who’d saluted with fists to chests and never gazed upon my face.
As Emperor, I couldn’t take the risk. Despite the unlikelihood that someone might climb unnoticed up the sheer cliffs of Steelhold’s spire, lying in wait for the moment I peered over the lip of the wall, it was a chance I must consider. Especially now, with the continued chaos in the capital and surrounding towns.
Speaking of… I gritted my teeth and looked down over Jaliss. From here, the city looked like a rippling cape fastened around the neck of Steelhold’s spire. To my right, the fabric of the streets and buildings was pocked by black holes as if eaten by a spill of hot coals. The fires in Lowtown had been doused early on the first morning of my reign, but the despair and rubble remained. From this height, any workers attempting to clear gutted or toppled buildings were impossible to make out. But I doubted much repair work was happening.
Directly beneath the spire, mansions in the Heights sprawled wider than whole blocks in the Splits, the last refuge for the city’s Provs. I squinted at the district now, wondering how the commoners fared and whether my liaison, Vaness, was down among them, stalwartly spreading the message that I wished to close the divide between Atal and Prov. The Decree of Functions would be phased out, allowing men and women to take up the trades they’d always dreamed of rather than the Functions the Empire had assigned them.
If Vaness was down there spreading the message, I wondered if anyone heard her. Why should they believe the words of an Atal woman carrying the seal of yet another Atal Emperor? When my first representatives had wheeled barrels of tin scrip down the Corridor of Ascent to dump the loads on the jumbled cobblestones, the waiting Provs had thrown the coin back in their faces. The servants I’d sent to deliver the wheelbarrows had been Provs themselves, but only the quick defense of the protectors had kept the mob from attacking them.
A
fter that, I’d sent Steelhold masons into the city in hopes they could organize repair crews. The effort had met similar results.
Over and over, I’d attempted to use my resources to better life in the city beneath me. Over and over, my attempts to help the Provs had been rebuffed as strongly as the Atal elite seemed to resist my authority.
The Provs did not want my charity. Many claimed they desired nothing from the throne. Ever. And the Atal elite saw a weak young man, Ascended under false pretenses without even a Ministry to bolster my strength.
My fingers curled into fists on the windowsill. Somehow, I would make them believe in me. I would rebuild the city, bind the Empire’s people so that we could confront the Breaking together. Because the Breaking would come. I was as certain of that as my predecessor, Emperor Tovmeil, had been. All we could hope to do was survive its devastation.
As if mocking my thoughts, a minor tremor rattled the tower. I clenched my jaw as I turned away from the window. Lowering my satchel from my shoulder, I set it on a polished mahogany table. I slipped the strap from the metal buckle and reached inside.
The Bracer of Sight lay beneath my fingertips. On the morning after my Ascension, the relic had been attuned to my spirit, but it had taken me a few more days to face its truths. Now, I donned it once a day, hoping for insight, new information, anything that might allay the coming tragedies. So far, I’d been given the same visions, over and over. They left me trembling. Confused. But the Empire’s safety was my burden.
I slipped the relic over my forearm and fastened the clasps.
***
Seen through a murky fog, water slapped the shoreline, a large wall that reared up, crashed against the sand, and receded in a frothing hiss. Moments later, the water struck again, pummeling the earth as if furious. Again, the crash reverberated in my chest. Such violence the water held. I wanted to shy away from it, escape the crash and hiss. But, like every time, my feet were locked to the earth. My gaze was pinned to foaming waves.
Raised within Steelhold’s walls, I’d never seen the ocean. But I couldn’t imagine what else this could be. The water stretched away to the horizon, chaotic waves torn by the wind and pulled by forces beneath the surface. It reminded me of the vast Atal grasslands, undulating and bowing as crosswinds howled down from the mountains and tore at the ripened grain.
Between one crash and the next, a scream shattered the air. I turned, helpless as the world wheeled around my viewpoint. As before, my throat clamped down.
Less than a hundred paces down the shore, a building slid toward the sea. Or rather, the sea was rising up and swallowing it. And not just one building. A dozen structures, humble homes and sheds, were disintegrating beneath the waves’ hungry crash. People ran. Screamed. Dragged children from the sucking force of the sea.
But they weren’t fast enough. As the buildings disappeared, lost beneath the frothing surface, a massive wall rose from the depths. The sun, hazy behind thin clouds, nonetheless shone through the back of the wave.
There were bodies in the water. Hundreds of them turned into shadow puppets by the sun’s revealing glow.
A few still struggled. Most were twisted and broken.
The massive wave swelled, the bottom so thick now the sun had no power to light the green-black depths. Those still attempting to run stopped when the shadow fell over them. They knew it was hopeless. Though I’d seen it before, my breath seized. I stared, terror-struck, as the killing wave loomed, cresting in a white-edged rim that suddenly smashed down with the speed of a blacksmith’s hammer.
Death, wet and uncaring, came for me, too. As the edge of the froth slapped my face, the scene vanished.
I stood in a marsh, knee deep in cold water that smelled of mud and algae. White-barked trees stood like ghosts in the mist. Between them, shadows moved. My heart thudded. Slowly, so slowly, I stepped forward. Water gurgled around my pants, and the shadows froze. Splashing followed, and when the first wails pierced the air, I knew the beasts had found me. I tried to run, but the water made my movements awkward. I fell forward, arms plunging into the wet. The first claws tore at my simple clothing, opening gashes on my back. I screamed as the vision ended.
The scenes were the same every time I donned the Bracer, but their order changed. I had a heartbeat to wonder what would come next before I felt solid earth beneath my feet. Afternoon sunlight soaked my shoulders as I turned a slow circle beneath the wide dome of the sky. To one side, smoke curled from the fire in the center of a herder’s camp. A short distance from the huddle of canvas shelters, sheep and cattle grazed. Beyond, the landscape fell away where the tableland of the Atal Plateau plunged over the bench and granted a view of the wide forests of Guralan Province below.
Flies buzzed in the afternoon’s calm.
I wanted to tear my eyes away but couldn’t. When the first, light trembling shook the earth, I staggered. Moments later, the quake rolled over the land. Livestock stumbled, screaming as small cracks swallowed hooves. The herders ran from their tents in time to see the rift open. Slicing from north to south, the land spread wide, a raw gash. Wider and wider, the edges crumbled. Tents listed and then plunged. Herders and animals ran. One man made it thirty paces before the ground collapsed beneath him. The others were already gone as the vision faded.
Abruptly, I stood on a low hill in the center of a small town. In the far distance, Steelhold’s spire rose from a smoldering city. As I blinked, sound and smells joined the vision. Cries of agony, the stench of blood. I turned a slow circle in the center of a massive battle. Prov against protector. Farmer against aurum mage. Though they fought fiercely, almost ferally, the commoners were being cut down as easily as wheat beneath the scythe. Corpses blanketed the city, and men and women tangled in death. It was a slaughter more than a battle. And unlike the other visions where I’d been given a view of the devastation through the eyes of another, somehow I knew that I, Kostan, was the man standing at the center of the fray.
A roar sounded from the north, and hoofbeats shook the grassland, a wall of riders approaching from the Icethorns.
The mounted fighters, hardened men and women, shouted as they bore down: “Death to the Empire!” “Rise of the Storm!” “Sharder victory or Sharder graves!”
The line of horsemen crashed into the battle. Protectors began to fall. Even the aurums hesitated.
Again, time sped forward, and now I saw myself extend a hand to one of the Stormsharders.
The moment our hands clasped, the ground began to shake. People screamed as the shuddering knocked me from my feet. Someone pointed. I turned and stared.
Steelhold, both the fortress and the spire were leaning over the city. For a moment, the spire resembled a curious child bent over an interesting insect. And then stone began to buckle, sloughing off in great sheets to smash the city below. Like a falling tree crashing onto undergrowth beneath, the pillar toppled.
No one in Jaliss would survive that.
And somehow, deep in the core of my being, I knew these things were just the beginning.
Stomach clenching, I groped for my connection to my body where it was seated before a table in the Aurum Tower. My fingers found the clasp for the Bracer and fumbled against the catch. Finally, they managed to flip the catch and release me from the horrible visions.
Sagging into the chair, I gagged and spat metal-tasting saliva on the polished stone floor. The Bracer stared back, accusing me. Two things were certain. These visions were inevitable. And only by making the Empire strong did we have a chance of surviving their aftermath.
Chapter Four
Savra
Entrance hall of an ancient fortress
“I’M SORRY YOU had to make that man’s acquaintance,” my father said as we stepped into the keep’s entrance hallway.
The precisely-built stone walls threw back the sounds of our footsteps as I hurried to walk beside him. “Who is he?”
“Joran leads the Shard from central Guralan. H
e’s a drover by trade. Been a blister on my heel since I became a Sharder, but he’s more talk than action. I’m just surprised he confronted us alone. Usually, he needs half a dozen thugs at his back.”
“He talked like he could get you punished for my crimes.”
Father chuckled. “Not to worry—I’ll just pit Sirez against him. If there’s anything she hates worse than the Empire, it’s Joran.”
From the entrance hall, we turned into a wide passageway where shadows fought against the daylight. I shivered. Though the keep’s walls cut the wind, the stark corridors held a deeper sort of chill. I felt the builders’ absence in the echoing walls and bare niches where statues might have once stood. Gone without a trace. I hugged my elbows to my ribs as we moved through a stepped arch into a larger chamber.
As we entered, a woman hurried over. Lines of stress creased her face, and her right arm was splinted and bound in a sling. Falla had been a member of my father’s Shard. She’d been out on patrol with Father, taking the chance to question the newly-arrived Kostan, when the earthquake struck. Most of their Shard members, including Falla’s husband, had been killed in the resulting cavern collapse. During the quake, a tumbling stone had broken her arm.
“Evrain,” she said. “There’s been another report. Much worse than before.”
Father stiffened. “The same sort of attack?”
Falla nodded, face a mixture of grief and disgust. “The slain are…yes, the same as before. Same lingering smell.”
My father’s tunic bulged when tension bunched his shoulders. “How long ago?”
“Yesterday, maybe. Or the day before.” As she spoke, Falla’s gaze shifted to me.
“I see,” Father said. He glanced at me as well before clearing his throat. “I’d like to hear the full report from the scouts.”
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