Sword felt something in her hand. She looked down and saw Brother Scieran's hand in hers. It was a strange feeling. Something intimate, like Garden might have done.
Garden. What should I do?
The thought of her friend made her sad. Made her wonder if it was possible that all Brother Scieran had said was true.
Could it be?
She hoped not. She prayed not.
But she feared it was.
17
They had barely stepped out of the alley before they heard another scream.
Sword didn't know which she found more horrible: the scream itself, or the fact that there were so many people still on the street… and none of them moved to help. No one ran toward the scream, no one even looked toward it. Men and women just hunched over, pulled cloaks tight against bodies as though the sound were a cold wind they could guard against.
Gods, why didn't I see this before? Why did I never notice this happening?
This time Sword did not wait for Brother Scieran to lead the way. She ran toward the sound. The scream sounded like that of a girl, but it could have been a young boy, too. She couldn't tell. All she knew was that it was someone in danger, someone in pain.
She didn't know if she believed Brother Scieran and his Cursed Ones, but she did know that someone was hurting. And whether he spoke truth or not, she could not let it stand.
She rounded a corner. There was no alley this time. The assault was taking place on a wide street. The glo-globes were dim and flickering here, as they were throughout this part of Vritof, but there was more than enough light to see what was happening.
Another braided soldier stood in the street. A colonel. This one had a group of soldiers with him, and they were busily pulling a family from one of the dwellings that lined the street. A mother, holding a screaming infant to her breast, then three screaming children. The children looked to be between five and nine Turns, two girls and a boy. They were sobbing, trying to hold to their mother but being peeled away by the dozen men at the colonel's command.
"Good," he said. "The kennels need just this kind of fare."
"No!" screamed the woman. "Don't take my babies. They're all I have left since they're father –"
One of the men pushed her back. The baby screamed louder. "Be silent!" The colonel's face was almost as red as his uniform. "You're lucky I'm leaving you with your baby. Or your life."
He gestured, and the soldiers tied the three children.
"Stop."
Sword didn't say the word loudly, but it was loud enough to carry over the children's sobs.
The colonel turned to her, rage contorting his features into a gruesome caricature of humanity. "How dare you," he snarled. He looked at two of the soldiers. "Kill her."
They rushed her.
They fell. Their heads, still spinning through the air, fell a moment later.
Sword threw her robe off. She showed the black disc she still wore. "How do I dare? I dare by the power of the Emperor. I dare as one who may take what I will. I dare as a Blessed One."
For a moment the colonel looked even more enraged. For another he looked as though he might resist. Then the rage disappeared from his face – mostly – and he bowed low. "Your will be done, of course, Blessed One." He straightened and was now the perfect picture of groveling. "What is it that you wish?"
Sword flicked the blood from her katana and her wakizashi. Then she pointed at the family with her sword. "Let them go back to their homes."
The colonel nodded. He gestured, and the soldiers cut the children's ropes. The mother gathered her children around her. They started back into the home.
"Wait," said Sword. The woman froze, clearly worried that their fortune would turn to ill once more. Sword turned to the colonel. "Apologize," she said.
The rage returned to the officer's face. "You –" He bit back his next words. And though the rage remained, he managed to choke out, "I… apologize, woman."
The woman didn't respond. Just disappeared into her home, no doubt to hide in a cabinet or a closet until morning.
"Anything else?" demanded the colonel.
"No," said Sword. She realized that Brother Scieran was behind her, along with the three Cursed Ones. They moved as though to disagree, but stopped when she held up a hand. "You may leave," she said.
The colonel, face still red and mouth still opening and closing like he was continually deciding to say something and then deciding against it in the next moment, gestured his men into a rough line. They turned to go. Marched a few steps.
"Colonel?" called Sword.
"Yes?" said the colonel, exasperation now joining with the rage.
"I do have one more thing I require."
"What's that? My shirt?"
"No." She pointed her katana at him. "Your life."
He snorted. "You can't – you can't be serious."
She sheathed her wakizashi and held up her black disc. "With this I may claim anything in the Empire's boundaries." She dropped it and it rattled on its chain as it fell against her breast. She re-drew her wakizashi. "I want you dead. Now come here and kneel before me. Even if you haven't lived with honor, you can at least die with it."
Shock, anger, terror – all battled for control of the colonel's face. "Kill her!" he finally screamed.
The soldiers looked at one another, confused. Not sure whether to follow the orders of their commander or the well-known law that what a Blessed One required must be given.
"Kill her now!" shrieked the colonel.
The men moved.
So did Sword. She felt Brother Scieran behind her, and with her heightened senses knew he was drawing his whip and his sickle. She could hear the creak of Arrow's bowstring. Could feel electricity gather as Wind and Cloud prepared their own weapons.
She did not intend to let them use them.
She came to the first three men. They hadn't even managed to draw their swords, and she cut their arms off the first two with twin strokes of her katana and wakizashi, ending the slashes in a cleaving motion that decapitated the third.
She rolled under a swing. Impaled the attacker. Cut the legs out from under another. Took down four more in a great circular cut that eviscerated them all.
She parried a thrust, spinning to the side so that it continued past her… and straight into the soldier behind her. Then cut down the man who had lunged.
Two left, and they died as fast as the first.
The colonel had a gun out. Not a rifle, but a revolver. He emptied all six shots as she ran at him. She parried the shots, the strength of her katana so far beyond that of the bullets that she suspected anyone investigating the battlefield would find not six spent bullets but twelve halves.
She drove the katana into his belly. Then the wakizashi.
"If you had surrendered, I would have sold you to the kennels," she said. She twisted the blades, and the colonel groaned. "I guess you got off easy."
She yanked the blades out. He fell. Gave a last gasp.
Died.
She heard movement. Spun to see Brother Scieran, Arrow, Wind, and Cloud stepping gingerly among the bodies. Cloud and Wind were looking at her with something like admiration. Arrow still looked angry. She couldn't blame him.
"You're…." Brother Scieran searched for a word. "Your Gift is impressive."
"Of course it is," she said, and cleaned the blood from katana and wakizash in twin flicks, then sheathed both blades in a move so fast that it could barely be seen. "My Gift is who I am. And I am Sword."
She looked at the bodies on the ground. She took a deep breath, and it was one that had nothing to do with what she had just done.
This was about what she was going to do.
"Tell me how to stop this," she said.
"I will," said Brother Scieran. "I will, and more."
THREE: cursed rebel
"Nobility, it was once said Below, is its own reward. And this is true. Because part of nobility is power to kill or to grant life, and f
rom these twin powers all other blessings flow."
- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension
1
Armor was frantic. It had been two days and more, and still no word of Sword's whereabouts.
Garden stood nearby, wringing her hands. "What if she's –"
"I'm sure she's not," he said, though he was sure of no such thing.
Someone had blunted the mission of a Blessed One? Preposterous.
Someone had stolen some of the targets out from under their noses? Ridiculous.
Someone had kidnapped one of their number? Impossible.
Yet it had happened. It had all happened.
When Armor heard of it, he felt numb. A sick feeling that spread from his stomach to his throat, that made his head pound and his eyes water.
Not Sword. Not her, Gods, no, not her.
He knew something had gone amiss, of course. He saw the strange storm that came from nowhere, the lightning strikes that sent Marionette's poppets tumbling in burning masses of cloth and flesh. And he knew what was happening, in the larger sense:
Cursed Ones. The tales are true.
Then a lightning strike hit near him. His Gift protected him from most of it, but the bolt knocked him a good two hundred feet into the woods, and by the time he came back it was over. Eva's body and the bodies of her guards remained, but the attackers were gone.
As was Sword.
Armor wanted to organize a search party. To go after her, and to destroy whoever had dared stand against the Empire and her chosen servants.
But Devar lost control of himself. Screaming, throwing things, all but frothing at the mouth. He stormed off into the night, going in the direction that everyone said Sword had been taken, and did not return.
That changed things. It would have been Armor's duty to go after Sword. Now that they were missing both her and the mission's leader, it was his duty to see the rest of the group safely home.
The return trip felt like they were traveling to a funeral. Garden kept bursting into tears. Siren sat close and whispered comfort. Teeth and Scholar were so upset they barely bickered.
When they returned to the palace, the Chancellor was waiting. He said Devar had been in contact; that the young man had had no luck finding Sword and that he would be returning as soon as he could. Then he dismissed all of them and told them to wait in their rooms in the palace until further notice.
"This is a grave and a tragic event," said the Chancellor. "And it will be rectified. But it must be handled with calm heads and even thoughts so that further tragedy does not result."
Armor was comforted by this. He had served the Empire most of his life, first as a soldier and then as a Blessed One when his Gift manifested itself during his twenties, and he responded to authority. He liked the idea that people were in control, and that those people understood what was happening.
He retired to his quarters. Tried to sleep. Couldn't.
I've failed you, Sword. I've failed you, my daughter.
He tried to convince himself it wasn't true. That it couldn't be true. But of course it was true. He had been there, but he hadn't saved her.
She was gone.
At last he called for a palace Ear, and one came quickly – a pudgy man named Erlong. After a few whispers, the connection was established, and Armor began to speak. He didn't often take advantage of his ability to have anything in the Empire, but he had used it for this one thing: to station another Ear permanently outside a particular residence in the State of Strength. Ears could speak instantly with one another, making them invaluable for important communications, but typically only rich men and women could use them since the person you wanted to talk to also had to have an Ear nearby.
Armor was not rich. He was Blessed. And this was something he wanted. Something he needed.
It was strange at first, to talk to Erlong as though he spoke to the real object of his communication, but as always he quickly forgot that there was anyone between him and his wife.
"I wish you were here, Kataya," he said.
"And I wish you were here," she said back. There was no pause: what you spoke to one Ear the other heard, so when she said the words on her end the Ear on his side repeated them instantly. "But you are serving the Empire, and that's good, too." She paused. "What's wrong, my love?"
He sighed. There was so much he couldn't speak to Kataya about. Even though she was his wife, he still had to keep much of his work secret. She knew he was a Blessed One, and knew the general outlines of what he did. But not the particulars.
"One of my missions," he finally said, "went badly."
"I'm sorry," she said. Erlong was a good Ear: not merely giving the words but also communicating the inflections, the intonations of his wife.
Gods, I miss her.
"As am I," he said.
"You'll make it right."
He was silent. Then: "I hope so." Another silence. "I don't know why I bothered you, Kataya. I'm sorry."
"There is no need to be sorry, husband. I am always here for you. Will you be able to come home soon?"
"I will try. At least for a visit, if not for a longer stay." He sighed. "The Empire asks much."
"And you give much. Because you are a good man, and it is in the nature of good men to give."
"You afford me too much credit."
"You afford yourself too little." She paused a moment, then said, "What is it? What is it that really has you so saddened, Armor?"
That she called him by his new name, the secret name given him by the Empire, was a measure of his love for her, and hers for him. It was technically an act of treason for him to reveal it outright: a small betrayal that meant little to anyone else, but had been a signal of his love for her. She rarely used it when speaking to him through an Ear. But she did now.
She's reminding me who I am. What I do, what I stand for. That I am more than myself.
It worked. The grief, the fear did not go away. But he felt control assert itself, felt it rein in the other feelings.
I will find her. I will make this right.
"There was a girl," he finally said.
His wife gasped. Just a small sound, and passed imperfectly from one Ear to another. But it was enough. He knew she understood. But he said the rest anyway. Because, as with so much, things just didn't seem real until he said them to Kataya. She was the best part of all the good things in his life. And until he shared any good with her, it wasn't real. Not completely. Not in the ways that mattered.
"You would like her," he said. "She's much like I picture Elishe."
Erlong made a strange sound – the noise of an Ear trying to reproduce a sob, Armor suspected. "I'm sorry, my love," said Armor.
"Don't be sorry," said Kataya. Far away, but so close he could hear her words. Thank the Gods for this Gift. "You say you have someone like our daughter in your life again. I envy you, that's all." Another one of those faraway sobs. And he was almost crying, too. Remembering his daughter, dead so long. Thinking of Sword, the same age as Elishe would have been and so like what he had always hoped his daughter would be had she made it to this age: strong, brave, speaking her mind. Worthy.
Good.
"Tell me about her," said his wife.
And he did. He spoke not of the secret missions, not of the works they did for the Empire. But he told Kataya of Sword's transformation from a wild animal to a refined girl. From a near-creature with only the most basic knowledge of the world to someone who was a voracious reader of history, of the arts, of the myriad facets of humanity.
His wife asked many questions. He answered them all, as much as he could.
Eventually they ceased speaking of Sword and spoke simple nothings: what the weather was like in Strength, what the newest fashions were in Center.
And, finally, he asked the question he always asked. The question he most dreaded, but the question he never forsook.
"How fare you?"
She answered q
uickly, as though she had been waiting for this moment. She probably had. "I'm fine. You don't have to worry."
"I know I don't have to. It's the privilege of a husband." She laughed. Even through Erlong, the sound was sweet. But not sweet enough to dissuade him from his purpose of the moment. "You haven't felt… it… come back?"
She laughed again. "I've not been sick a day since that big man came."
Armor felt cold. He always did for some reason, though he knew the Chancellor had somehow saved his wife when the best doctors and strongest Patches had not been able to. She did not know who it was that had come to her, only that it had been a "big man who looked like a beast" and barely spoke to her.
Armor did not tell her who it was. Did not tell her who saved her life. As though to tell her would be to call the disease back to her body. And he couldn't have that. He couldn't risk losing her again.
Not like we lost Elishe.
For his sense of honor, his personal integrity, he owed the Empire his service.
For the saving of his love, he owed it everything else.
A messenger came to his quarters and told him that the Chancellor wanted the Blessed Ones to meet in their headquarters.
"Love, I have to leave," he said.
"Good," she said. "Go. Be brave. Be strong. Remember that you are my Armor, and the protector of the Empire."
"I will. I love you."
Then he was out the door so fast he barely had time to button up his uniform shirt.
When he arrived, Garden was already there. No one else. And so even though Armor felt he had lost perhaps the most important person – other than Kataya herself – in his life, he found himself comforting her. Repeating that he was sure Sword was safe, he was sure the girl would come to no harm, wherever she was.
Lies.
The door opened. Teeth, Scholar, and Siren slunk in. They looked like children who had been scolded for failing to perform their chores. Siren looked like she hadn't stopped crying since they came back.
The Sword Chronicles: Child of the Empire Page 16
