The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1)

by Peter Fugazzotto

  The Fallen sat in stunned silence, all but Hanu who said, “Shit, my life’s cursed.”

  22

  “YOU CAN’T BE the Emperor’s son,” said Bui. His eyes narrowed behind his mask. “You can’t push this by us. You’re nothing more than a little trickster.”

  “He’s got the script on his flesh, and the sun,” said Gima, her fire-scarred face slowly turning as she inspected the writing on the boy. “It’s not like you can fake that.”

  Maja squinted at the flame-lit skin. Gima was right. The boy’s skin was covered with the thin ancient script, the forgotten language of the gods. She recognized the strong strokes, the undecipherable text, and the stylized sun that the Empress had claimed imbued the wearer not only with the right to rule the empire but also purported invincibility to normal blades. She had only seen the same tattoos on two other people in her life: the God-Emperor himself and the Holy Son. The priests of the capital inked the skin of the heirs and she wondered if they had not secretly tattooed one of their own, but she could not imagine why.

  “He’s a fraud,” said Bui. His hulking form grew in the shadows that danced around the edges of the fire. “Put your robes back on, child. He can’t be the second Holy Son. There is no such thing. We would have known. Who was closer to the God-Emperor than us? He had no second child. Someone’s played a bad joke on you, boy, and come morning, we’re going to scrub that ink right from your skin.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to wash off with soap and water,” said Hanu. He stood next to Sri and ran his fingers over the script on his arm.

  “Well, more than one way to skin a cat,” chuckled Bui, his laughter echoing through the hole in his mask.

  A silence descended. Maja did not like the direction things were headed. This was not why she had come to seek the Fallen. They were supposed to protect her and Sri, not turn blades on them. She needed a refuge from the bloodshed.

  In the darkness, the sea churned and slammed against the cliff. Maja felt a slight tremor each time the waves crashed against stone.

  Wayan rose from his spot in the circle and walked up to Sri. Wayan lifted the boy’s arm, wet his thumb, and rubbed it hard against the script written on his flesh. It did not smudge. “There were rumors.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Bui. “What are you going to tell us now? And why have we never heard of this before?”

  Wayan turned the boy around so that he could read the script. His gaze fixed on the sun on his chest. Wayan nodded, his lips tight. Then he looked to Bui and the others. “Rumors of another son. A hidden heir. A bastard from another mother. Whispers.”

  “Why would another Holy Son be needed?” asked Hanu.

  Bui chuckled. “Because the first one was not as immortal as they claimed.”

  Those around the fire shot him dark looks. Even Maja scowled. The words he spoke were treasonous, blasphemy, but he was right. The Empire was in mourning. The Holy Son had died. The impossible had happened.

  Wayan bent down, lifted up the robes from the dirt, and slung them over Sri’s shoulder. “Sit down now.” Wayan returned to his spot near the fire. “Adi had spoken of it to me before. He and the other Demon Captains knew of something. He had spoken of whispers of the birth of a child. This was in those days before our fall.”

  Bui muttered curses beneath his breath and a few of the others joined in.

  Wayan continued. “The God-Emperor knew that others in the Empire, allies and enemies, disputed his rule and his claim to be the blood line to the heavens, disputed his mandate that only he and his heirs could rule the great seas. He knew that others perched in the shadows with blades in hands. After all, was our charge not to protect him from such very real threats? He knew that we would not always succeed.” Wayan laughed. “With one child only, his blood line was vulnerable, and we all know how the Queen nearly died giving birth to the Holy Son, and that the physicians whispered that she would never be able to bring another child into this world.”

  “So the God-Emperor made a little bastard to protect his rule,” said Bui.

  “Not just that,” said Wayan. “We all heard the talk. The Holy Son was not pure blood. The Queen was not of the people. She was an outsider, a foreigner, nothing more than a tribute, and that the blood was diluted, and for the Holy Son to rule would weaken the Empire, an insult to our heritage.”

  “Then Sri does not lie,” said Hanu. “He is the heir to the throne?”

  “I still say we throw him from the cliffs,” said Bui. “We owe the God-Emperor nothing. Not after the Eye of the East. Let him know loss.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Hanu.

  “He’s not my burden,” said Bui. “He’s your problem and Maja’s.” He stood with a speed that surprised Maja. “It’s late. I’m on fishing patrol tomorrow. I need to be up early. I’m going to bed.”

  He shuffled off in the shadows towards the dimly lit compound buildings. The others followed suit until the only ones left were Maja, Hanu, Wayan, and Sri.

  Wayan kicked dirt into the fire. “Bui’s right, Maja. You brought the boy to us. We owe Yavasa nothing. Our debt’s paid. Decide what to do about the boy. I’ll give you until mid-day tomorrow and then we make the decision.”

  23

  MAJA SAT, A borrowed sarong wrapped around her shoulders, staring across the embers towards the dark fabric of the sea.

  Hanu, cloaked in his own sarong, sat next to her. They were the last ones awake. The rest had retreated to hammocks, Wayan having taken Sri where he would sleep for the night.

  Maja was not yet ready to sleep. She had slept long and hard during the day and she knew that she would while away in the hammock worrying about what to do. Trying to sleep would only mean frustration. It was better to be awake. But despite all the sleep she had, she was exhausted. Her eyelids weighed heavy. She could not drink enough water, and her muscles, especially her calves and shoulders were sore from the journey on the beach and in the canoe. She needed days to rest her body and for her mind to clear. But she did not have the luxury of time. Wayan had given her only until morning, and she imagined that Khirtan was not far behind in his pursuit. If Sri was the heir, nothing would stop the torturer. How soon before Duke Buranchiti sent an army?

  Hanu broke the silence. He too stared out over the dark waters. “Sometimes I think we should have kept going east. Never signed on with the Captain. We should have seen if we could have found the Forgotten Lands, tested whether the seas are truly endless. What strange lands we could have discovered, you and I.”

  Maja stared at where the sea and the stars met. She squinted. She could not tell where the water ended and the sky started. She wondered if that was how it was meant to be, whether the barriers and differentiations we created were false, if the pieces of the world were less defined, the edges less neat than she believed.

  “The seas end,” she said. “Or at least more islands lie further to the east. Maybe even a great continent like in the stories of childhood.”

  “That’s where we should have gone. Maybe we shouldn’t have settled in with the Captain and his crew. We should have just kept heading to the east.” Hanu snorted. “Listen to me. Talking as if we have no choice any more. We do still have a choice. Things are not hopeless. The unknown east. That’s where we should go. Far away from this.”

  “Leave our home?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Our home? You’re not even from here. An outsider left here by your father, a false hostage so the ship could get away. This is not your home.”

  “Neither is the east.”

  “But that’s what I’m saying. We don’t belong here. It’s not your birth home. And even if it is mine, it hasn’t treated me well at all. Even from the moment I was born, things have been stacked against me. I still remember the char of burnt flesh, my uncles and cousins. Then the time in the pits. And rescued to the soldier’s life? I suppose my time as a Demon Guard was the bright moment of my miserable little existence but, ha, we saw how that
ended. Worse than I could ever imagine. Almost wished Khirtan’s blade slipped and it all ended there. Things would have been better.”

  “Don’t say that.” Maja fought back the same thoughts that rose almost daily for her. “We can’t look at it that way.”

  “I’m honest.” He prodded the embers with a stick and the smoke churned white and thick, welcoming against the buzzing of the mosquitoes.

  Maja looked east. The stars were beginning to fade. Dawn would come soon. How long before Khirtan and the others would figure out where they were? How long before soldiers climbed those cliffs? More likely, they would circle back and approach from inland. Tactically it would cut off a retreat. Maja would have nowhere to run.

  “So what are we going to do?” asked Hanu. He dug the stick into the ground, leaving a swirl of black charcoal. “What are we going to do about the boy? Any way you look at it, it’s not going to end well.”

  “We need to bring him back to the capital,” said Maja.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  Hanu hurled the stick out over the cliff and it sailed into the paling sky before dropping out of sight behind the cliff. “The choice is to forget all this and head east. There’s nothing here for us anymore. We can be free of the past. We can start over again. Great explorers in a new land. Maybe even find a place to settle down. Die of some miserable sickness in old age rather than from a sword in the gut.”

  “We need to return to the capital.”

  “What good do you think will come from that?”

  She shook her head. “Hanu, we have the heir to the throne. We have the Holy Son, a lost child. We can bring him back to the safety of the palace. This is our chance to get back.”

  “They’ll greet us with swords. We were exiled. They did repeatedly mention a painful death if we ever stepped foot in the capital again. We’d be fools to return.”

  “Not fools. The God-Emperor would see our true hearts. We would be forgiven. You want to escape from the sins of our past. I want to atone for them. We can be given back the lives we deserved.”

  “The only thing we will be given is the sharp end of a blade. And that’s if we’re lucky. Odds are we’ll be sent back to Khirtan’s little chamber of joy. Not sure how well I can function with no hands. Bad enough as it is now.”

  “You have to believe in the goodness of the God-Emperor. He will do the right thing.”

  “Your naive, Maja. It’s all politics. We were the sacrifice to appease the Duke. We meant nothing to the God-Emperor. And even if he showers us with marigolds and virgins on our return, it will be only a matter of time before we get chewed up by the vicious teeth of the dukes and lords waiting in the wings.”

  “I have to do this. I have to try. I could not live with myself if I just gave up. The Queen was my only true family. If I give that up, I have nothing.”

  “I guess all these years were shit to you.”

  “It’s not what I mean.”

  “But it’s what you’re saying. Can’t you see that going back to the capital will lead to more trouble? You’re going to walk back towards the swords that want to cut us into a thousand pieces. It’s a death sentence.”

  “No, Hanu, it’s not. It’s our one chance to live again. We have been in hell for the past five years. We’ve been wronged. We bring Sri back. We restore order. We take our rightful place in the palace. To do anything else is the coward’s path.”

  24

  WAYAN PERCHED AT the edge of the cliff, his toes curled over the ledge. He stared out over the sea painted orange by the morning sun. Maja came up behind him. If he had heard her approaching, he had given no sign. She scuffed her feet but still he stared. Maybe the hiss of the sea obscured the sound of her steps. With each approaching step, Maja’s balance rolled beneath her as the sense of vertigo swarmed over her senses. She paused. She was too close to the cliff for her own comfort. She took a deep breath. She wished he would turn to her so she would not have to continue. He would need to come back away from the cliff for her to talk to him. She inched forward one more step but her feet felt heavy as if she wore shoes of stone.

  She glanced behind. The walls of the former temple were lit brightly in the early sun. The structure was carefully tended: the incessant vines cut back, cracked plaster repaired, new roof tiles stacked neatly against a wall. The Fallen had not been idle in their time at Land’s End.

  The remaining Fallen gathered on the bamboo mats that had been rolled out beneath the shade of the towering ficus trees near the former temple. They were still finishing their breakfast of rice, fish, and fruit. Hanu had folded in with the others, and he had just finished telling a story about one of their misadventures at sea and the others were laughing. It would be easy for Maja to return to the comfort and camaraderie. But that was not the path she was sure she could take.

  And first she needed to talk to Wayan.

  She called his name.

  He turned. He leaned heavily on a walking stick, his body bent in constant pain. In the strong morning light, his scars stood out, more obvious now than in the firelight of the previous evening. Khirtan’s blade had started at the top of his head and cut a descending spiral, a deep jagged cut that left a thick raised line of white flesh, all the way down to his feet. He looked like he wore a striped animal skin but it was his own. He was forever branded as a traitor, as one who had betrayed the God-Emperor.

  He stepped away from the ledge towards her and when he was close enough, she reached out and traced the scars along his face with her fingertips. The scars were burning hot to her fingers, still angry with the fungal poison that had been on the edge of the torturer’s blade. He winced at her touch.

  “It still hurts?” she asked.

  He bobbed his head. “Some days worse than others. But, yes, it hurts all the time. Sometimes it is an annoying itch, as if insects crawl beneath my flesh. Other times I feel as if a hot brand is being dragged across my skin. And, at the worst times, it’s as if I’m wrapped in burning wire being tightened with every breath. Binds me in agony.”

  She lifted his hand and gently kissed the scars there. “Nothing soothes the pain?”

  He winced and shook his head.

  She let go of his hand and retreated a step, her own hands drawing close to her chest, her fists balling.

  He smiled despite the tears in the corners of his eyes. “Tried a thousand cures. Mud baths. Recutting the wounds to try to wash out the fungus. Teas that made me vomit. Three days of an old hag chanting and blowing cigar smoke on me. None of it does a thing. Sometimes the pain is so bad, I can’t move. It’s blinding. I lose all sight and sound. I become useless.”

  “Khirtan comes for the boy,” said Maja. She stepped back further from Wayan, further from the ledge. “He tore Sri’s finger nails out. Can you imagine him doing that to a boy?”

  Wayan waved a hand towards the other Fallen, scarred, mutilated, and crippled. “What can you imagine him not doing?”

  “That’s why we need to get Sri away from him and back to the capital.”

  “Why are you getting yourself involved in this?”

  “I was dragged into this. I had no choice.”

  Wayan stepped away from the ledge, close to Maja, and it looked for a moment as if he would touch her, but he withdrew his hand. She tried to remember the last time he touched her on his own initiative. It was before the Fall. Even after they had been freed from the Duke’s torture chambers and stumbled away down that mud and stone road, he had drifted away from her as if she were the source of his pain and suffering rather than the cuts on his flesh.

  “It won’t end well,” he said. “Khirtan, the Duke, the politics of the court.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Maja answered. “You know as well as I that we did nothing wrong. The betrayal came from deep inside the palace. We could not have stopped it. And beyond that, we never failed in our duty. The First Son was protected. He was hustled a
way from the poison. Only the Duke’s boy was lost. We upheld our task.”

  “The Duke saw it differently.”

  “The God-Emperor saw the truth.”

  Wayan spit out laughter. “You joke, right? Saw the truth? After Khirtan had us for weeks? Took weeks to see the truth? He wanted us there. He wanted us to suffer. After all our years of faithful service, he abandoned us! We meant nothing.”

  “Without his word, we would have died there.”

  Wayan’s voice dropped. “Might have been better.”

  “How can you say that? We live! We survived!”

  “Our child did not.” His gaze dropped to her belly and legs where scars hidden beneath her armor crisscrossed her flesh.

  A wave of dizziness washed over Maja, and she put out her hands to steady herself. Wayan reached for her but she withdrew her hands and stepped backwards, away from him.

  “I know what was done,” she hissed. “You think a day goes by that I don’t think about what he did to me. The monster. I’ll never forget. Never forget what we lost.”

  “It wasn’t just him, Maja. Why can’t you see that? Why are you still so loyal to the God-Emperor?”

  “It was our duty. We never failed.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “I was family. She took me under her wing. She trained me to be a Demon Guard.”

  “You were never family. Maja, you were a foreign devil. You were an outsider. She was using you. She saw the size and strength in you. You were her little prize that she danced around. You were nothing more than a tool for them.”