The Skyfall Era Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Matt Larkin

  “Stranger,” Malin said, “it is time. For too long I’ve served the Moon Scions. Served without thanks, without recognition, without respect. Today I change the future of these Isles. If I can trust you.”

  The foreigner rose. “You can trust I have as much reason to want Rahu dead as you do.”

  Malin folded his arms. “Many have reason. I can get us into his chambers and back out of the palace. But as for the man himself, his Moon Blessings make him stronger, faster, and more resilient than any Moon Scion or Jadian.”

  “Traits we share.”

  Malin waited, but the man did not elaborate. If he could fight Rahu, then so be it. If they failed, Malin would lose everything. But risking nothing meant gaining nothing. He knew that now. Not even Chandi would help him. She had been part of the lie. Malin nodded, and motioned for the man to follow him from the room.

  Though the foreigner carried himself with the grace of one trained in martial arts, he didn’t appear to have Malin’s stealth. It would make things more complicated. The guards didn’t stop them from leaving the third floor, but an Arun Guardsman watched the fourth floor wing that housed the Lunar delegation.

  “I’m going to distract the Guardsman,” he told the Stranger. “I want you to approach from the servant’s hallway, there, and pass by as quietly as you can manage.”

  The Stranger glanced down the narrow servant’s hall, then his eyes glazed for a moment. When they came back into focus, he trod down the hall without a word. Malin cursed under his breath. If the man were some kind of drug addict this could go very wrong.

  Forcing the grimace from his face, he stopped to chat with the Arun Guardsman. He recognized the man—it was the third time this week he’d had this duty—though Malin didn’t know the Solar’s name.

  “Has the War King returned from the meeting?” he asked, watching the foreigner slip by. The Guardsman told Malin the meeting had just recessed, and Rahu was in his room. He seemed bored—Malin didn’t blame him. The man had probably been assigned this duty as punishment for some ridiculous infraction of equally ridiculous Solar law.

  As soon as the Stranger passed around the corner, Malin left the Guardsman and followed. “Wait outside,” he told the Stranger. “I’ll speak to him first to get him off his guard, then you come in and we’ll take him together.”

  “Don’t get in the way.”

  Malin snorted and continued down the hall, then pushed open Rahu’s door. The War King spun on him, still seeming lunatic. How did he maintain the façade of sanity before Kakudmi? Perhaps Malin only saw it because he knew to look for it. Or perhaps Kakudmi pretended not to see it in the hopes of peace.

  “Why have you come, tiger? Do you have what I sent you after?”

  “No,” Malin said, stalking closer. “But I know who does.” Perhaps it was his imagination, but Rahu had even started to smell insane.

  “Tell me, then. I’ll enjoy showing them the error of their ways.” Rahu’s fingers grasped Malin’s shoulders in an iron grip. “Tell me,” he repeated.

  Malin wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out. “Speaking of the error of one’s ways,” he said, “there’s someone who wants to show you something, too.”

  Rahu’s mouth opened as the Stranger pushed through the door. The War King turned his wild gaze back on Malin, understanding of the betrayal in his eyes. With a grunt, Rahu tossed him aside, sending him crashing into the dresser. His momentum knocked it over and he lay dazed among the splinters.

  By the time he pushed himself to his hands and knees, Rahu had already rushed the foreigner. The Stranger snapped his arm up to block a series of lightning-fast blows. He stepped forward even as he blocked the last, his open palm catching Rahu in the chest. The War King hurtled across the room and through a sandalwood bedpost before slamming into the back wall.

  Malin blinked as the Stranger walked toward Rahu. The man’s strength was uncanny, frightening. With a cough that sputtered blood across the floor, Rahu staggered to his feet. “Your vengeance against me already ruined one civilization. And still you pursue me. How many worlds will burn beneath you?”

  Rahu launched another blindingly fast attack. The Stranger twisted out of the way and caught Rahu’s arm, bending it backwards as though Rahu had the strength of a mere mortal man. “To annihilate your insane tyranny? As many as it takes.”

  Rahu reached his other hand out and two pieces of splintered bedpost levitated from the floor. Malin had started to rise and draw his keris, but he balked. The debris hurtled through the air at the foreigner. The man turned and batted one piece aside, but the other caught him on the shoulder. He spun through the air from the impact.

  With his foe distracted, Rahu leapt onto the wall and ran up it. Malin gaped as Rahu shifted his gravity to the ceiling and keep running. He hurled the keris into the War King’s path, causing him to stumble.

  While Malin debated how to attack a foe on the ceiling, the Stranger dashed over and kicked off a wall. It gave him enough height to grab Rahu by the shoulders. He swung Rahu over his head and slammed him down onto the bed with enough force to shatter its legs.

  Rahu tried to kick him, but the Stranger knocked the attack aside and hurled him against another wall.

  “Now you think to murder me,” Rahu said, the words hard to make out as he choked on blood and broken teeth. He still managed to launch another series of punches as the Stranger neared.

  The Stranger blocked each and landed a body blow that must have shattered ribs. “I already have. Your ribs have punctured your lungs. But I think someone else deserves vindication this day.” The foreigner tossed Rahu’s broken body at Malin’s feet.

  Malin bent to retrieve his keris knife. After twenty years, it seemed odd it would end like this. Twenty years of service. Once he had worshipped the man.

  Malin knelt beside his former master. “You held power in the palms of your hands. And you squeezed those loyal to you so tightly they slipped through your fingers, until there was no one left.”

  “I will have revenge, beast,” the War King sputtered.

  “No.” He hacked deeply into the man’s throat, blood spraying over his face. More. Malin carved until the lunatic’s head came free. Holding it by the hair, he stared into its vacant eyes. They accused him of betrayal, just as his mother’s eyes had.

  Disgusted, he tossed the head aside.

  “I have one more thing to do in the palace,” the Stranger said.

  Malin rose. “Meet me in the Harbor District. I will have a loyal ship ready. If guards pursue you, we leave without you.” Malin spared Rahu one last glance, and then he turned his back on the man who had remade him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Naresh tried to keep the hurry from his step. Chandi wasn’t in her chambers, but that wasn’t so unusual. Kakudmi had declared a recess on the talks until after the lingsir kulon meal, so perhaps she had gone to see her uncle. Hard to believe Rahu could be her uncle. The War King’s lust for power seemed out of place in the same family with Chandi’s sincerity.

  He could imagine her face when he told her she’d been right about everything. The way she’d beam at him. “I know,” she’d say. He smiled to himself.

  Rahu’s door opened as Naresh entered the hall. The Stranger.

  The foreigner stepped into the hall some distance from Naresh. Surprise flashed over his green eyes, but only for a moment before they became resigned.

  “What are you doing here?” Naresh said.

  “You do not wish to be here. Turn and leave now.” The man’s voice was soft, almost emotionless. Had he heard the Stranger speak before this? He spoke the tongue of the Isles with a slight accent.

  Naresh advanced, hand on his keris. “Not likely. I asked you what you’re doing here.”

  The Stranger held up a hand as Naresh approached. The air seemed to tremble. A bout of dizziness washed over Naresh. The Stranger fell back a step and the feeling began to fade.

  “Everything I am doing, your empero
r understands.”

  “Betraying him?” Naresh pulled himself to his feet. The air rippled again as he advanced on the Stranger. He gritted his teeth and took another step forward. If this was some Moon Blessing, it only proved the man a traitor. “The emperor won’t like his advisor taking secret meetings with his enemy.”

  “Rahu the madman, Rahu the deceiver. A man to whom no agreement was sacred, to whom betrayal is a matter of course. You saw the reflection he cast, but could never perceive the depths of his depravity in it.”

  Naresh clenched his fist around his sword, then paused. For the first time, he noticed blood spatters on the man’s shirt, then on his knuckles.

  “Consider your people. You must let me go. Things must happen. You cannot change the course of events set in motion.”

  The Stranger did not retreat as Naresh’s sword slid from its sheath. “I don’t know who you are, or why you’ve come. But if you murdered one of the emperor’s guests, someone under my protection, you won’t leave here either, assassin.”

  Neither the man’s gaze nor his voice faltered. “I have done as the emperor wished. Would you fault me for that?”

  “You’ve started a war. Am I to believe Pak Kakudmi wanted that?”

  The foreigner began to edge around Naresh, his back to the wall. As he drew nearer, the dizziness returned. The Stranger shook his head. “You must know war would have come regardless. This tenuous situation could not have held. Now it comes without the lunatic War King.”

  He should strike the man down. Kakudmi would never have hired an assassin. Never have violated all honor by murdering a guest. Or maybe he could claim that he had not ordered the Stranger to do anything. Chandi had warned him Rahu would bring them to war, that he had gone lunatic. Now he’d bring them to war through his death.

  Yet the man’s claim made too much sense. Kakudmi would never order a murder. But perhaps their emperor was shrewder than Empu Baradah gave him credit for. If he knew the talks would fail, if he knew war was inevitable, why would he stop another man from solving a problem that threatened his Empire? The Stranger was right about that—if there was war, better that Rahu not lead it. The relentless, pitiless madman would have led them all to annihilation.

  The foreigner slipped by him, his green eyes not leaving Naresh’s face until he passed around a corner. Naresh fell to his knees, though the dizziness had begun to fade. Only a few breaths, then he pulled himself to his feet.

  Inside Rahu’s room the Lunar king lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. A pool of blood collected around him. His head lay some distance from his pulverized body.

  Naresh glanced around the room. The legs of the bed had collapsed and the dresser was overturned. Surya alone knew what kind of fight this had been. Word would spread soon. The Fifth War would begin over this. And Chandi’s father would become the new War King.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “Mama, I want to see the dugongs.”

  Ratna looked up from her desk to where Revati sat on the windowsill, watching the sea. With the pouring rain, it was unlikely the child could have seen the sea cows even had they gone out to the harbor.

  “Soon, moonbeam,” Ratna mumbled. Soon, when they were safely back in Bukit, she would take Revati to see whatever the girl wanted.

  After the murder of everyone in Kasusthali. Ratna shook her head, trying not to think of it. She had to focus on the practical details and pray Chandra would forgive her for the repercussions later.

  Her outer door creaked open and her heart leapt into her chest. Was it time?

  She spun, but it wasn’t Malin standing there. The Stranger, the man who had taken any chance to reach Kakudmi from her.

  “What do you want?”

  He stood very still, eyes taking in the whole room, and, if anything, looking sad. An almost imperceptible sigh escaped him, then he walked straight toward the windowsill, gaze now locked on Revati.

  Ratna leapt up and interposed herself between the foreigner and her daughter. “What in Rangda’s underworld are you doing? Guardsmen!” She shoved his chest with both hands, and when he didn’t budge, swung a fist at his jaw.

  The Stranger caught her wrist, grabbed her shoulder with his other hand, and flung her against the wall. The impact jarred her and left the room spinning. Ratna moaned, trying to push herself up, but her muscles felt like water. Blessings. She struggled to claim her Potency Blessing, but it was so weak, so hard to catch it.

  “I’m sorry,” the foreigner said. “Your Guards are unconscious and this is the only way. I made a promise.”

  “Mama!” Revati called.

  The Stranger advanced, not on her daughter, but on Ratna. “You are his daughter, but you still have a choice. You don’t have to follow his path.”

  Ratna finally grasped her Potency Blessing and, muting the pain, managed to sit up. She tried to kick the man, but he batted her leg aside then wrapped her in an embrace that pinned her arms with one hand. His other clamped down over her mouth and nose. Ratna drew her Blessings as hard as she could, but the man’s grip was forged iron. His arms didn’t even begin to budge under her struggles.

  “Mama?” Revati asked.

  “She’s going to take a short nap.”

  It was the last thing Ratna heard. Blackness clouded the edges of her vision, and her mind drifted until she saw nothing.

  When she woke, she lay on the floor, head throbbing. For a moment, it seemed unreal. Then she jerked upward.

  “Revati!”

  Her daughter was gone and there was no sign of the foreign man.

  Ratna’s legs threatened to give out beneath her as she climbed to her feet, desperately rushing toward the hallway. “Malin!”

  No answer was forthcoming. Ratna slipped, banged her knee on the ground, then crawled out the door. “Malin!”

  An Arun Guardsman lay on the ground, moaning, half-conscious.

  “Malin!” Ratna shrieked. Over and over she called for her bodyguard, until her voice was hoarse.

  He never came.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Ben lingered in the mess hall of the palace, figuring if he was here anyway, he might as well enjoy some grub on the Solars. Not literally, of course, as the only Solar he’d ever consider eating off was Landorundun. She had, thus far, not been interested to try any such thing, but maybe he just needed to find the right mango.

  Somehow, even the mental image of decorating her navel with mango slices was not quite enough for him to shake the foul weather that had swept over his mood. Naresh planned to send him to investigate the damn werecrocodiles, which, Ben suspected, was probably just an excuse to keep him away from the man’s future wife. Not that Ben could truly blame him for that—what man in his right mind would want a handsome fiend like Ben hanging around his betrothed?

  Speaking of which, the woman herself came strolling into the mess hall, walking right for him. Ben rose to greet her and, before he could even speak, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

  The handful of Solar soldiers in the mess hall let out a series of whoops and calls of encouragement, some shouting for him to take the First right there.

  Landi pulled away from him and leveled a scowl across the room that silenced the soldiers, who very quickly appeared to find their bowls a great deal more interesting than the First of the Arun Guard. Ben, on the other hand, was ready for a little more of the woman.

  “Ah, my dear, that was lovely. I just … I thought … Forgive me. I am so rarely at a loss for words. Indeed, I thrive on words.”

  “You were supposed to wait out in the hall.”

  Ben shrugged, making certain to sway his locks as provocatively as possible. Moping about, waiting for Naresh to send him off to investigate the damn pearls, was not exactly his style. Nor did he fancy dawdling just outside while Landi and Naresh talked about their future lives together. “A man must be where he’s needed more than where he is expected, except when he is expected to be where needed, in which case, that’s exactly the
right spot for said man.”

  “What?” Landi shook her head. “Where do you even think these things up?” She held up a hand, then drew him into the Arun Guard’s private mess hall. “No. No, forget I asked. He called off the wedding, Ben. Naresh broke our engagement. He said we should follow our hearts. Can you believe that?”

  For a moment, Ben stood there, stupid grin on his face, not quite certain what to say. Could he believe it? “Damn right I believe it. Hero always gets the girl, after all. We should celebrate by making love here on this table.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Very well, we can use the floor.”

  “My parents still have not agreed to our wedding.”

  Ben waved a hand to dismiss such a minor obstacle. “They just haven’t met me yet. One look at my handsome face and—”

  “Ibu Landorundun,” a large Guardsman called from the doorway.

  “Surya’s blazing cankers, man,” Ben cursed. “You cannot interrupt us now. We were about to make love.”

  “No, we weren’t,” Landi said. “What is it, Lem?”

  “Ah, my dear,” Ben said, “I am an expert in the ways of love. Trust me when I tell you these things.”

  “Ben!”

  Ben smiled. “Excellent. Practice saying my name just like that. I can assure you, very soon you will be—”

  “Rahu has been murdered,” the large Guardsman interrupted.

  Ben’s jaw clamped shut. He had to have misheard that.

  Landi grew still as a statue and shut her eyes for an almost imperceptible moment. “Who is responsible?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Seal the palace gates,” Landi ordered. “No one gets in or out. Find Naresh, find every member of the Guard currently in the palace and bring them here.”

  The big Guardsman nodded and ducked out through the doorway.

  Ben blew out a long, slow breath. The peace had been a dream, too good to last. And with its loss, so too went his hopes of a wedding. Now, all he could do was remain nearby in case Landi needed something.