Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

With each strike, with each blow she delivered and received, she felt some of the wild fear within her diminish, though her mind still spun with the memory of what had happened in Eliana’s rooms the day before.

  How was it possible that this gaunt, mute, joke of a girl—who had once been a formidable assassin, supposedly, though Jessamyn couldn’t imagine that—could have bested her? Jessamyn, student of one of the greatest assassins Invictus had ever employed? Jessamyn, virashta of Varos? She had told herself it was lingering grief over his death that had distracted her. But this was no comfort, for it indicated a softness to which she had long thought herself impervious. A human softness Varos had tried to beat out of her.

  Nevia’s staff grazed her arm, making Jessamyn grunt and stumble. She regrouped, spun on the thin, flexible sole of her sandal, and smacked Nevia hard on the shoulder, then again on the hip.

  And still she could not stop thinking about what would have happened if Eliana had succeeded in killing herself, what the Emperor’s punishment would have been.

  What his punishment might yet be.

  Thinking about it made her sloppy. Nevia spun fast, whacked Jessamyn on the head with her staff, then used it to strike Jessamyn’s feet out from under her. She fell hard, knocking her chin against the ground. Stars burst across her vision, and she tasted blood, but the shame was far worse.

  Nevia circled her. “I never did understand what Varos saw in you,” she said. There was no malice in her voice, simply a bewildered curiosity.

  Then a set of doors to Jessamyn’s right flew open, and everyone but her—Nevia, the watching trainees—fell simultaneously to the ground.

  The Emperor stormed into the yard, a fur-trimmed cloak thrown about his shoulders, and as soon as Jessamyn locked eyes with him, her body stiffened, her bones snapped rigid. She blinked, and the world shifted.

  She was alone in the yard. The sky was gray, the buildings of the Lyceum black and windowless. The world vibrated—the air, the Lyceum, the stone underfoot. A child’s sketch given furious life.

  In this strange, shaded world, the Emperor was glorious—eight feet tall, slender and long-limbed, his face an exquisite configuration of sharp cheekbones and bright, pale eyes, his hair a shifting black cloud. His clothes floated about him in dark whorls. From his back fanned a set of enormous wings—bright where they burst from his shoulders, tipped in shadow.

  Jessamyn cried out, her knees buckling. She wanted desperately to look away. He was too beautiful, too brilliant. She should not be looking at him. Her human eyes were too small for it.

  But the Emperor held her in place with his mind, forcing her to stare. She felt him slipping into her thoughts like a snake through a crack in stone. Soon she would shatter, the taste of his fury on her lips as metallic and sour as blood.

  “You brought knives into her room,” he said, his voice jagged and booming.

  He was too immense for her. His mind in hers made her head ache and her eyes burn with a searing heat. His fingers were deep in the folds of her thoughts, digging, twisting.

  The world flickered, then changed.

  Jessamyn watched in horror as Nevia and the others reappeared—though now they were emaciated, wild-eyed. They bashed their heads against the walls until their faces were soaked in blood. They leapt on each other and tore with their teeth, feasting.

  Jessamyn choked out, “My lord, please—”

  “You have been trained by my finest fighters,” the Emperor said, “and yet you were stupid enough to present Eliana with weapons. Your idiocy astounds me.”

  A crow swooped down from the sky and pounced upon a small songbird. Jessamyn watched the crow stab the bird’s chest, rip at its throat, and shake it. With its great black beak, it tore away chunks of flesh and tufts of feathers.

  Jessamyn’s heart pounded faster and harder. She was frantic to cover her ears, but she could not move her arms, because she no longer had any. Instead, her wings flapped and fluttered. She was the songbird in the dirt, and the crow pecked at her, broke her ribs, peeled off strips of her flesh. The crow’s eyes flashed a brilliant white, as blazing as the Emperor’s angelic eyes had once been, and she knew that this darkness, this huge, roaring weight bearing down upon her, clawing at her, was the crow, yes, but also the Emperor, forcing open her mind.

  “Forgive me, Your Excellency,” Jessamyn managed, her throat in shreds. “I grieve for Varos—”

  “Your grief is laughable beside my own,” the Emperor replied. He was a shifting column of darkness, hovering over her face as if considering a kiss. She saw his white eyes, wanted to close her own against them, but she had no eyelids. She wanted to scream, but she could not open her lips. When she touched her face, she found that her mouth had disappeared, in its place a flat plane of flesh.

  “Tell me,” murmured the Emperor, “why did she stop? What did you see?”

  Jessamyn stood whole beside her own body. She watched her other self, mouthless and lidless, twitching in the Emperor’s grasp.

  “She jabbed me in the throat,” Jessamyn said, watching calmly. “She pulled a dagger from my belt. She thrust the knife at her stomach, then stopped before the blade could touch her.”

  “What did she look like in that moment?”

  “Her eyes grew hazy.” It was fascinating to Jessamyn to see what her body looked like when it was in agony. How her muscles distended, how copiously she wept. “She dropped the knife.” Jessamyn paused, remembering. The memory was distorted, as if she were watching it through a veil. “She asked a question. ‘Who are you?’”

  The world exploded into brilliant white light, the air shrieking at Jessamyn’s ears.

  At last, blackness.

  She opened her eyes, gasping, and stared up at the midday sky. The Emperor was gone. She thought she heard the sound of his boots clipping stone. Nevia and the others roused themselves from the stupor the Emperor had held them in, each of them blinking and disoriented.

  And only then did Jessamyn realize how strange it was that the Emperor had asked her what had happened in Eliana’s rooms. He seldom left the girl’s thoughts, after all. His mind should have shown him the answer.

  Which meant that—even though Jessamyn had never imagined it possible for anyone to match the Emperor’s strength—something, someone, somehow, was shielding the truth from him.

  • • •

  The following evening, Jessamyn strode through the Lyceum toward the library. She felt sharp around the edges, her skin ill-fitting. She had spent the entire day stationed outside Eliana’s rooms while the Emperor worked.

  It rankled her that listening to the girl’s screams could affect her so. She was Invictus, the student of Varos. She had heard worse. She had done worse.

  And yet, she could not put from her mind what the Emperor had done to her in the fighting yard the day before. It was as if Jessamyn had died on the ground beneath the Emperor’s hands and had been reborn a shaky, jumpy version of herself.

  A hard knot of fury rose in Jessamyn’s throat as she stormed through the Lyceum’s shadows. All of this was Eliana’s fault. She refused to capitulate, and so the Emperor’s temper unraveled.

  Jessamyn had heard the whispers at the Lyceum over the past few weeks, fearful and furious: More cruciata were pouring through the Gate every day. The Sunderlands were lost, the Northern Sea choked with beasts. Thousands of angels patrolled the Celdarian and Borsvallic coasts, standing between Elysium and an invasion of monsters, and they used the Emperor’s vaecordia to cut down beast after beast from the sky. None had yet made it past the front line to the mainland, angels were losing their stolen human vessels by the dozens, the toxic blood of the cruciata forcing them to abandon their bodies, and the Empire was struggling to supply them with fresh ones quickly enough. Some angels had even themselves succumbed to the beasts’ poisonous blood, their intangible, bodiless minds splintered beyond repair.

/>   The front would not hold forever.

  Jessamyn scanned the library for Remy, her heart pulsing with an unfamiliar, angry fear she couldn’t seem to shake. Her mind felt hot and choked from it. Eliana had the power to seal the Gate and rid the Empire of this problem forever, but she refused to use it. If the Emperor could not break her in time, her inaction would doom them all.

  And, Jessamyn thought, it was possible that the Emperor was no longer strong enough or sound enough of mind to crack Eliana’s defenses. It had been months since her arrival, and still the little lost princess had not been beaten.

  Jessamyn held her breath, waiting for punishment to descend from the skies. Some angel would hear her treasonous thoughts and come for her, drag her to the palace, and let Admiral Ravikant carve her to pieces.

  But the library remained dark and quiet. At the far end, a small lamp glowed. A dark-haired figure bent over a book. Remy, studying at his favorite table. Jessamyn blew out a slow breath.

  When Varos had been alive, her loyalty had been absolute, her obeisance fervent and unthinking. But now Varos was dead. Jessamyn had witnessed firsthand the Emperor’s erratic state of mind. The Lyceum was full of whispers, and monsters were flooding the world.

  For the first time, Jessamyn was feeling the slow turnings of doubt. And she hated it. Doubt was weakness; doubt was betrayal.

  There was only one thing to do. She needed to push Remy even harder through his training. Present him to the Five and to the Emperor, and then to Eliana. Jessamyn imagined watching the girl’s face fall as she realized what had been done to her brother—and with it, her will to fight.

  Reassured, Jessamyn shook out her arms as if to shake off dust, then darted into the long dark rows of bookshelves and moved swiftly toward where Remy sat, intending to catch him unawares.

  But by the time she arrived at his table, he was gone. The book was still open, the lamp glowing softly.

  Jessamyn let out a low curse, grabbed a dagger from her boot, and whirled around, but Remy was not distracted by seditious thoughts and moved faster.

  He darted out of the shadows and seized her. Blade against her throat, a sharp jab to her solar plexus. He twisted her arm, nearly succeeded in disarming her.

  Nearly.

  She recovered quickly, cut him quick and sharp on his bicep.

  “You walk too loudly, kaeshana,” Remy said. He released her, the edge in his voice glinting silver. “You crashed through the library doors like an animal. Did you think I wouldn’t hear?” It was the first time he had spoken since whatever it was the Emperor had done to him two days ago, whatever had made Eliana want to take her own life.

  “I felt generous,” Jessamyn said. “Thought I’d give you a fighting chance.”

  Collecting her scattered thoughts, fighting a swell of irritation that he had managed to catch her so completely off guard, she moved around the table to look at him.

  In the months since Remy had come to Elysium, he had grown taller. Nearly two inches, she guessed. And now that he had lived in the Lyceum for weeks, he stood straight rather than hunched like a prisoner. The light in his eyes was sharp, focused. He clasped his hands behind his back, waiting for her orders. The deferent student, with his neatly combed dark hair and his long tunic’s tidy collar. On his cheek was a fading cut from their sparring session the previous week.

  Jessamyn glanced at the book he had been reading, a brown-papered text written in scripted Old Celdarian. It was part of every Invictus trainee’s schooling—gaining fluency in the languages of the Old World, the angelic languages, and every modern tongue.

  “Are you finished translating?” she asked.

  “Nearly,” Remy replied.

  “Nearly isn’t good enough. You should have completed the entire volume by now.” Jessamyn slammed the book closed and kicked over his chair. The crash was thunder in the quiet, cavernous room. “We’ll go to the training yards. We’ll fight until dawn, and then you’ll sit here and finish, and you won’t eat until you do.”

  Remy flinched but kept his eyes straight ahead.

  “That would be a mistake,” he said evenly. Only the barest tremor in his voice betrayed his nerves.

  Despite herself, Jessamyn was impressed by his defiance. “Oh?” She came around to look at him, peering close. “Have you gone mad, little virashta? Have my fists beaten your brains out of you at last?”

  Remy was quiet for a moment, then dared to look at her. His face was hard, but there was a pity in his eyes that unnerved her.

  “Fighting with me until dawn would be a mistake,” he told her. His voice cracked, neither boy nor man. “You need rest, and if you go back to the palace without sleep, you may make another mistake and displease the Emperor.”

  Jessamyn stared at him, speechless.

  “I saw what happened in the yard yesterday,” Remy said, looking away. “I snuck into one of the attics and watched you fight Nevia. I saw it when he came for you. He was too distracted to realize I was there, I think. I saw the others fall. I saw him attack you.”

  Remy’s mouth twisted; he was biting the inside of his lip, a nervous habit Jessamyn had broken him of their first week together. She should have struck him for it, but she was too shocked to move.

  “And I heard what happened to Eliana,” he added, his eyes bright. “I heard it was your knife she almost used. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “Everyone,” Jessamyn said, quietly reeling.

  “Here at the Lyceum. I notice things, when you’re not here. I sneak around and spy, as you’ve taught me.” Then he looked at her again with a ferocity that startled her. “I don’t think you should fight me tonight. I think you should rest. I think you’ll need to stay sharp.”

  Jessamyn finally managed a soft laugh. “Such a devoted student you are. I’m touched by your concern. You, who hate me and would probably love to see me executed or exiled by the Council of Five. Thrown out into the tent cities for the refugees to devour.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I hate you,” Remy replied. “You need to stay alive and in the Emperor’s favor. And you being alive is good for me.”

  The library’s shadows suddenly felt oppressive, as if they held the weight of many staring eyes. So he had overheard whispers. Her fellow trainees, no doubt, gossiping about her rumored failure. Jessamyn laughed, circling Remy so he would not see her face and how he had shaken her.

  Then she whirled around and kicked him in the small of his back, sending him flying forward into the table.

  “I need to stay sharp?” she snapped, swallowing the revolting fear curling at the back of her throat. “So do you, little virashta. And if you think you can weasel out of a fight tonight, you are gravely mistaken.”

  Remy glared at her over his shoulder, wiped the blood from his lip.

  Then he launched himself at her, and Jessamyn felt herself relax with her first savage blow to his head. They would fight until she decided it was time to rest.

  They would fight until Remy remembered his place—and until she remembered hers.

  22

  Rielle

  “There are scholars who believe the empirium to be a conscious force, kind and merciful, a gift from a benevolent God. Others believe it to be inherently indifferent to the life it has made. I posit that the empirium and God as some have conceived it are one and the same. It is neither unkind nor particularly benevolent. It simply is—an incomprehensible essence that I, for one, am glad I cannot knowingly touch.”

  —The Unknowable Essence: An Examination of the Empirium by Humans Without Elemental Magic, a collection of essays compiled by Celdarian librarian Vaillana Morel for the First Guild of Scholars

  Raindrops landed on Rielle’s cheeks, and she turned up her face to welcome them.

  She spread her arms wide, because a terrible heat surrounded her, and in her blood raged an inferno. She
was desperate for the cool splash of rain.

  But the rain was hot, and when it hit her lips, there was a pungent thickness to it, a red tang. Something coiled tight in her chest, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the drops wetting her face were not water but blood.

  She was standing in a shallow pool of it on a cliff-side overlooking a rocky line of coves. Her memory slowly returning, she recalled that Obritsa had taken her to Meridian’s eastern shore in pursuit of the Meridian Obex and Saint Nerida’s trident. The wind from the ocean below gusted up into her blood-matted hair. Waves crashed and roared like beasts battling for meat, and the horizon flashed with lightning.

  Many storms, Rielle learned, casting her power out across the flat plane of water and reading the words the empirium had etched upon it. A thousand storms rippled out from the Gate and carpeted skies across the world.

  Rielle laughed, licking her lips, and braced her palms against the slick ground. The earth rippled at her touch, for her hands were still blazing hot. The humming echo of Saint Nerida’s destroyed trident lingered against her skin. A shattered arrow lay at her feet. The Obex had actually tried to shoot her, as if she were some ordinary attacker. How they had screamed just before she unmade them.

  Rielle looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with Obritsa. The little traveler, the Kirvayan queen, with her tangled white hair and her light-brown skin gone sallow with the storm. The girl glimmered, gold painting her hands where the empirium lay waiting for her to thread. Gold painting her mind, with all its meticulous control and focus. There was gold in the ocean, and gold in the sky, and a pulsing gold underneath the black rocks and the restless ocean, rising, rising.

  “Well?” Rielle rasped, mocking. “Have you anything to say?”

  Obritsa’s furs were also streaked with blood. Flakes of charred flesh lingered in the air, but she did not flinch away from them.

  Instead, she held Rielle’s gaze and said, “Have you ever considered killing him?”

  Rielle laughed. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. “Kill him?”