Lightbringer

by Claire Legrand

  The Prophet did not reply to that, but Eliana felt the steady cloak of their thoughts as she fled back through the palace to her rooms. A foul taste flooded her mouth when she caught sight of her doors, flanked by two gray-eyed guards.

  It will not be forever, Eliana, came the Prophet’s voice, thick with sorrow. I am working tirelessly to help you in ways you do not even know yet, but the timing must be precise, or else we will lose our opportunity. I will return to you as soon as it is safe. We will go back together.

  Eliana did not answer. Instead, she pushed open the doors to her rooms and shut them behind her in silence.

  26

  Simon

  “Don’t look too close at the woods, my dear,

  Don’t speak too loud in the night

  Stay in the glow of our bed, my dear,

  Keep our candle always in sight.”

  —Traditional Astavari folk song

  Corien had filled his city with abducted beauty—faces with remarkable symmetry, minds crackling with talent. Poets and musicians, artists and carpenters. Each building was flawless, designed by angelic minds and crafted by artisans stolen from their beds the world over—promised safety for themselves and their families if only they would live in Elysium and do as His Majesty the Emperor of the Undying commanded.

  As Simon made his way through the city to the Lyceum, he found every citizen Corien had collected staring up at the sky—some in wonder, others in fear.

  Simon, stalking past them, kept his eyes on the road ahead, refusing to gape like the rest of them, but the light from this thing that had appeared in the air could not be ignored. It washed over everything, illuminating the city with strange colors. White and blue, indigo and plum. It was night, and yet the city hummed with light bright as day.

  Only once, at the doors to the Lyceum, did Simon glance up.

  Above the city, directly over its heart, gleamed a bright unblinking light, trapped behind clouds. It had appeared some weeks past, and every few days it grew larger and brighter, like the head of a brewing fierce storm. Some described it as a tear in the clouds or a bruise. It was a great eye, insisted others. Simon had heard them whispering during his patrols; the entire city teemed with the mystery of it.

  The angels had given the phenomenon a name: Ostia.

  Across the bridges and the rocky plains beyond, refugees clamoring for entrance to the city had begun carrying out elaborate sacrifices to curry favor with the angelic guards posted at the city’s perimeter. The light in the air, they believed, meant that the time was nigh for some great act of either mercy or bloodshed from the Emperor. If they impressed him, their lives would be spared.

  If only they knew that the angelic guards watching them did so with nothing but cruel amusement, and that their violent acts would go unrewarded.

  Simon threw one last cold look at the sky. He knew exactly what Ostia was, as did the angels and many who lived in the Lyceum. It was a tear in the empirium, clumsy but growing, and beyond it lay the Deep. Soon there would be not just one Gate they would have to guard against, but two. The question was, who had made this one?

  The answer seemed obvious to Simon, but Corien had spent weeks tormenting Eliana and had found no evidence tying her to it. Her screams echoed through that wing of the palace day and night with little silence between them.

  Simon entered the Lyceum and did not look back.

  • • •

  In the Lyceum, in the receiving hall known as the Rose Room, Simon sat listening to the governing body of Invictus known as the Council of Five, wondering how long it would take them to realize they were being spied upon.

  He glanced at the glossy cherrywood doors, beyond which Jessamyn crouched, eavesdropping. Her movements had been too clumsy to go entirely unnoticed; Simon had heard her foot scuff the floor. Like the rest of them, she was no doubt on edge due to the constant eerie light teeming in the sky. There were no true nights anymore; even the darkest hours were painted silver.

  Simon looked back at the Five, but they were ignorant to her presence, which faintly disgusted him. They were meant to be assassins of the highest order, and yet they could not hear one of their own students shuffling outside their door.

  One of the Five, a pale, sinewy woman named Vezdal, leaned over the council table with a glare.

  “So you see, Simon, we cannot delay any longer,” she said urgently. “Each moment that creeps by could be our last. You’ve seen the sky. I refuse to watch angels die and the Empire collapse because we did not act.”

  “‘He has chosen me to guard His works,’” said one of the other Five, Mirzet, a brown-skinned woman lined with age and yet still supposedly a viper with a sword. “‘He has chosen me to receive His glory.’ So says the Invictus oath. He has chosen. Not they. Our loyalty must remain to the Emperor.”

  “And yet the oath also says, ‘I am the guardian of His story,’” said another of the Five, his voice smooth and even. His name was Kalan, a tall, bull-shouldered man. “One could argue that His story is the story of the angels—the Empire, the entire race, not only one angel—and that we are not properly guarding it if we let it end, whether or not that means betraying the Emperor.”

  Mirzet scoffed, pushed her chair roughly back from the table, and stalked away to one of the windows. It was the only one open in the room, admitting a spear of Ostia’s eerie blue light.

  Kalan turned to Simon and spoke again. “Jessamyn’s reports tell us he shuts himself up in the girl’s rooms for hours at a time. She hears her screams, and she sees the Emperor emerge afterward, harried and crazed, but still the girl resists him. Is this accurate, Simon?”

  Simon watched the man coldly. “It is.”

  “And Ostia grows every day. Ravikant suspects it will soon open wide enough that the fabric of the empirium there will rupture, and the cruciata will spill right into the streets of our city. Isn’t that right?”

  “If you are trying to steer me toward betraying my lord and Emperor, you will fail,” Simon said, his voice low and even. He rose from his chair. “It was a mistake for me to come here. It was an even larger mistake for you to call this meeting. I will give you one chance to persuade me that you have said these things in error due to fear and a misguided interpretation of the Invictus oath. If you fail to persuade me, I will bring the Emperor here tonight and have you slain on your steps.”

  Kalan’s eyes blazed, his hands flat on the tabletop. “His mind is elsewhere, Simon. You know this. You see it yourself every day. All of us do. This obsession with traveling to the past and reuniting with his lost love… It has ruined him. If he were himself, if his mind were what it once was, he would have broken the Ferracora girl long ago. But he has not, and monsters encroach upon us from sea and sky. We must act. She must seal the Gate, and now Ostia too, or else it is death for all of us.”

  Simon waited, half his attention on the tense council.

  The other half listened for Jessamyn.

  “Admiral Ravikant is already at work,” Kalan went on, sounding more confident now. He thought his argument was working. “He has assembled his strongest lieutenants. They believe that the combined strength of their minds will be enough to destroy him. But in order to do this, we will need your help.”

  Suddenly, Vezdal shot up from the table and hurried for the doors. She kicked them, and they flew open wide, knocking Jessamyn to the floor.

  The girl jumped to her feet just as Vezdal lunged, a long, slim blade flashing in her hand. Jessamyn dodged it, whirled and kicked. She missed, and Vezdal grabbed her leg, flung her hard to the floor.

  “Fool girl!” Vezdal roared. “Traitorous scum!”

  Kalan wrenched Vezdal back into the room, brought her whirling around to face him.

  “We can use her, Vezdal,” Kalan hissed. “She has been assigned to the girl’s guard. She has been assigned to watch over her brother. Jessa
myn is a valuable pair of eyes in the palace.”

  Vezdal ripped her arm from his grasp. “Now she is a risk, and we must eliminate her.”

  But Jessamyn had already fled down the corridor.

  Vezdal ran after her, reaching for another knife at her belt. One of the other Five, a formidable archer named Telantes, followed hot on her heels. Simon heard the clatter of blades against the stone floor, the thin whip of arrows.

  Kalan turned to Simon, his cheeks bright with anger, but before he could say anything, Simon pulled the revolver from his hip and shot him.

  Before Kalan hit the ground, Simon had whirled and shot the others cleanly between their eyes—Mirzet at the window, and Praxia, still seated at the table.

  Simon stalked across the room and stood over Kalan, who clutched his gushing belly. Simon raised his gun for a killing shot.

  “My apologies, Kalan,” he said. “I could not allow you to work against the Emperor. You think Ravikant would be able to do what the Emperor has not? His mind is a bludgeon. He would kill the girl the first time he entered her thoughts, and then we would be defenseless before the oncoming swarm.”

  Then Simon pulled the trigger. He was out of the room before the gunshot’s echo faded.

  As he ran out of the Lyceum in pursuit of the others, a single thought screamed through his mind, and even with his feet pounding against stone, his gun hot in his hand, he could not shake it:

  I shot him right in the gut.

  I shot him right in the gut.

  • • •

  A maze of courtyards surrounded the Emperor’s palace—one Simon knew well.

  He passed under a stone archway from one courtyard into the next, keeping his gaze fixed on Jessamyn. She was not far ahead of him; she’d taken an arrow in the thigh and was slowing fast.

  Vezdal leapt out of the shadows and grabbed Jessamyn’s arm, spinning her around. Jessamyn dodged Vezdal’s knife, then jammed the hilt of her own into Vezdal’s nose with a sickening crunch. Vezdal staggered, her nose spurting blood, but she only hesitated a moment before running after Jessamyn’s limping form.

  A shadow followed fast atop the courtyard walls—Telantes, a quiver of arrows on his back.

  Simon cut through another courtyard, then emerged through an arch of ironwork dripping with flowers just as Jessamyn came staggering down a flight of white stairs. She ran into him, and he gripped her hard before she could fall.

  “Invictus,” she panted, wide-eyed, her face pale from blood loss. “Ravikant.”

  “I know,” Simon said calmly. “I was there, if you’ll recall.”

  Then he moved her aside, took aim, and fired behind her. Two shots—one for Vezdal, the other for Telantes. The archer fell from the wall into a pile of flowers.

  Simon helped Jessamyn toward the palace, his arm tight around her back. He glanced down. Her leg was drenched with blood; her eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “Our physicians will see to your wounds,” he told her, and then there was a stillness. A veil descended upon his mind. He knew it well. Its flavor, its scent. The astonishing power of its will.

  Simon opened his thoughts to Corien, letting him peruse as he liked—the Rose Room, the frustration of Invictus, the treason of Ravikant.

  I see. Corien’s words floated on a white river.

  And then they were at the palace, stumbling into a small parlor near the southeastern entrance. Corien paced, his white shirt open and loose over his dark trousers, his hair a matted mess. He had been with Eliana; his eyes held a crazed gleam that appeared only after a day locked away in her rooms.

  The palace nurses hurried forward, settled Jessamyn on a divan, and began at once to tend her wounds.

  Corien stood over her, though Simon knew he was not looking at her. He could feel the distraction rampant in Corien’s mind, how entirely his thoughts were wrapped around two women—one dead, and one near it.

  “Thank you, Jessamyn, for coming to warn me,” Corien said quietly. He pressed his lips to her hand, lingering over it for so long that the nurses—human, clear-eyed, stolen for their skill at healing—exchanged nervous glances.

  Simon cleared his throat and stepped forward. “My lord? What are your orders?”

  “My orders?” Corien turned to face him. Through the windows, Ostia’s light painted him exquisitely. His cheeks glowed as if he had daubed them with rouge made from stars.

  “My orders are to open every door to Vaera Bashta,” he said quietly, his voice making every word shiver. “Every last one of its prisoners will be free to do as they wish. Every house, every body, every bed is theirs to claim. No more cells. No more wardens. I want my white streets to run red in her honor. Clearly this city is filthy in ways I did not realize. It is time to clean it.”

  Then he grabbed his coat from the floor and swept out of the room. Simon started after him, but Jessamyn caught his arm as he passed.

  “But Remy is still in the Lyceum,” she said, short of breath, her eyes hazy with pain, her braid limp with sweat. “Get him, please, and bring him here before the prison is opened. If he dies before Eliana seals Ostia…”

  Simon snatched a syringe full of sedative out of the nearest nurse’s hand and emptied it into Jessamyn’s arm. She went limp on the divan, and he left her with the silent nurses to hurry after Corien through the palace.

  27

  Navi

  “I know you grieve. I know you look at the life we have lived and what the world has become and feel rage burn in your heart. But think instead of how I love you, and how Nerida loves Tameryn, and how the families we have seen cherish one another as families have always done. Love is the one constant force that no violence or despair can diminish. We must hold onto the light of this truth, Cat, even when the world grows dark. Especially then.”

  —Undated letter from Saint Ghovan the Fearless to his sister, Catarina, archived in the Vault of the Ages, in Orline, the capital of Ventera

  Over the past month, Navi and her little army had ferried nearly all of their meager supplies and most of their number from their camp in the Kavalian Bog to Ysabet’s hidden cove.

  In four days, the ship would be ready to sail. An incredible achievement, and one that had both swamp and cove abuzz with nervous energy.

  Navi was not immune. She worked with little rest, hardly allowing her sweat to dry between tasks. Readying bundles of rags, bottled herbs, and canvas tarpaulins; stacking wrapped packets of dried meat, seeds, and rice cakes; boxing sacks of grain and oats. Much of the last month had been spent carefully and quietly visiting a strategically nonsensical pattern of markets on the islands of Hariaca and Laranti, even occasionally venturing back to the port of Algare, where they had first made port after leaving Meridian.

  Now, they had a decent supply of their own to add to Ysabet’s, and Navi could breathe more easily, knowing her people wouldn’t be a burden. If she was to lead Ysabet and her crew on a deadly mission across the ocean to Elysium, at least they would all be comfortably fed in the meantime—if the stores didn’t go bad, and if they didn’t lose everything in a storm.

  Navi shook those worries from her mind and ducked into her tent, searching for a scrap of paper on which to make notes. Her eyes burned from lack of sleep, but whenever she tried it, rest came only in fits. They were all feeling the strain—exhaustion and fear and a wild, giddy sort of exhilaration. At last, they would take to the sea, storm the Emperor’s home, and fight for the Sun Queen. They would be legends in whatever world survived. Their names would be whispered at tables, muttered in prayers.

  First, of course, they had to figure out how to actually get to Eliana. It would not be a simple task to breach the walls of the Emperor’s city.

  Navi laughed to herself, wiping her brow. She desperately needed sleep. And anyway, they had the entire ocean voyage to engineer a plan.

  Merry shouts rang o
ut beyond the tent, followed by the drag of boats up the muddy shores of camp. Ysabet’s crew, come for that day’s shipment.

  Navi froze, paper in hand. She tried to listen past her suddenly racing heart but could hear only her own eagerness, the hot pulse of it in her blood.

  A moment later, the tent flap flew open, and Ysabet strode inside, bringing with her the salty smell of the sea. Damp white hair curled at her chin, and her cheeks were red from the wind.

  “All is well,” she said, hands on her hips, sheathed sword hanging from her belt, white sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She surveyed Navi’s neat little tent like it was the deck of her own ship. “We’ll be ready to leave in four days’ time. An evening sail, which is not my preference, but until we’re away from the islands, we’ll have to watch hard for imperial ships. Not that the Queenslight cannot fight for herself—she can, she’s a fierce she-wolf of a boat—but best to avoid battle until we can’t any longer.”

  Navi had been moving uselessly about the tent, straightening papers, tucking Hob’s notebook back under his blanket, keeping her face carefully blank. She could not bear to look at Ysabet. For a month now, she had simmered with a longing she had not felt since she first lay with a girl at fourteen. And on the heels of her desire was a terrible fear that Ysabet would laugh in her face if she confessed it. Never mind that she often felt Ysabet’s eyes upon her as they worked together, and that sometimes when their hands touched, it was like tinder catching fire.

  But then one of Ysabet’s words fixed itself in Navi’s fretful mind. Queenslight. She straightened to stare at Ysabet, whose smug grin lit up her face.

  “You named her,” Navi said faintly, all the air knocked out of her. “You named her after Eliana.”

  “It’s a good name, isn’t it?” Ysabet winked. “Have I earned a kiss at last, then?”

  A slow warmth spilled down Navi’s limbs. Her eyes filled with tears, and she couldn’t stop looking at Ysabet’s face, hungry for the quickness of it. Her sharp jaw and cheekbones, her lively brown eyes.