Jaime widened his eyes. “Stepped off?”
“An unfortunate suicide no one understands,” Gaiyus interrupted. “For our purposes now, these details are irrelevant.”
Julias gave a respectful nod. “Usheon, a former daimyo—Kaipponese feudal lord, that is—was a rare individual who discovered Sage-powers and was not of the royal house.
“Now the Kaipponese Emperor, Viro of the Tazuga Clan, is feared by many. Usheon was no fool to challenge the Emperor for the Fire Throne. His eyes fell on the neighboring Kingdom of Jaypes. We were feeble and weak without a King, and under the pretense of trying to protect us, he invaded, forced our Queen’s hand, and declared himself King. With The West preoccupied with war, no one cared to stop him.”
“No one could,” a crabapple-faced politician said.
Jaime picked at his breather. “What about the Queen? She wasn’t a Sage?”
A sigh escaped Lord Gaiyus’s throat. “Our beloved Queen Sarendi was, unfortunately, of ordinary blood. A year after her marriage to Usheon, she bore him a son.”
“Then came the Royal Decree,” Julias said.
“Alas,” Gaiyus turned to the fire, “Usheon’s desecration of the holy law Julias spoke of earlier could not go unchecked for long. A day after his son’s birth, seven airpriests from the High Temple carried a message from our god himself. They divined a prophecy: to punish the King for blaspheming the Codex, Lord Jaypes aligned the stars in such a way that, on the fifteenth year of Usheon’s reign, his own beloved son would overthrow him.”
Jaime’s brows creased.
But the gods aren’t real. If Lord Jaypes hasn’t been around for this long, how can they take a prophecy seriously?
Instead, he said, “The gods can make things like that happen?”
“It was unusual, certainly, having priests receive such a powerful divination. But yes—no one can question the holy judgment of Lord Jaypes. Usheon was outraged, of course. He ordered the execution of the priests and his own son.”
Jaime fought down a shiver.
“Ah, yes, even his son.” Lord Gaiyus’s voice grew quiet. “His lust for power is remarkable.”
A cold silence drifted through the chamber. Gaiyus handed the medallion back to Julias, who looped it gently over Jaime’s neck. Their lord paced across the stone chamber, the whiff of roses trailing behind him.
“Did Hilaris ever tell you who I . . . ” Gaiyus glanced at Julias and the other politicians. “Who we are?”
Jaime shook his head.
“At one time, we led Lairdos’s Old Senate. I was Head Senator, second only to the King. My friends here—Eukles, Herodotus, Alexion—had the foresight to escape the capital the night before the Invasion. Julias Markus was the Queen’s brother.”
His jaw dropped open.
The Queen’s brother?
“After Aeropolis Capital fell, the King forced me to watch as his fire burned the rest of my Senators. He exiled me to Jaypes’s cold fringes, to humiliate me. In that time, we built the Air Alliance, the final resistance against the despot who sits upon the throne. That unholy fiend who rules us murdered our beloved Queen and wise court friends, denied us the sacred burial of our dead. His lies have poisoned the Jaypan lochoi and turned our own priests against us. He has commanded the genocide of thousands of Jaypan children.
“But in this year, this final season before his fifteenth year, everything has changed. A storm is rising, Jaime. Because of you, the gods are now on our side.”
The old man’s voice was low, but Jaime felt spine-chilling thrill creeping under it.
Something between a laugh and croak scratched his throat. “I don’t understand . . . ”
“Alas, but you do,” said Gaiyus Sartorios, voice blooming like a woken storm. “Before the King could slay his son, the Queen escaped with the boy. His men found her, but never the child. Even after the King tortured her under the palace, she refused to reveal his location.” He clasped his hands together again. “The King sent his soldiers to Mount Alairus because he thinks your brother is the missing boy. This year, our prince would be fourteen.”
“Stop—”
“The Sacred Relic,” Lord Gaiyus’s eyes fell on the medallion, “responds to Sages. If one holds it, regardless of what his natural element is, that Sage has the ability to wield Air.”
Jaime shut his eyes.
“It responded to you because you are a Sage. That is the only explanation for the banestorm outside—”
“It’s not a banestorm. And I’m a Pappas—just a farmer. You’re wrong.”
Hida knew about the medallion. Did Hilaris know?
She never said anything about it. Instead, she hid it away in Hektor’s grave. So many lies. What else—?
Commander Julias caught Jaime before he fell. He couldn’t feel his lungs. If he talked anymore, he was afraid the world would swirl into darkness.
“Are you saying . . . ”
Jaime forced the words out.
“Are you saying the King is my father?”
Chapter Five
“Do you know what this means?” Lord Gaiyus said.
The light of the flames suddenly were too bright, too sickly.
“The King is a Fire Sage. This medallion gives you the power of Air.” Lord Gaiyus’s voice lilted. “You must call a Duel against your father—a battle to the death—or more people die. People like Hektor Pappas. People like your mother and brother, who are scheduled to burn at dawn.”
“The King is not my father,” he screamed, “and I’m not calling anything!”
Jaime fled the chamber.
The Free Guards at the entrance hesitated, unsure whether to lower their spears.
Politician Crabapple yelled, “Stop that boy! He has the Relic—”
One of the guards grabbed Jaime. He wrenched himself free.
“Don’t touch me!”
A sudden gale of wind knocked the guards to their knees.
The chamber gasped. It had to be a coincidence—a loose stormwind somehow finding its way under the bowls of the mountain. Everyone kept their distance. No one dared move.
Gaiyus studied him, eye twitching, and finally said: “Let him go.”
No one dared move—except for Commander Julias. “Arm yourself, at least,” he hissed, pressing a knife to Jaime’s chest.
He took it and yanked himself free.
His bare feet pattered out of the pantheon, directly below the isolated akropolis where Lord Gaiyus ruled from. So that’s where we were. Townfold’s network of villages was built on the mountain’s slope, and for a second, his entire home sprawled below him in full view. Every faraway tier crawling with the King’s soldiers.
Not my fault—none of this is my fault—
Jaime streamed in the direction of the sky, the slope of the rocky fields burning his thighs. Away from the familiar districts of flat-roofed, mud-brick houses. Away from Champion’s Square, where the pyre waited for him. The climb stole his breath.
He wanted to disappear into Mount Alairus’s great cloud-tipped peak. From down here, it looked mighty, an altar for gods and Jaypan warrior-heroes, a paradise where not even the King could conquer.
The kingpines thickened. His thighs burned long before he reached a quarter of the way up the mountain. Jaime slipped the knife between his teeth, felt around the bark of a pine, and scaled upward.
Rain flattened his bristly bed of hair. Stormy gusts nipped at the brand mark on his wrist.
They’re wrong. Commander Julias is my father. He has to be.
He pressed his head to the bark, shutting his eyes.
Hours passed.
Rain battered the forest.
How had things become such hell? On Mount Alairus? Where the worst thing that ever happened was the occasional eloping and streaking?
They’ve l
ost their minds. I can’t even plow with my asthma, and they want me to fight the King’s fire currents with air?
Jaime cupped his face into his hands.
What had Hektor Pappas had been like? He saw a bigger man in his head, imagined the oval shape of his face, the stark kindness that was said to light his pewter eyes. The same eyes Hilaris had. In those visions, Hektor would teach him how to wield a spear, and catch golden eagles, and win pretty girls with long dark ringlets. For as long as he could remember, he envied all of the Townfold boys who had papás that survived the war.
But you do have a papá. Only your papá is different. Your papá killed thousands of boys, just in case any were you.
He gripped the medallion tighter. In the stormlight, the Air Emblem almost seemed to glow.
What god divines a son to kill his father? I don’t get why men like the Commander worship you. I think you’re a coward. If you’re real, answer me.
Nothing.
The storm outside pounded the mountain harder. The skies grew darker. He couldn’t stay in this tree forever.
If the burning wasn’t happening till dawn, he still had a few hours to break his mother and brother out.
I’m not killing the King. I don’t know if Gaiyus will rat me out for trying to run. But the Commander won’t. Maybe he’ll even come with us.
Jaime had sensed something budding between Julias and his mother the past few years. The way they would murmur with each other in the dark. Touch each other goodbye outside their farmstead when they thought Jaime wasn’t looking. Sometimes, Hida would slip him a package of honey cakes between a bundle of textiles he bought from her.
Julias Markus would help him.
When he reached town, Jaime’s feet stopped dead. Sickness creeped up his into the back of his throat.
A small body hung upside-down over the wooden doorway that framed Townfold’s eastern entrance. Flayed. Peeled down to the wide, bulging eyeballs. Dark droplets drip, drip, dripped into the grass.
Evander.
The shepherd’s boy.
Jaime pressed a hand over his mouth and fled through a collapsing arbor. Acid scorched his throat. Jaime retched, his eyes welling.
No. Evander’s not—I’m not the King’s son. They have it all wrong.
Distant laughter made his head jerk up. It sounded like it was coming from a side alley.
Who could be laughing right now?
He wiped his mouth and followed the noise.
On the irregular slopes of the street, five boys danced around a skinny shape. One of the boys gripped the skinny boy’s head and shoved it into a pail, holding him down despite his flailing arms.
“Still can’t talk?” The biggest boy—Rimas Vulcus, the pallbearer’s son—laughed. “Maybe we can change that.”
Jaime recognized that shape—big shoulders, awkward, long limbs, head proportionately small against the rest of the body. He also bore the symbol of an X’ed out circle on his wrist. It was Cassie, the mute-boy.
Rage blistered in his chest.
Townfold is going to flames, and you’re attacking a crippled kid?
“Let him go!” Jaime bellowed.
The other boys whirled around, their bare feet crunching in the brush.
“What are you doing?” Jaime said. “Don’t you know what day it is?”
Rimas’s yellow teeth showed through his grin. “Your burning day, Stormy Lungs?”
Suddenly, Jaime remembered the knife under his himation.
The boy holding Cassie pulled him back up. The latter gasped, collapsing into a bush of fennel and coughing up water.
Rimas pointed at Jaime. “Go on, let him have his turn!”
Red blinded his vision. The knife ended up in his hand, unsheathed, just as they were a footstep away.
The boys exclaimed and skidded to a halt. Rimas’s eyes shot open. They backed away slowly.
Jaime advanced.
His bloodshot eyes locked on Rimas. The other boys fled—Jaime pounced, knocked Rimas into the dirt.
This boy had called him names his entire life. But Rimas Vulcus and his friends picked on Cassie even more, beating him up in puddle-filled alleys and under rickety bridges when they thought no one was looking.
That wouldn’t happen anymore.
“No!” Rimas threw up his hands. “It was just a game, I swear! I swear—by all four gods!”
Someone gripped Jaime’s wrist as it came down.
Rimas sobbed and dashed into a grove of hemlock trees. Jaime screamed. Sprung at his attacker, but in turn the silhouette grabbed his left wrist.
“Jaime!”
The Commander’s beard nearly scraped his face. His heavy myrrh smell stung Jaime’s eyes.
“What in the high hells are you doing?”
“They were going to drown Cassie—”
Julias’s eyes shifted to the knife raised in Jaime’s hand. Jaime had never raised a laddle on anyone before. But now, endless waves of heat pulsed out of his chest.
Maybe I am a monster like the King.
Cassie’s breaths grew heavy. Jaime caught his eyes only for a split second before Cassie fled behind the rickety houses, head sticking out like it was trying to escape his body.
Julias’s stark gaze returned to him.
“Listen to me, Jaime. My men are freeing your mother was we speak. We have to get both of you to Achuros.”
“Who?”
“He is an airpriest in the south, the only one I trust with your life—”
“What’s an airpriest?”
The Commander sighed down his urgency. “Ancient scribes. Keepers of the High Temple. Each Kingdom has one. Only about a hundred still survive in Jaypes. They read Lord Jaypes’s omens and train Air Sages, the way Achuros will train you to Duel the King with Air—”
“No, I’m not fighting the King!”
“Jaime.” The Commander clasped his shoulders. “We have little time before—”
A low horn sliced through the pregnant storm clouds.
That was the same horn they blew when the Archpriestess announced one family would stand on the pyre. Which meant this horn signaled it was time for a burning.
Mamá—
Jaime wrested free. The knife vanished into the ankle-high grass. The Commander called him, but he stormed in the direction of Champion’s Square.
Lightning flashed over the black skies.
The slope of Townfold Village loomed upward, displaying the dozens of New Jaypes banners pinned to familiar landmarks. His chest cracked. So many places he never thought twice about. The smithy, south of the square, where he shared countless bowls of gruel with Peri Kreed’s family. Ptolemy’s Library several blocks ahead—he and Hilaris used to chase each other under its tattered awnings when they were kids. Charis Poupolos’s toy shop in the east. The day Lord Gaiyus rode off with Jaime’s brother, Charis saw everything and handed Jaime a miniature horse on wheels.
“Keep it,” the old toymaker winked.
I was supposed to grow into a man here, maybe even find a pretty girl and marry her.
Jaime’s view of the slope broke when a soldier marched past him. He pressed himself behind a water jug, desperation blurring his eyes.
Things are never going to be the same again. It’s only going to get worse and worse and worse . . .
He was terrified of defying the soldiers, but he was even more terrified of what would happen to him and his family if they stayed. And what would happen to the Alairans? Ten years ago, the King stripped the mountain of its wealth, leaving empty husks of quarries behind. What would he do to it this time?
As Jaime rounded the altar with the bull statue, he crashed into a shield.
“Jaime!” a voice cried.
Hida pushed through the crowd of Free Guards and pressed him tightly again
st her. Jaime held on to her. As the sky broke, heavy rains seeped through his himation, breathed cold into his skin.
“Did you know?” he whispered.
For the first time in years, he drank in the way her hair nestled against her nape. The way her fingertips were calloused from years of weaving and threshing barley. The smell of the brazier’s charcoal on her skin. This woman had plucked him out of the wilderness, clothed and fed him when she could barely afford to feed herself.
She was Townfold Village, and Mount Alairus, and everything in Jaypes Kingdom that existed.
“My son, not now—”
“It has to be now, Mamá! Did you know I was the King’s son?”
The town guards watched them, ankle boots pawing the ground.
“I had an inkling.” Her voice was steady, but tears cut down her cheeks. “Everything I’ve done was to protect you and Hilaris. Lord Jaypes forgive me. I have failed both of you.”
He gripped her hands tightly. “No, you didn’t. Lord Jaypes did this, not you.”
“We cannot blame—”
“Now let’s go get Hilaris.”
“The Archpriestess has him, Jaime,” said Damias, one of the younger guards. “Rumors are floating about that you’re the missing prince. Is—is it true?”
“No. It’s not.”
“Nides was yelling it in the barracks. And he told the Archpriestess.”
That dirty traitor.
Jaime quickened his sprint to Champion’s Square.
Hida pleaded him to stop. The Free Guards chased after him, stumbling down the ragged, weed-strewn streets. His lungs were going to explode any second now.
Hilaris was already on the pyre.
Jaime bit down a scream.
Two soldiers held his brother down. His arm was stretched out over a wooden block. The Archpriestess snicked his brother’s flesh with a knife. Hilaris’s mouth twisted—he was struggling to bite down a cry.
When she finished, the Archpriestess lifted up his arm.
The Air Emblem was carved onto it, a mocking display of holy reverence to the God of Air. Her free hand clenching Hilaris’s wrist, she wiped his blood over his forehead. Her milky eyes closed.
Stormfire Page 4
