Burning Glass (30 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING, AFTER THE SNATCH OF SLEEP
I
’D GOTTEN
in the tapestry room, I crept back through the doors to my own chambers. I’d left Pia’s clothes and her pretty floral scarf in a folded pile in the corner of my room. I knew, like clockwork, she would arrive a quarter hour before Lenka—perhaps even a few minutes earlier since she must be eager to hear about my “romantic getaway.” I nudged my tired brain and tried to dream up some scintillating lies.

But Pia never came.

I chewed at my lip and looked at the table where she’d set her tray of food last night. We’d never eaten in our hurried plan to sneak me out of the palace. But now the tray was gone. Tosya’s book of poetry was also missing. I’d left it near the statue of Feya during my prayers and forgotten to hide it, though I checked beneath the mattress of the box bed to be sure. I also rummaged through the stacks of Pia’s reading
lesson books against the far wall, but it was no use. The volume of poetry was nowhere to be seen.

I flexed my hands. My nerves crawled with unease. What if Pia had taken the book last night? She could have noticed it when she came back for her tray and thought it might contain a love sonnet—the sonnet I’d encouraged her to practice for Yuri.

What if Pia had been discovered with something treasonous?

The clock on my wall chimed the hour. I hid Pia’s clothes in the bed sheets I always rumpled so it appeared I’d slept there. My gut was a cavern of anxiety by the time Lenka opened the door.

She glided in, my other attending maids behind her like a row of ducklings. I stood in the center of my antechamber, my arms crossed as I felt Lenka’s smug aura. Her skin looked particularly gaunt and stretched today over her jutting bones.

“I haven’t eaten yet,” I declared, noting my headdress and Auraseer’s robes in the arms of my other maids. What special occasion merited such finery?

The corners of Lenka’s mouth pulled slightly upward. “This is a wise day for fasting,” she replied, dismissing my words. “It will help you focus. The emperor’s welfare is in your hands.”

“The emperor’s welfare is
always
in my hands.”

“Yes, but today he will be surrounded by more than nobles. He is opening the palace to admit the public.”

“A reception for the people?” I asked, unsure if I’d understood her correctly. When she nodded, I raised my brows. These
receptions once had been a monthly tradition at the palace, an opportunity for the people to lay gifts at the emperor’s feet or beseech him with their requests. But in all my days as sovereign Auraseer, Valko had never held one. Rumor persisted that he’d only done so twice during his reign. Today’s reception surely had to do with his scheming for Shengli. He wanted to appear benevolent so the people would accept the lowered draft age with grace.

“I don’t wish to fast,” I said. “Could you please send Pia up with a tray?”

Lenka angled away from me and brushed a lock of hair back into her tight bun. “I’m afraid Pia is indisposed.”

My cavern of anxiety widened to a crater. “What do you mean?”

Lenka shrugged, but I still sensed that smugness about her. “I’m sure we’ll learn soon enough.” With that vague and unsettling explanation, she clapped her hands. Two servants entered with the traveling tub that seemed to rotate between my room, Anton’s, and surely other high-ranking staff. A flock of attendants followed with steaming buckets of water and reminded me of my first day in the palace.

“Come,” Lenka said. “We haven’t much time before the emperor requires you.”

The tables in the great hall had been removed. The only remaining furniture rested on the dais: Valko’s magnificent throne and my small stool. Guards flanked the perimeter of the room and
tripled the amount that had served the night of the ball. Yuri wasn’t among them, still off on his recruitment errand for the empire.

Nobles milled about and left a wide berth around the center aisle for the forthcoming people. The commoners stood in line outside the closed doors. I’d passed them when I’d entered. Their auras wove a web of resentment, desperation, and curiosity within me. I kept a hand on my headdress’s dangling pearls, but the sting brought little relief.

It was harder to meet Valko’s eyes now I’d made a pact against him. As I rose from my curtsy, he stared down at me from the height of his throne. “My Lord Emperor,” I said in greeting.

“Sonya.” His gaze softened, and he extended a jeweled hand to my stool. I lighted up the dais and took my seat.

The double doors to the great hall opened. The nobles quieted. Valko’s chest puffed beneath his brocaded kaftan.

The common people filed in, some with wide eyes as they took in the spectacular domed ceiling. Others trembled the nearer they advanced to Valko. But most wore grim looks of determination, their hands fisted, their faces set in stone.

Some were farmers who shared detailed reports of crop failure, despite the rains and melting snow. The soil was cursed, they said, and they pleaded with the emperor to petition the gods for relief from the famine. Others wanted more than Valko’s “royal channel to the heavens.” They came meeting their monarch in the finest clothes they owned—threadbare
and patched—and asked him, while observing firsthand the extravagance of his stronghold, if he would share in his plenty until the earth yielded up her fruits again.

Valko had similar responses for all them. “Be of comfort. The time of prosperity is at hand.” Or “Hold fast. The gods have spoken and declared Riaznin will flourish.”

He meant every word. I felt his surety fill my breast. But I pushed out every breath of empathy for him. His means of restoring the empire were heartless. My role was to reveal a better way—a way that no longer required his leadership. More than that, I was to make him believe it.

My gaze wandered over the nobles as I searched for Anton. I yearned to speak with him, to concoct some sort of plan for approaching the enormous task before me. He must have some ideas for slowly breaking his brother down. At least I hoped he did.

But the prince wasn’t here. I slouched a little on my stool, then chastised myself for being disappointed. It wasn’t as if we could have a treasonous conversion here, anyway. Or even a flirtatious one.

After the farmers, other people came with more grievances: quarrels with their neighbors, pleas for fortifying the villages around Torchev that didn’t have securing walls like our city. One thin-shouldered woman complained that the Azanel River was making her children sick. Refuse was dumped in the river, and she lived downstream of it. She wanted the sewer outlets diverted, or at least funds to dig a proper well.

Valko held a placid smile as he listened to her, but my fingernails dug into my legs with his grating impatience. He wouldn’t be able to brush her off as easily as he did the farmers. “I shall discuss the matter with my council,” he said at last. “It is my desire that
all
have clean water.” He lifted his gaze to the continuous stream of peasants while extending his ringed hand to the woman. With reluctance, she kissed it. As she left, Valko motioned for Councilor Ilyin to step forward. “Please see that this matter is addressed at our next meeting,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear.

The graying councilor bowed. “If I may, My Lord Emperor,” he said quietly, “the woman’s request is one of many in the city. If you wish to recruit a younger,
healthy
army, you would do well to clean the water supply.”

Valko frowned and tilted his head at him. “Councilor Ilyin, did I never abandon the beard law? By the gods, you should grow yours back.” He sat back in his throne and muttered, “I suppose something must be done about the water. We’ll discuss it later.” He waved him away.

There was a lull in the receiving line as Councilor Ilyin ambled back to the others, his hand on his smooth cheek. As the next peasant waited for the signal to advance, Valko sighed and turned to me, the seven rubies on his crown twinkling. “Such is the tedious lot of an emperor,” he said from his comfortable chair. I didn’t comment. The peasants had waited in line for hours before they were even admitted into the palace. “I’m itching to go over battle strategy with General Lazar,” he
went on, “but I saw the wisdom in receiving the people today.”

He smiled and leaned a fraction closer. I tensed, wondering if he’d dare to touch me with his public watching. His gaze dropped to my clenched hands, before lifting back to study my eyes. After a beat, he said, “I’m glad you are here, Sonya. Anything is easier with you by my side.”

The emperor’s soothed aura sent a wash of warmth across my shoulders. His well-timed sincerity weighed me with guilt. I felt the swirl of conflicting emotions that plagued me the night of the ball. I
did
know that I helped him. He’d opened up to me and shared who he was when at his weakest. That humbling experience had forged our relationship to a deeper level. But he would never change. I had to remember that. While his fondness for me might intensify, his fundamental qualities of greed and lust for power would remain ingrained. They were the very things I needed to alter if I wanted the revolution to succeed. My stomach folded into knots. I had no idea how I would go about achieving what I’d promised.

Perhaps I should try to test Valko now, see if he could be persuaded to feel any genuine concern for these people. As I scanned the peasants for the perfect candidate to invoke the emperor’s compassion, my gaze fell on the next person in line—an elderly man leaning on a crutch. If Valko couldn’t pity him, I didn’t know whom he could.

As the man prepared to hobble forward, I also readied myself. I dug into Valko’s aura and felt his restlessness where it made my knees bounce, his trapped energy as it sped my
heartbeat. I struggled to empathize with the emperor. He had spent so much time designing his grand plans for Riaznin. This reception must seem so minuscule in comparison to his larger, more important campaigns.

As I had on the night of the ball, I tried to open myself up to Valko, to connect on a level of pure understanding. Only then could I twist his feelings and encourage his regard for the old peasant man—who was now approaching. But the link between the emperor and me only half flickered, like a flame on a candlewick too short to sustain it.

The problem was my false empathy.

I cringed with the old man’s pain as he winced with each advancing step. Who would help him if I couldn’t?

Behind him, a commotion rose up as someone shoved his way to the front of the line. The people stumbled aside to reveal a brawny, ginger-haired man, his beard worn in two braids and studded with painted beads. A wave of revulsion flooded me, made no easier when the man’s abrasive aura scraped mine.

Valko observed my strained expression. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head. “That is the bounty hunter who brought me to the convent. His name is Bartek.”

“Ah.” The emperor’s gaze searched my face. “So your parents did not report you to the empire of their own accord?”

I lengthened my neck, taking some measure of pride in their decision, even though it cost them their lives. “They did not.”

A pulse of anger shot through me and made my muscles
contract. Valko must have finally pieced together something he hadn’t fully realized until now: unlike so many Auraseers at the convent, it was never my desire to be owned by the empire, or to end up here by his side.

His fingers curled around the armrests of his throne. With a stiff set to his jaw, he turned his attention to the bounty hunter, whom the peasants were bottlenecking back. “Let him forward,” Valko commanded.

The crowd fell away, all but the elderly man, whom the bounty hunter knocked aside with his shoulder. The man buckled to his knees, and his crutch skidded across the parquet floor. A peasant woman came forward to assist him and shot livid glances at Bartek.

“Your Imperial Majesty.” The bounty hunter bent at his paunchy waist. When he rose, our eyes met. A flash of recognition curved his lip. “I have come seeking a reward.”

Misgiving spooled around my lungs. Had he found another Auraseer? If so, why would he bring her here and not the convent?

“Who is it you have captured?” Valko asked. “By all appearances, you are alone.”

“I have come regarding the treasonous revolutionary.”

Tosya?
My lungs compressed tighter. My pinched-off air spotted my vision.

“Which revolutionary do you speak of?” Valko’s anger sent fire through my veins. “Many such fools have a price on their heads.”

Bartek jutted out his chin and adjusted the traveling bag slung around his shoulder. “Yuri Sergeev.”

I blinked. Tosya was safe. But—“Yuri is wanted?” My voice faltered. “I thought . . .” Had Yuri used his recruitment errand as an opportunity to conduct business for Anton? “What has he done?” I asked.

Valko regarded me. “Do you know that unfortunate soldier?”

I nodded in a daze. “He has been my escort on many occasions.” When the emperor’s brow arched, I felt the depth of my precarious position. As sovereign Auraseer, it was my job to detect any kind of threat or danger to the emperor, and I’d just admitted that I’d been with—on more than one occasion—a man wanted for treason. “I swear to you, My Lord, I never felt anything suspicious about him.”

That wasn’t true. I’d found out Yuri was in league with Anton before the prince ever admitted to it. Then there was the snaking darkness I’d sensed the night of the ball. Could that have belonged to Yuri? Anton said some of his men were growing impatient for Valko’s reign to end. “What has he done?” I asked again, and hoped the question would deflect my failure to act in this matter.

Valko cast a bored look at Bartek, who stood on the balls of his booted feet, ready for permission to address the emperor once more. “We have first accounts of Yuri working with the wanted traitor, Tosya Pashkov,” Valko answered.

I swallowed and scanned the room again. Where was
Anton? Would he come to defend Yuri?

The emperor sighed. In it, I felt his tedium at having to reprimand one of his soldiers, just as tiresome as helping the woman with her well. The only silver lining was that the emperor didn’t seem to appreciate how real and far-reaching this revolution was growing. Nevertheless, my heart ached for Pia. There was only one punishment in Riaznin for treason—death. She would lose the man she loved.