Harbinger (32 page)

“Then”—the Emperor broke in—“you will put it about that I caught ill or some such and bury me in a hidden grave.” He jabbed his knife in the air for effect. “I know you’ve always wanted my throne.”

At her back, Zofiya heard the crowd shift a little; their Emperor displaying his insanity so openly was unnerving many of them.

Her brother, though, was now completely ignoring them, lost in his own imagined plots and schemes. “All the women in my life have always wanted to take from me.” He darted back behind his wife and laid his head on her shoulder. It was a macabre and disturbing sight. “Ezefia here, she was conspiring with Derodak, that treacherous Deacon, to steal my throne. He even put a child in her belly!” He placed a hand on the bleeding gash just under her breasts, covering his fingers in her still wet blood. “But obviously he did not care for her that much, since he never came back for her as I had hoped he would.”

For just a second, Zofiya’s determination wavered. Kaleva had never been betrayed by anyone in Arkaym, but he could not appreciate that. Ezefia, if she had been unfaithful to him, had not done it willingly. From what Zofiya knew of the Empress’ past, her father had been a true Prince to his people, and though she had always seemed sad, the regent had never detected any falseness in her. Zofiya also knew firsthand that Derodak had ways of manipulating people and bending them to his will. She could only be grateful he had not demanded anything more intimate from her while he had her under his control.

“Now you, Sister,” he said, straightening and fixing her with a slow grin that made her skin crawl, “you want to take what is mine directly. You have always been jealous of my rule. Tell me, how long have you been plotting to take it from me?”

This could not go on. The more he talked, the more poison he was infecting the people around her with—people who she was going to have to rely on in the months to come. That was if there were more months to come.

Zofiya drew her saber in one practiced motion. She knew her brother was no match for her; not in sanity or skill. It was almost certain she could drop him to the deck without having to kill him. Her gaze raked over the few people that stood behind him. All were members of the Court, and as far as she could tell, terrified by the Deacons and not capable of standing as seconds to their Emperor. Now all that remained was for her to make the move.

However, before she could get herself to the point of action, something curious happened. It was not on the deck, and it took only a second. Between one heartbeat and the next, something opened in the mind of the Grand Duchess Zofiya. A crack of understanding that had been levered open by the geistlord Hatipai, who had occupied her brain. It was the same curious something that had alerted her that all was not as it seemed with the new aristocrat in her brother’s Court months before. The same person who, it had turned out, was Derodak. Merrick had seen that glimpse of potential in her, and now, under pressure, it sprang open again.

She was, in that instant, terribly aware of Deacon Petav standing beside her, his Center wide open. She was aware of it, because she was suddenly seeing what he was seeing. The world flared a whole range of colors that she’d never known existed. Everything around her was now not only beautiful, but also packed with meaning that none could see. Emotions, Bonds and intentions were all swirling around her, and the regent had no way of interpreting what any of them meant. It made her feel sick and exhilarated all at the same time.

Deacon Petav, the Sensitive was seeing something, something that was about to happen but had not yet come to pass. A sickly green light danced around her brother’s form, rendering him into an eerie figure that she barely recognized. However, Petav saw what was coming.

The Emperor Kaleva was going to shoot his sister in the head, and then himself. He would end this line of Emperors before it was even really begun.
Cut out the contamination before it spread.

Zofiya snapped back to reality and felt all the cool air rush abruptly back into her body. She had been holding her breath for that long moment. Before she could think on what she had experienced, she moved.

Sheathing her saber, she tucked and rolled across the deck. Kal had only time to pull out the pistol concealed in his jacket, before she was on him. The Imperial siblings crashed into each other, sliding across the tilted deck and colliding with the gunwales on the other side. Zofiya had her brother pinned with one knee and grappled with him for the pistol. He might not have the skill she did, but he was much stronger.

Everyone else on the deck ceased to matter, as for a time, Kaleva and Zofiya were pressed against each other, as close as if they were twins in their mother’s belly. Face-to-face, the Grand Duchess wrapped her fingers around the weapon and pulled mightily. “No, no, Kal!” she screamed at him, hoping to get him to loosen his grip.

“Yes,” he hissed back, even as his greater strength began to win out. “We were never meant to be in Arkaym, Sister. The geists are coming and neither of us should be here to see them.” His eyes were wide as they stared into hers.

Suddenly she realized that he was not struggling to aim the pistol at her.

The Grand Duchess Zofiya flicked her gaze away only a moment before her brother put the barrel under his chin. All she had time for was a strangled “Kal!” and then the pistol went off. Blood and gore sprayed all over the deck and Zofiya. The bullet exploded through the top of his skull and took away any chance of his recovery.

Dimly, she heard the screaming of the Court and the shouts of her troops, but they were a very long way off. Zofiya knew if she turned back she would see Kal’s mutilated face. She wouldn’t do that.

Before anyone could reach her, she stood up, drenched in her brother’s scarlet blood. The Imperial color. Silence swallowed up the chaos, and those on the
Winter Kite
formed a circle around her. Carefully, she took off her jacket, and without looking down draped it over her brother’s body. Then Zofiya pushed aside her hair, mopping scarlet drips from her face as best she could.

She had rolled across the deck of the airship a regent, but she arose as an Empress. Zofiya could only hope that her reign would not continue as it had begun—in blood and death.

She stood there, locking gazes with all of those around her: people who had only a short while ago been enemies. It was Deacon Petav who broke the silence when he called out, “The Emperor is dead. Long live Empress Zofiya!”

Soon the cry was taken up and echoed down the airship. As she looked around, the new Empress noticed that even on the faces of the Court, who had been her brother’s only moments before, were definite looks of relief. She would bury Kal in the vault under Vermillion, and make sure he was remembered, not as the mad Emperor, but as another victim of Derodak and the Circle of Stars.

It had not been meant to be like this when she and Kal had set off from Delmaire. She thought of the moment that they’d first set foot on Arkaym soil, a bright blessed time that seemed in memory to be surrounded by golden light. As she walked forward and became Empress, she would hold on to that. It was something even these events could not tarnish.

Both brother and sister were gone now. Only Empress Zofiya remained.

For a coyote, the Fensena would have made a better sheepdog than Merrick could ever have imagined. The young Deacon might have thought Sorcha was a hard taskmaster, until he fell under the tutelage of the geistlord.

Word of the success at Waikein spread from city to town to village. Soon the outpost they had wrestled from the geists was inundated by as many people as could find their way there. An airship, a commandeered vessel from the Imperial Fleet, had even arrived within a week. It was damaged beyond the repair of anyone in Waikein, but it had been commandeered by a brave contingent of Deacons from the west, who had answered the call Sorcha had sent out from the citadel. An extra hundred Deacons put a strain on resources, but also made Merrick feel a little more confident.

Then there were the throngs of normal folk who poured into Waikein asking, pleading and sometimes demanding to be tested. Merrick snatched what sleep he could from time to time, but all of the trained Deacons found themselves working every hour they could keep their eyes open.

However, there was one problem: getting all these Deacons to Vermillion. Certainly without Sorcha they could not make use of the Wrayth portals. So Merrick thought of another woman who was just as powerful as his partner.

She did indeed come when he called.

Merrick stood on the hill just outside the city of Waikein and watched as the ships of the air appeared from among the clouds. They were very beautiful, too beautiful to be part of the world that seemed to be falling down on itself. The sharp wind from the east made him blink his eyes and draw the cloak of silver fur closer.

It seemed to be the right thing to do to wear it. With Sorcha gone, the Order needed someone to follow, and the cloak distinguished him from everyone else. He was First Presbyter now, after all. Young as he might be, he was all they had now.

“It suits you, boy,” the Fensena, who lounged at his side, commented while his golden eyes remained fixed on the approaching airships, “but those better not be tears in your eyes.”

Merrick pressed his lips together and chose not to answer. The coyote kept quiet when in earshot of other Deacons, but all of them knew what he was. It was disturbing how none of them questioned the fact that their de facto leader had a geistlord at his side. They swallowed his statement that he and Sorcha had quelled and tamed the Fensena, and it was he that had given up the information that would lead them to victory.

The world had become such a hardscrabble place that any little hope—even from a geistlord—was eagerly grasped. Merrick turned his head away from the oncoming airships and spared a glance behind him.

The Order may have grown in the weeks since Sorcha’s abduction, bulging to almost three times the size it had been in the citadel, but he wondered if it was going to be enough.

It was not the Order that Merrick’s previous Arch Abbots would have recognized—there were not enough cloaks to go around, so many had provided their own. Consequently, the group waiting below him was a variegated patterned quilt of a gathering. Their lack of proper training was the thing that still haunted him though.

Merrick’s bleak thoughts were interrupted by a sharp nip on the ends of his fingers. Merrick jerked back from the Fensena, who had drawn blood with his sharp fangs. The coyote’s gold-coin eyes were narrowed and fixed on him.

“You must not think of things you cannot have,” the beast growled. “You cannot give proper training without time—and you do not have time. What you have is what you have.”

Merrick pulled his cloak tighter with a frown. He didn’t think the coyote was inside his head, but he very much disliked the impression the beast gave that he was. “It does not seem much to take on Derodak and his Circle of Stars—let alone the Maker of Ways . . .”

The Fensena did not deign to reply, but raised his muzzle as the three airships approached. “You have transport to get where you need to, that should be enough.”

It was the
Summer Hawk
. The First Presbyter smiled; even in these dark times something as familiar as that airship lit a small fire of hope in his chest. This had been the very airship he and Sorcha had first commissioned to take them back to Vermillion. Afterward they had defeated the Murashev. He could only hope it was an omen of things to come.

Captain Revele—if it was she, still in command—maneuvered the airship down to a hundred feet off the mountaintop and secured her position with landing ropes. Finally, a sturdy, yet swinging ladder was dropped. Still, apparently someone couldn’t wait.

A person, dressed in white, slid down one of the ropes to land only a body’s length away from him. For a moment Merrick was caught completely off-guard. Zofiya had come to meet him, but he knew immediately something had changed.

She was dressed in a white jacket and Imperial scarlet trousers, with her dark hair braided up at the nape of her neck. On her left ring finger she wore a thick strap of silver, surmounted with a massive sapphire. It was the Imperial Ring he had last seen on her brother’s hand. Encompassing her forehead was a band of gold decorated with a strand of silver leaves. Each of those leaves represented a principality of Arkaym. It was not the Imperial Crown, but it might as well have been. Merrick knew the only thing this all meant.

The Grand Duchess was no more. The person standing beside him was the Empress Zofiya of Arkaym.

Merrick’s throat was suddenly dry, and his hands dropped to his side instead of wrapping around her. Automatically, he stooped into the deepest bow a Deacon could give.

“Rise, First Presbyter Chambers,” she said softly. Their eyes met and he saw with some relief that she was still herself—though there was a deep, abiding hurt hidden in there. She had said nothing of her change in status in the brief weirstone missives she had sent.

A frown darted across her Imperial brow. “I wanted to tell you myself,” she whispered, for a moment looking very vulnerable.

He swallowed before answering. “That is entirely your right, Imperial Majesty. May I ask . . .”

Zofiya looked about, and seeing that they were alone except for the silent coyote, threw herself into his arms. Suddenly she was just his love: warm, soft and hurt. She whispered the horror of it into his neck. “I had to take the throne, Merrick. Kal . . . Kal killed himself in the end. I couldn’t stop him . . .”

The feeling that she had been holding all this in for weeks was immediate.

Merrick let her hold him for a little while, but there was no time for much more. Eventually, he pulled back and wiped her tears with the sleeve of his shirt. By the time he was done, no one would have been able to tell that the new Empress had a heart.