The Sword Chronicles: Child of the Empire Read online

  Again, Samira felt her jaw drop. She had never been in a royal court, but she felt fairly certain this was not normal protocol for the ruler of the world and his right hand.

  Malal caught her eye. He smiled at her confusion, and suddenly he seemed even younger. A boy showing off a prized toy, or taking pride in a new trick he has learned. "My Chancellor is regent over the Empire. I take complete control in two more Turns. But until then he is the real head. Still, he lets me make the occasional decision, for practice."

  "His Lordship is too modest." The Chancellor looked at Samira. "When his family was killed, the Empire fell to me. The Emperor was but a boy, so I have ruled and tried my best to teach him to be a better ruler than I." He again ran fingers through the Emperor's hair. "He is already wise, already there. We wait only on the law for him to complete his rise to the throne."

  Affection shone in the Malal's eyes, a look so unfiltered and sincere that Samira felt uncomfortable. She didn't know how to deal with it. Didn't know how to deal with all these people who were….

  She didn't understand what they were. They were not Dogs, fighting over scraps of rotten food until called upon to murder one another. They were not trainers or assistants.

  People. They're people.

  She wondered if everyone was this way. Something inside her – something deep in her heart, nearly cut away by her years in the kennels – cried out with the hope that it was so.

  The door opened. Not the guard this time, it was a short, fat woman dressed in a simple white blouse and black pants. Still, even that seemed finery for the simple fact that it was clean.

  The woman bowed. "You called, Lord?" she said.

  Malal sat up a bit straighter in his chair, and the Chancellor took a noticeable step away from the Emperor.

  So they are formal with some people.

  But not with me.

  Again, the strange sensation of being included spread through her. The warmth of belonging. She did not understand it, but she hungered for more.

  "Please approach," said the Emperor. The woman bowed again, then came to him. Malal looked at Samira as she walked toward them. "I would like you to see something."

  Samira felt something touch her shoulder. Surprised, she jumped back with a snarl. "Don't worry," said Malal. Samira realized that the fat woman had fallen back a step; it had been her hand that had fallen on Samira's shoulder. "She is an Eye. She can show you things she has seen, but she has to touch you."

  Samira stayed in a half-crouch, her body singing from the unexpected contact. She understood what the Emperor was saying, but her mind couldn't seem to calm her body.

  "Samira," said Armor. His voice was low, calm. That strong voice she was already starting to trust. "Samira, it is all right." He looked at the woman – the Eye. "Can you take us both?"

  She nodded, though she looked a bit afraid. Like Samira was a wounded animal, and one she didn't know whether to nurse to health or kill or simply abandon.

  Armor reached for Samira. He moved slowly, and she barely flinched when he took her hand in his. His hand was large and callused. Hard from years of labor, probably swinging swords and bearing shields in defense of the Empire. It felt solid, and comforting.

  He looked at the Eye. "We are ready," he said. And, saying it, he somehow made it true. Samira's body relaxed. She stood straight again.

  The Eye took a few small, hesitant steps toward them. She reached out and touched Samira's shoulder, one of her fingers brushing the bare flesh beyond the neckline of her gray robe.

  "I See," whispered the woman.

  And Samira's world exploded.

  14

  Everything dissolved into white, a white so bright it had sound, it had taste, it was something she could feel.

  Then the white disappeared, and suddenly she saw….

  Herself.

  She was standing in a room. Holding hands with Armor, the Eye touching her shoulder. The Emperor and Chancellor watching from nearby.

  She rose. High, higher, higher. She saw the ceiling rushing at her, cried out.

  "It's all right." The whisper came from beside and below her at once. From the Armor who was holding her hand on the floor, and also the one that she realized was holding her hand beside her, here in midair.

  She also saw that the Eye was floating up with them. Eyes closed, lips moving but no sound coming from her mouth.

  "She is taking us to See," said Armor. "But we are really in the room, and nothing you See can touch you or harm you."

  The ceiling flew at them. Passed through them. Darkness.

  Then light again.

  She was outside. Outside, with Armor on one side and the Eye on another. Flying up, up, up. She was above a huge building. No, not a single building. A castle. So large it dwarfed even the largest of the buildings she had seen on her drive with Devar. A huge central area, broken up by sets of large buildings set at regular intervals within: stables, barracks, other buildings whose purposes she could only guess at. There were turrets and flanking towers with holes where bowmen or riflemen could fire on invaders.

  At the very center: the palace proper. Beautiful, of the most exquisite workmanship she had ever seen. White granite walls, flecked with some mineral that made the whole building glimmer in the sun. Turrets and flanking towers on each corner that made the palace itself into a miniature keep that could stand as a secondary defense should invaders breach the outer walls.

  Surrounding the castle was a parapet wall with guards walking patrol, and outside the whole of it, a deep moat circled the place. No water in the moat, but spires were set in the deep pit, gleaming and dangerous.

  Around the outside of the moat, surrounding the entirety of the small city that was the palace and the castle that held it… a long line of twenty-foot-tall spikes, as thick as a man's arm. They seemed to serve no purpose, but just looking at them gave her a feeling of dread. They seemed to be not only outside the castle, but apart from it. As though the castle had been built by one person, these things placed here by some other group – alien and unfriendly.

  Then she – and the others – continued to climb. She could see country for miles around: large estates laid out in neat squares. Waving fields of grains, orchards laid out in perfect lines of trees. Beyond that, in the distance, a city that she guessed was where the bazaar had been. Where the kennels were.

  She blinked. And now she was in another place. A new city. Floating just above a well-paved road and then zooming down it so fast she expected to feel her hair blowing in the wind. But it didn't – she wasn't really here.

  "This is Center's Edge," whispered Armor. "Quite beautiful, though I wouldn't recommend doing this in the flesh."

  "Doing wha – aaaah!" Samira's question dissolved into a scream as the road abruptly ended. It just dropped off to nothing, and past the nothing… air. The road became a dropoff that went down a thousand feet, sheer rock cliffs ringed with shifting clouds at the bottom.

  Even though Samira knew she wasn't here, wasn't in any danger, she still felt sick. Vertigo gripped her, and it was only Armor's hand in hers that kept her from pitching to the side.

  "This is the northern edge of Center Mountain," said Armor. He pointed with his free hand, and she saw a huge mountain across a wide gap. "That's Strength, where the armies train." He sighed. "I gave that up to serve as Blessed."

  She saw something floating between the two mountains. It looked like a round bag bound in netting with some kind of carriage slung beneath it. "What's that?" she said, pointing.

  Armor looked. "An air-car. One Push is enough to enchant a bullet. If you have a Thread bind several of them together, they have the power to enchant something much larger. That balloon carries several hundred people between Strength and Center Mountain at a time. There is also a skybridge, but the air-cars are faster. They're mostly used by the rich, government officials, and messengers."

  Armor looked at the Eye. "Take us to Nasius," he said.

  The world dissol
ved into that spray of touch/taste/sound that was the Eye's power.

  When it faded, Samira gasped.

  They had landed in a place she could only call death.

  She could tell it had once been a village, but only because of the still-smoking shells of several huts. The rest were piles of charred sticks, whitened to ash in many places. The crops around the village were a ruin, torn to pieces and with only the occasional stalk of corn standing at an odd angle, as though leaning in shock over what had happened to its companions.

  There was a pile in the center of the village. This one was not charred wood, not burning thatch. This one was bodies. The corpses of the villagers – men, women, and children – heaped in an ignominious mass atop the remains of what looked like it might once have been a church.

  Samira cried out. She had seen death – the fights came weekly, sometimes more, in the kennels – but nothing like this. There was the ferocity of battle, then there was the slaughter of innocents in a massacre. This was the latter.

  It made her blood boil. Made something in her cry out for vengeance. To die as a Dog had at least some honor, if only the lowest kind. This was purest evil.

  "This is why the Blessed Ones exist," said Armor. His voice was hushed. "The Empire stretches across the five mountains, but there are enemies. Enemies who also have power, and who hide among us. They sack villages, they destroy our people."

  "Why?" she whispered.

  He shook his head. Sounded tired. "Why does anyone do such a thing? For money. For profit. For power. For the illusion that we are more than our selves, our minds and bodies and souls." He looked at her. His hand clenched on hers. Not painfully, just enough that she knew he spoke fervently; spoke from his soul. "You have a Gift, Samira. I do not know the extent of it yet, but I would like to find out. I would like to discover it with you, and use it to stop…." He nodded at the carnage in the center of the once-village. "Things like this. To put an end to the assassination attempts that come daily to the Emperor to whom I swore an oath of loyalty." His eyes bore deep into hers. Gray eyes, the eyes of a storm, the eyes of a good man who believed his cause. "Will you join me?"

  And then, before Samira could answer, the Eye screamed in pain and the world turned red and Samira found herself back in the library.

  The Eye was dead. That was the first thing she saw. The fat woman was crumpled in a pool of her own blood, the eyes that had once held power now open and staring into nothing. A dagger jutted from her back.

  "Protect the Emperor!" shouted Armor. He clapped his hands, and a sound like thunder rolled through the room. He seemed to grow an inch in every direction, and his skin took on a metallic tint.

  Samira didn't think. She yanked the knife from the Eye's back with her left hand, with her right she pulled the sword from the scabbard at Armor's side. He moved a hair slower than she did, grabbing for the sword but slapping only empty leather.

  Then she had only space in her mind for the men flowing into the room.

  A dozen. More. All dressed in finery that she presumed to be the castle livery. The first ten were armed with swords and knives, the last two bearing guns as well. She saw the bodies of the two guards laying at the open door, blades bright and spears clean – whatever had happened, it had taken them utterly by surprise.

  She realized that the same power she had felt when holding the knife in the arena now flooded her when she held this knife, as well as Armor's sword. She could use them, she knew, and use them well.

  One of the gunners pointed his weapon and fired at the Emperor, but Armor managed to jump in the path of the bullet. There was a loud pink and Samira felt something fly past her as the bit of metal, enchanted by a Push to go straight once its chamber was opened in the gun, hit Armor and then ricocheted.

  She had a split-second of amazement. An instant to wonder what, if anything, could pierce his skin.

  Then the first sword came swinging at her.

  15

  She ducked under the swing. Slashed. The man fell. Armor charged at the same time. Swung a huge fist. The man he aimed at ducked away, but the hit still managed to connect with his shoulder and he screamed as a fist that felt like a steel hammer slammed down on him. Half his body crumpled in on itself. He fell and was still.

  Two swordsmen faced Samira, swinging their blades in a coordinated attack. She parried the blows with her knife and sword, then saw the second gunman raise his gun to fire at the Emperor.

  She threw her knife. It flew through the air and knocked the gunman's aim off in the instant he pulled the trigger. He swiveled just enough that the shot went wide – instead of hitting the Emperor, he shot one of the other assassins and that man fell. Then so did the gunman as well as the knife bounced off the metal of his gun and planted itself in his neck, just below the jaw.

  Samira saw Armor plow down two more gunmen, ramming them with head and fist, crashing through to the remaining gunman, leaving her as the only defense between the remaining swordsmen and the Emperor.

  She whirled, her sword moving so fast it cut the very sunlight, slicing it into individual rays that blinded the two swordsmen in front of her. She cut one across the throat, then buried her sword in the other's chest, angling up under his breastbone and piercing his heart. He fell with her sword still in his body, so she plucked his sword from his hand as he toppled.

  The same electricity. The same power.

  I can kill with any weapon.

  She marveled for the time it took to turn and kill another man. Armor hit a swordsman – no, she saw, this one was a woman, though her hair was cut short like that of a man – over the head, and there was a crack of bone and another assassin fell dead.

  Something tingled. The same part of her mind that told her how to swing, when to stab. The part of her mind that was telling her now that something was wrong.

  Danger! Danger!

  She fell to the floor. Rolled. She heard the click of a gun, the whine of a bullet firing. Felt the hot sting of it as it passed by so close it burned her neck.

  Someone grunted behind her, and another swordsman fell, killed by his own fellow.

  But where had the shot come from? She had lost sight of the second gunman, the still-living one, and now she couldn't find him anywhere.

  "He's a Fade!" roared Armor. He was wrestling under the weight of two of the three remaining – visible – swordsmen, who were stabbing him ineffectually with their swords and daggers, faces curling in greater and greater desperation. "You can't see him unless you look directly at him!" One of the men on his back plunged a knife directly into his eye.

  The knife broke in his hands.

  Armor roared. Grabbed for the man, but the man kept ducking away, all the while stuck to the warrior's back.

  The other swordsman rushed Samira, and she knew in that instant that he was less interested in killing her than in giving the now-invisible gunman a chance to kill the Emperor.

  She had an armed foe rushing.

  Armor had been driven to the floor by the two men who were now clearly just trying to keep him busy rather than do him any damage.

  And the gunman was going to kill the Emperor.

  16

  She blocked the thrust of the swordsman who faced her. He was grizzled, with eyes that were flinty and cold. Experienced and the most expert foe she had yet faced: it took two moves for her to kill him.

  She spun in a circle, trusting that Armor could take care of himself – and the two men he was wrestling with.

  She concentrated on searching for the last man.

  He hadn't fired his gun, so that meant he was either out of bullets, or was waiting for a perfect shot. If the former, he was going to be moving toward the Emperor with a blade. If the latter, that meant she was blocking his shot. Either way, he would be on the move, and if she had to look directly at him to see him then she suspected his movement would keep the assassin safely out of sight.

  Moving….

  She closed her eyes. And it was not as
if the world disappeared. Rather, everything turned into boxes in her mind.

  One box: Armor. Grunting, followed by the crack of an assassin's neck. The panic-breaths of the other assassin.

  One box: The Emperor, breathing hard, but not moving. A bare whisper of flesh on velvet as he shifted in his chair. The Chancellor huddled near him and whispering, "It will be all right. We will save you." Over and over, like a prayer that might gain either of them a single breath of life.

  She heard it all, heard it so loudly and clearly that she felt she could have stepped to any of them and touched their hands, their faces, could have fought them with eyes closed and won.

  And there was one other box: the great box of the room itself. A silent box, once she took away the sounds of the others. A box that held only her and….

  She spun. Leaped.

  The Emperor screamed. The Chancellor moved to block her swordthrust.

  She impaled the Chancellor.

  The Chancellor gasped, his face turning white as pain seized him so tightly it allowed for nothing – not even speech, not even air – to escape its grasp. The Emperor screamed.

  "What have you done? What have you done?"

  There was a final, sickening crunch. Samira heard Armor get to his feet. Heard his hands clap and saw him out of the corner of her eye – smaller than he had been only a moment ago, diminished to his "normal" size.

  The Emperor was still screaming. "Stop her, Armor. Stop the girl, she's trying to kill the Chancellor, stop –"

  Armor put out a hand. So did the Chancellor. Both lay hands on the boy's arms, quieting him.

  "She… she… saved you," managed the Chancellor.

  Samira yanked her sword from the Chancellor's shoulder. A wound she somehow knew would not be fatal, just as she knew that all the other blows he had dealt would be.