Jade Empire Read online

  Jade Empire

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Map

  PART ONE – A CONTESTED LAND

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  PART TWO – THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART THREE – AN EMPIRE FALLS

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART FOUR – A WORLD OF GHOSTS

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Author’s note

  Copyright

  Jade Empire

  S.J.A. Turney

  PART ONE – A CONTESTED LAND

  Chapter 1

  I have always loved the dusk. It is my favourite time of day, yet it is also the most saddening. At dusk, the blistering heat of the day is done and we sit, eased and grateful for the cool breeze the sunset brings. We are no longer in peril from the heat. The time of back-breaking labour is done. The time to rest is come.

  But the sun has gone, and though the heat has gone with it, so has the light that blesses the day. And though we are no longer labouring, we now miss the camaraderie the day’s work brings. And sometimes the simple cool breeze is not enough to make the passing of the golden glow satisfactory.

  So it is with days.

  So it is with empires.

  The world of Aram, rajah of Initpur, crumbled and decayed like the great world of the Inda around him. His grandfather had predicted the great decay many years before. The Inda had been a light shining bright like a constellation across the diamond-shaped land, but they had always been too fractured, too scattered, too diverse. His grandfather had looked both east and west and seen the eventual doom of the people.

  To the west the great empire was ruled from Velutio, where one man held sway over a populace of many millions of people, each with a place in the system, each willing to fight and die for their realm. To the east lay the Jade Empire – strict and brittle, but efficient and focused. Two great powers, each the match for the other, but each ever hungry for more land and power, more resources and glory. Aram’s grandfather had looked at the old map painted on the wall of the throne room, where his beautiful, small land of Initpur shone like a facet near the top of that diamond, pressed upon from both sides by those empires. And he had predicted the great decay.

  ‘There cannot be two masters of the world, Aram,’ he had said. ‘And both of these emperors are determined to be just that. One day they will go to war, and if anyone survives, they will inherit the world. But no matter who dies and who survives, the Inda will not live to see it. We will be the first true casualty of their war.’

  ‘But why, Grandfather?’ Aram has asked earnestly – he had always been an earnest boy.

  ‘Because we lie between them, Aram. So do the horse lords across the northern mountains, but traversing the great steppe with an army would be a formidable undertaking, with little to no support or forage, and blood-maddened nomads picking at the army. No. Because the lands of the Inda are rich in food and spice and minerals, it will begin with us. If only we were as focused as they, that we might hope to defend ourselves against such a fate.’

  Aram had not realised his grandfather had had the gift of prophecy, but it seemed he did. It had begun to happen during the reign of the next rajah of Initpur, Aram’s father. It had come not from the western empire, which seemed to look inwards and was content with its river border and watching the Inda world curiously. It had come from the Jade Empire.

  It began as raids. Officially, in that officious eastern realm, it was called ‘righteous forage’, as if simple banditry could ever be righteous. The first Inda ruler to experience the ‘foragers’ took offence. He was only a minor rajah of one of the remote border lands, with a royal guard of less than a hundred warriors at his command, but the Jade Empire’s forage party was half that. He sent out his men and expelled the enemy from his land. His world lasted twelve more days. His people were still celebrating their victory when the forces of the Jade Emperor came for him. They poured across the border in their thousands. And in three days an entire Inda kingdom was gone. Utterly gone. The people were killed and burned and buried in pits, be they high-born or low, worker or scribe, woman or child. The animals were corralled, the crops gathered and the stores emptied, all of it loaded into carts and taken back east. Then the buildings of the kingdom, even the palace, were systematically ground into dust. Nothing remained to mark the passing of that poor, deluded, defiant rajah except the temple. They left just the temple and its blind priest. No one, even the Jade Empire, was willing to risk angering a god.

  ‘Why can we not create a grand army and fight them?’ Aram had asked his father when the news came in.

  ‘The Jade Emperor’s forces are like the sea, Aram,’ his father said sadly. ‘Vast and unchainable, while the rajahs of the Inda are like beautiful, colourful fish. How can fish hold back the sea?’

  ‘I do not understand, Father.’

  ‘Do you know what “Inda” means, Aram?’

  Aram shook his head in confusion.

  ‘In the old language of our people, in the days when the gods led the way, “Inda” was the word for “people”. We are not an empire, you see. We are just “the people”. And the lands of the Inda are just the lands of the people. There are many rajahs, major and minor, but we are no more capable of becoming one great force than a field of peacocks can become one giant peacock. No man can bring the Inda together, and that is an essential part of who we are. It is also the cause of our doom, as your grandfather understood.’

  Aram nodded. He understood too. It saddened him, but he understood.

  The years passed and things changed, but only for the worse. Rajahs across the north began to draw their people into their fortresses when Jade Empire forage parties were spotted in the area. The invaders were left free to ravage the land. Then, in a fatally short-sighted move, one minor rajah offered to pay the forage party to spare his realm. They accepted the bribe with relish, and the Inda lord smiled with relief. Until they came back the next year and the price rose.

  The same offer was made to other rajahs. It was called tribute, though that was just a hollow word that masked the truth: extortion. Rajahs began to pay whatever they could, and often more than they could, to save themselves, their lands and their people, from the Jade Empire. And so began the tribute system that gradually weakened and destroyed what strength the Inda could claim.

  Aram’s father died in the autumn one year with a satisfied smile on his face. Aram couldn’t help but resent that, as though his father had deliberately died while still relatively young, so that he no longer had to shoulder the burden and could pass it to Aram. And pass on that burden he did.

  Aram began to deal with the Jade Empire just as his father had. When they came, in the autumn, he had gathered together the anticipated value of foodstuffs, coin, metals and livestock. They came, they examined his offerings, and they left with them. Not always with all of them. Aram was careful to overproduce, because the Jade Empire was nothing if not precise and rule-bound. If they had stipulated nine sacks of grain, and Aram had produced eleven, they would take the nine and leave the rest. But woe betide those rajahs who fell short of their quota. There were such stories as made the blood
run cold; the Jade Empire was inventive in its punishments.

  The seasons turned, and Aram watched his grandfather’s predicted ‘great decay’ becoming a reality. Initpur had never been a great kingdom, and was relatively poor, and the gradual rapine of the land was driving the people into utter poverty.

  Aram became a greybeard early, his sons growing into men young. They watched with dismay as their father had the palace stripped of its gold ornamentation and had it melted down and recast as ingots for the tribute. Anything of value was sold or repurposed. Initpur became Init-poor.

  Thus it was that the day Aram’s heart began to die, he was standing in a room devoid of wealth and grandeur. A world of faded opulence. Much of the room’s paint had flaked away and had not been replaced. There were threadbare patches in the rich carpets. The tables showed signs of wear, were chipped and scratched and poor. The statues of the gods had been the last to go, melted down in a moment of dreadful impiety because, as the poor rajah had said to his sons, he needed to protect his people more than to honour the gods.

  The forage party entered the hall, straight-backed and gleaming in shining black and steel. Their leader wore an ornate helmet and had gauntlets with articulated fingers, a cloak of shimmering grey flicking behind him as he moved. He had twenty men with him, and a gang of slaves with the carts who had remained in the courtyard outside, loading the various goods. In the hall was the chest of coins and ingots and the manifest. Aram nodded at his vizier, who passed the list across to the imperial commander.

  The officer peered at the paper, his eyes burning like white phosphor through the small holes in his face mask. He made an unimpressed sound, thrust the records back at the vizier and ripped off his helmet, passing it to one of his men. He was a tall and elegant man with sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin that reminded Aram of one of the many devils he had seen in old books.

  ‘You are short.’

  Aram had been prepared. He’d known what was coming.

  ‘It has been a poor harvest, and the copper in the Ushan valley is exhausted. There is nothing we can gather. But I have two offers for you. Either a promissory document for your records to provide the shortfall during the next tribute, or the three elephants we have used in the copper valley. They are still young and strong and can be put to work. They would make a more than adequate replacement for the shortfall, I’m sure.’

  The officer shook his head. ‘That is not in my orders. I am required to return with the requisite supplies or their value in certain other goods. There is no mention of promises or elephants. My men will search your palace and villages and remove anything that fits our list.’

  Aram stood for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his fists. The old anger over the decline of his world was settling into him, but he caught sight of his three sons, standing at the side of the hall, along with his wife, and the realisation that he was helpless pervaded him. He nodded.

  For more than an hour, the forage party ransacked Aram’s world, seeking out anything they could use to fill the shortfall. Aram watched as even items of purely sentimental value were ransacked, their monetary value irrelevant when placed against the ledger of the Jade Empire. His wife’s wedding gifts. His own childhood mementoes. Everything of value. Everything of no value. Everything. It brought tears to Aram’s eyes, but he would not cry. He would not cry, for the boys were watching. There was no helping any of this, and resistance would mean nought but disaster, so the boys must not be driven to intervene. But his wife’s wedding gifts, for the love of the six sacred wonders? Aram stood silent, proud, as his world was torn apart.

  Finally, under the steady gaze of the rajah and his council and family, the imperial officer and his men reconvened, carrying in a collection of goods. Aram saw with dismay the last few valuables he owned in the world being hoarded by the enemy. His grandfather’s ring. The silver statue of the god of healing that had saved his ancestor from the plague that had slighted half the world at that time. A sword that had belonged to Jirish, the slayer of demons. His son’s birth gift, a peacock made of jade and gold. Four things only. They had been well hidden.

  ‘This is still not enough,’ the officer announced. ‘What else have you hidden away?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Aram said in a broken voice. What could he possibly have hidden that they had not ripped from him?

  ‘Then there is only one resource left we can take. The value will be made up in slaves. Fourteen slaves will be required, though if they are of inherent value, the figures are negotiable.’

  ‘Slaves?’ spat the eldest boy, Jai. Aram flashed him a warning look, but was shocked at the fire in his son’s eyes. Gods, no! Had he not tried to set an example of passive resistance to stop this very possibility?

  ‘A resource is a resource,’ the imperial officer remarked to the eleven-year-old in an offhand tone. He turned back to Aram. ‘In the interest of a continued beneficial relationship, I will allow you to select said slaves yourself and deliver them to the courtyard for transport.’

  Jai had made his move before anyone realised.

  The imperial troops were scattered, some outside with the carts, some with the box of impounded goods, others standing in watchful positions around the room. Aram was too far away to intervene as Jai leapt forward, ripping a short, curved knife from his belt. He lunged with it, aimed at the spine of the officer.

  Always fast, Jai, always active, curse it.

  But he was eleven, and not as quick as he thought. And an officer in the Jade Empire does not reach his position through political manoeuvres, but through war. By the time Jai was a pace away from sinking the blade into armoured flesh the officer had spun, an arm lancing out. He grasped Jai’s knife arm by the wrist and squeezed, those articulated plated fingers clenching.

  There was a crack. By some miracle of fortitude, Jai did not drop the knife, but as the officer let go, his arm dropped to his side, trembling.

  ‘Your boy has the stink of defiance.’

  ‘He is young, with the impetuousness of his years. He will cause you no further trouble. Jai – back to your brothers.’

  But Jai was not moving. He was staring balefully at the imperial officer, his gaze carrying two generations of hate. Gods, no, Jai…

  ‘I think you are mistaken,’ the officer said, meeting that gaze with impassive superiority. ‘The boy knows exactly what he is doing. And he has fire in his heart, this one. He knows what the likely consequences will be and yet he continues to defy us, and to ignore the commands of his father. He will always cause trouble until he learns discipline. I think he would not last a day in the Jade Empire.’

  Aram’s gaze lifted to the rest of his family. His wife, Alesha, wore a horrified mask, remaining still as a statue. Beside her, the youngest boy, Ravi, stood with a strangely blank face, but his stance was protective. The middle boy, Dev, looked as angry as Jai, and was shaking gently. Aram worried that his second son was about to join the one-man insurrection.

  ‘Jai! Stand down.’

  But still Jai did not move. And Dev looked as though he might leap forward at any moment to join him. Aram’s boys. So proud. So devoted. So… foolish.

  There was a tense silence. Jai struck again, but this time much differently. He waited for the officer to turn his face away, tossed the knife from his broken hand to his good one and leapt. Still the officer was far too swift. An armoured gauntlet knocked the blade aside and then reached out, grasping Jai by the neck. For just a moment, he squeezed, compressing the major veins and the windpipe, enough to cause Jai’s eyes to bulge and his blood to thunder as his lungs burned hot for desperate breath. Then he relaxed his grip, allowing both blood and air to flow, though he did not let go of the boy’s neck.

  Dev stepped a pace forward and their father’s hand rose sharply. ‘Stay where you are, boy.’ Then, to the officer: ‘Please, let my son go. I will discipline him.’ Please. Please let him go. He is just a boy.

  The officer shook his head slowly. ‘I think not. There
is use for him. He has strength and cunning, despite his youth. But he is defiant and wild. Time in the imperial academies will either knock out the insolence and turn him into an impressive specimen, or it will simply kill him. The choice will be his. Your son will be one of the slaves.’

  ‘No!’

  The shriek came from his mother, who collapsed to her knees, Ravi hugging her tight. The fire in Dev’s eyes burned a little brighter, and Aram realised two things: he had lost a son today, and if he did not restrain Dev, he would lose two. Half a heart torn from his chest. He could not lose the other…

  ‘Dev. Look to your mother.’

  That did it. The sudden realisation that she was on the floor, weeping, shook the urge to act from the middle son, and he joined his younger brother in comforting her. Satisfied that the rest of his family were safe, Aram could concentrate on his eldest son and heir. He looked intently at the officer.

  ‘What can I offer you to leave my son here?’ Desperation now. A coin? A prayer? An arm?

  ‘Nothing,’ the man replied in his unadorned, offhand manner. ‘I will take this boy and he will be made or broken in the academy. But I am not an unmerciful man. He is of value to both you and your kingdom, and counts for more than a common slave. I will class him to the value of four slaves. You may choose the other ten and assemble them in the courtyard.’

  ‘Jai,’ Aram said, hoarse, his breaking heart audible in his voice.

  His pride and joy straightened. ‘I have been given the opportunity to save four of our people, Father, and that is a noble thing.’

  Aram cried, then, in front of his court and the enemy. He could not have held it back. The officer returned to the courtyard with his men. The vizier went to arrange the requisite slaves, and Aram managed a brief and hollow farewell to his eldest boy before Jai was marched from the room with his head high. He then consoled the rest of his family.

  The forage party left that afternoon, moving on to another rajah before eventually returning to the Jade Empire. Once the carts had rolled out through the palace gate, Aram standing in the doorway and watching them take his son, Dev appeared silently next to him.