The Serpent and the Shattered Sword, page 29
Zahra’s voice broke the stillness: “The pale moon rises over the blade so broken.” Surprise flickered, then a slow nod passed among them. The soldiers took Rinley’s limp weight without hesitation.
“Give me a moment to myself, would you?” she asked. “Then follow. My reunion is more important than this.”
Semera parted the guards, entering the camp along the dirt road as she made her way toward the largest fire and the circle of gray-green tents that formed a protective barrier for the rebel officers in the encampment’s center.
Her presence, one unexpected, yet welcome, drew in many soldiers eager to discern the identity of the serpent-eyed specter who walked through their midst. As she reached the fireside, only one rose to greet her.
“You’re the one he sent?” the tall ehlferi woman asked. Her adornment with leather sashes and silver accents helped her stand out from the rest. Trophies, Semera believed, that were taken from the conquered city behind her.
“I am.”
“Good. I have what was promised. Wait here.”
The ehlf retreated into a tent beside the fire, dragging the familiar, tired body of Zahra’s sister from beneath its canvas. It took a moment for Alira to blink away the sand in her eyes, having been roused from slumber. It took a few seconds longer to comprehend the reality of who stood before her.
With a coy smile as Alira looked to both the demoness and the commander, Semera unleashed her barbed words upon unready ears. “The Imperator sends his regards.”
It was in the blink of an eye that Semera lifted her hands to defend herself, but found no need for a block or parry. Alira was restrained by a swelling throng of soldiers, who rushed forward at the snap of their commander’s fingers.
“Still so full of fire, I see,” Semera chided, batting her eyes at her sister. Most peculiar, amongst the many things she’d experienced since coming to the east, was finding her sister to be unarmed. Evidence that she was taken with no form of struggle. “I thought they’d have long broken you by now. I guess you’re losing your touch, Ivonne.”
“I was going to do it to save my sister, but now, it’s for me.” Alira hollered, lashing out against the strength of the guards holding her back. “You’ll die for what you’ve done!”
“And who’s going to offer me that death? You?” Semera couldn’t help but double over at the thought of an action so insulting. “Please, you tried that once, and look where it got you: restrained in the arms of rebels who, I’m assuming, have led you to believe you’re fighting the good fight, huh? That somehow you’re going to make a difference.”
“How...how are you still alive? We were rid of you...The Eternal Flame...Once and for all, you were no longer to be a blight on this world.”
“The darkness, my pretty,” she replied, clearing the dirt from under her nails. She had no desire to take part in the conversation. “You don’t realize the infinity that waits opposite the veil. Only the light is finite, needing to sustain itself. It may hold back the darkness, but it can never destroy it entirely. And so, it broods, and waits, and schemes, for the time when the light shall fade and it may retake what belongs to it.” She paused, relishing the hurt of her own words. “As I did. I raced so far into the endless night that no light could touch me. As I watched it go–as it always does–so too did I seize the moment of my return. Now, she’s mine. Again.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Alira told her, gnashing her teeth, mouth frothing, and her cheeks flushed with crimson. “You, and Vanir. Tell him to shove his regards up his–”
Semera lifted a finger to Alira’s lips, commanding her silence before the queen could break from her demonstrated lady of the court personality. Uttering a profanity for the entire camp to hear. “Oh, but you’re mistaken, my dear, sweet sister. His regards weren’t meant for you.”
ALIRA’S HEART DROPPED through her feet as her eyes drifted over her shoulder. She stared at Ivonne, who placed her hand on Semera’s shoulder. “That’s...”
“Impossible?” Ivo asked, capturing the entirety of Alira’s attention as she struggled in the grip of the soldiers at her shoulders, who wouldn’t let her look away. “Or improbable?”
“He told me he would tell you this was coming,” Semera told her, folding her arms to rest her chin against a welcome palm. “The night you were together in Théabourg, after your council, when he found you atop the cliff. Alone. Do you remember what it was he said?”
The thoughts in her head tumbled over one another, unable to bring one to the fore to answer, while the others jockeyed for position.
“I know it because that’s what I was told. This is my part of the grand plan,” Semera returned, cutting off her sister’s chance to speak. “I believe he told you, and correct me if I’m wrong–though the Imperator never is, ‘I see the sword has not yet shattered.’”
The line was true, and Alira hadn’t seen it coming. His words weren’t describing the breaking of Evenglacia’s seal, but the movement itself.
“He told me, before he sent us forth in Estrada, what you were going to do. The Eternal Flame, a failed ritual, but one well worth the attempt. For that, I applaud you.” Semera lifted her hands and began a slow clap in mockery.
“But, how...how did you know what was coming?”
Alira stuttered, stumbling over the words expelled from her lips like venomous vomit. How was it possible that their plan was known before they set out? Semera played her role. Alira had her suspicions, but hadn’t known until the moment her hands were released in Clerracia that the demoness had never left at all.
“Eyes and ears are everywhere,” Semera replied, standing beside Alira. “Trust is but a concept rooted in the belief that fallacy does not exist. Do you trust the others, Alira? Would any of them have had reason to betray you?”
“Do not poison my thoughts with lies.”
“Lies? You still don’t believe me? After finding me here, in council, arm in arm with the Commander of the Shattered Sword. Despite that, all of that, you do not see it. He promised never to lie to you, Alira,” she paused. “There hasn’t been a single instance when that wasn’t true, and still you don’t believe him. We’ve been ahead of you from the beginning, and it will be until the end. It’s time to lay your sword at the feet of the Imperator and beg his forgiveness.”
Semera padded before her sister. Though her intent, to Alira, was born of pure mockery, there was a silent pleading behind her eyes to see reason.
“He waits to offer you forgiveness,” she told Alira. “And to move forward as allies.”
How can it be? A charlatan, among those I trusted...the four who will stand with me to...one of them is false...
The fluttering of Alira’s eyes betrayed her inner council, and Semera stood idle, allowing her to process the revelation, if only to let her mind run wild with its drawing of conclusions.
Teora...no, not after what I did for her. She wouldn’t. And Flynn, I stood with him atop the world and found him a place among his people.
It was only then her mind turned to darker matters: the one who abandoned her on the Heaven’s Fall. He’d allowed her to feel the anguish of watching her Guard Captain’s head roll from the blade of an ax before he intervened.
The man who sent her north, alone, and hadn’t sent a single solitary letter to her in two years. And last, the boy who stabbed her in the heart, and twisted the blade as he sent the woman she held dear from her sight to protect himself.
Emile...but why?
“I see we’re getting through to her,” Ivonne said, ordering Alira’s restraints to be released, allowing her to fall to the ground. She hammered the dirt beneath her with a fist, unable to believe his betrayal.
“And slowly, but intentionally, does it unravel,” Semera said, kneeling next to Alira and offering a hand in condolence, one that was rejected as it shot back away. “You can’t save this world, Alira, but you can bring down its false prophet. You take counsel and fight with those who call themselves your allies, and yet only those you deem an enemy would love you unconditionally. But you must choose.”
Semera waved the guards aside, dragging Rinley’s limp body across the shadowed ground. She slipped it behind a cluster of rocks, keeping it out of view. Up ahead, Alira’s gaze wavered, her breaths coming shallow, her fingers curling as if to grasp at nothing. The glint of steel in the distance caught her eye—and a pang of recognition tightened her chest—but Semera’s shadow still shielded the scene, holding back the moment that would shatter her.
“We needn’t be allies until the end,” Semera told her. “Only after we’ve seen the end of Evenglacia. Then, when there’s nothing left between us, can we have our war.”
She dried the tears in her eyes, sinking back onto the comfort of bent knees as her gaze met that of Semera and Ivonne. Understanding there was no going back, Alira’s head nodded in agreement as she raised a hand of her own to the demoness’.
“All shall fall,” Alira said. Her teary-eyed gaze turned to anger as she stared upward.
Ivonne held a hand above her head, knuckles popping and cracking as her fingers closed into a tight fist. From the reeds surrounding the camp came the rustle of grass, and the unmistakable gurgle of slit throats.
“You’re powerful, Alira,” Ivonne said, helping her back to her feet. “But I couldn’t tell you anything before I was certain you’d listen.” She took a seat beside her captive, flanking her left side with Semera at the other. “Now, I believe you’re ready to hear it.”
“To hear what?” Alira asked, her voice a whimper.
“The truth,” Semera said. “About everything.”
Chapter XV
Cloak and Dagger
JUST AS HE’D hoped, they crossed the isle’s southern bridge and entered Vilmonde without drawing attention, though glances followed them. Flynn held the reins at the front of the horse-drawn cart, Emile beside him, and Teora hidden in the towed cart behind.
Their passage had been secured the night before, at the cost of more than a pouch of golden Til. Emile wore tattered black robes over armor and a long-snouted mask with only two eye reliefs, a disguise borrowed from a plague-era apothecary but now signaling death’s herald rather than healing. Secrecy was paramount. By his reckoning, the Council of the Three Houses would already be in session.
Flynn tipped his mask forward, words muffled behind the ceramic shield. “Smart to come under a veil, but even so...” He avoided the watching crowd along the cart tracks. “We’re still a far cry from blending in.”
Emile’s glare caught the Périzienne soldiers in blue, welcomed back months earlier to Vilmonde amid citizen backlash. Ever the strategist, he weighed the politics against the immediate need for secrecy.
“It doesn’t scare them enough,” the king replied, rattling around in his seat as the smooth stone over the bridge met the uneven cobbles of the markets. “The records say the only good thing to come out of the plague was the thinning of the populace. It’s hard to imagine how the loss of life would benefit the city. But as hard as it is to accept, it did.”
“How so?”
“Vilmonde modernized after years of war and pointless suffering. The four kingdoms ultimately merged into one, working together as a unit. Vilmonde, and Périzieu. Elysées, and Chantilles. My great-grandfather, generations back, was the first king of the Unified Realm of Talliers.”
“Ah,” Flynn told him, snapping the reins of the horse to keep it moving through the crowd. “Even three hundred years after the founding of their settlement at Théabourg.”
Emile nodded. “The only cooperation came during northern expansion—colonizing lands deemed uninhabited. Not curiosity at all, but spoils. Devastating for the northern populace; their survivors were driven into Lochlannon.”
Opposite the lower market district was the harbor, and with it came the yammering and hollering of sailors, fishermen, and civilians trying to get the barter prices for their morning’s catch. As beautiful as the city was, with its idyllic gardens and kept-clean streets in the winding districts above, Vilmonde paid a mourner’s wages in the gutter. Though the people far below the castle often hadn’t two coppers to buy a pot to piss in, they were the most passionate and patriotic among his populace, and he never forgot their love.
Nor their sacrifice in his name.
“Can we get moving?” the bemoaned lump hidden beneath a pile of blankets and old rugs yammered from the back of the cart. “All this horse tack and antique shag makes it smell like the death of some Tallieri fella’s arse.” Teora poked out from beneath the cover, enough to reveal her eyes, and the pieces of white cotton shoved into her nose, with a slight pale-green tinge to her upper cheeks.
“Good news then,” Flynn told her, turning backward with his mask tipped up once again. “We’re here, so it can’t get any worse for you, Princess.”
“I don’t know where you pulled that from,” she told him, shooting a scolding finger out, away from the palm covering her mouth. “But drop it! Do I look like some kind of southern princess to you? No, I don’t, do I? Well, I’m only one of those things, but still.”
“Funny,” Flynn told her, “I didn’t know you were a southerner. Learn something new every day, I suppose.”
Through his back, Emile felt the cart jerk as Teora tried her best to throw the blankets off herself and choke the breath from her companion. Only when she was close enough for her breath to catch against his cheek did Emile reach back with an open hand and shove her back down in the cart.
“Knock it off,” he demanded. “We’re doing our best not to draw attention. I don’t want to hear another word until we hit the upper levels.”
“Tell him,” Teora rebutted, “he st–”
“Not. Another. Word,” Emile told her, holding a solitary finger to his lips, begging for her silence.
“That means shut up, Teora.”
“Flynn, I swear!” she shot forward from her seat, as the king drove another hand into the back and pushed her back once more, giving Flynn a side-eyed glare for his slight against their temperamental traveling companion behind them.
They cleared the harbor and wound around the first corner leading to the lower residences—the homes of market and harbor workers—then climbed past the third district, where careerists and the lower-privileged lived. Vilmonde stretched upward, the city climbing the island to its outer walls.
At the summit, the tower crowned Riennes Castle, watching over the realm below. On certain evenings, the sun would set behind it, bathing the castle in a fated glow.
The sixth level of the tower held the government quarter: a long wooden hall lined with stained glass and ornate, antiquated designs. The trio dismounted to the rumble of voices within. The king’s suspicion was confirmed—the three houses had convened, and debate was in full swing.
Nobility sparred with common folk, each clash mirrored by the wealthy elite and remnants of a centuries-old clergy, still clinging to edicts of land and title that even the king could not overturn for another four hundred years.
“It’s funny,” Emile said as he hopped off the cart, holding his hand out to aid Teora down. Though she swatted it away, still not having recovered from the seriousness of his tone earlier, he took no offense at her–far too often–crude behavior. “I figured we’d see at least one missionary on our way up here.”
“I wouldn’t place too much faith in your sister,” Flynn told him, turning to survey the empty streets that sprawled away from the silhouette of the imposing forum. “We’ve yet to know how deep their wound has cut.”
“When have you known the Evenglacians not to put on some kind of spectacle?” Teora asked, challenging his logic. “I mean, think about it: they brought their prowess on display in Théabourg when they arrived, and smashed the Illyrian Fleet. Again in Waystrider and Estrada. Need I go on?”
“Fair point, and they didn’t hide themselves in Périzieu. Perhaps the plague never ended,” Emile told them, removing the mask from his head and brushing back his dark hair. “Maybe...it’s only found a new face.”
“I wouldn’t be too quick to believe it,” Flynn told them, nodding over his shoulder. Summoned from beyond the veil at the mention of their name, a missionary in the unmistakable robes of white and gold appeared from an alley opposite the forum’s shadow. His hollering and spewing of rhetoric alerted the local populace.
Shutters of windows swung open, and eager ears were lent from steps and stoops.
Waiting, and watching.
No sooner had the sermon begun from atop a small box, than the prophet was dragged from its height by uniformed Tallieri guards and beaten in public view of its people. The bloody mess remained on the ground as a loud, boisterous guard dispersed the crowd, telling all to return to their homes, for there wouldn’t be any further spread of lies nor deceit through the illustrious capital.
“Your thoughts?” Flynn asked, grabbing his attention as he removed the archaic disguise of his own.
“If there’s one, there’s many,” he replied, eager to get moving with the prying eyes of his citizens having noticed the return of their king. “There must be an explanation for this. Vilmonde would never accept Evenglacia willingly.”
“Then it leaves us with no choice,” Kaata told him, her presence coming to the front of his mind, darkening his focus on all else to fix it on herself. “You know what you have to do, Emile. As king, you must.”
No, I...I can’t,” he told her, grappling with inevitability. I would...be the very thing I fought to destroy. That which my people gave their lives for. I would be–
“A savior,” she told him, understanding his concern, but knowing that Vilmonde, his home, was at stake. “You could spare thousands of lives, striking a blow to Josée. Ignite the fire and let it consume this city. Leave no trace of Eastern sentiment. Only you can do what must be done, King Riennes, Fate of Flame.
They would never forgive me if I did.
“Then the choice is yours,” she told him. “Burn through like wildfire or perish alongside those you wouldn’t defend.”
