The Silvered

Chapter Fourteen

THE EMPEROR PUSHED through the curtains at the back of the observation booth before the wall had finished closing, paused and stared up at Reiter, cheeks flushed, eyes narrowed. “Something bothering you, Captain?”

There were so many things bothering him, Reiter didn’t know where to start. Particularly as he’d like to stay alive after the telling. It wasn’t that the mage had called the emperor insane; it was that the moment the word had been spoken he’d realized it was true. One moment he saw the emperor, the next moment he saw a man. A man who kept pregnant women captive, not as an act of war or to keep the empire safe as Seen in prophecy, but for his own insane reasons.

“Yes, Majesty.”

The emperor barked out a surprised laugh. “Credit where credit is due, Captain. At least you’re not a liar.” He patted a bit of Reiter’s ridiculous gold braid and started down the stairs. “The dark-haired mage has lied to me since she arrived.”

His shoulders were right there, right by Reiter’s boot, and the stairs were narrow and high. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee of a broken neck and, given that he was alone with the emperor, fairly high odds he’d die regardless of how successful the attempt.

“I despise liars.” Most of the anger had faded from the emperor’s voice, leaving it tired and slightly betrayed. “Well, anyone would who spent as much time as I do with politicians, wouldn’t they? Still, the sixth mage hasn’t yet arrived, and I expect as long as I have them all pregnant at once, I’ll have fulfilled the prophecy in good faith.”

“Uh…breeding the mage, Majesty, right now…is it…that is…” This was not a conversation Reiter ever expected to have, but maybe he could buy the mages some time. “Will she catch during her…bleeding, Majesty?”

“A very good question, Captain.” The emperor sounded intrigued. “I don’t suppose you discussed fertility with your mage?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s hard to know what information will end up being important, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. But with other bleeding…” Flame it! He was not using the word animals. “…females, their bodies aren’t receptive.”

“They aren’t?”

“No, sir.” Reiter found himself hoping the emperor had never had a dog.

“I expect I’d have known that if I’d kept a few female abominations. There didn’t seem to be much point at the time as all my high-powered mages were—or were about to be according to the Soothsayers—female, and breeding my own was the ultimate point of the exercise. Still, that’s why we have the scientific method: observation, measurement, testing, and experimentation to modify the hypothesis. And nothing else remotely like the abominations exist, you know. They’re unique.” Instead of moving down the narrow corridor back toward the palace, the emperor turned, and pointed at the lantern hanging to the right of the stairs. “If you could remove that, please.”

The gaslines that had been brought in to light most of the newer parts of the palace hadn’t been extended into the north wing. Or at least they hadn’t been brought into the hidden corridor leading into the north wing. Was it because the gas was a type of flammable air and an Air-mage would be able to work with it? Wondering who filled the oil lamps and how much they knew, Reiter lifted the lantern off the ornate brass bracket and stepped back, giving the emperor room to reach up and pull the bracket down.

A piece of the wall folded back, exposing a corridor that ran parallel to the room the mages were in. Had been in. Were being dragged out of by pairs of guards. The lever on the inside of the wall was in full sight, the works themselves were exposed—polished steel gears and chains and parts Reiter didn’t recognize. The emperor patted a brass curve fondly before closing the door and leading the way to the right along the hidden corridor, past another set of gears and levers, under a line of old-fashioned oil lamps.

Reiter could do nothing but follow. He clenched his teeth so hard a muscle in his jaw began to spasm. He was impotent; considering where they were going, the word was darkly apt.

“I hadn’t intended to take you any farther with me into the north wing. The work I’m doing there has only peripheral connection to the mages, after all, and it was with the mages that the Soothsayers Saw you’d be useful; however, two things have changed. Do you know what they are, Captain?”

“The mage…”

“Yes, of course, the dark-haired liar. That was a little obvious, wasn’t it? Actually, now I consider it, the second point is fairly obvious as well.”

Reiter had no…“Cobb.”

“Well done!”

He despised himself for his involuntary flush of pleasure at the Imperial praise.

“I choose my staff for, among other things, their ability to not speak out of turn. So much of my life is public, I like to maintain the minimal amount of privacy I have. To keep it, as it were, private.”

“So Cobb was a test, Majesty?”

“Of course. You were Seen by the Soothsayers, and I had certainly hoped you could take the place Major Halyss was to fulfill, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you could be trusted.”

Reiter’s knees actually felt a little weak, his relief out proportion to the amount of time he’d spent with Cobb. “So she wasn’t…removed.”

“Of course, she was removed. As I said, Captain, I like to keep what’s private, private, and the north wing is mine alone—the guards are mine, the scientists are mine, the experiments are mine. Although no one will ever know the effort I’ve put in, I fully intend to use the results of my research to benefit the empire. If you’ll recall, I mentioned how the discovery that abominations are necessary to create mages will eventually leave us with the only truly functional mages in this part of the world. The Imperial armies will be unstoppable. More than they are now, of course,” he added with a smile that suggested he didn’t want to hurt Reiter’s feelings, Reiter being in the army.

Telling even a sane emperor to shut up would be suicidal, but Reiter wanted him to stop talking almost enough to risk it. He didn’t sound crazy when he talked. He sounded rational. Scientific. Smart. He sounded a lot saner than half the brass Reiter had served under. When he talked, it was hard to remember what he meant.

At the end of the corridor, the emperor waved Reiter forward to open a normal door—no iron bars or massive locks to warn of the horrors it hid—then stepped through and smiled his thanks. “Although my observation booth is technically part of the north wing, we’re in the north wing proper now. That door…” He pointed to the right between two guards in the same uniform as the men who guarded the mages. “…leads out into an antechamber where the pages wait. They don’t come any farther. While I’m all for expanding the scientific curiosity of the young, there are some things the youthful mind is just not flexible enough to experience. Science is not always pleasant, and the search for enlightenment can take dark paths. Beyond the antechamber is the palace. Well, the rest of the palace, of course, as this is also the palace. It’s huge, you know. Of course you do; you’ve probably spent the last few days trying to find your way around it. Now this way…” He turned to the left, indicating Reiter should fall in behind him. “…is the way to the testing rooms. I suspect we’ll have arrived first.”

Constant repetition of harmless may have ensured no shots were fired as they fought the guards to keep from being separated, but it changed nothing in the end. Securely held between two large men, Danika saw Stina, Jesine, and Annalyse dragged back to their cells while she and Kirstin were forced down the stairs into the dark.

Panic rising, Danika reminded herself that Leopald had ordered them taken to the north wing, not the cells. Not the cells. The north wing. She laughed, unable to stop the awful sound from escaping at the thought of preferring new horrors to old. Chipped-tooth wrapped an arm around her waist, his new hold gentler if just as secure.

Weight hanging off her guards’ hands, Kirstin braced both feet against the wall and pushed. She wasn’t very large, but she’d never been weak. Bruised-thumb stumbled off the edge of a step. Swayed. Began to fall. He’d have fallen alone if he’d just let go of Kirstin’s arm. Dimples could have saved himself if he’d let go. They both hung on. The three of them landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, Kirstin somehow, amazingly, on the top of the pile. She scrambled to her feet and limped past the line of dark cells to the rough wall at the far end where they cornered and recaptured her.

Three steps higher, Danika watched it all.

The fall, the landing, the chase—all done in silence. Dimples cried out when he landed. Bruised-thumb made no sound.

The guards had been ordered not to talk to the prisoners. That had been obvious from the beginning.

That there were men willing to follow orders so exactly was as terrifying as anything that had yet happened.

Danika knew she was both taller and heavier than Kirstin. She could get better leverage and do significantly more damage if she landed on either of her guards.

She was also pregnant. Risking the baby in a fall she couldn’t control would bring freedom no closer. Once again, she wished she knew how to fight. She knew how to dance, how to speak to her housekeeper, how to entertain politicians, how to dress well, how to lie charmingly, and how to struggle but have no effect on two large men trained to use their bodies for violence.

Just past the last cell there was a full-sized steel door; like the stairs, incongruously new.

On the other side of the door, another row of dark cells. The moment Danika’s guard pulled the door closed behind them, the prisoners began to howl.

Pain and anger and fear and anger and hunger and anger.

Danika stumbled and was hauled back onto her feet, fingers gouging bruises into her arms. The floor was sticky. She could smell shit and urine and blood and rot. How much more overpowering must it be to Pack senses?

Kirstin’s guards were carrying her now. Danika could see her mouth moving.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

The howling grew louder, anger drowning out the rest.

Danika felt Chipped-tooth shudder and she twisted, mouth near his ear. She couldn’t convince him to do anything he didn’t already want to do. “I know you. Let me go.”

His grip loosened.

“I know you. Let me go.”

Loosened.

“I know you. Let me go.”

Then Gouge-in-boot nearly jerked her out of Chipped-tooth’s grip, and he tightened his hold again.

It didn’t matter, she realized. If they let her go, she’d follow Kirstin regardless.

She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the captured Pack that would give them comfort.

At the other end of the cells, Kirstin’s guards carried her up another flight of stairs although these were old and worn and probably the original access to the cells.

Danika wrapped the anger in the air around her like high fashion, like silk and lace and velvet, and climbed, head up, back straight, teeth bared.

In an antechamber, identical to the one that led to the water room and the big room and their hall, they were handed over to four other guards. They looked harder, more confident—these were men who’d already proven themselves. As they made the transfer, Bruised-thumb swore and jerked back, blood running down his cheek. Blood on Kirstin’s mouth. If he hadn’t moved in time, he’d have lost the end of his nose.

One of the new guards laughed. “All abominations bite, kid.” As he grabbed Danika’s arm, she saw familiar scars. She knew the teeth that made those scars. These guards dealt with Pack. If Dimples and Chipped-tooth proved themselves with netted mages, would they be promoted to torturing Pack? Were they looking forward to it?

The door closed behind them, and the howling faded. When the door opened in front of them, a woman wearing a white coat over sensible clothes looked up from a mess of paper on a high desk and said, “Take the dark-haired mage to testing. Blonde to the cage on the deck.”

The guards began to drag them apart.

Danika let herself go limp, her unexpected weight pulling her arms from her guards’ grip. She dropped to one knee, pushed forward and back up onto her feet, throwing her arms around Kirstin’s waist. “Where she goes, I go.”

She’d spoken Imperial, but the woman in the white coat only pulled her spectacles off and polished them as though she hadn’t heard. “Get them separated, or the abomination will be there before she is.”

“Don’t ignore…” Danika’s head snapped back. Her mouth filled with blood. She had to swallow or spit. Only her grip on Kirstin kept her from falling. Another blow and they were yanked apart, Danika clutching fistfuls of Kirstin’s clothes, refusing to let go, grunting in pain as blows pounded against her ribs.

“Danika! Think of the baby!”

Danika blinked away tears and tried to focus on Kirstin’s face. Wrapped her fear and anger around the Aydori words. “You know what they’re going to do to you!”

Blue-flecked eyes narrowed, and Kirstin’s upper lip curled. “I know what they think they’re going to do. I make my own choices, Lady Hagen. Like I always have.”

“Stubborn…”

One of the guards jabbed his thumb into the back of Danika’s hand, driving it deep between the small bones. Her fingers spasmed, opened, and she lost her hold. As they dragged her along the slick floor, she thrashed and fought. She couldn’t get free, but she would not have them say she left her Pack willingly.

Rounding a corner, they planted their boots and threw her forward. Sliding across the glossy tiles on her knees, she slammed up against metal bars and spun around in time to see a cage door shut and barred.

“This mage is the first female abomination we’ve allowed on the deck over the testing room. I’m looking forward to her reactions. They should be fascinating.”

Breathing heavily, Danika rose to her feet and turned to face Leopald, snarling, lips drawn back off her teeth. It seemed at first as though he was in a cage of his own, but there were only bars between them and in front of him. One set separated him from the room below, one from her.

He stood far enough away, she couldn’t reach him. Arm thrust through the bars, her fingers clawed at the air.

He shook his head. “Fascinating. They all attempt that. It must be due to some commonality in their blood.”

The man standing behind him, wearing a parody of a uniform, stared at the back of Leopald’s head in disbelief.

Danika knew him.

Reiter saw the mage’s blue-flecked eyes widen and knew she’d recognized him.

“You did this,” she snarled, touching two fingers to the blood at the corner of her mouth.

The emperor turned to face him and Reiter barely managed to control his reaction in time. After a moment of study, Reiter maintaining as neutral an expression as possible, he turned back to face the mage. “You remember Captain Reiter, do you? How wonderful. But when it comes right down to it, it’s unkind to blame him for the situation you’re in. Your current situation is entirely a result of what you are, isn’t it? The captain was merely following my orders.”

Reiter could see her answer in her eyes—the anger, the terror—and he braced himself. He’d taken prisoners before. While he was still a ranker, he’d been on work details throwing prisoners’ bodies into pits. On the other side, in other armies, he knew enemy soldiers did the same. It wasn’t personal. It was war.

This wasn’t war.

This specifically wasn’t even about trying to prevent a danger to the empire the Soothsayers had warned about.

This was, as she had said, insane.

And he’d helped make it possible.

Before the mage could speak, throw accusations or curses—both justified—a door opened. She shot him one last disgusted look, then spun around to throw herself at the bars separating her from the room below.

The deck stretched along one side of a square room. Longer and higher than the small box where the emperor spied on the mages, it was much the same idea without the Imperial trappings or the secrecy. The floor and the walls of the room had been covered in the same large white tiles he stood on. The ceiling had been entirely mirrored, brass rings marking the holes where a dozen lamps had been lowered down from above. At first glance the room looked featureless in the brilliant gleam of the reflected light. At second glance, Reiter saw the rings and clamps where any manner of things could be attached to the walls and the floors.

Through the open door in the west wall, Reiter could see the small, dark-haired mage. Although her guards attempted to throw her into the room, she twisted free and limped through the door under her own power. Rolled her eyes when the door slammed behind her. Glanced up. Curtsied mockingly at the emperor.

She tried to hide it, but Reiter had seen that expression before. Had passed soldiers lying wounded on the battlefield, looked into their faces and seen dead men look back. Men who were breathing and making jokes, but who knew they were dead.

He didn’t understand. She’d lain with beastmen in the past and they were, when it came down to it, only another kind of men.

This would be public and unwanted, but she’d survive the experience. The emperor’s plan to control the only mages and beastmen in this part of the world meant he needed these mages alive.

What did she know he didn’t?

“Kirstin!”

Reiter silently repeated the name the blonde mage had called out. People had names. Abominations didn’t.

Kirstin raised a hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look up.

What didn’t she want her friend to know?

“We’re putting the big tricolor in with her.” Nothing in the emperor’s voice gave any indication he was aware he was about to destroy a life. Nothing suggested he was about to enjoy the pain and humiliation he’d ordered to happen. “He’s been restless, and they tell me he keeps setting the others off. Hopefully, this will calm him a little. The volume they can achieve may be scientifically amazing, but it’s still annoyingly loud for the poor people who have to care for them.”

“Big tricolor,” Reiter repeated. He remembered his grandfather talking the same way about the pigeons he kept.

The emperor laughed. The gleaming toes of his boots were pressed right up against the bars. Against, Reiter noted, not through although there was room enough. “Big tricolor rather than the small- or medium-sized tricolor. It’s completely unnatural, so it’s the easiest to spot when the abominations try to hide among people. I have a number of them. I know it’s foolish, but I’m hoping I can get some other colors when these five…no, four whelp. Unfortunately, the result of this…” He waved a hand toward the room. “…will likely be another tricolor.”

The door seemed to open again on a wave of sound: snarling, howling, claws and teeth ringing against steel. In the open doorway, a cage. In the cage, an enormous wolf; black and gray and tan fur blended in a way that made it…Him, Reiter corrected. Made him hard to see in the shadows beyond the door.

The silver collar around his neck glinted in the spill of light from the room as he fought to get free.

“Kirstin!”

“They were very chatty when they brought me around, Danika. I know what to expect.” She spoke Imperial so that everyone could understand her—making it harder for the enemy to consider her a beast, Reiter assumed—but she still didn’t look up. She backed slowly away until she stood against the wall opposite the door. She twitched invisible wrinkles out of her skirt, folded her hands, and waited.

Metal screamed as the front of the cage rose. The wolf charged out onto the tile.

He was huge. Gaunt. Starving, if Reiter was any judge. His hips jutted up and his ribs hung down like another cage under loose patchy fur.

The mage watching—Danika, he reminded himself. Danika made a soft, pained noise that had Reiter curling his hands into fists, nails pressed into his palms.

Silver spikes lined the inside of the collar, the ends driven into the flesh all around the wolf’s throat. Silver poisoned the beastmen. Every soldier in the Imperial army knew that now. What must silver constantly digging into a wound be doing?

The wolf walked carefully, his nails skidding on the slick floor. As the door swung shut behind him, he lifted his head, stared at the emperor with deep-sunk, mad eyes, and charged forward.

One paw nearly reached the emperor’s boot. Reiter winced as the wasted body slammed down onto the floor, bones barely covered with flesh and fur rattling against the tile.

The emperor shook his head and sighed. “Every time. They just don’t learn. Well, every time they’re not tied down,” he added thoughtfully.

“He can’t change with the collar on!” Danika’s cry was loud enough Reiter knew the dark-haired…Kirstin had to have heard it. She didn’t react. She didn’t look up. She didn’t take her eyes off the wolf. She wasn’t surprised.

“That is the point of the collar,” the emperor agreed.

When Reiter turned toward her, Danika stood pressed against the bars, her knuckles white where she clutched at the steel. The cheek he could see, glistened in the harsh light. “How long has he been kept like that? How long since he’s been allowed to change?”

“He’s permitted to change when we need him to heal.” Staring down at the wolf, the emperor shrugged. “He’s fine.”

“He’s barely there!” She took a deep breath, stepped back, and turned toward the emperor. Reiter watched her swallow her pride and her fear and keep her voice calm and level. In a lifetime spent under Imperial banners, he’d never known anyone with that kind of strength. “Your Imperial Majesty, please listen. If the balance between fur and skin is not kept, if there’s too long spent in one form over the other, then that form begins to dominate. If this man has been forced to remain in fur, tortured in fur, starved, he won’t be responsible for his actions. You still have only five of the six mages the Soothsayers prophesied. If you allow this to continue, you’ll have four.”

“He’s not a man.” When she made a noise, as though she couldn’t believe that was what he chose to respond to, the emperor turned to face her. Standing behind him, Reiter couldn’t see his expression, but he knew he was smiling. He even knew the smile. The pleased smile of a teacher who enjoyed sharing his knowledge. “As the abominations are attracted to power regardless of form, I don’t see the problem.”

Reiter forced his voice to work. “Majesty, I think she’s saying there’s a good chance the wolf has gone insane.”

“I know what she’s saying, Captain. Given the way she’s throwing the accusation around, I don’t think she knows what the word means. Oh, good. He’s spotted her.”

The wolf had lowered his head, his nose almost to the floor, his shoulder blades rising up above the line of his spine like paddles. There was so little meat on his bones, Reiter wasn’t sure how he could even stand. This is what he would have brought Tomas to.

Both of them to, he amended, looking at Kirstin. He’d have brought both Tomas and Mirian to this.

Kirstin’s eyes were locked on the wolf, and her mouth was moving. Not begging, nor pleading. She looked determined. He couldn’t hear what she was saying.

The wolf could.

His ears went up. Down. He shook his head and whined.

Kirstin kept talking, convincing him to do…what?

He shook his head again, and his lips drew back exposing impossibly large, white teeth. His head swung slowly back and forth as he sniffed the air. Then he stilled, nose pointed directly at the mage. He growled and saliva splattered on the floor.

Nothing about his reaction looked sexual.

“Majesty, how long since he was fed?”

“He ate recently. Probably not as much as he would have liked, given his size, but the food is divided evenly among them.”

What did he eat? Reiter wanted to ask. Didn’t have the courage to ask. Was afraid the question wasn’t what, but who.

“And when he last ate makes no difference, Captain. The mages both attract and control the wolves with their power.”

Reiter closed a hand around the bars, his knuckles white. “She has no power, Majesty. The tangle has suppressed it!”

“Suppressed it. Not removed it.”

Kirstin raised her head and looked directly at Danika, ignoring the two men so completely, Reiter felt invisible. Under the cap of dark hair, she had a pair of gold hoops in her ears. “It would have happened anyway,” she said. “Better fast than slow, yes? This is my choice, Danika. I cannot suffer as you can, and suffering is all the future holds. We are none of us getting out of here.”

She unfastened her dress and let it drop to the ground, a puddle of blue cloth around her feet.

“My choice.”

“Good girl,” the emperor murmured.

Reiter had barely enough time to notice the smear of blood, dark against the pale skin of an inner thigh before toenails skittered against tile.

Blood.

And a starving wolf.

Kirstin raised her chin. “I wish I could have said good-bye to my boys.”

Red spattered against white. It sounded like rain. And branches breaking in a storm.

“No!” The emperor actually sounded surprised.

As the wolf bent his head to feed, ripping the belly open for the organs, Reiter shuddered, clenched his teeth, and looked to Danika who watched…no, witnessed, silently. As though aware of his gaze, she turned her head, tears running down her cheeks, and said, “He didn’t want to. She convinced him to do it, to take her strength, to survive.”

Then she closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and threw up. Half-digested porridge and biscuit spattered out through the bars.

Reiter looked at a slender leg and a pale foot against the blue fabric of the discarded robe and remembered that he’d once believed science could do anything mage-craft could do. Science couldn’t have done this.

Down below, the door opened and two guards charged in, boots slamming against the tile. They wore packs and carried metal staffs, thick rubber handles gripped in heavy leather gloves. Wires ran from the staffs to the packs and sparks jumped from the staffs’ blackened upper ends.

Two steps.

Three.

They stopped in tandem.

Apparently, guards who were able to torture a man who looked like an animal drew the line at approaching while he tore bloody chunks of meat off a woman’s body. They hesitated long enough for him rip off an arm and gulp it back, fingers fluttering as her hand disappeared between his jaws, larger bones cracking, smaller crunching. One guard took a step back, the other jackknifed forward and spewed vomit all over the tile. The end of his staff hit the wall.

A tile smashed, and a drift of smoke that smelled almost like gunpowder momentarily covered the scent of blood and guts and puke.

Perhaps these guards had never handed out the wolves’ food. Perhaps Cobb had only been removed from the palace. Perhaps the old man sent to the north wing back on Reiter’s first day in the palace had been sent to scrub tiles. Those tiles were going to need scrubbing.

I should do something. I need to do something. He couldn’t save the dead mage. He couldn’t even save the live one.

Neither of them had screamed.

“Just a reminder, Captain…”

Reiter looked down to see the emperor staring up at him.

“…that what happens in the north wing is not spoken of. My privacy is very important to me.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” Who could he tell?

Reiter had hoped he’d be dismissed when they returned to the palace, but the emperor kept him close for the rest of the day. He stood behind the emperor’s chair—behind Tavert and the distant cousins and whoever the flame else those people were—and wore the expression officers wore when they knew a battle had gone to shit but they didn’t have the rank to stop it, and all they could do was send more solders out to die.

Fortunately, those officers allowed into the emperor’s presence had been trapped in the palace for so long it wasn’t an expression they recognized.

At supper, Reiter found he’d been moved to a higher status table. His new companions were more obsequious, but better at it. He pushed his food around on his plate and drank more than he should have. It didn’t help.

As the platters emptied of fruit and nuts were cleared away, it was announced there would be dancing in one of the smaller ballrooms. The appropriate pleased response ran through the crowd.

“Her Imperial Majesty loves to dance,” the woman seated next to Reiter gushed. “I’m sure tonight’s affair is to welcome back the Talatian ambassador, whom she adores and missed greatly while he was gone.”

A quick glance at the head table showed Her Imperial Majesty laughing with a dark-skinned man in a deep green uniform.

“The ambassador always seems to enjoy these small family gatherings.”

“Family?” Whatever he was now, Reiter wasn’t family.

She smiled, hand over her mouth to cover a bad tooth. “All of us, of course.”

Those who ate with the emperor, regardless of how far away they sat, were expected…required to attend.

Waiting with the others in the anteroom outside Their Imperial Majesties’ apartments while the emperor changed into evening wear, Reiter wondered if he’d been looking forward to dancing with his wife while watching a young woman torn apart by a starved wolf.

Reiter didn’t dance. He stood. He stared at nothing. He kept his thoughts from showing on his face.

“Walk with me, Captain.”

It took a moment to pull himself out of his thoughts and focus on the man beside him. Reiter blinked at Major Halyss’ father, realized that hadn’t been a request, and unlocked his knees. Given that he’d taken Major Halyss’ rather specific position at the emperor’s side, it had been a moment’s work to discover the major’s father was Lord Coving, Duke of Barryns, and one of the ten most powerful politicians in the empire.

“His Imperial Majesty prefers you to circulate so Her Imperial Majesty doesn’t ask him later why you weren’t having a good time.” Lord Coving’s mouth curved into an approximation of a smile as they began to make their way around the edges of the room. “Her Imperial Majesty would prefer you to dance, but realizes not everyone is as skilled as she is.”

“Her Imperial Majesty is a very accomplished dancer.”

“Yes, she is.” He waved off a clump of approaching courtiers, and they continued uninterrupted. “If you’re going to remain at court, you’ll have to learn.”

“I’d rather be returned to the front. I’m a soldier, sir. This isn’t for me.”

“Dancing?”

“Court.”

“Ah.”

It was a simple, noncommittal sound that managed to express solidarity while admitting nothing. It was so noncommittal, Lord Coving had to be aware of what was happening in the north wing. Maybe not the exact particulars but enough. After all, the wing had to be built and equipped. Guards and scientists paid. Reiter had no idea where the money came from, but the emperor definitely didn’t dole it out himself. Coving knew and had arranged to have his son sent away before the mages arrived. Before something like today happened and the major, who was a gentleman and not just a soldier, protested too vehemently and got himself killed.

The small orchestra at the end of the room played loudly and enthusiastically. Those not currently dancing talked and laughed. Lord Coving commanded enough space around them to ensure they wouldn’t be overheard.

“How can you?”

To his credit, and right now that and getting his son out might be the only thing to his credit, Coving didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “We give him this and, for the most part, he lets us run the empire.”

“For the most part?” The wine that had been nearly too much at dinner suddenly wasn’t nearly enough.

Again, the approximation of a smile. “For the most part.”

“Would one of his parts be declaring an entire people abomination?”

Lord Coving nodded genially, as though they weren’t talking about genocide. “He has the right as the head of the church to appoint a new Prelate more sympathetic to his beliefs.”

“And attacking Aydori?”

“No, the Prelate had…”

“Was attacking Aydori another of his parts?”

“Yes. And it would have been significantly more cost-effective to have placed an army on their border and made treaties for the contents of their mines and their forests rather than spend the silver to kill enough of them to allow us to take the country. Of course, you and I both know the attack was as much to cover the Soothsayers’ requirements and your activities as it was to attempt to acquire resources, but we don’t spread that information around. Still, the Prelate and Aydori aside, for the most part, His Majesty doesn’t interfere and things get done. Trade is negotiated. Borders are secured. Roads are built. Children are educated. There are hospitals and poor laws. You could travel from Karis to the border in only three days should you need to. Well, it might take slightly longer now that the border has shifted, but life in the empire is good and every day we work at making it better. And safer. It’s a small price to pay.”

Fingernails pressed into his palms again, Reiter growled, “You’re not paying the price.”

“They’re not like us.”

He remembered gray eyes and a wide mouth pressed into a thin, disapproving line. He remembered a stubborn glare. Blood. Bruises. Tears. A boy who cried out for his brother. A woman who gave her strength to a starving…man. To a starving man. He stepped forward enough that he could turn and see Lord Coving’s face. “When he’s done with them, what differences will he want to study next?”

The orchestra started a new piece, and the emperor laughed as he led the ambassador’s wife out onto the floor.

“I don’t…” There were shadows under the old man’s eyes. In his eyes. “He won’t be done with them for a long time.”

Coving had agreed to ignore the emperor’s insanity in order to be one of those few who ran the empire. To Reiter, that seemed unnecessarily complicated. “Why can’t you run things without him?”

“Don’t be naive, Captain. Someone has to be at the top. If not him, who? His Imperial Highness? Then who guides the prince until he’s old enough to take the throne? And who chooses who guides the prince? No, the emperor is essential to the smooth running of the empire.” Before Reiter could speak again, Lord Coving caught the attention of a woman about his age who sat wrapped in at least three layers of brilliantly colored shawls, tapping her foot to the music. “Lady Clarin, have you met Captain Reiter? He served with my son and we were just catching up. The captain is on the emperor’s staff now and a trusted confidant.”

And that was the end of the conversation. Reiter had been told in no uncertain terms that the north wing was part of how it was in the empire and he would just have to accept that.

Finally dismissed at nearly midnight, he returned to his room and stripped. Walked to the wet room through empty halls, past rooms of sleeping soldiers who didn’t know how it was in the empire, and stood under the shower until the water ran cold. Then he lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling, water from his hair soaking into his pillow. When he finally slept, he dreamed of white tiles and red blood.

And screaming.

Danika lay curled on the floor, face pressed to the crack under the door, layering Kirstin’s story onto the air. She didn’t know if the others would hear or if it would just circle their prison endlessly, but she didn’t stop talking until her voice had gone rough and hoarse.

There was no second meal.

No chance to see, to touch, to know that the others were alive.

No chance to find out how much more time Stina needed to destroy her door.

They could see the lights of Karis painting the night sky even though they were still some distance away. The contrast was distinct enough that even Mirian could make out the yellow glow against the black.

Tomas paced, finally settling close enough she could feel the air warming between them. “Do we sleep or do we keep moving?”

“The sensible thing to do would be to sleep. If we keep going, we’ll be tired and careless when we arrive. We’ll still have to find where the Mage-pack are being held, and we don’t have a lot of luck with cities.”

“We should definitely avoid markets,” he muttered. Then, a little louder, “So I should find us a safe place to sleep.”

“No.”

“But you said the sensible thing…”

“I know.” Mirian pushed one bare foot forward, feeling the path to Karis. “I don’t think we have time to be sensible. You’ll have to be my eyes tonight.” Air currents shifted and without looking, she put her hand down to stroke the fur between Tomas’ ears. “I can feel when I go off the path, but I can’t see to stay on it.”

She slipped the belt he wore in skin out of the bedroll then shortened up the ropes so the roll pressed snug against her back, too tight to bounce when she ran. The belt was made of braided straw and as she buckled it around Tomas’ neck, she thought of the collar they’d lost in Abyek, suddenly wanting the more formal touch of leather, but not really sure why. “I’m trusting you not to run me through puddles or gorse bushes.”

He gave a soft woof, and she shoved at him with her leg.

“Oh, sure, you say that now.” She could tell him she trusted him, but he knew that so all she said was, “Jake was right.” She closed her fingers around the loose loop of belt, then closed her eyes so as not to be distracted by things she couldn’t quite see. “We need to hurry.”

The emperor beckoned Reiter up to walk beside him as they made their way to…actually Reiter had paid no attention at Tavert’s morning briefing and had no idea where they were going. He only knew that wherever it was—north wing, west wing—he didn’t want to be there.

He particularly didn’t want to be alone with the emperor, but Tavert and the rest had been instructed to fall back, so clearly it didn’t matter what he wanted.

“The mage who escaped from you,” the emperor murmured, grinning broadly, “my sixth mage. I have word that she’s on her way to Karis.”

It took Reiter a moment to find his voice and at that he only managed a neutral, “Majesty?”

“Half of Lower Tardford was put to sleep by a nondescript young woman of about twenty with brown hair, accompanied by a young man of about the same age with black hair. They were wearing country clothing. Sound familiar?”

He thought about lying. He thought about strangling the emperor and dying a moment later. “Yes, Majesty.”

“That’s what I thought. Given what happened in Abyek, it’s obviously her.”

“It could be another…”

“No, no, the prophecy is pulling at her, Captain. Remember what the Soothsayer Saw: The sixth mage in the room with the others. She can no more resist fulfilling the prophecy than I can resist those sugar cookies with the jam centers. I am curious, though, what could she possibly have against markets?”

“Markets are where people are, Majesty.”

The emperor beamed up at him. “That was remarkably insightful, Captain. Well done.”

His skin crawled under the emperor’s approval.

“I can’t weaken the door any further until we’re ready to go, or it’ll fall off its hinges the next time the guards open or close it.”

Danika clutched Stina’s hand below the edge of the table. Their quiet conversation hopefully looked as much like comfort as the words Jesine murmured into Annalyse’ hair, arms around her, rocking her back and forth. There had already been weeping and wailing enough to satisfy their captors, and Stina had spoken only for Danika to hear.

Only Danika remained to hear.

Kirstin was dead.

She winced as Stina tightened her grip. Nodded, although she wasn’t sure at what. “Can you finish tonight?” Would Kirstin still be alive if she’d asked that two days ago? Should she have pushed harder?

“No.”

“No?”

“I couldn’t have gotten through the door before Kirstin died. The question was all over your face, Danika. This wasn’t your fault. Or mine, although we’ll both blame ourselves. If I work the night through, I can have the door in pieces before morning. But I can’t guarantee how much time we’ll have to get clear of the palace after that.”

“Then we’ll have to use the time we have.”

“The nets…”

“Our mage-craft isn’t all we are.” Danika drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It never has been. We get out of this prison, we disappear into the city. It’s a very large city. We worry about the nets later.”

“The Pack?”

The Pack locked in small dark cells, howling, starved, tortured.

“With the nets on, with them nearly mad with pain and unable to change, none of us are strong enough to control them. It’d be a massacre. Which I’m not against,” she added as Stina’s gaze darkened, “provided the right people die, but wearing the nets we can’t ensure that. We’ll come back for them.”

“Your word, Alpha.”

“My word.” She hadn’t realized she’d raised her free hand to touch her chest until she felt the ridge of the scar under her fingertips. “Right now, I’m worried about what happens if there’s a guard in the hall when your door comes down.”

“He’ll be right outside my door, won’t he? And, thanks to you and Kirstin, he thinks I’m harmless. That should slow him down considerably.” Stina’s lips drew back off her teeth. “Our mage-craft isn’t all we are. It never has been. I’ll deal with him.”

Two or three Tardfords would have fit into Karis with room left over for Bercarit. Lessons on the Kresentian Empire taught that the capital had originally been built within a loop of the Vone River, but over the years that loop had been entirely enclosed by the city. When the sun rose, the yellow glow of the lights had been replaced by a yellow pall of smoke, hanging thickest over the closely packed buildings nearest the water.

“The Mage-pack has to be in the palace,” Mirian muttered, trying and failing to pick out individual buildings. “They were taken because of Emperor Leopald’s Soothsayers, so he’d want to keep them close.”

“The palace is on the east side of the river. The only direct way in from the west is by the Palace Bridge, but it’s heavily guarded and there’s an old portcullis gate that’s still fully functional on the palace end. Rumor has it the bridge itself was designed to break away and that the mechanics are so precise even a child could operate it. The empire is always the enemy,” Tomas explained when Mirian turned to stare at him. “Junior officers work out ways to defeat it. According to Harry, you can’t take the palace by force; it has to be subterfuge. He suggested once that we could get the entire Hunt Pack in by pretending to be a dog show. Not one of Harry’s better ideas,” he admitted after a moment.

There were two other ways across the river—the Bridge of the Sun, south of the palace, passing directly in front of the Grand Temple of the Sun, or the Citizens’ Bridge to the north.

“We’d need to cross over two thirds of the south city to get to the Citizens’ Bridge. It’s too far, and these boots hurt my feet.”

“Forgive me if I’m weighing your feet against having you skinned at the last minute,” Mirian told him, stepping around a section of broken cobblestone. The puddle filling the hole was green and bubbling intermittently in the sun. “We’re taking the north bridge and staying away from anything that looks like it might be or had ever been a market.”

They stuck to narrow residential streets of narrow red brick houses older, dirtier, and at least two stories taller than the houses in Abyek. The first floor started half a story up, and they learned they could judge the neighborhoods by the seven steps leading up to heavy wooden doors. On those blocks where the steps were whitewashed to a gleaming contrast with the brick, every trace of coal dust removed, stern-faced women with their sleeves rolled up, watched them pass from first-floor windows or from the tops of the steps themselves. While they didn’t seem likely to scream abomination, they weren’t pleased about strangers. Children too young for school played quietly.

“Alphas by committee,” Tomas bent to murmur in her ear.

Mirian laughed, able to feel the weight of their gazes even if she couldn’t see their faces.

On blocks where the whitewash was worn or the steps were so close to the same dirty color as the brick that Mirian could barely make them out, babies screamed behind open windows, children ran happily up and down the street with balls or hoops, and the dogs quieted only as they passed.

On some streets, the spaces between the steps had been filled in with small shops—tailors, seamstresses, shoemakers, cabinet makers, ironmongers, undertakers, coffee houses, bakeries, taverns. Once a small school where a dozen children around five or six repeated the Imperial alphabet. Every now and then the bricks gave way to a wrought-iron fence and small courtyard and a Temple of the Sun. A few of the temples were old enough they’d clearly been built for other gods, before Leopald’s grandfather had brought the empire out of the darkness and under the Sun.

“How can they live like this? All crammed in so close together?” Tomas muttered as they turned sideways to slide past a knife grinder’s cart. “It’s like that room in the shelter, only with more smoke and way too much cabbage. I think my nose has gone numb. There’s no air; the buildings are too high and the streets are too narrow and…Horse.”

It took Mirian a moment to figure out what he meant. Then she heard the clop, clop of hooves against the cobblestones, squinted down a street to the right, and saw an elderly bay not much larger than the ponies at home, pulling a cart full of coal. When the cart stopped, the driver rang a bell and people swarmed out of houses and shops carrying metal buckets as the driver moved from the seat back into the box. The horse lowered its head until its nose nearly touched the road. Mirian thought it looked more bored than exhausted.

It certainly didn’t look like it cared there was a predator standing on the corner.

“We’re downwind, if she even has a sense of smell left. But we need to be careful. If a horse panics in these kind of close quarters, people will get hurt and we’ll be blamed.”

“They won’t know,” Mirian began, then remembered the women on the steps. They’d be blamed because they were strangers and then Tomas would be found out. They were so close. Too close to be caught again.

Not close enough.

“Hurry,” Jake said. Not once but twice. Maybe a dozen more times since they’d left.

Hurry. They were moving as fast as they could without arousing suspicion.

Not fast enough.

They’d been walking for hours when the street they followed spat them out onto a broad boulevard, the buildings made of pale limestone rather than brick. At first Mirian thought the stone new enough it hadn’t had a chance to be stained by the smoke and then she made out scaffolding and heard people shouting about water and hats.

“Are they washing that building?”

“If you ask me, they should wash the whole city,” Tomas snorted. “But yes.”

A raised footway ran along their side of the road—and she assumed the other side as well—allowing pedestrians to move comfortably in front of hotels and theaters and cafés. It was the first part of Karis that felt a bit like Bercarit. Had Mirian been in her own clothing, she wouldn’t have felt out of place. As it was, clutching the bedroll and staring, she felt every bit the country yokel she was dressed as.

A double line of steel tracks ran down the center of the road. As they watched, an open, bright yellow-and-red carriage, little more than six rows of empty benches, came to a stop at a yellow post. A small crowd got on.

“This is Citizens’ Avenue,” Tomas announced.

“How do you know?”

“Says so on the plaque on the corner of that building.” Hands on her shoulders, he turned her to face the plaque, much as she’d done to him back in Tardford. “If Citizens’ Avenue goes straight through to the Citizens’ Bridge—like in any normal city where they haven’t destroyed their brains with stink—we could ride. You have money.”

Mirian watched the carriage move up the road, a group of young officers waiting until the last minute to get out of the way of the horses, shouting genial insults back at the driver. “We could walk faster. We need to hurry.”

“I know, but we can’t run and my feet are killing me in these boots.” He sighed. “Riding would be a more sensible thing to do than crippling me.”

He had been limping a little—although, for all his whining, he clearly hadn’t wanted her to notice. “What about panicking the horses?”

“Why wouldn’t the whirlwind thing work? You started up a whirlwind the moment you saw the number of horses on the street,” he added when she frowned.

Cabs. Delivery vans. Private carriages. Riders. All with horses. Although she hadn’t as much seen the individual horses as known they were there.

A quick check of their immediate surroundings and she discovered she’d wrapped Tomas in a spiral of air that rose straight up as it passed his head, dissipating high enough to prevent panic.

“You did start it, didn’t you?” he asked, grip tightening on her shoulder. “Tell me it’s not happening without your control.”

“I’m controlling it.” And that was the truth, although she hadn’t consciously started it. The moving air pulled a bit of dust up off the footway, but given the amount kicked up by both people and horses, Mirian doubted anyone would notice. The risk of discovery—and yes, lack of control—was preferable to the disaster that would follow if even one of those horses caught scent of Tomas. She didn’t care so much about the people—any one of them would skin Tomas for the bounty—but she hated the thought of the animals being injured. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” She nodded toward the middle of the road where the carriage had disappeared in the traffic. “It’s gone.”

He turned her to face the other way. “There’s another carriage coming.”

She couldn’t actually pick it out in the traffic, but she could see another crowd already gathering at the yellow post even if she couldn’t make out the individual people. “Fine.” Truth be told, she was tired of walking, too. Tired of Jake’s shoes that didn’t fit right. Tired of being either stared at because they were strangers or ignored because they looked poor. She’d gotten used to the feel of the earth under bare feet, of feeling the connection to where she was going. Of having no one watching what she did except Tomas, who never judged.

Maybe the urge to run would ease if she sat down.

Under the dirt and manure, the road seemed to be crushed gravel pounded into tar. Barely able to separate the traffic into individual pieces, Mirian held Tomas’ arm as they crossed to the post. The post seemed to be nothing more than a post, so the word TROLLEY painted vertically down it most likely referred to the carriage. Or it was an Imperial word she didn’t know that meant: gather here and complain about how long you’ve been waiting.

Mirian met the eyes of a stout woman who looked as though she wanted to be left alone and would therefore, logically, not want to chat with strangers. “Excuse me, does this go over the bridge?”

“It does.”

“For how much?”

“Havmo from here to the southside. Each.” The way she said it, she didn’t believe they had it. She didn’t care, but she didn’t believe.

Mirian slipped her hand into the bedroll and into the purse. She didn’t pull it out, they had far too much money for the clothes they were wearing, just slipped the knot and removed a few coins by touch. Fortunately, the coppers with the half moon on the side opposite Emperor Leopald’s profile were larger than the rest. She could see which coins were copper but not the image stamped on them.

“Hey.” Tomas’ breath brushed against her ear. “You all right?”

“Just thinking about…” Going blind. “…words.” Thinking about words was infinitely preferable to thinking about going blind. Halfmoon to havmo. Language moved. Shifted. Changed. The Pack had been named abomination. If it could be changed, it could be changed back although Mirian didn’t know how.

First, the Mage-pack.

Her control over the whirlwind slipped a little as she passed over their fare and climbed up onto the trolley, sliding across to the far edge of the last bench, but she got it back before a passing chestnut did more than kick at the traces.

Theaters and hotels gave way to private clubs to banks to construction to what looked like new government buildings on the last few blocks before the river. Which smelled as bad as Mirian had suspected it would.

The tracks extended right across the bridge although the trolley had to keep stopping and starting because of workers hanging Imperial purple banners on overhead wires.

“Flaming Soothsayers and their flaming public days,” the middle-aged man on the bench next to Mirian muttered, folding his newspaper and slapping it down on his lap. His coloring suggested his family had originally come from the Southern Alliance although he spoke Imperial like he’d never spoken anything else. In spite of Gryham, she hadn’t expected that; people who’d moved to the empire from countries it hadn’t absorbed. The empire was the enemy. “Citizens’ Square’ll be a madhouse tomorrow,” her neighbor continued. “How’s anyone supposed to get any flaming work done?”

A madhouse might be useful. They could hide in a madhouse.

They got off at the first stop on the other side of the bridge, the yellow post obvious at the edge of what Mirian assumed was Citizens’ Square. To the east was the river and the road the trolley continued to travel along. To the north were blurry rows of shops and taverns. To the west just blur. And to the south, the palace wall and the north gate.

“Looks like the Shields’ garrison to the west. They never leave Karis; they’re here to defend the city. Well, really the emperor. Although Harry figured the rankers and junior officers were rotated out fairly regularly to keep them from getting fat and stupid. I bet there’s another way inside the palace wall from the garrison.”

Mirian stopped trying to see across the square and focused on Tomas’ face. “Are you suggesting we stop to take out a division of the Imperial army on the way?”

He grinned. “Why not?”

He was waiting for her to come up with a plan. She could see well enough to see that on his face. They were here, in Karis. What now?

Mirian had no idea. Her entire plan had been to get to Karis and rescue the Mage-pack.

A ridiculously ornate fountain topped with a large statue of an emperor on a rearing horse—maybe Leopald, maybe not—anchored the center of the square. It was, thankfully, the only horse Mirian could see, although there were a lot of people in the square. Sitting around the base of the fountain. Buying meat pies from a cart. Enjoying a beautiful spring day. Mirian had never seen a priest of the sun before, but the trio of men in yellow robes under white tabards were fairly easy to identify even given her vision problems. She could hear music and assumed it came from the cluster of people over by the garrison. When she heard yelling and the swoosh of falling fabric, she turned to see workers—well, dark shapes—on the top of the palace wall hanging yet more banners.

She and Tomas weren’t even the only people in the square clutching bundles and looking lost.

But mostly, there were soldiers. Which made sense if an entire garrison made up the western boundary of the square. Where else would the soldiers go to…?

Tomas’ hand closed around her arm. “Mirian, don’t look, but I think that’s the soldier we escaped from.”

“Captain Reiter.”

“No, he’s no captain.”

Mirian frowned, trying to remember the other man. “Blond? About your height? Kind of squinty-eyed?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Chard.”

“I don’t know his name, but he’s seen us.”