Vessel

Chapter Ten The Emperor

All the farms in the west had withered. Mounted on a roan war- horse, the emperor rode at the front of the army caravan and forced himself to look at each dry field, the shriveled rows of dust and the twisted sickly trees. He rode past abandoned farmhouses and some that looked abandoned but weren’t. Men, women, and children clustered in the doorways and watched the army march by. Their faces wore the pinched, hollow look that he’d come to recognize as the look of his people, and their hungry eyes devoured the caravan.

At the first few farms, he’d quietly had his soldiers shuttle food to the families. But after a while . . . He needed the supplies for the army. Just as quietly, he’d had his soldiers stop.

Still his people drank in the sight of the army, consuming it with their empty eyes.

“You give them hope,” General Xevi said. His two best generals flanked him. General Xevi, an older man who had counseled the emperor’s father, rode on his right. General Akkon, an even older man who had known the emperor’s grandfather, was on his left.

“False hope,” General Akkon said.

“Hope is a powerful tool if it is not abused,” General Xevi said.

The criticism was there, unspoken. “You think this is madness,” the emperor said.

“It is not my place to cast such judgments,” General Xevi said.

The emperor’s mouth quirked. It was almost a smile, though it didn’t warm him. “Of course it is. I trust you to advise me, and that includes speaking up if you believe that I am acting like a nightmare-addled lunatic.”

“To base so much on a dream and a myth—”

“And the claims of a madman,” General Akkon added.

“The magician is not mad,” the emperor said, “though I admit he has his moments of . . .” He cast about for the proper euphemism, and words failed him. The magician was indeed flawed. “You did not speak your concerns before.”

“The court is filled with fools,” General Xevi said, “but they are powerful fools. You needed the full confidence of the military when you stood before them.”

“And do I have the full confidence of the military?” the emperor asked. He did not let either his voice or his face betray the way his insides clenched.

For a moment, General Xevi did not answer. They rode past another farmstead. The wooden door swung open and shut in the wind, as if in rhythm with the footfalls and hoofbeats of the army. Torn curtains fluttered in the windows. But no family came outside.

“You have our hope,” General Xevi said.

The emperor nodded. It was enough. “I will not abuse it.” He twisted in his saddle. Dust rose in clouds from the road, and his army stretched into the distance. “Send a scouting party ahead. Secretly, if you can, so as not to admit any doubt. Send them to the desert mountains. . . . And let us see if they find false hope or true.”