Sworn to Quell Read online

  Sworn To Quell: Courtlight #10

  Terah Edun

  Contents

  Copyright

  Title page

  Sworn To Quell Summary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Terah Edun

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-1-946217-07-3

  * * *

  Never want to miss the latest book? Sign up here!

  Sworn To Quell Summary

  Ciardis Weathervane witnessed the collapse of her empire’s system of governance. Because everything pivoted on the rule of one man. Now she must forge a new path. Through the madness. Through the chaos.

  Still with the imperial palace in ruins, and the coalition between the nobles and the rebellion falling apart, there is no more time. No time to rule. No time to justify.

  The god was here for retribution, and her triad would be forced to rise to the occasion or fall under its own bluster.

  With an emperor dead, a prince heir uncrowned, and a people lost in the wilderness of death and destruction every which way they turn, Ciardis faces her most challenging assignment yet. Picking up the pieces. Mending the coalition. Winning the hearts and minds of Sebastian’s people. The people she could now call her own.

  The heavens have come to earth. It remains to be seen if the earth will fall before its might.

  1

  The assassination was on everyone’s mind. Even Ciardis Weathervane’s. Although tonight she was quiet. Contemplative. She stood at the edge of the tower, leaning forward to stare out at the sea with a concentration that suggested every lap, every wave, held the answer to her problems in its depths. She almost believed it did.

  “Nature is serene, is it not?” a voice behind her asked.

  “Hypnotic,” she called back as she shifted her stance from where she leaned against the white stone guard of the tower. Ciardis had a long glaive perched against the wall next to her, but she didn’t reach for it. It was too long for her to do much with in such a confined space anyway.

  If she needed to deal with a malcontent, the tiny knife with the pearl handle at her waist would just have to do. She’d found it covered in soot in the wreckage of the east wing of the palace. She was in the north wing now, it was a maze of corridors and towers left almost untouched by the inferno that had leaped from one level to the next in the lower buildings. Made of glass and gilt and pretty burnished wood, those parts of the palace had gone up in flames as cheerily as a holiday log crackling in the furnace.

  But this wing, and others, were made of harsh stone and fierce magical enforcements. Remnants of the Initiate Wars from long ago. Remnants of a time in which the Algardis Empire had been beset on all sides by enemies.

  Dragons. Gods. Kith. Even our own people, Ciardis thought wryly.

  The person behind her nervously cleared their throat.

  They hadn’t gone away. She had half hoped they might. With a deep sigh Ciardis turned away from the entrancing vision of the sea and faced the chaos of the palace behind her.

  Her eyes met the gentleman rocking back on nervous heels as he faced the woman whom the city was beginning to refer to as a legend, and not in the kindest way.

  Ciardis knew what they thought of her now. It hurt. But she couldn’t show her pain. Not when she and everyone she fought alongside stood so perilously close to the edge, both figuratively and physically. She needed to be strong and she had to win their hearts and minds. But if the citizens of Sandrin weren’t willing to give her that, she’d still take their subservience. People were very accommodating when they wanted to live.

  “What is it?” she murmured as a harsh wind came off the sea and blew through her hair. It got in her face, and her clothes, a loose tunic with long sleeves and a cape to match, tangled around her form. They were practical clothes if not stylish.

  She didn’t need stylish right now anyway. They could be mid-battle at any moment and she’d take alive and well fitted to fight in over beauty any day.

  Even Lillian had agreed.

  Ciardis nearly keeled over in apoplexy when forced to admit it during one of the few self-defense trainings she’d squeezed into her transition from village maiden to court-worthy Companion…but she had agreed.

  But what mattered now was the fact Ciardis was very well aware she could fight in a dress if she had to. But she knew she could win in pants.

  The man, a young person no older than his late twenties, bowed nervously. “The conclave has been convened.”

  Ciardis didn’t let any emotion show on her face. No joy. No relief. No anxiety.

  This was going just how the triumvirate had planned. Or rather…as closely as it could to the plan after they had killed an Emperor, lost far too many friends, and destabilized the entire empire without a proper transition process.

  Ciardis Weathervane might have even been able to live with all of that.

  The knowledge lost with Maradian’s death, from his secrets to the ‘simple’ matter of how to run an empire.

  The friends lost to death, time, and resources.

  But her heart beat empty knowing she had lost someone more precious than all of that combined.

  She wished she could say it had gone down differently. But it hadn’t.

  Life seemed to love jerking her around.

  This week had been no different.

  The man cleared his throat as he swayed back and forth on jittery feet that even his palace training couldn’t hide.

  Ciardis took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She felt like she’d been through the wringer and hung out to dry. Which she had. They all had.

  As if mirroring her dark mood, the winds off the sea picked up in harsh bursts. The storm that had been rolling in, bringing with it the fresh smell of the sea Ciardis so loved, broke.

  Harsh rain slammed against her back and almost took the servant off his feet as he faced the winds head-on while trying to maintain his position.

  When lightning struck so close to the tower that she could see the arc of bright energy out of the corner of her eye, Ciardis smiled and he jumped like a frog into the air.

  To his credit, he landed back in the place where he had started, but that apparently was the end of his deference to courtesy. He was halfway back down the stairs before he halted, and very reluctantly turned to look back up at her while he gripped the remaining stair rail so tight that his flesh was ghostly.

  Ciardis raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t entirely sure if he was waiting because he was too afraid to move or because he needed more from her. He
’d delivered his news, after all. But she also knew she wouldn’t get her answers by deferring to what protocol demanded of her in this situation. Which was waiting for him to say something. She could see from the look in his eyes and the way he opened his mouth, then closed it again, that he was in shock.

  So she said kindly, “You’ve told me your news, now you may go.”

  “May I take your response to the prince?” the man finally said as gracefully as he could under pressure.

  “Where is he?” Ciardis fairly shouted as thunder rolled over them again.

  The servant said something, but nature drowned him out.

  She asked again, but apparently he heard something entirely different. A question in her words about how the prince heir was doing, rather than a clarification on where the person was.

  Ciardis was highly frustrated. Because of fear and perhaps protocol, he wouldn’t come close enough for either of them to hear the other clearly.

  “This is ridiculous,” she grumbled as she prepared to make her way across the tower while keeping a wary eye on any stray fingers of lightning in the air.

  But then just as she put one foot in front of the other, suddenly the thunder and high winds died.

  It was like they had never been there in the first place, and the servant was already readying his reply to their previously drowned-out conversation.

  She didn’t have to struggle to hear what he was saying now.

  He still began with a shout. “No, milady. The prince heir. The prince heir!”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “Not the diabolical one,” he said as he shivered in the now cold and still air.

  She sucked in a breath but didn’t reprimand him. She couldn’t. He was right.

  Besides, he realized his mistake all too quickly in the silence that followed.

  Ciardis wanted to reassure him that it was all right. She put false cheer in her voice, but the words weren’t really for him. They were for her.

  “Thanar’s been called worse,” she said cheerfully as the newly soft wind buffeted her.

  The man blanched. “I-I didn’t mean—”

  She shot him a darkly amused look. “I wasn’t speaking to you. Go. Leave me to myself. I’ll be along in just a few minutes.”

  He took her at her word and scurried off to the dubious safety of the exit while she looked around at the vista below. This vista was different from the seascape just behind her. It was like standing on a precipice and being able to see the world burn. Or what was left of it anyway.

  As Ciardis stared at the palace in ruins, her hope died with it.

  But she wasn’t empty. Because anger took its place. Anger and retribution.

  It almost seemed silly, but when Thanar had taken his rage out on Maradian, every blow, every crunch of bone, every yell had been both for her and without her. She thought victory would ring sweet; instead, it was hollow. Like a log that had finally cracked and revealed an interior destroyed by beetles, then gave over to rot and mold. She couldn’t shake the sensation that she hadn’t won, that instead she’d been allowed to win.

  Ciardis let out a bitter laugh as she said to the empty tower, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Maradian thought it better to die now than face a god while he was forced to stand at the head of a human army.”

  So he’d taken the only escape handed to him, or seemed to anyway. That would fit his temperament to throw a wrench in Ciardis Weathervane’s plans one last time, even if he had to die to do it.

  She had the thought, which ran down her spine like an ice-cold shiver, that this was just the beginning. They had seen the palace burn. But before the end, the entire city and even the empire itself would be up in flames.

  That was something she didn’t want to see. Something she couldn’t even imagine.

  But she wasn’t sure she could prevent it either.

  Everyone was dead. Everyone.

  How were one inexperienced Companion, one unscrupulous daemoni prince, and one very overwhelmed prince heir supposed to be able to commit deicide on their own?

  The answer was…they weren’t. And Ciardis Weathervane was starting to realize she had been set up to fail. It was a long game, and even though he was dead at Thanar’s own hands, it seemed that the false Emperor had had the foresight to set his plans in play well before they had even stepped onto the board.

  It was the way the games of court life were played.

  But just because Ciardis Weathervane was down, it did not mean she was out. She knew that winning this fight would take all she had, all they had, as one united force. Starting with the conclave awaiting her appearance. Awaiting her explanation for the string of deaths she had left behind her. Awaiting an explanation most of all for the death of the man they knew as Emperor Bastien Athanos Algardis.

  So she turned for one last look at the sea and then began the long journey down the steep tower steps into the wreckage of the palace below.

  She thought about the wicked storm that had descended on them with barely a moment’s notice. The fact it had lasted for only seconds was incredible.

  Like a storm called down from the heavens, she thought. Or a storm that a mortal mage had called in.

  Neither idea appealed to her.

  If an unlicensed mage was loose in the city of Sandrin, or the seven gods forbid, on palace grounds—they would have to deal with them. Ciardis had the feeling the palace and the citizens of Sandrin were a lot more vulnerable now than they had ever been. Whether the fight between her and Maradian had taken down more than just a ruler had yet to be seen. But one didn’t see incredible thunderstorms forming in seconds and weird snaps of mage power in random corners of the palace when everything was fine.

  That, by definition, was the opposite of fine.

  And she shuddered to think of what else was to come.

  Whatever it is, we’ll handle it, she thought firmly. Like we always do.

  Yet those words didn’t comfort her nearly as much as they had in the past.

  2

  As she walked down the steps, Ciardis made a note to herself to ask the Weather Guild to keep a firmer eye on their members. Almost all the city inhabitants were running scared since the Emperor’s death a day and a half ago.

  But that didn’t mean that they could just descend into anarchy.

  No, that won’t do, she thought as she trailed a finger in the dark ash that coated even the walls of these steps.

  She hadn’t witnessed it personally, but she knew that the fire that had raged, stoked by unrestricted magic, had been a furious one. Furious enough to throw the flames so high that they reached into an enclosed stairwell and roared to the fresh air at the very top.

  She wouldn’t have wanted to be trapped in the inferno. She didn’t think anyone would have survived.

  And now the palace was once more in order, or as orderly as it could be, considering that the people had simply traded the foreboding rule of a maniacal Emperor for the unspoken, but very much realized, presence of one very troubling god.

  “No wonder everyone’s so frazzled,” Ciardis muttered with a grimace as she took the last step down and met the barely sane eyes of some skittish servants running to and fro like mice trying to avoid the notice of a very large predator.

  Ciardis had the sense they weren’t necessarily afraid of her, but what was coming in general.

  Panic and fear hung over the palace and the city itself like an oppressive cloud that would not rise.

  It wasn’t something that could be shook off. You lived with the fear, you woke with its chokehold on your breath, and you went to work with it riding your back like an ominous crow.

  As she stepped around some flagstones that had been upended into crag-like outcroppings on the floor, she pursed her mouth into a grim line. They were in the eye of the storm. She knew it. The servants knew it.

  The weather was so calm that it was actually unnerving. Waiting. Watching. Wary.

  Not knowing when the god would
appear. What he would appear as. What they could do. What they would do.

  She knew that the citizens of Sandrin feared for their lives. For their families’ lives.

  Unfortunately, Ciardis Weathervane didn’t have much reassurance to give them.

  All she could manage at the moment was to plan, even though her plans previously had had very nasty habits of falling apart.

  “Plan and keep people busy,” she said as she looked around with a critical eye. She saw a man so frazzled that he walked straight into an ash-covered pole before hastily straightening himself with a frightened look and hurrying along again with his fellow mice.

  Ciardis snagged the hand of the person nearest her. A servant walking by with her cloth-wrapped head firmly down.

  Another mouse, she noted with disappointment. She couldn’t blame them for their fear. It would rule her too if exhaustion hadn’t already taken a predominant place.

  As of now all Ciardis Weathervane had time to do was function. Function and act as if every second were her last. So she planned and she schemed and she scoured the palace for anything that would give her allies the upper hand.

  And today she would act. Because they had to. Their leisure time had run out. With the Emperor dead and a god descending, they have very little space left for preparations. She would make the most of it.

  “Where is the prince heir’s meeting?” Ciardis asked the woman not unkindly.

  The woman blanched under the layer of dust and dirt that caked her face but fortunately didn’t lose her composure. She dipped a hasty curtsy.

  “In the chamber of the conclave,” she managed to say with barely a squeak of her voice.

  Ciardis noted her calmness and gave her a smile. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, Your Imperial Highness,” the woman said smoothly as she curtsied again and scampered off before Ciardis could correct her.

  Looking after her with a perturbed expression, Ciardis called out, “I’m not an imperial anything.”

  When five different servants stopped scampering through the halls mid-run and stared at her, Ciardis ducked her head self-consciously.