Sworn to War Page 8

  As her eyes adjusted to the slightly darker space at the front entrance to the room, Ciardis stubbornly refused to look anywhere but straight ahead. It helped that the personal guard of the Emperor were doing their sworn duties by filing inside in straight columns—blocking her party from seeing anything too unusual.

  Even if they happened to provide a physical disturbance, her gaze was focused only on the Weathervane matriarch right now. Ciardis refused to let her vision be filled with the sight of palace servants who had been cruelly maimed, if not killed, by the pre-struggle to the battle between the Emperor and her.

  After all, this too was her fault, and she couldn’t take one more assault on the moral fiber of her being. Not today.

  But the healing hall was mercifully bare of bloody visuals and thrashing patients. No screams rent its air; in fact, it was quite peaceful. More peaceful than most of the palace they had walked through to get here.

  “What in the world?” Ciardis asked as she took in immaculate beds, clean quarters and not a person in sight. “Where are all the healers?”

  Lillian gestured to her from where she had already managed to clear half the ward on swift feet. “Keep up, dear, keep up!”

  Ciardis stayed where she was, looking around in dismay. Were all the healers dead? Silent victims of the palace power struggle? But if they were, would they not have fallen here instead of amongst the bodies inside the palace itself? Ciardis could believe that many of the healers had raced to take charge of the wounded once they heard the destructive beginning of the palace crumbling days ago. But all of them? Not only was that impractical, but it would be impossible.

  And yet, here she stood in the midst of what looked like a trauma ward empty of attendants. The floor was immaculate, the beds made, tools lay in carefully accessible places—all gleaming and ready to be used, but not one healer inhabited this place. It was eerily silent; it was hard to conclude anything else in the face of such emptiness.

  Is this too to be part of the dark stain I carry on my soul for the rest of my days? Ciardis wondered.

  She looked at the soldiers surrounding them for some clue as to why they were here, as her mother refused to divulge any of her new secrets. But they were as still as stones, watchful and wary. They waited around the prisoners with careful eyes, unwilling or unable to say anything to lift the fog of confusion from their charges’ minds. When her eyes landed on the Emperor, he gave her a mysteriously blank gaze and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. With a silent wave of his hand, he indicated that she should join her mother across the hall.

  Seeing no recourse, Ciardis did as commanded.

  As she walked away and stood beside Lillian, Thanar and Sebastian fell in behind them like proper escorts. Then Lillian began chattering as fast as a magpie on a hot summer’s day.

  “This is actually the most stable part of the palace,” Lillian said. “Built apart rather than into the marble imperial hallways, it is not actually tied into the magic of the nexus.”

  “Which is why the walls here have not crumbled?” Sebastian asked—his voice reluctant, but still curious.

  “Oh yes,” Lillian said as she beamed around. “Nothing here, as you can see, has been touched by the destruction wrought in the palace proper. This place is actually where you were born, Prince Heir.”

  “Not in the imperial bedchamber?” Ciardis said, and almost instantly regretted it.

  There was nothing wrong with the question, except for the fact that this was a day of mourning and defeat. Not trivial palace history.

  But if Lillian noticed her misstep out of the depressing and dark sense of demoralization that she had taken on as her champion, she was blessed enough not to mention it. “Precisely. The second Empress, wife of Bastian Athanos Algardis, labored here fourteen hours under the care of five imperial healers, a medical attendant from the kith tribes, and untold number of servants.”

  Ciardis bit the inside of her cheek to fight from asking more questions. Instead, she took in the narrow hallway and the wide flight of stone steps they began to walk up.

  There was a second level to this healing hall, she had seen that from the outside. She wondered what awaited them up these steps. The sound of soldiers knocking on the second-floor doors preceded them. They halted patiently mid-flight as their escorts and jailers waited for the doors to be opened.

  This place was both remote and located on a higher elevation than the rest of the palace, so she wasn’t surprised to not hear the shouts and crashes she’d become accustomed to as they walked through the crumbling palace interiors. Still, it was quite disturbing in its own weird way to be back in a place that seemed so normal. Untouched by the destruction, even. Ciardis wasn’t sure if that was because Lillian had said this place was old, older even than the main palace which they had just left, or something else set it just out of reach of the destabilizing capabilities of the nexus, like distance.

  In either case, it was a jarring juxtaposition to look out the window, to see and hear the flutter of hummingbirds as they floated outside as they walked between levels. To know that just out of eyesight, a building with over a thousand souls was being destroyed in a cataclysm that she had started, but that the Emperor, in his ever-expanding wisdom, had elected to quite thoroughly finish.

  He’d yet to say why the destruction of the imperial palace of Sandrin was absolutely necessary or why he couldn’t save it with his bountiful powers, but Ciardis was sure this was just another part of his plans.

  She hummed to herself as Lillian began to nervously explain that level one of the healing hall was flat on the ground, but level two was actually set back into the rocky foundation of the cliff face that much of the city was built into. Ciardis could have told her that she had figured that out on their approach to the building, but at this point hearing her mother speak of the present rather than the past with bright cheerfulness was only slightly better than hearing claws scratching through sheets of rock.

  So she let it be, and she studied the stairway in which they stood.

  It was both elegant and simple, if eerily empty. No sounds from either the level above or the one below met her ears. She thought she was going to go crazy if she stared too long at the birds outside the windows. There was nothing wrong with them. That was the problem, because inside herself, Ciardis felt broken. Broken, and consumed with wonder as to why the entire world wasn’t reflecting itself as broken as well. Nothing should be acting normal right now.

  Especially not her. She couldn’t understand why her interest in the history and the architecture of this building and the palace itself wasn’t gone, just like her ability to stop the Emperor or his men. Her entire worldview was being rocked, and yet here she stood in a remote corner of the palace grounds, so distant from all the others, that on the surface was untouched by the turmoil not even half a mile away. It was as empty as a tomb on such a bright summery day.

  15

  She couldn’t shake her curiosity, though. The healers had to be somewhere, or else why would they come here? Even she didn’t believe that her mother wanted solitude so much as that she had a new part of her plan unfolding, and somehow, some way, this place was a crucial part of that plan.

  Fortunately, Thanar was just as curious as she was. He asked as they started moving forward again, “Where are all the healers?”

  “Hmm?” murmured Lillian as she focused on climbing the flight of steps.

  He repeated his question.

  “Oh,” Lillian said with a flip of her hand, “most are tending to the wounded of the palace on site, I expect, which is why the first level’s trauma ward is so bare.”

  As the doors up ahead swung open and the soldiers entered together two by two, Ciardis asked, “And this? Is it too a trauma ward?”

  Lillian looked over at her and patted her hand gently. “Oh no, dear, not to worry. There are no maimed to flinch away from here.”

  Ciardis looked at her aghast and almost stumbled over her own feet.

&
nbsp; It wasn’t just the words themselves that startled her, it was the sentiment behind them. As if Ciardis was wrong for having a reaction to all the pain they had endured and hurt they had inflicted—even unintentionally.

  Lillian was treating her as if she was an emotional invalid, stunted by pain, when it was her mother who was stunted by her inability to feel, in Ciardis’s own eyes.

  Ciardis almost told her that to her face, cried out in fury, questioned how Lillian could just stand by as Ciardis told her of the Emperor’s culpability in her own son’s death. But she looked into Lillian’s eyes, and the woman she thought she knew wasn’t there. She expected to see a cold woman with a courtier’s cool calculating gaze reflected back at her. That would not have been out of character for the woman who reinvented herself as a quickly as a pottery artist shaped clay before throwing it into a kiln.

  In a way, Ciardis had expected Lillian to have a chameleon nature. She couldn’t have survived the imperial courts without being quick on her feet and reactive in any situation. She wouldn’t have been able to abandon her children in the countryside, literally, while returning to courts under a false name otherwise. She was Lillian Weathervane, the woman who no one could beat for very long.

  But she was also Ciardis Weathervane’s mother. And Caemon Weathervane’s mother. And for one moment, Ciardis wished that Lillian could let go of her endless grasp for power and grieve. Grieve with her daughter who had lost a brother.

  But Ciardis had come to realize that this wasn’t who Lillian was. She bounced back faster, if she had even taken a moment to let sadness overwhelm her at all. That perseverance served her well. It had earned her her freedom, and a position as a guest in the Emperor’s cozy new scheme.

  Ciardis felt bitter bile rise up in her throat at the thought, at the very idea of living her life as if Caemon hadn’t even existed. But staring into her mother’s eyes, Ciardis also realized that Lillian was dealing with his death in her own way.

  She might even see this as a way to revenge him, Ciardis thought with wry sadness. By living her life to the fullest and making the Weathervane name synonymous with power throughout the entire empire. With wasn’t an effort to actually kill the man who sanctioned his death, though. Never that. And that was what Ciardis wanted, not this. It was hard to understand how she could just let her son’s death pass by without batting an eyelash, but as Ciardis stared into Lillian’s hopeful gaze, she knew she couldn’t crush her. Whatever fantasy Lillian Weathervane was living in, it allowed her to continue with some semblance of sanity.

  If Ciardis confronted her now, she had to wonder—would the woman who stood next to her so proudly be a crumbled mess or would she emerge from the challenge stronger than ever?

  Ciardis had her suspicions, and she would act on them, but she wanted to see just what it was her mother was so desperate for them to see first.

  Then Lillian would see what it was truly like to endure too much pain. The day had gone on long enough, and Ciardis Weathervane was tired. Tired of playing a game that she knew they had no chance of winning. They had been routed at every turn, and that was after Ciardis had learned that her closest friends in all the world were dead.

  Perhaps now, rather than later, was an apt time to concede failure.

  To die with dignity, if not with mercy.

  As she looked into her mother’s eyes with a tentative smile that hid the dark realizations she had come to, Ciardis got an answering smile from Lillian. She wondered why she had never thought to question the Emperor’s care of Lillian Weathervane before.

  Could he have been torturing her all along? Ciardis wondered as she gently traced a finger through her mother’s curling hair. Could his immoral healer been healing her every time with her none the wiser? Is that what he plans to do to all of us?

  She didn’t have any answers, but it was the only explanation that Ciardis could come up with for her mother’s rather absurd behavior. First she was cold and calculating; now she was hopeful and optimistic. She was acting like they were all heading to a tea party. Ciardis had the unsettled realization that perhaps Lillian herself was now insane from the emperor’s extended period of ministrations.

  He had weeks alone with her. I left her to him like a puppet to play with, Ciardis thought in horror as she took the steps side by side with her mother, who had grasped her hand tightly awhile back and not let go.

  Ciardis knew that Lillian might not even realize the torturous trap she was leading them into, not if her mind wasn’t just confused…but simply gone.

  As she looked over at the smiling older Weathervane, Ciardis felt more sadness overcome her.

  My fault, my fault, my fault, Ciardis cried in her head in time with her steps. It’s all my cursed fault.

  She tried to get a grip on her emotions. To not let her mental anguish show, when she was literally surrounded by the enemy on all sides, and backed by a mercurial Emperor more inclined to torture an ally than to let bygones be bygones. Even if she had proof to accuse him of torturing her mother with, well…she could just add that on top of the crimes of murder, fratricide, and civil turmoil that she was no happier to lay at his doorstep. It wasn’t like he’d been punished for any of those other actions either; they had all led up to her hasty actions on this day.

  In fact, Ciardis suspected that the Emperor had only committed some of those crimes, the murder of her brother for instance, to lead her and her allies into a murderous trap. One even they couldn’t walk away from. It was one thing to commit to fighting another day. It was entirely another to turn your back on the senseless murder of your friends in order to retreat in cowardice.

  She would have never done that. There was no question of her loyalty.

  And Ciardis had no doubt in her mind that Maradian knew that. He knew her better than her own mother, it seemed, if Lillian thought for one second Ciardis had a single bone in her body willing to forgive the Emperor of Algardis for what he had done.

  She wasn’t her mother.

  She wasn’t Lillian Weathervane.

  As she acknowledged that sentiment in her mind, Ciardis felt a curious sense of relief.

  Relief mixed with pity as she watched Lillian walk through the doors of the second floor with her own relieved smile on her face.

  If Lillian thought Ciardis or Sebastian or Thanar were willing to make amends, to sit down and break bread with the Emperor, or to lead his citizens in war with the gods while he pursued his own interests…she was more than just delusional. She was an enemy on the same level as the Emperor she obediently followed.

  Ciardis straightened her shoulders and brushed past Thanar and Sebastian.

  With a gentle swipe of the prince heir’s hand, she let him know to be ready.

  16

  He didn’t send her a response with words; instead, she felt his emotions rise.

  Anger. That was his response.

  On her other side, Thanar extended a wingtip to brush the back of her neck. It almost looked like it happened in passing, but she knew that he could have just as smoothly avoided her in the crowded stairway. He was just that good.

  What she read on the edge of his thoughts was different than Sebastian. He wasn’t nursing resentment that he was born into a family that had no sense of good or decency. He wasn’t even boiling in fury at what it meant to be dragged down in the muck by a person who shared his own name.

  No, Thanar had no bone to pick in this fight, if you looked at it from afar.

  But what he did have was a sense of anticipation. He was eager to shed blood and make them all pay. Whether that was a sign of his race’s mercurial nature or Thanar’s own predilection for violence, she couldn’t say. But it was exactly what she needed at that moment.

  Good, she crooned to herself. They’re ready.

  She didn’t care if she died this day. But she would be no one’s patsy.

  Ciardis eyed the walls around her. There was nothing but loose fabric drifting in the wind.

  She needed a wea
pon. Anything loose enough for her to wield would do, really.

  If she was going to fight her mother, her Emperor and more than a dozen personal guards, she needed something other than magic to get her through the next hour.

  She soon spied something that just might work, and she smiled.

  Quickly Ciardis stumbled on a step and stubbed her foot.

  Howling as if she’d broken her toe, she grabbed onto one of the vertical rods which the scraps of silk were fluttering from and prepared to throw a couple dozen soldiers down a steep flight of stairs with it.

  Whimpering with all the passion she could muster, she heard Lillian hurry back to console her.

  Fortunately, her mother’s fluttering hands and overly dramatic response were just what she needed.

  And if she gripped the metal rod in her hands a little too tightly, well, that could easily be seen as the nervous tic of a young woman just trying keep her balance at the very top of a long flight stone stairs. With a sniffle Ciardis stood up carefully and shifted her weight to pull the rod back away from the wall. It wasn’t anchored into the stone, so all the better for her. She didn’t hesitate.

  She pulled it up and away from the floor with a substantial yank. With one swift move, a practice lunge that wouldn’t have been out of place if she was holding a glaive, she swung it wide with a frightful scream. She was so fast that she managed to hit several unsuspecting soldiers in the face. Even the one that saw her turning around with a metal rod in her hands only managed to duck backwards, which was perfectly acceptable in Ciardis’s plans. He fell backward, taking several of his other comrades with him. With the stairway too narrow for the rest of them to draw their weapons and fight back, as she had the advantage of a singularly long reach, they too fell back down the stairs. Either by force or by choice, but mostly at the receiving end of a harsh thwack of her curtain rod and a mad cackle to send them on their way.