Sworn to Sovereignty Read online

  A satisfied voice interrupted her thoughts as her eyes adjusted to the sudden lack of night.

  “So you like my daylights?” said the man as he walked forward with a smile.

  That was when she caught sight of his form.

  Ciardis, prepared to say something else, was quick to snap her mouth shut. Eyes wide, she took him in.

  The emperor met them with a smile. But it wasn’t the smile that caught her attention so strongly.

  The man posing as Sebastian’s father was covered in blood. Dripping with it. Bright red and freshly shed, if she was any judge.

  Ciardis didn’t know what to say.

  Sebastian apparently didn’t have any problem. “Another of your victims, Father?”

  Maradian laughed. “Oh, come now, Sebastian. Surely we’re past the formalities.”

  The prince heir narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Family secrets are really burdensome to carry around, and well, since you already told your fiancée it all, we might as well lay all of our cards on the table, shall we?” Maradian cooed softly.

  Ciardis sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Yes,” said the emperor whose eyes cut quickly to hers. “I am an imposter. But then again, you knew that.”

  Sebastian walked forward a bit and carefully searched the eyes of the man who stood before him.

  Maradian looked down his nose at him with the impatience of a god being studied by a mortal.

  “And you, Weathervane, I bet you’re wondering…well, why didn’t I just kill you both before you returned to my fair city?” Maradian purred.

  Ciardis crossed her arms defensively.

  “Well, first, it’s a simple manner of cost-benefit analysis,” Maradian went on. “You’ve been useful to me and I knew that even before you left for the city of Kifar. You will have to tell me how that went, by the way. I’m dying to know what those people are like after half a century trapped away. And, well, why didn’t they kill you, my son and heir; that too.”

  “Why, you no good—” Ciardis hissed.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” said Maradian while wagging a cautionary finger. “I’d hold off finishing that sentence, Weathervane. A daughter must respect her father, and after all, soon we’re going to be family. And don’t you want to know what’s second?”

  Ciardis couldn’t help it. Revulsion openly showed on her face.

  But she played his game. Sullenly she asked, “What’s that?”

  Maradian smiled. “I control the fate of your parents. Both of them,” he said with a laugh. “It is the irony of ironies. But I know you two would do anything to possess the two, so we’re at stalemate, shall we say?”

  Ciardis froze.

  Sebastian said in a halting voice, “He’s alive?”

  Maradian turned cold, dead eyes on his nephew. “Oh yes, he is. And he’ll stay that way. As long as you two continue to do exactly as I say.”

  Ciardis voiced a thought through a suddenly hoarse throat. “And if we don’t?”

  Maradian shrugged. “It won’t be hard to disappear a woman the entire empire considers a murderer. And well, as for your father, Sebastian, he disappeared long ago.”

  The look of horror on Sebastian’s face spoke volumes.

  But Maradian continued to dig in. “And not a soul noticed. So what’s one more unidentified body in the bay, along the imperial roads to the forest, out in the frozen tundra, or scattered across the desert sands? I’ve yet to decide which death would be most appropriate for a former emperor, but I know at least one of those will be fun.”

  “Stop it,” Ciardis hissed as she put a cautious hand on a shaking Sebastian’s shoulder.

  “What did I say about respect?” Maradian said in a cold tone. “Do not ever forget who I am.”

  Sebastian said in a voice that would have chilled a room, “The man who murdered his sister-in-law and disappeared a sitting emperor.”

  Maradian smiled. “The man you know as emperor. Now, let’s get back to Kifar, shall we…why aren’t you dead? I truly thought they’d get rid of two birds with one stone for me. Death of the troublesome heir and the perfect carte blanche to take back a forgotten part of the empire with no pesky conundrums.”

  Ciardis shuddered as the magnitude of his words reached her. “You’ve always been two steps ahead of us, haven’t you?”

  “Three, actually,” Maradian said with a pitying smile. “I sent you to your deaths to also get some much-needed cleanup done in this fair capital of mine.”

  “The rebels?” Sebastian asked flatly.

  “Inconsequential,” said Maradian with a roll of his eyes.

  “Vana Cloudbreaker?” Ciardis asked with a hitch in her voice.

  Maradian smiled with dead eyes. “An interesting conundrum.”

  “Where is she?” Ciardis asked, while lunging at the blood-covered emperor.

  She looked behind him as well. At the one alcove where the light from the wall panels would not reach.

  “Not here,” said Maradian in a sing-song voice.

  “Please,” Ciardis begged.

  “Oh no,” the emperor cooed, “I want you to bleed for this one.”

  Ciardis stiffened as she heard the sound of a blade leaving a sheath. Sebastian’s blade.

  To her horror, Maradian merely laughed.

  “I do not mean that literally, Sebastian,” he said. “My, so touchy. But since your fiancée asked so nicely, I’ll say this: Vana Cloudbreaker is not here. I released her from my gentle grasp earlier tonight. Alive.”

  “Well?” Sebastian asked.

  “Oh no, let’s not go that far,” Maradian said. “But she did walk out of here on her own two feet. Which is more than I can say for the person she left behind.”

  Ciardis was desperately searching those shadows to confirm that Maradian was telling the truth, but she couldn’t pierce the gloom. So she whirled on the emperor.

  Her hatred must have shown in her eyes.

  “You don’t even know who that is, but you feel for them,” the emperor said with a smile.

  “I’d feel for anyone who’d been left to your tender mercies for a day or more,” Ciardis said with coldness in her voice.

  The emperor snorted. “Well, true. Though it’s not like I planned this portion. You can thank your daemoni prince’s amateurish plan for that. I had to improvise. I saw Vana’s part in it from miles away. But this one…he actually managed to surprise me.”

  Ciardis’s mouth curled into a snarl. “I’m so glad you were amused.”

  “You won’t be for very long,” the emperor said softly.

  Ciardis pursed her lips tightly. That she believed.

  A moment passed, then another.

  Finally Maradian sighed. “Well, as fun as this has been, I must be going. An empire to run and all. I expect the both of you in attendance at the council meeting tomorrow, wyvern in tow. It shall be such fun to hear your stories.”

  Then he stepped aside and towards the door. As he did the body behind emerged from the shadows and Ciardis gasped. Sebastian hurled.

  It was Caemon Weathervane.

  As the emperor took his final steps with his hand on the knob, the prince heir spoke out.

  “Why should I let you live?” Sebastian asked in a shaking voice.

  “Because you’d never come close to matching me in a duel,” Maradian said with a shrug. “Even on your best day. And today is not your best. So rest, my nephew. Our time is coming. It is just not this night.”

  Ciardis, ignoring their focus on each other, raced to her twin’s side while slipping and sliding on the floor in the mess of blood Maradian had left in his wake.

  The emperor left the Chamber of Imperial Astronomy as quiet as when they’d entered it.

  Except for the harsh sobs emitting from one Ciardis Weathervane.

  9

  Ciardis could barely speak as she asked, “What do we do?”

  Caemon was lying on his side, his entire front covered in the same brig
ht red blood that had stained Maradian, although she could see that it was already starting to cake dry.

  She was afraid to even touch him. He looked deathly pale, his eyes were closed, and his lips an unhealthy gray that reminded Ciardis of a corpse.

  Her hands zipped up and down over his body like angry bees. Just out of reach of his skin. Not touching him. Not disturbing the thick coat of blood on his clothes, in his hair, on his lips. She wanted to shake him awake. To scream at him. Anything to make them all wake up from this nightmare.

  But it wouldn’t work. She knew that.

  “Maybe, maybe it’s just a trick? An illusion!” she finally gasped out. “Like Maradian did with Mother? Do you think? I—”

  “Take a breath, Ciardis,” snapped Sebastian as he rushed over. “This isn’t helping Caemon.”

  She did as he asked. She took a deep breath, her mind rushing through a dozen explanations and discarding each as even more ludicrous than the last. One thought centered on the illusion concept. Another put forth the idea that this wasn’t really her twin in her head. Just someone who looked just like him. Down to the curls that dipped into his face like a bouncy shield.

  None of them were real enough to undo reality, though.

  Sebastian reached for Caemon’s blood-covered throat to feel for a pulse. He moved his hand lower on his throat to get a better read.

  “Did it work? Can you feel a pulse?” she finally asked.

  Sebastian put his other hand on Caemon’s shoulder. “It’s weak, but it’s there.”

  “We need to get him to a healer,” Ciardis said.

  Sebastian began to search Caemon’s chest, pulling back pieces of his shirt.

  “He’s been stabbed,” the prince muttered as he looked. “No, not stabbed.”

  “What then?” Ciardis asked as she peered closer to her twin brother’s wounds. “Are those…claw marks?”

  “What did Maradian do to him?” Sebastian asked in a horrified mutter.

  Ciardis said, “Did you say your father would torture you here? Was it like this?”

  “No,” Sebastian said, flummoxed. “Not anything like this. I meant in the metaphysical sense. Not—I’m sorry, Ciardis, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “I have,” said a voice off to their left. “And if you don’t let me treat him fast, death will be the least of your problems.”

  Ciardis scrambled up and in front of Caemon’s prone body, heedless of the danger. To her comfort, so did Sebastian.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  A man in blue robes walked slowly forward carrying a heavy satchel.

  “I am the emperor’s private healer, and I see wounds like this all the time,” the man said. “I can help him.”

  Ciardis glanced over at Sebastian who was frowning.

  “Why have I never met you before?” the prince heir asked stiffly.

  “Because you’ve been away from court for quite a while, Prince Heir,” said the man formally. “Now, if you please.”

  The so-called healer started to walk forward.

  Ciardis shook her head and stepped into his path. “You’re not getting near my brother.”

  The man pinned her with a strident gaze. “Then he’ll die.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” she growled. “But if you don’t leave right now—”

  “I already explained who I was,” the man said in exasperation.

  “Who sent you?” Sebastian asked suspiciously.

  A slow groan emitted from Caemon behind them. Ciardis jumped in place. She ached to turn back around and tend to him but she couldn’t. There wasn’t much she could do anyway.

  “The emperor himself,” the man said with a puffed-up chest.

  “Is that supposed to inspire confidence?” Ciardis asked with a slack jaw. Aghast that the man who worked for the monster who had done this would dare come to help his victim.

  The man eyed her. “You mean in light of who did this to him in the first place?”

  “Precisely,” said Sebastian in a clipped tone.

  “All I can say is that his imperial majesty likes to play games with his foes,” the healer said bluntly. “But they never die. Not unless I am impeded from getting to them first.”

  His tone was pointed.

  Ciardis still didn’t budge.

  “You call that a game?” she asked, still stunned. “What kind of healer are you?”

  “A very good one,” the man said. “And one who will lose both his job and his family if you do not let me pass.”

  “Your family,” said Sebastian flatly.

  “The emperor bound me with an old spell,” the healer said as a slightly frantic tone began to seep into his voice. “I heal his patients—”

  “You mean victims,” Ciardis said snippily.

  The man gave her a long-suffering glare but quickly amended his words. “I heal his victims in a satisfactory manner, and he spares my family. So far I have a four out of four rate of success, and I’d like to make it five out of five, so please let me pass.”

  “How did he bind you?” Sebastian asked slowly.

  The healer rolled up a sleeve and showed the prince heir a cuff with runes carved into it.

  It was glowing, which was apparently enough for Sebastian. He stood aside.

  As the healer stepped around Ciardis, she put a restraining hand on his chest.

  She didn’t say a word to the healer, just looked directly at Sebastian with a hard gaze.

  “He’s legitimate,” the prince heir said with a distant gaze. “Let him pass, Ciardis. He’s the only hope right now that we have of saving Caemon.”

  She dropped her hand and choked back a sob as the healer dropped to the floor and got to work.

  “How do you know he’s telling the truth?” she managed to ask through muted cries.

  Sebastian came over and put an arm on her shoulder. “Because the same sort of healer tended to my minor cuts and bruises as a child. The tactics my father uses haven’t changed much since I remember him. He favors repetition, always has. If something works well once, keep it around.”

  His tone was musing. Ciardis looked up and caught his gaze through tear-blurred eyes.

  “You mean you think—” She paused, wary of their audience.

  Sebastian picked up her thoughts internally. That my uncle has been masquerading as my father since childhood? Most definitely.

  “If you two could do me a favor?” the healer asked jovially, happy now that he had his patient in hand.

  “What is it?” Ciardis asked, breaking eye contact with Sebastian.

  “Hold this young man’s shoulders and his feet,” the healer said. “This is going to hurt.”

  “Caemon,” Ciardis said while settling at her brother’s feet. “His name is Caemon.”

  The healer glanced up at her over a pair of dark green spectacles he had placed on his face. “Caemon then. Please keep Caemon restrained while I work.”

  Without a word, Sebastian took his position at Caemon’s shoulders, and the healer got to work.

  There was a lot of blood and many screams. Whatever this healer did was nothing like the healing that Christian did. In fact, his tactics—eliciting pain out of his patients, that is—reminded Ciardis more of what Thanar tended to do.

  Ciardis shuddered and grimly held on.

  By the time the healer was finished, Caemon had sunk back into unconsciousness.

  Nodding brusquely at his work, the healer said, “I need to take him to the imperial healers’ quarters now.”

  He stood and wiped his hands on a clean cloth.

  She wanted to protest, but she didn’t see many other options presenting themselves. She didn’t know if the koreschie was in any position to tend to Caemon’s wounds at the moment, and finding another healer in the dead of night when one stood right beside them was asking for trouble.

  Ciardis, her hands covered in sweat and blood, just wiped her palms on her pants legs when the healer didn’
t offer her the same choice. She had no plans on asking him.

  She did, however, have a question. “How can you live with yourself?” she asked while standing up.

  She didn’t couch her question in more polite terms. But to his credit, the healer took off his medical spectacles and respected her enough to look her directly in the eye.

  He gave her a tired smile. “I would do anything to save my family. I don’t think I’m the only person here who would say the same.”

  Ciardis didn’t flinch. If he was referring to what she had done for her mother, she didn’t care. He didn’t know the whole story. He didn’t know like she did with unshakeable proof that the Weathervane matriarch was innocent of the crime she was accused of.

  Ciardis shook her head. “Even so,” she replied while gesturing at her brother’s resting form. “This? You knew what the emperor was doing. You had to, as you registered no surprise at having a fifth victim on your hands.”

  “Yes, I knew,” the healer said with a shrug. “Who am I to question my emperor’s actions?”

  This time it was Sebastian who spoke. “If you don’t, who will? You the healer, you the caregiver, you the protector.”

  The man looked at the prince heir askance. “I, among all of us here, am the most fallible. The emperor, your father if I may be so bold, would order my execution with a snap of his fingers.”

  The prince heir looked at the healer. “That is where we differ less than you think. My father is a calculating man, and we all have a role to play in his plans. If we don’t, we are equally disposable.”

  The healer smiled and bowed. “And that, Prince Heir, is how I have rationalized living with myself. Practicality. It’s the only way to survive in the imperial courts of Sandrin.”

  The healer turned to Ciardis and bowed as well. “Now, I’ll take my patient and provide him with the best care in this half of the empire.”

  Ciardis swallowed harshly, but she didn’t feel like arguing more this night. They couldn’t change the healer’s mind. All that mattered at the moment was the fact that he would care for her brother.

  Which is all that the emperor asked of him, she thought to herself bitterly.

  Aloud, Ciardis said, “We’ll come with you.”

  “No, you won’t,” the healer said as he repacked his satchel and swung it on his shoulder. His tone was matter-of-fact. Her response was anything but.