FRATRICIDE: An Amoni-Ram Story - SCP Foundation

The Emperor of Amoni-Ram is dying. His two sons struggle for the throne. A general is pulled into a plot to kill her dauphin. The future of the Mekhanites hangs by a narrow thread.

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FRATRICIDE

An Amoni-Ram Story

Chapter I • Chapter II • Chapter III • Chapter IV

Chapter I

The two princes chased each other around the courtyard. The palace’s inner walls sheltered them, dappled sunlight falling across the tilework and fountains, across the gold mosaics and orange facades. They panted, laughed, shrieked, the younger running after the older until, limber and long-legged, he tackled his brother to the ground, both falling in a heap.

When he opened his mouth to laugh again, he tasted copper. He pressed a hand to his mouth, looking at it in disbelief. Blood. His nose was twisted, gushing blood freely. For a moment, he didn’t realize what had happened — until he looked up, and saw his brother’s eyes turned cold and sharp, fuladh fist streaked with red.

In a second, their nursemaids swept in with their long flowing dresses, one hastily separating the two boys while the others pressed cloths to his face to stem the flow, clucking and fussing over him. The last thing the prince saw before the nursemaids crowded around him, blocking his view, was the sharp, offended eyes of his brother. How dare you. How dare you.

The field had been so very deafening a few hours ago. Now, it was painfully quiet and still. No more captains shouting orders, no more Daeva pushing the line. Just a sea of dead bodies, knee-deep and horizon-far, Mekhanites mixed with Daeva mixed with beasts mixed with nobody at all. Blood and oil flowing freely into the dirt, mixing into a thick red mud.

It coated everything — the severed fuladh limbs lying in the mire, the bleached-and-burned skulls of the warbeasts, Bileath’s golden armor as she picked her way through the endless carcasses, the men she commanded and the men she killed. Vultures danced overhead, patiently waiting to have their turn. They always got their turn, nowadays.

A Daeva corpse shuddered to her right. She didn’t hesitate, plunging the tip of her sword into its soft nape. The flesh gave way, the bone rent — and it gave a final death rattle before falling still again. She wiped the sword on the body’s tunic before returning to her slow march across the field.

No prisoners, Qabar had told her. No prisoners and no quarter. Anyone who fell, died. Nevermind that the Daeva had no regard for their own lives and would fight to the last man, prisoner or otherwise. Nevermind that the bodies they left were easy fodder for the man-eaters later.

It was fine. The legions followed her word, not his. She would, quietly, give the order to burn the bodies when the mud, thick with blood, receded. Qabar would rage silently, but he would not do anything. To her, anyway.

She spied another body twitching a few feet away and gingerly stepped between dead, tangled limbs to approach it. A wet crunch; her foot landed on the head of a half-transformed Daeva, face formed into a horrific visage. The viscera sprayed across her once-shining greaves. She grimaced, and raised her sword again.

Behind her, as the sun set, she could hear horns carried over the wind.

The siege of Thambarat continued.

It was the latest front in the First War — the crusade, waged against the aggressor nations in defense of the borders of the empire. They had pushed back against the Daeva’s incursion, setting fire to the jungles the sorcerers raised as defense. The fire spread virulently, from tree to tree, copse to copse, forest to forest, vast swathe of jungle to jungle until there were only vast plains of ash, charred bodies twisted in agony. Every spear-length of land they retook from the Daeva was paid for in gallons of Mekhanite blood. But it was paid for in full, and they took their righteous prize.

And now they had pushed the monstrosities back all the way here, to Thambarat. A fortress-city, resting between two rivers at the point where they pushed closest to one another, not quite touching. A wide, shallow city, and in the spring thaw the rivers became impassable rapids: a natural barrier.

Bileath had pleaded with Qabar to hold the siege until winter, when the glaciers feeding the rivers would re-freeze and the water would become passable — maybe even frozen thick enough to move troops and siege engines over, if they were lucky. He had ignored her, of course, so she had enlisted Harram’s help.

He was her opposite, Qabar’s left hand as she was his right. The general of the expeditionary armies, he and his forces had been pushing in the far East, carving a bloody path across the southern lands of the Nälkä and the northern borders of the Daeva, pushing west until they met the Golden Legion at Thambarat. Harram came from the east — Bileath came from the west — and, the city and its defenders squeezed between their armies, they had pled with Qabar to hold the siege for a few months.

From his tent on the hill overlooking the city, he had looked at them. Stocky, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, the piercing golden eyes marking him as a Bumaro now laid upon the two of them.

Harram went first. “My Lord, my forces tire. They have waged bloody war in a foreign land. They have not seen the temples of Qaya-Ram in many years, the towers of Amoni-Ram in even longer. I fear we will not be able to take the city for many months.”

Downhill, the armies were camped — thousands of men sitting in the mud around sparse fires, setting up canvas tents and wool cots to rest their heads for a few precious hours. Harram spoke truth; they were the bravest of the empire, and still, they were exhausted after an endless, bloody campaign.

The prince had cocked his head, face impassive. The inside of his tent was cast alight by the setting sun, rays bouncing across the treasures seized from the Daeva during this campaign. Wooden shields inlaid with gold, intricate carvings of warbeasts and marble statuettes of elephants, polished blades and spears made for hands much larger than a man. The tiger-skin rug the two generals stood on as Prince Qabar sat in a stolen throne completed the image.

Seizing the silence, Bileath offered her support. “I must agree, sire. Our infantries are depleted.” She bit her tongue for a moment, then continued. “Our mechanical corps are down to the last few men. We only have one functional goliath, cobbled from parts from the fallen. I question our ability to hold a siege.”

The sun inched down the horizon before Qabar spoke.

“Do your forces fear dying in the name of their Emperor?”

She could practically hear Harram’s teeth grind. She interjected before the man could say anything. “Of course not, my Lord. But death now is not worth anything, not when we still have a long campaign ahead of us. We must conserve our resources.”

“We must take Thambarat. We must make sure the Daeva know that they cannot hide behind their walls of stone and root until we turn tail and run back to our nest to lick our wounds.”

“The Daeva have stores of fruit and grain for years, and can easily make more,” Harram argued. “They will endure. We cannot simply starve them out.”

“Then we will burn them out. Siege engines, bombarding the city with burning pitch day and night.”

“The sorcerer-nawabs will repel them,” Bileath pointed out.

“Then we will distract the sorcerer-nawabs with direct assaults.”

“We don’t have the men,” Harram near-shouted, exasperatedly.

“They will fight for me, or they will be put to the sword,” Qabar said casually. “As will you, if you raise your voice to me again. I care little for your victories in the east if you cannot obey your betters, General. Do well to remember this.”

Harram was silent for a moment before bowing. “Yes, my Lord. Deepest apologies.”

“Now go and marshal your armies. I want the siege engines set up on the hill before the sun rises.”

Harram had slipped out of the entrance to the tent, flanked by the imperial guard, and Bileath had turned to follow him when Qabar called out to her, speaking but not looking.

“I expect some insubordination from my men. But you would do well to remember your future after this campaign, Bileath. There is no room for insubordination in the palace walls.”

She bowed her head and slipped away.

That had been many months ago. Now, their heels were dug in, and the siege continued unabated into the beginning of summer.

Bileath’s hopes that the summer would bring a dry run proved fatally incorrect. The waters of the river rose up as the glacier thawed even faster. The mud and dirt wore and washed away, and one night, the banks collapsed, sending half a dozen camps tumbling into the rapids. Before anyone could do anything, the screaming soldiers were snatched by the rushing water, slammed over and over again into the sharp rocks the Daeva had placed downriver. She had no idea how long they took to die, but prayed it had been quickly.

Morale in the camp grew worse after that, if such a thing was possible. The misery was daily now — foodstuffs were dwindling. Some of her lieutenants were debating slaughtering their mounts. In the day, soldiers would dig through the newly-replenished battlefields for Mekhanite corpses and drag them back to bury them. And every night, when the sun set and the fires across the camp came to life, the battle would begin again. The siege engines, with their deafening combustion, would begin casting balls of burning pitch over the walls, into Thambarat. The sorcerer-nawabs would return fire with fist-sized balls of venomous thorns, cast down onto the legion by the hundreds as another force would rush whatever part of the walls they felt were weak that day. The Daeva pikemen on the walls would stab from above, piercing flesh and fuladh. Screaming was the symphony of battle.

And all the while, Bileath and Harram sat a mile behind the line, safely in camp, while their men fought and died. They drew their plans and maps and adjusted force counts, hearing the distant shouting and screaming.

They stared at each other over the map when a particularly devastating round of screams sounded out.

“Should we—”

She shook his head. Qabar had ordered them back — that they were more valuable making the plans and leaving the common soldiers to die for them. He’d said it so casually — as though death in these numbers was not just a consequence but an unforgettable component of the battle.

And of course, he’d ordered her back in particular. Stroking her cheek with his still-flesh right hand. “I couldn’t risk my hawk breaking her wings,” said so softly that it made her blood boil and her skin crawl. But she had simply nodded and returned to her quarters.

So there they were, in the command tent, looking at each other completely helpless as their armies screamed and bled and fought and died.

“This isn’t what we are meant to do. We’re supposed to lead,” Harram insisted.

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

Harram heaved a deep, weighty sigh, then put his dagger down on the table.

“You walked the fields last night?”

She nodded. “No prisoners.” Not anymore.

“Then go rest. I’ll hold the command.”

“I am not going to sleep while my men get massacred.”

“With this prince, you’d never sleep again.” It was a seditious comment, maybe, but one she couldn’t deny the truth of. The exhaustion was there, encroaching on her now that the adrenaline was wearing off. Dark edges to her vision, her prosthetics weightier than ever.

“Only for a few hours.”

Harram nodded. She could see the exhaustion in his face too — he wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old enough to warrant the lines of worry that had been etched under his eyes. Some small part of her wondered what she looked like now, whether it was the same face she had when she’d set out from Amoni-Ram. She put the thoughts away for later and slipped out of the command tent.

Her own tent was at the edge of the camp. She was afforded some privileges from her position, privacy among them. She didn’t trust herself to stay in the air this tired, so she made the trek on foot, stomping through the mud and weaving between the labyrinth of tents and campfires. The soldiers from the units not involved in the attacks were kneeling, warming themselves, eating what rations they could get their hands on. Seeing her approach, they scrambled to their knees to salute, but she waved them down. No point disturbing what little rest they’d get. They settled for weakly raising their fists in a salute, one she returned before passing.

Then she stumbled backward, pushed to the side. It was a small group of prisoners. Three or four Daeva, dressed in rags and manacled together. Their heads were bowed as they were led along by soldiers. She was going to call out for them to stop until she registered the red-dyed capelet on their shoulders. Imperial guards, not for her to command.

That was impossible. They weren’t supposed to take prisoners. But she watched them go back the way she had come, torches and disappearing into the darkness. One of the prisoners turned for a second, locking eyes with her. She started. He was young, far too young to be a soldier. His face was almost bestial — half-transformed into the Daeva spirit, jaws drawn back to reveal razor-sharp teeth, curly-haired and dark-skinned. But eyes distinctly rich and brown and human. Then he turned away, and they were gone.

She jostled the soldier nearest here.

“Where are they going?”

“I don’t know, my lady.”

She narrowed her eyes and turned, heading to her tent.

It was a small space, but it was distinctly hers. The soldiers respected her; no one would think to enter without her permission, so she had no fear of her possessions being disturbed. It was simple: her cot, chest, canvas-wrapped weapons, a few mementos from home.

A handful of trophies — nothing as ostentatious as Qabar’s war-loot, but just a few memorable objects she had squirreled away, to remind her where she had gone and what she had accomplished. A Daeva wood-sword, thorns torn from the tree-beast she had felled. A little statuette of a dancing scarlet god. And her favorite, a large cage made from finely-woven wood, containing a number of small forest-beasts. They were odd little creatures, the size and shape of frogs, but with six legs and mouths full of sharp teeth. They glowed in the darkness. They were contraband, and no doubt she’d be punished if Qabar found them, but they were her little rebellion.

Closing the tentflap behind her, she shook a pinch of dried crumbled meat into their enclosure and watched as the four or five of them emerged from the sticks and moss she had carefully arranged for them and went for the food. The biggest got there first and bullied the others, pushing them around and snapping its jaws menacingly at its brothers as it ate. When it had gotten its fill and wandered off, she shook in another pinchful for the stragglers.

Then she collapsed into bed.

“I don’t know how you suffer him, really.”

She flicked her gaze up at Harram. They were in the command tent, drawing maps for the next assault. She let the comment hang in the air for a moment before addressing it.

“It’s my duty.”

“To follow the commands of a blind, spoiled oaf who knows nothing about war?”

“I wouldn't say he knows nothing.”

“Fair. He knows how to kill his men.”

“Harram.”

Her admonishment wasn’t in Qabar’s honor — it was purely out of concern someone might hear. He acknowledged it with a nod, at least.

“Have you heard the reports from last night’s assault on the southern flank of the city?”

“No. How bad?”

“Four hundred.”

“Injured. How many dead?”

“Four hundred dead, Bileath. Twice that injured.”

It was an eyewatering number. She didn’t speak for a second.

“Goddess forgive us.”

“I really don’t know how long we can sustain this. Disease is tearing through our ranks almost as quickly as the Daeva are.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, Bileath.”

Bileath’s gaze settled on him.

“What are you talking about?”

“When I was a youth in the Legion — you would’ve been but a child — we were waging a campaign against the rebels at Ulma-Ram. It was a bloody affair; none of us knew how to make war against other Mekhanites, not really. And of course, there is nothing worse for morale than killing your kinsmen. Many of us died on those fields. Too many. ”

He paused for a second, lost somewhere else.

“But eventually, we had the rebels in a position where they were willing to try and execute their commandant for surrender and leniency. They served us with an offer — I was a lieutenant, then, and all of the lieutenants brought it to our captain. He listened to the surrender offer very patiently. Then he reached took it and tossed it into the fire. Announced to all of our shocked faces that we would not accept a surrender, and that he would have the commandant’s head on his pike before granting an inch of mercy to any traitor of the empire.”

Bileath asked, even though she knew the answer; the tale was rumour and mythology in the Legion, oft-whispered and never-confirmed. She just hadn’t realized Harram was its origin. “What happened?”

“We roused the next morning to find him, in his tent, throat slit and bleeding like a stuck pig. A rebel traitor must have snuck into the camp at night and cut him down.” He said it bluntly and dispassionately.

“A rebel traitor.”

“Yes.”

It hung in the air, weighty and full of implication.

“Harram. Do not tell me something I cannot let myself come to know.” She said it softly but firmly.

Harram nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry. I forget your position.”

“As do I.”

They were silent again until a messenger burst through the tentflap, announcing a summons — Bileath, to Qabar’s camp. She swallowed the pit that suddenly found itself in her stomach, and exchanged looks with Harram.

“I assume you’ve heard the casualty report from last night.”

Qabar was picking at a roasted cut of meat in front of him, barely acknowledging Bileath’s presence. She stood on the rug in the middle of the tent, hands folded behind her.

“Yes, my Lord. They are…”

“Unfortunate but inevitable. I question the efficacy of the plans you and General Harram are devising if these are the consequences, but of course, such things are your domain.”

She silenced the scream she wanted to let out.

“Still, the problem remains: we need a relief force. How quickly can you make it to Amoni-Ram?”

Her heart stopped, struck by a bolt of wild hope. She willed it back to life, not wanting to betray the momentary lapse in impassion.

“If I hurry and am able to catch a good wind, four days. Perhaps three.”

“Will Harram be able to hold the line without you?”

She nodded silently, not wanting to say anything that might convince him to change his mind. He thought for a moment, then motioned her to a ceramic data-cylinder sitting on a table.

“Then three days. Deliver the reinforcement orders to General Maleeyn at the garrison in Amoni-Ram. Don’t wait to lead the relief force here — I want you back here as soon as possible. You may trust Harram to lead, but I don’t.”

Her heart was singing. She stomped it down and nodded obediently, dispassionately. Qabar rose from his seat, approaching her. She stood ramrod-straight and death-still as he raised her chin with a fuladh finger.

“Take comfort. The sooner this siege ends, the sooner I return to Amoni-Ram a conqueror, with you at my side. My father will formally abdicate the throne to me, and I will be free to take my shahansha as my concubine, as is my birthright. Crown Empress, if you’re good.”

She nodded, eyes lowered. It was the only way he wouldn’t see the burning rage in her eyes. “Thank you, my Lord. I look forward to it.”

“Of course you do. Go now.” And he returned to his meal.

I don’t know how you suffer him, really.

Harram’s words echoed in her head from the moment she ran full-tilt to the edge of camp and leaped off the cliff, wings spreading wide to catch the updraft and rocketing her high into the air, to the hours spent utterly alone, gliding along the desert winds with the hawks and the falcons as the dunes shifted endlessly beneath her, left behind in record time.

I don’t know how you suffer him, really.

It bounced around her as the desert below gave way to farms and sandstone houses, and then she crested a vast hill, and then it was in front of her — Amoni-Ram, Gate of the West, Adytum’s Answer, high walls surroundings the city and sunlight reflecting off the sky-scraping towers gleaming bronze and proud, off the shimmering fuladh of the palace’s facades, off the armor of a new legion marshaled outside the city gates, blinding sunlight forcing her to cover her eyes as she swept in to the city of her birth, the city she loved, the city she’d left behind. She swung low through the air, abandoning the birds, coming in over the city walls where the guardsmen greeted her with a cheer and a salute she returned.

I don’t know how you suffer him, really.

It raced in her head as she raced, wings spread, through the alleys formed from the sandstone and fuladh-and-steel buildings. The crowds spread out beneath her — more refugees than normal, maybe, but still happy crowds, reassured that they were safe in the greatest city on Earth as they partook in the bazaars and prayers to Mekhane and ten thousand other things that the metropolis offered. They looked up as her winged form shot overhead, weaving around pipes and about corners.

I don’t know how you suffer him, really.

It dominated her thoughts as she quickly found herself at the garrison, filled with armored soldiers and officers, finding a meeting with the general-in-residence and handing over the memory-cylinder before apologizing but she really had to go now, and she would be more than happy to discuss the news from the front tomorrow over tea. And then taking her leave, again into the air, but this time away from the garrison and away from the palace, to a familiar skyscraper. She landed hanging from the building’s side, one hand gripping the metal frame of the window as she folded her wings, popped the latches on the glass, and clambered in.

And the thought departed from her head entirely when, rounding a corner in the expensively-decorated apartment, she laid eyes on the tall, thin man as he turned from the books he was poring over. His mouth fell open in surprise even as his eyes lit up, and she rushed him, catching him in a bone-crushingly tight hug as he did the same.

Ansool Bumaro, Second Prince of Amoni-Ram, High Scholar of the Imperial Cult, the White Prince, kissed his beloved.

“My love.”

“My love.”

The palace complex at the heart of Amoni-Ram was a vast, labyrinthine thing. It spiraled out from the central throne room, it contained hundreds of rooms and dozens of courtyards, beautiful lush gardens (before the war, of course), masterful artworks and mosaics commissioned from craftsmen and artisans across the empire. One could spend a lifetime inside and not see everything it had to offer.

Ansool had left at sixteen. He preferred the relative peace and privacy of one of the grand towers — it gave him quiet, solitude, time to focus on his studies and his works. His parents had been unhappy, but Qabar had argued on his behalf; his older brother had taken their father aside, telling him the boy needed time to come into himself, just as Qabar had found himself on the battlefield. Ansool was no warrior, they both knew that much — he might as well give him the space he needed to discover what he was instead. The Emperor, still sound of mind back then, had grudgingly let him go — he was still in the city, close enough for the Imperial Guard to keep an eye on. The boy would return sooner or later, anyway.

That had been fifteen years ago. Now, the apartment had only expanded, Ansool taking over the entire floor and converting it into his study and workspace. Every spare scrap of space was occupied by an ancient text or stone tablet or innovation-in-progress, steel and copper and fuladh constructions and wires, their states of completion as unknown as their purpose. He hurriedly cleared some off of a long chaise, guiding her to a seat. He rushed around the messy kitchenette, grabbing a crystal pitcher of clean water and two metal cups.

“I wasn’t told you were coming. I would’ve prepared—”

She smiled. “It’s fine. I didn’t know either. It was an unexpected change in plans.”

“Does this mean the siege has broken? You’re coming home?” His hopeful face made her heart sink.

“No. Thambarat’s walls are as strong as ever.”

“How can that be? Harram has had a chokehold on the city for almost half a year, now. I can't imagine any city able to hold out against him for long."

He talked about Harram with an affectionate lilt in his voice. The general had practically raised the boys after the Emperor's illness — though they hadn't seen each other in years, now.

"We aren't free to command our forces as we see fit."

"Still. They should’ve long since raised the flag of surrender and opened the gates.”

“There will be no surrender.”

Ansool blinked. “What are you talking about?”

She hesitated, and the man picked up on it.

“Your wings are twitching. What is it?”

“Prince Qabar has given the order for no quarter. There will be no surrender, no negotiation. No prisoners.”

His brow furrowed. “Then what happens when you break the defenses?”

Her silence said it all. His face fell, and they sat in quiet for a few moments.

“Why would he do that?”

“I couldn’t say, my lord.”

“Don’t call me that. And… I’m sure he has his reasons.”

Another lapse into silence, this time broken by Bileath.

“I was only dispatched here as a messenger, to deliver the reinforcement order to the garrison. I told Prince Qabar I could make it to Amoni-Ram in three days. I did it in two, and I’ll need a day of rest before I can make the return journey.”

“Which gives us a precious few hours together,” he smiled, mood raised again. He leaned forward, forehead pressed against hers, the fuladh fingers of his left hand snaking up and interlocking with hers.

“Let’s make the most of them,” she said, fingertips peeling off his craftsman’s glove and pulling him up off the chaise.

When Ansool woke up, it was well into the night. He blinked himself awake, the implant of his left eye quickly cycling itself into motion as he extricated himself from the sheets wrapping around him. In the darkness, he saw a figure on the balcony.

Bileath turned her head back as he came up behind her, placing the blanket around her shoulders.

“It’s a cold night. You might catch something.” She nodded once in appreciation, then turned back.

They both leaned against the railing of the balcony, looking out at the cityscape. From this high up, Amoni-Ram revealed itself as the city of ants that it was — massive golden towers rising high above a mazelike inner city, sandstone homes built on temples built on shops built on ruins older than anyone alive. Bright electric lights burning and gasping, illuminating the crowds, each man or woman smaller than the head of a pin, but grouping in schools, ceaselessly moving through the boulevards and alleys, a staggering performance of mass civilization.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It’s why I fight. To protect these crowds, these people. To protect this.”

Her hand snaked across the railing to clasp his.

“It takes a noble soul to leave your home to protect it from our enemies. We owe you a debt that cannot be repaid. You and every soldier that dies in the campaigns.”

She sighed. “I worry I’ll end up like them. Meeting my death in a faraway, heathen land, not in the city of my birth.”

“You’ll be home before long.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“Why not?”

“When I return home, it will be at the side of a conqueror as his Empress. Amoni-Ram will not be my home. It will be my domain.”

Ansool’s face fell.

“We don’t have to think about that now.”

She smiled sadly. “You don’t have to. You can move on, onto the next thing, always the next thing. It’s nothing for you. Prince Ansool will find a nice girl from the court to marry, eventually. This is a pleasant memory for you to look back on one day. It just hasn’t ended yet.”

He shook his head. “That’s not true.”

She smiled sadly. “Oh, but it is. There is no way out of it. You are as bound by your station as I am. Surely you don’t think we could carry this on after your brother’s coronation.”

“I could talk to him. We love each other. He’ll have his pick of the court ladies as emperor. He wouldn’t rob his brother of love.”

Bileath almost laughed. “You have not spoken to your brother in years. The front has changed him. Made him harder, if such a thing is possible.”

“That’s just the aura he must project, as commander. He cannot allow his troops to see weakness. You understand that.”

“Of course I do. But there is hardness, and there is cruelty. The troops fear him. I would fear him, if I wasn’t able to rein back his worst ideas.”

She turned to look at her lover. He was distracted, fumbling with a small contraption made of drilled, burnished brass, stubby and cylindrical with a dish at the end. He crumbled something brown into the dish, then placed the other end into his mouth and lit a fire, melting whatever it was. When he exhaled again, it was heavy and tinged with red.

He offered it to her gently, and she took a puff. It dulled the aching pains across her back, if only for a second. She blew the smoke back into his surprised face, and then he was coughing, and then she was laughing, and then they were both laughing and coughing and the smoke was drifting out across Amoni-Ram.

They walked through the streets the next morning. Bileath had her meeting with General Maleeyn at the garrison, and Ansool accompanied her. It didn’t raise any eyebrows with the soldiers — he was still a prince, after all. It was a surprise to see him take an interest in military matters for once, but not an unwelcome one.

The citizens, for their part, were happy just to see two paragons of the city out and about. It brought an air of reassurance, countering the silence from the palace. They made their way through the crowd, the two of them surrounded by a light accompaniment from the Imperial Guard. The crowd parted respectfully as they passed, stopping their bartering or purchasing or hawking to bow respectfully before the prince. The guardsmen saluted the shahansha as she passed.

Ansool fidgeted awkwardly at the endless cavalcade of bows. “You’d think once would be enough.”

“They don’t see your father anymore. Their expectations in him fall to you.”

“That seems unfair. I’ve denied the role enough times already.”

“And yet.”

“If I wanted to rule, I would’ve asked father to grant me a governance.”

“Some duties you can’t deny, my Lord. Governor or not, you are their prince. That comes with certain responsibilities.”

“If this is what it means to be prince, I’m more than happy to let Qabar be the heir.”

“But Prince Qabar is not here, and you are,” she reminded him gently.

“Unfortunately.”

She was glad the reverence from the crowd was loud enough to mask the hiss she let out. She stamped it down — a stupid, thoughtless comment. Nothing more. She put it outside of her mind until they arrived at the garrison.

It was a vast, hulking complex in the western quarter of the city. High towers, gates manned by soldiers. On the plazas, daily drills and fitness checks were occurring, armored soldiers in formation marching and slashing their blades through the air in perfect synchronization with the drums. Officers shrieked out orders that quickly become “KNEEL!” as the Shahansha and the Prince passed.

She pulled one such officer aside.

“My lady.”

“At ease. Where is General Maleeyn?”

“In the infirmary, my lady.”

“Is he all right?”

“I don’t know, my lady. That’s just what I’ve heard.”

She released him and made a beeline for the infirmary, Ansool following earnestly behind. It was another large building — it had once been smaller, but recently it had been forced to integrate the surrounding buildings for need of space. She tried not to think about what that signified as she entered.

The stench of stale blood and urine was immediate. She turned to Ansool.

“Would you like to wait outside, my Lord?” she asked, acutely aware of the presence of the imperial guard listening in.

“No, no. I’m… quite alright.”

So they carried on, through the tiled corridors of the infirmary. Every room they passed contained bodies — most alive, some in more questionable state. Moaning and grunting echoed throughout the halls, of men healing and men dying. Surgeons rushed around them, pausing momentarily as they considered kneeling or saluting before Ansool hurriedly waved them off. A soldier passed by, carried on a stretcher by two orderlies — there was a gaping, ragged hole in his chest, turning a sickening yellow at the edges, ribs exposed. Struck by the Daeva, no doubt. His eyes were fluttering and he was sucking in air greedily.

“Mekhane’s grace,” she heard Ansool whisper behind her.

“Don’t look, my Lord,” she called back. It killed her to say it, but she knew him — she knew he couldn’t handle this. He had always been a softer soul. Uninterested in martial affairs, and disturbed by the sight of blood. Everything Qabar wasn’t. It was part of why she loved him.

Then she found herself face to face with Maleeyn. He was a tall man, bearded, easily a foot and several pounds of muscle over her. Intimidating, but his face broke into a warm smile on seeing her.

“General Bileath!”

“General Maleeyn.” They exchanged salutes, then he knelt for the prince.

“My Lord.”

“Rise, General Maleeyn. No need for any of that.” His face was pale, eyes wide.

“Are you quite alright, my Lord?”

“Fine. Just fine.”

Maleeyn nodded, turning back to Bileath.

“I looked through the reinforcement request. Resources are admittedly tight, but Thambarat must fall if we are to hold the region. I’ve marshalled the men; they’re gathering outside the western gate.”

“Commanded by?”

“Qurna.”

She nodded. She knew him. A competent, skilled leader.

“And Bileath?”

“Yes?”

“Off the official report… tell me, how is the siege progressing?” he lowered his voice.

She thought for a second before looking back up at him, eyes hard. “I’ve seen men being commanded into a full frontal assault with no artillery cover against the gates of the city. I’ve seen aerial units pushed into suicide missions to destroy such significant targets as a farmer’s hut. I’ve had my soldiers pulled from their camps and drowned in the night, beheaded and poisoned and run through and burned alive. I’ve had to walk the killing fields where we engage them in the day and use my blade to fulfill the no quarter order myself because my men are tired of killing defenseless enemies. I’ve seen Harram and I ignored time and time and time again for the sake of some imagined glory on the battlefield. I can tell you that there is no glory to be found at Thambarat.”

Maleeyn pursed his lips. “I was afraid of that. Can we pull back—”

“No. At this point, we’re dug in, and any siege in the winter will be even harder because the Daeva will be prepared for it. The defenses will be even further hardened. We wasted our golden opportunity. Now the only thing we can do is absorb the losses and try to end it as fast as we can.”

Bileath didn’t lower her voice; she was acutely aware of Ansool behind her, quietly listening in the whole time.

They were leaning against the outside of the Western Wall, some shade from the overhangs. It was a public spot, perhaps risky — but the reinforcements marshalling outside had departed some hours ago, and there was no one left around. The watchmen on top of the wall couldn’t see them in this nook, holding each other before she had to take to the skies again, to leave Amoni-Ram once more.

“I hope you understand now,” Bileath said, tip of her nose pressed against his.

“Understand what?”

“What I’m protecting you from. That kind of horror and bloodshed. So don’t say ‘unfortunately’ you’re here instead of at the front.” It was a soft admonishment, but a firm one. “This is where you belong. And that is where I belong.”

He went quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, my love. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“That it was unfortunate Qabar is at the front.”

Now both of them went quiet.

“You understand, then?”

“He’s my brother. I love him. But… I understand how he can be. Reckless. Aggressive.”

“He’s grown worse, Ansool. He sends soldiers to suicide pushes for no reason other than to spite and distract the enemy. He refuses to listen to me or the other generals, and men die in droves as a result. I worry I can’t keep reining him in.”

He sighed. “What choice do we have?”

Harram’s words hung in her head, but she stamped them out, and kissed the man she loved.

She was coasting through the air back to Thambarat when she first smelled it.

Smoke. It was just the slight, bitter odor at first, then it was everywhere, filling the air, filling her nose and her lungs, choking. She lapsed into a coughing fit, losing control of her glide, spiralling back down to earth. She barely managed to lift herself out of the dive at the last minute, landing on her shoulder. She heard the shearing of metal and cringed before her mind returned to the present.

She was in a field of burning bodies. Corpses arranged neatly in rows and columns, coated in oil, burning, the stench of charred flesh inescapable. Bileath covered her nose and mouth, looking down at the Daeva.

Except they weren’t Daeva. These were humans, men stripped of their armor, most missing one limb or another. Gold peeking through fissures in the skin.

These were Mekhanites. And then the realization dawned on her in increasing horror: these were her Mekhanites. Her men, her soldiers. She recognized their faces, the same faces she’d led into battle and rescued and commanded and dragged from the field. They were dead, burning, all killed the same way — throats slit. The fires baked the blood to a dark stain on their brown skin.

Two hundred, at least. More behind the pillars of thick black smoke. Her jaw clenched.

“Bileath.”

Harram, from behind her. She turned, hands shaking with rage.

“These… these are my men. What happened here?”

“After you left, he ordered an assault on the city’s weakest flank — the southeastern side of the city.”

She blinked. “That’s directly across the water.”

“Yes. It would require fording the river. A risky, dangerous, stupid manuever under these conditions, fit only for a brute. So of course he ordered them to. And they rebelled.”

He looked out across the field of burning bodies.

“They said they wouldn’t do it without their general there to lead them. Refused to get into formation. So he brought his cohort and the imperial guard down on them. You heard him. They fight or they’re put to the sword. But of course, killing a quarter of your forces is too stupid, even for him. So instead, once order was restored, he issued the order: every unit selects one man among them, and kills him.”

Her vision was blurry now, fury mixed with adrenaline mixed with soot.

“He had them stripped,” she said in disbelief. Not referring to their clothes — their prostheses. Burying a soldier without his arms and legs was among the greatest insults. Reserved only for—

“He wanted them marked as traitors.”

Her voice was shaking. “All he had to do was wait a single day. I would’ve come back. I would’ve led the charge.”

“He’s an animal, Bileath. And with the Emperor comatose, he’s broken his leash.”

They stood there for some time, the only sound the crackling of the fires.

“You see it, don’t you? A vision of the future, under this Emperor. Citizens put to the sword if they don’t take up arms. The imperial guard treating women and children as they do enemies. Nothing but war, constant war.”

He was right. She could see it, rendered in perfect detail. Qabar on the Fuladh Throne, completely unstoppable. The Legion under his direct command, conscripting boys barely old enough to shave. Herself relegated to the life of a bird in a gilded cage in a burning house, watching him drive the Empire into ruin, helpless to do anything but cry out to deaf ears. Ansool quietly killed or put in the dungeons to consolidate his rule.

Amoni-Ram burning, burning just like the bodies of her soldiers, smoke spiralling up into the air, endlessly.

She gasped through the choking ash.

“It can’t be allowed to happen.”

“It can’t,” he agreed simply.

“What do we do?”

“The same thing you do with any animal that’s broken its leash,” Harram said dispassionately. “You cut it down before it does any more damage.”

Chapter II

Ansool stared up at the walls of the palace of Amoni-Ram, seat of the Fuladh Throne, his erstwhile home. It was like a microcosm of the city that surrounded it, roughly circular, central — central to the city, to the empire, to the world. The walls were stone-hewn and the height of four men. Nothing compared to the great walls around the city, of course, but if those did fall, the palace would be protected.

But that would never happen, because Amoni-Ram would never fall.

Ansool approached the central gate to the palace, the imperial guard surrounding him. Their presence was like a pebble in his shoe, grating and inescapable. The taciturn, gold-masked soldiers answered to his father, nominally — though of course, now that meant very little. In practice, they took their orders from his mother, and she refused to let her son go without protection in times like these. After sufficient shouting, he had at least managed to negotiate some privacy; they were not to enter his private apartments. He was thankful for that small blessing, at least — it was difficult enough keeping his relationship with Bileath secret without the guard lurking outside his bedchambers.

Part of why he had left the palace — indeed, here they were lurking around every corner and in every shadow. Any secret was on a ticking timer, and one as dangerous and sinful as this…

He raised a fuladh hand to the guards at the gate. They knelt and pulled the massive, heavy metal gate open.

“My Lord.”

He ignored the pit in his stomach the supplication provoked and passed into the central courtyard unassailed. It was a wide, open plaza — courtiers and nobles and clerics with business in the palace milling about, hoping for an audience with the Emperor that would never come. That was fine. They had a system worked out, he was told.

More kneeling as he pressed swiftly on. More imperial guardsmen at every doorway, stairwell, and arch. He entered into the inside corridors, cutting through reception halls and servants’ corridors and kitchens, putting his bodyguards through their paces. They may have been trained for this, but he had grown up in these halls, running wild through every nook and cranny of the palace. Chasing Qabar through servants’ quarters and play-wrestling in the laundry rooms and playing hide-and-go-seek in the storerooms.

That had been a long time ago. But the memories still came, and with them the deep-rooted knowledge of the palace’s layout. He let his muscles carry him to where he needed to go, and then—

“My Lord!”

He would’ve ignored it or offered a kind nod like he did for the thousand other voices, but it struck out in its familiarity. He turned, and broke into a smile.

“Larat.” He reached forward and embraced the man warmly, pulling him into a hug. After a second, the servant returned it, somewhat hesitantly.

“I don’t know that this is appropriate, my Lord.”

“I find myself with less and less regard for what’s appropriate by the day, my friend.” He released the young man, brushing the dust off his shoulders. He was a few years younger than Ansool, simple beige tunic and thick beard making a sharp contrast against his own red-dyed robes and clean-shaven cheeks. A few servants around might have looked on in surprise at a member of the imperial family embracing a servant in the tunnels of the palace, but the imposing presence of the imperial guard sent them on their way quickly enough.

Larat called after them. “I told you nothing but truth, see!”

“What stories have you been feeding them?”

“Oh, nothing. Just that the prince owes me his life. Our adventures fighting rebels at Ulma-Ram. Such and such.”

Ansool laughed. “You wander ever closer to earning the ire of someone important.”

Larat clapped him on the shoulder. “Not anymore. It’s been ages, my Lord. What brings you back home?”

They started walking down the corridor. “It hasn’t been home for a long time.”

“Of course. You should hear the rumours flying around the servants' quarters. Prince Ansool has left the palace because the imperial guard is plotting on his life, never to return. Prince Ansool has taken control of an entire tower to take quarter in with his thousands of mechanical oddities. Prince Ansool has cracked the curse of the mechanical mind, and made himself a fuladh lover.”

A image struck him — Bileath’s flawless, beautiful gold-and-fuladh wings, spread around the pair as they embraced, cradling the two of them. He stamped it down and laughed along with his friend.

“Nothing quite so tawdry. No. Just, privacy. The palace is stifling.”

“I couldn’t disagree. But really, what brings you?”

“I must see my parents.”

Larat went quiet.

“I’m sorry about your father, my Lord.”

“Don’t be. We all return to Mekhane sooner or later.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

He might be better off if he was. Ansool bit back the response. “Yes, of course.”

“Well. I won’t hold you, then. I have my own duties to attend to as well.” Larat bowed deeply, and then he was gone, disappearing into the maze of shadowy corridors and passages he knew like the back of his hand.

Larat's father was the vizier — not the grand vizier, whose domain extended throughout the empire and was a landed noble, but the palatial vizier, whose domain covered the palace grounds and was formally just another servant. The palace was a living, breathing entity, a constantly-shifting web of allegiances and loyalties. It was the palatial vizier’s duty to keep a finger on this erratic pulse, to report any significant changes or news flitting around the kitchens and laundries and workhouses to the ear of the Emperor, and it was these skills that he had passed down to his son.

As a boy, Ansool had been told not to play with the servants, but in practice, no one looked hard enough to stop him. When Qabar had begun spending more time in the garrison, learning the arts of combat and war, Ansool had shifted to spending more time with the vizier’s boy. Larat — cheerful, easygoing, disarmingly charming — had earned his parents' tentative approval, and the farther Qabar drifted, the closer the two became.

Until he left the palace.

Ansool shook the thoughts away, hand on the metal ring of the door as he heard the voices inside. He tugged it open, slipping inside the Hall of Lions. It was a reception room, smaller and a little more private than the main throne room. He drifted into the curtained shadows near the rear, and watched the proceedings.

Empress Halana was standing by the chaise — tall and in a long, thin white dress, imported from the eastern provinces. The gold of her fuladh legs shone through it. She hadn’t seen him yet, and he elected to keep it that way, sticking to the shadows outside her cone of view, which was focused entirely on the man in front of her. Some minor shah from the western provinces, complaining of banditry against his farms, asking for a detachment from the Legion to quell the raids.

He watched the Empress's hand snake down, almost imperceptibly, to the shoulder of the man lying in the chaise. His father, her husband, Hayth Bumaro, Emperor of the Broken Empire, Lord of the Fuladh Throne, the most powerful man in the known world.

He was reclining weakly against the padded chaise, skin pale, wrinkled, heavily-spotted. His eyes were covered by a thin film of milky-white, making it impossible to see what he was focusing on, if anything. His hair had long-since fallen out, but his beard was perfectly-manicured — it was strange for a noble to keep whiskers, much less the Emperor, but it had been a tactical decision by his wife so audiences would not see his hanging lip collecting saliva. His body was draped in expensive robes to hide the extent of his augmentations, but still they peeked up around his neck and over his collar. Rebreathers, pace-setters, air-filters, his entire left ear replaced, no doubt more under the robes. Augmentations were a sign of devotion, but this was far beyond mere augmentation — this was life support.

He breathed heavily, not noticing or responding to the shah’s supplications. And then Halana’s hand snaked down and clasped his shoulder twice, and something in the Bumaro’s mind triggered and, shakingly, he shook his head no.

The duke’s face fell and Halana stepped forward.

“The Legion is preoccupied with the war effort, which you understand takes priority; but we sympathize with your plight. A supply of our weapons will be dispatched — your farmers will be armed to protect themselves. You are dismissed.”

“I traveled here to speak to the Emperor. Not to hear his wife,” the shah protested.

Her eyes lit up with indignant rage, and Ansool hurriedly stepped out of the shadows. Several sets of eyes turned to him, passing through confusion, then recognition, then surprise.

“She speaks with the full authority of the Fuladh Throne. You would do well to remember that. You have your answer.”

His indignation evaporated. "Yes, my Lord.”

The shah slunk back out of the door with his attendants. When the door closed behind him, he barely had time to turn around before Halana embraced him tightly, kissing his cheeks with gold-colored lips.

“Finally, he returns.”

“Only for the afternoon, Mother.”

“More than you’ve given me until now.”

She released him. They both turned. His father was still on the chaise, not acknowledging Ansool’s presence. His mother gently prodded him forward, and he knelt, gently grasping and kissing his father’s hand. Ansool was not a strong man, but his father’s fingers felt like paper in his grip.

“My Lord.”

It would take a minuscule action of the muscle for his father’s hand to rest on his hand, or stroke his cheek, the barest hint of conscious movement to signify something was alive inside.

Nothing came. Just the sound of the rebreathers sucking air into dead lungs. Ansool blinked away the disappointment as he rose; he’d long since spent his tears.

He stood with his mother in silence, both unwilling to state the obvious: that they were looking at a dead man.

“He’ll abdicate to Qabar when he returns?” Ansool asked.

She nodded. “He will. The empire needs an emperor fit to rule.” The frankness was alarming. “And Qabar will return a hero.”

“The stories I hear from Thambarat say otherwise.”

Halana shot him a look. “Do not denigrate your brother. He leads an army against an impossible foe.”

“I know that. I just mean that the casualty reports are… staggering.”

“That is the Daeva’s fault. Not his.”

For a split-second, her refusal to even question Qabar’s leadership struck him, and doubt wormed its way into his chest. Was this how he sounded to Bileath?

“Qabar will need to take a wife when he returns, ensure there is an heir to the throne. Did he mention anyone to you before leaving?” Ansool prodded gently.

“Well, his first wife will be Bileath, of course. Tradition demands the Shahansha of the Legion submit to her Emperor.”

He tried not to betray how his heart wilted. “Qabar was never one for tradition.”

“Not in all things, but certainly in this. He is quite fixated on her — he has told me he intends to have her upon his ascension.”

“Why wait until then? Why not marry her now?”

“Princes marry. Emperors take concubines. It seems he does not want Bileath as his Empress, merely in his harem. I cannot say I approve, but…” She sighed and shrugged.

A concubine? Taking his love, not even as his proper wife, not as the Empress, but as a concubine? Bileath was the smartest, bravest soul Ansool had ever met. Locking her away in the harem with a dozen others, purposeless save for producing heirs — it was beyond a waste, it was an insult to her very being. She deserved the palace, she deserve the empire, she deserved the world itself, not to be some fool’s pleasure-slave—

Ansool forced his fists to relax, for his breathing to calm.

“You ought to find a woman of your own sooner or later. You have a duty to the family. Cannot wait for the perfect princess to cross your path.”

He ignored the bile rising in his throat. “I know. I will.”

“Anyway. Why do you ask about Qabar, love?”

“Curiousity. Bileath is a powerful commander — I can’t help but wonder if she’s not better served on the battlefield than in the harem-house.”

“I don’t disagree. But when Qabar is on the Throne, he may do as he wish. The only one that could prevent him is the High Authority of Mekhane.”

The High Authority of Mekhane — the Emperor himself. It was a sick joke. He cast a long glance at his dying father, reclining on the chaise, wheezing and sucking in air, milky eyes focused on nothing at all: the wise and just ruler of Amoni-Ram.

“I haven’t committed to anything yet.”

Harram nodded, standing across from her. They were in her tent — it offered a little bit more privacy from prying eyes and ears.

“That’s fine. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

Bileath walked around him, ensuring the tentflap was sealed shut, then sat down on the edge of her cot.

“What do you have in mind?”

“He needs to be removed. This is no longer in question.”

“You’re not talking about removal, though. You’re talking about killing.”

“It’s the only option.”

She shook her head. “There must be another way. My duty is to protect him, vile as he is. You’re asking me to compromise on that. To compromise myself.”

“You think this is easy for me?”

“We occupy different positions. I am not simply another general.” Her wings twitched reflexively. “I have a higher calling.”

They stared daggers at each other for a second. Then Harram’s voice softened.

“Your duty isn’t to protect him, Bileath. It’s to protect the Empire. Protect the Throne.”

“That means protecting its heir.”

“Not if him sitting on the Throne will bring about its destruction,” Harram spat.

She opened her mouth to say that they couldn’t be sure, but thought better of it. She’d seen the vision, Amoni-Ram burning. She’d seen the bodies, her men, put to the sword, bodies arranged neatly in as honorable a grave their comrades could get away with arranging them in, skin soaked in oil, burning hot and fast. Qabar on the Throne meant the fall of the Empire; she knew it in every pore of her body, in her bones.

“Say I agreed. I don’t, but say I did. What would it entail?”

Harram reached under his breastplate, pulling out a small leather pouch. He undid the string, drawing out its contents: a small corked vial, no bigger than his thumb, containing a shimmering white liquid.

“On my campaign in the east, we managed to encircle a small Daeva fort. One with a priestess still inside. We outnumbered them five-to-one. Her soldiers surrendered against her orders, and we swept through the fort as fast as we could. I found the priestess in her shelter, this raised to her lips. I tore it out of her hand and corked it, but not before she managed to suck down a single drop.”

He swirled the liquid around. It caught the light magnificently.

“I’ve never seen someone in such pain take so long to die. We had her as our prisoner for— it must’ve been two weeks, at the least. She bled out of every orifice, she vomited up her organs. Thorns escaped her skin. She went blind a few days in, and I was hoping she would go mute — all she would do was either moan prayers to her heathen god, or beg me for the rest of the vial. Whispered half-mad that if she was given the whole thing, it’d kill her instantly, painlessly.”

“Did you?” Bileath asked.

He passed her the vial. It was almost full to the brim.

“Slip it into his water, then?”

Harram shook his head. “You’d never get the chance. The imperial guard keep far too close of an eye on his food and drink. And even if you did, suspicion would immediately fall on us, especially after his decimation of your forces.”

“I wouldn’t confess.”

“It doesn’t matter. I had some run-ins with the imperial guard when I was still at the garrison. They have ways of pulling the truth from your lips that don’t require your co-operation.”

“I am not going to drag a lower officer into this… plot.” Even the word had a dirty ring to it.

“You don’t have to. It can’t be anyone here. You saw what the imperial guard did to your men. They had no hesitation putting a hundred men to the sword. If the dog dies here and now and they suspect treachery, it will be open war. I have no idea how many may die, and the siege will be lost. Even if we survive, if we kill the imperial guard, we will be unwelcome in Amoni-Ram so long as our heads are still attached to our necks.”

She pursed her lips. “A dangerous situation.”

“One wrong move, and…” he dragged a finger across his neck to underline the point. “No. No, it can’t be either of us, and it can’t be here. It needs to be after he returns to Amoni-Ram for his triumph. And it needs to be someone no one would ever suspect. Someone utterly beyond reproach & suspicion, someone who can assert control over the empire in the chaos and serve as a unifying figure with the support of the Legion and the clergy.”

She cocked her head at him. “I hope you don’t mean yourself.”

He didn’t so much as crack a smile. “No.”

“Who, then?”

He didn’t say anything, eyes closed for a moment, steeling himself.

“Harram, who?”

He opened his eyes and his gaze fell on her. “I still have my spies in Amoni-Ram, Bileath. I know about you and Prince Ansool.”

The bottom fell out of her stomach.

“I— I don’t know—”

“Afford me the respect of not lying to me, at least.”

He was right. No point denying what he knew. Like a switch, the stuttering stopped, and she took command, like she was born to.

“How did they find out?”

“That’s not important. But I know you have the ear of the prince. He listens to your counsel. You have… some power over him.”

The shock of the revelation was quickly replaced by new disbelief as she processed what Harram was intimating. She was glad the vial was in her flesh-hand; her fuladh fist clenched tightly enough to shatter it.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“I don’t—”

“This is already high treason,” she hissed. “You’ve made an accomplice of me just by telling me. And now you want drag in him!?”

“There’s no one else, Bileath. It has to be Prince Ansool.”

“He abhors violence, and he loves his brother. He won’t hear a bad word against Qabar, and you want to try and convince him to descend to fratricide?”

“I want you to convince him, actually.”

She leaned back in disbelief. “I will not. You’ve gone mad.”

His jaw set. “Is that how it is, then?”

“Yes.”

A sigh. “I didn’t want to do this, Bileath.”

Her hand quietly snaked to the dagger hanging from her belt, unhooking it from its loop.

“Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. But you have to do this, Bileath. You don’t have a choice.”

“I though you said I always had a choice.”

“Fine. You have a choice. You can do this, or word of your tryst can leak out to the imperial guard.”

Her blood went cold. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, and Harram leapt on the opportunity.

“You’d be executed for treason, of course. Prince Ansool forced to watch as the imperial guard tears your prosthetics off, leaving you to bleed out for hours in the sand. Your lover forbidden from interfering. It’ll almost be a mercy when you finally die. Except it won’t, because your dying thought will be the knowledge that now they’re going to go to work on him.”

Her throat was tightening. She could see it, fuladh limbs brutally ripped off, leaving her to writhe in the dust of the Court of Rubies. Ragged, bloody limbs leaking blood for hours, staining the sand red, letting the courtyard earn its name once again. Prince Ansool watching, vomiting, tears streaming from his eyes, the figure behind him holding a dagger against his windpipe, golden eyes alight with bloodlust — Qabar. Bloodlust that wouldn’t be quenched when she died.

No, Harram was right.

“They’d torture him,” she whispered, pleadingly. “For months, picking his limbs apart, making him bleed. He couldn’t bear that. I couldn’t bear that.” Silence. "He loves you, Harram. You're like family to him. Please."

For a moment, she thought she detected a softness in Harram’s eyes, but it was quickly replaced by a tired cruelty.

“Every manuever Qabar makes costs us half a unit. Dozens of men, dead, forever. And this bloodshed is a drop compared to the ocean that will be spilled if he takes the throne. Tens of thousands of men, dead. Thousands of families in Amoni-Ram, Qaya-Ram, Ulma-Ram, across the empire, left fatherless, every single day. I’m sorry, Bileath, but your life isn’t worth more than theirs. Prince Ansool’s isn’t. Mine isn’t. No one’s is.”

She was gasping down air now, trying to press away the visions of Ansool, back ripped open, screaming in the dungeons of the palace as the imperial guard set to work with their scalpels and screws and blades. “Bastard. You’re a bastard.”

“War makes bastards of us all.”

And then they were sitting in silence.

“I’ll give you two days to make your decision.”

And then he was gone, and Bileath was alone.

She rose to her feet. She was exhausted. The flight from Amoni-Ram, seeing the burning bodies, this. Trying to put thoughts together now was like marching through knee-deep mud.

But some small part of her mind pointed out what a perfect set-up this was for a loyalty test by Qabar. An experiment, to gauge his favorite bird’s commitment to her master. She didn’t think Harram would do that, but…

If it was a loyalty test, they wouldn’t give her real poison. She inspected the vial. Gingerly, she uncapped it — a pale white vapor drifted out, and she kept it far away from her nose. She strode to the cage in the far corner of the tent, popping the latches, and looking in. She selected the first beast she saw — the biggest, the alpha of the litter, the one that pushed its brethren around for food — and snatched it up, grabbing it in her fist as it squirmed around.

One drop had been enough to ensure a long, slow, painful death for the priestess. But the priestess would’ve been a human, and this beast was barely the size of her fist. Surely one drop would be more than enough?

She squeezed the beast again, forcing its maw open, and, carefully, tipped a drop from the vial into its mouth before dropping it back into the cage. The vial was corked and put away under her breastplate. And then she watched.

It hopped around fine for the first few minutes, seemingly confused by the whole experience. Then it trembled. Shook a bit, then undulated as it kept squirming around. It made a cry, and she saw flecks of blood in its spit. And it keeled over, and it was dead. Its brothers were starting to inspect the corpse, and she quickly disposed of it.

It was real. This was no loyalty test.

She stumbled to her cot and fell into it. In the half-moment before sleep took her, she thought she heard a scream sound out far across the camp, but then she was gone.

Ansool squinted at the machine in front of him. It was one of hundreds of little machines scattered around the apartment — there was no registry of their functions or parts, all of it was committed to his memory. This one lay in front of him, half-disassembled, mechanical guts spilling onto his workbench.

He sighed, putting down the tools. This was meant to be a miniaturization of the massive machines that the clerics used for recording memories and knowledge. Those mechanisms were the size of a room; this was about the size and shape of a human head. If it worked, it would make the memory-cylinder technology freely available for the citizenry, easing communication and logistics. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. He’d been trying to fix it for several hours now, and the magnifying lens was beginning to take a toll on his vision. He slipped the goggles off, rising from his bench and heading to the window.

He watched the skies, hopeful beyond hope, but was inevitably disappointed. No Bileath, swooping down on metal wings to embrace him. Oh well. She would return, soon enough.

The apartment was stifling, now. Hundreds of machines occupying every surface and shelf, most half-finished and bereft of drive. It was hard to think in, and so he escaped, slipping on his cloak and taking the elevator down, flanked by his guards, exiting out into the city streets, walking without a direction in mind.

When mechanisms did make it out of his quarters, they were lauded — the platinum-steel casing that had made the fusion reactors under the city twice as efficient, the new generation of automata that made the labor of the market that much easier. His presentations at the academy had earned him his title — High Scholar of the Imperial Cult. The clergy was as much about technology as it was religious studies, and Ansool had always excelled at both. The old texts had illuminating knowledge on creation, if one knew how to read them for it.

But that was a long time ago. And he hadn’t presented anything in a long time.

The clerics had little interest in civil engineering, now. As Crown Prince, Qabar set its direction, and its direction these days was engines of war. Machines to bring down walls, to vaporize armies, to burn cities. Tools of death.

Ansool was no idiot — he realized that if they lost the war, there would be no more creations, civil or otherwise. The Daeva and the Nälkä would see Amoni-Ram brought to its knees. Still — the neglect of the city put a bad taste in his mouth. The transit systems were suffering. The waterways needed maintenance. Yet the academy produced more siege engines, more cannons, more bombs.

He blinked as he found himself in the academy courtyard. He hadn’t been thinking consciously, and his feet had taken him here of their own accord. The courtyard had been bustling, once — clerics and academics milling about, exchanging ideas under the looming shadow of the academy building. It was quieter, nowadays.

And in the middle of the open plaza sat Bumaro’s Tree.

Plants were unfashionable in Amoni-Ram, now. The war with the Daeva had soured the people on the once-great gardens. No one wanted to return from the front, from the sight of sorcerer-nawabs splitting men apart with vines, of living trees marching across the battlefield screaming godless cries, to see the same lush greenery from their nightmares. The farming was relegated to outside the city walls, and the gardens were dug up or simply left to wither. But the tree was exceptional, and the Emperor at the time had granted it a pardon.

Its trunk was as tall as six men, as thick as three, and made of overlapping bark and fuladh. It was a marvel of biotechnics, a practice that had similarly fallen out of favor due to the Nälkä. But in its infancy, the tree — said to have been the tree kept fertilized by the droppings of the sheep of Bumaro the First — was split apart and implanted with a fuladh seed. As the tree grew, so too did the fuladh, and the result was a magnificent half-metal half-bark marbling, shining metallic gold-and-green leaves.

But today, a cleric had a ladder, and was taking a pair of clippers to one fuladh branch of the tree.

“Hail.”

The cleric spun around, shocked, and awkwardly descended the ladder to kneel.

“My Lord! I did not see you, my apolog—”

“You are fine. What are you doing?”

“Well, my Lord, the tree has come under affliction from rustrot.”

Ansool frowned. He had written his thesis at the academy on rustrot. A creeping, corrosive fungus that found a home on improperly-maintained metals, including fuladh, slowly eating through it.

“Why cut it? There are chemical baths to treat rustrot.”

“Very true, my Lord. But the biotechnical nature of the tree complicates matters. The chemical baths would risk poisoning the organic half of the tree, killing it. But the rustrot threatens the fuladh half, if we allow it to spread.”

“An unfortunate predicament.”

The cleric nodded.

“Indeed, my Lord. This has been recorded previously in the archives; sometimes an unhealthy branch must be culled to allow the tree’s survival.”

He raised a hand. “Leave it as it is for today. Rustrot is known to eat itself alive sometimes, disappearing as quickly as it comes. And I’d hate to damage the tree if we don’t have to.”

“… As you wish, my Lord.”

The cleric bowed their head and returned to the ladder, packing up their tools. Ansool stared at the tree and frowned.

Bileath strode through the camp, acutely aware of the eyes on her. Hundreds of soldiers, huddled by their fires, staring at her as she stepped around their clustered tents and over those sleeping in the mud. It was raining again, a slight drizzle. Not enough to extinguish the fires, but enough to lend a wet, tired air to everything.

The eyes were piercing, burning. She was used to this — soldiers looking to her for leadership, for guidance, for commands. She was their shepherd, and they depended on her judgement as much as she depended on their loyalty. And in this entire campaign, both had always given what they had and gotten what they needed.

Until now. Now, the eyes carried with them a new, unfamiliar, uncomfortable feeling — betrayal. Disappointment. She didn’t know how to deal with that, and so she pushed it away, not lowering her eyes even as the soldier leading her ducked into the large tent.

The scent of stale blood hit her, as familiar now as it had been in the infirmary in Amoni-Ram. Cots lined up against the wall, bodies placed in them — most dead, some still on their way. The results of a disastrous distance attack by the Daeva against a weakened flank of the camp. Usually they were far enough away to miss, or to be shot down by the artillerymen before they came close. Usually.

Maybe thirty men lay there, moaning prayers in their last breaths. She stepped past their cots, inspecting them. One man with his face charred into blackened flesh, mouth and nose drooping as though liquefied. One man whose limbs had been constricted by vines, turning the flesh below them a sickening shade of purple, the flesh dying. One man who had been the unlucky victim of an explosion, the entire left side of his body blown off. His corpse lay in the cot, more at peace than any of his comrades. Another and another and another, a tableau of vomit-inducing scenes.

Bileath wasn’t affected by gore much, not anymore. But something in her chest twisted on inspecting them. She walked between the bodies of the dead and the dying, whispering prayers and last rites and closing open eyes. She wasn’t a cleric, not really, but it was better than nothing. Then she heard a thump, and turned.

One man laying on a cot in the far corner of the tent, bleeding from his eyes, fist raised to his chest, thump-thump. A salute. He was saluting her. Another man close to him echoed the salute, and another, and then those in the tent that were still alive and had the use of their arms were pounding their chests and saluting her, their general, their leader, the one who would do anything to protect them.

Her vision blurred and a dull buzzing filled her ears as she moved, legs carrying her mechanically out the rear of the tent and into the rain. She leaned over and vomited.

When she came around the tent, the eyes fell on her again. Hundreds of soldiers, crouching, huddled around fires, staring at their commander, waiting for an answer.

There was no avoiding it. She owed it to them, this and so much more.

“I wasn’t there. I’m sorry. I wasn’t there, and I should’ve been.”

Her gaze washed around the endless crowd of men — the army she was in charge of. Young men with hopeful faces, older men with weary faces, rain washing over them all. It would be trivial for them to desert, to slip away during the chaos of a charge and make their way to the steppe or the west or any of the other lower cities, to abandon their comrades. To abandon her.

And yet, here they were. Unflinchingly ready to lay down their lives for her.

Harram was right. These were thousands of men, thousands of lives, thousands of families. They’d put her and the empire above their wives, their lovers, their children. She owed them the same.

Her grip tightened on the pommel of her sword.

“For the living and the dead. Never again.”

She raised a fist, pounding it against her breastplate. Thump-thump.

Thump-thump, the echo of a thousand salutes, echoing out across the camp, though the valley.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Bileath turned. Harram, standing some distance away from her, across the neatly organized corpses of her men. The rain had come, extinguishing the fires, turning the soft dirt to red-streaked mud. She didn’t have to wonder where the red came from.

“It’s a good reminder,” she answered, turning away again. She heard him approach from behind.

“Of what?”

“Of what lies in our future. Traitors to the empire, traitors to Amoni-Ram—“

“No.”

The sharpness of his exclamation caught her off-guard.

He continued. “We’re doing this for the empire. For Amoni-Ram. Every life I’ve taken, every drop of blood I’ve spilled — it’s been for the Fuladh Throne. This is no different.”

They listened to the rain pound the mud around them for some time.

“My duty is to protect the Empire,” she almost-whispered. “How does one square that with this?”

“It’s war, Bileath. You can’t protect everyone. Mekhane knows Qabar has divested himself of your protection.”

“I wasn’t talking about Qabar.”

“Ah.”

Another pause before he spoke again, his voice heavy.

“I like Prince Ansool. He’s a good boy. Soft-spoken. Gentle.”

She nodded without lifting her eyes from the corpses. “He is. He couldn’t muster a hand against a scorpion if it bit him.” A pause. “It’s why I love him.”

“A gentle ruler is a luxury, one we don’t have in wartime. You can’t protect him from the world forever, Bileath. His hands are going to get bloody sooner or later. Better someone else’s blood than his own.”

They lapsed into silence again. The bodies were disappearing now, sinking into the mire, the mud swallowing them.

For the living and the dead.

“I’ll do it,” Bileath said.

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t think I have a choice.”

Chapter III

Ansool was walking through the markets that morning, another attempt to escape the confines of the apartment, to try and jolt some new inspiration into him with the memory-recording machine. He passed by a group of street children, noticing them staring with quiet reverence at his augmentations. They were young, too young to have any augmentations themselves. But even if they did, he was fairly sure they would’ve still stared; his prosthetics were striking even from a distance.

He stopped, kneeling and smiling kindly at them.

“Hello. My name is Ansool.”

They exchanged unsure glances.

“It’s alright. You can look.” He extended his right arm. One of the children — the youngest, it looked like — ran up to him, all fear gone. His friends followed him. Fingers running across the cool fuladh plating, the intricate engravings and designs etched into the gold metal: images of Bumaro the First’s hammer raised to the heavens, Hashir bringing power to the great city, his own father raising the academy building. Most augmentations were nowhere near this artful, but the royal prostheses were commissioned from the finest craftsmen and artisans of Amoni-Ram, and it showed.

The children giggled to themselves as they inspected, whispering that they wanted one just like this when they grew older, and Ansool smiled. Then he saw a shadow fall over them, and turned.

It took every ounce of self-control in his body not to wrap Bileath in a bone-snapping embrace when he laid eyes on her, in public as they were. And then he registered the off-balance nature of her glide, the way she listed to her left before jerking herself back on course and coming to a stumbling landing. His brow furrowed with concern.

“General Bileath? Are you alright?”

She looked up and he could tell she too was exercising all of her restraint as she sunk into a kneel, favoring her left shoulder.

“My Lord. Yes, my wings were damaged. I managed to field repair them somewhat, but…” Her left wing jerked back and forth awkwardly. Some kind of damage to the actuators, probably. So she’d come back for repairs from the one person who knew them best.

He nodded. “I’ll have a look in my workshop.”

Bileath lay facedown on the rolled-out pad on the floor. Her armor and tunic were stripped away, cast to the corner of the room, and her wings were relaxed and spread, dominating the floor of the apartment. Crouched over her, Ansool was inspecting her back, panels spread open.

She heard him let out a soft sigh.

“Goddess. What happened to you?”

“I was scouting in the air. A lucky shot from a Daeva beast, a thorn-wrapped stone struck me in the wing. I managed to pull myself out of the dive, but landed badly.”

Her wing twitched, reflexively. He noticed it out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing.

“Well, at least you aren’t hurt?”

She nodded while trying to stay as still as possible. The slightest wrong movement could split a wire or sever an actuator, leaving her worse off than when she’d started. Maintenance and repairs were always an intimate thing — soldiers would form lifelong bonds with the combat mechanics that set to work repairing their arms, legs, and eyes after injuries. But Bileath’s augmentations were too rare, too complex for an average Legion mechanic. She knew how to repair most of her components herself, but the positioning of her wings demanded another person. So she came to the one person who knew them best.

Leaning over her back, Ansool clucked and made small noises as he inspected the damage. He reached a finger in, teasing one wire gently. Bileath whimpered a bit, soft electric buzzing numbing the muscles of her back — and then it shorted, making her left wing flap wildly and sending a contraption crashing to the floor where it shattered into a half-dozen pieces. Her face fell, and she reached out, grabbing the chunks.

“Sorry.”

She began inspecting the pieces, seeing their attachments and screws, seeing how they clicked and fit together, flesh and fuladh fingers scraping the surface and nooks and crannies. Ansool shook his head with a smile. “Not your fault. It wasn’t working very well anyway.”

“What is it?”

“A smaller version of the memory scribes. If they worked, you’d be able to use them to transcribe memories to the cylinders they could read later. Why don’t you take a crack at it later for me? You always had a better eye for such things than I did.”

“What’re you talking about? Look at how many inventions there are here.”

“Look at how many of them function, and how many don’t. It took me years of study at the academy to get to where I am, and I still struggle. And then…” He gently plucked the machine out of her hands. It was in one piece again, clicked and screwed and wired back together in a matter of seconds. “There’s you.”

“I was just fiddling with it. Exploring.”

“I know. You have an instinct for technology, Bileath. Instinct can’t be taught. You would’ve made a fine addition to the academy.”

“In another life, maybe.” They both ignored the fact that Hayth had long since barred women from being members of the academy. “How—” She grunted as another shock ran through her muscles. “How bad is it?”

He sighed, lifting his goggles up. “Not good. The actuators on the left side are all shorted, will need replacing. And of course, the fuladh feathers that are dented or crumpled will need to be reforged and hammered out.”

“How long will that take?” she asked, rising to a sitting position and motioning. Ansool passed her back her tunic and armor, and she slipped into it, as familiar as a second skin.

“A few days, at the least. But that’s a few more days spent together,” he smiled.

She didn’t return it, eyes lost somewhere else..

“What’s wrong?”

Tell him tell him tell him tell—

She blinked it away, and then she was smiling back at him. “Nothing.”

They wasted the rest of the day cavorting around Amoni-Ram. Bileath’s wings were too damaged for aerial maneuvers and long flights, but they were still intact enough to glide out of the apartment window, even carrying another person’s weight. They landed in a quiet alley in the southern quarter and donned rough, unobtrusive cloaks over their clothing. Ansool left his earrings and nose ring in the apartment, and for a day, they could walk around Amoni-Ram, free of the imperial guard, free of prying eyes.

They explored the spice market, inspecting the mountains of deep red and lilac spices from the farthest reaches of the empire, watching the hawkers shovel them into clay pots for the greedy outstretched arms of housewives and traders. Ansool scrounged a few coins from his pocket and paid for a basket of fresh figs and dates and apples. They ate from it until they were both full and their hands were sticky with juice from the figs, and then left the rest of it for the street children to devour hungrily. Bileath watched him smile at the children encouragingly.

“This is the greatest city of the grandest empire. No child should have to go hungry.”

His gaze fell on the soldiers patrolling through the market behind the scene.

"And yet."

They walked under the shadow of the great wall of Amoni-Ram, an ever-popular spot for young couples. Most much younger than them, but a man and a woman on a romantic walk was hardly a thing of note, and so they walked until the heat became too much and they took a seat against the cool stone of the wall, hands intertwined.

They passed through a teashop, taking sips from small cups with tea so strong it made Bileath gag and Ansool laugh. They drifted to a hashish-den, the degenerate establishments which had always existed but had only now begun to proliferate, returning soldiers looking for something to numb the pain and the palace looking for new sources of taxation. Smoke-filled rooms with cushions and low tables and the bubbling of pipes, strangers leaning into each others’ shoulders. Ansool partook a bit, laughing with the party of strangers he had sat down with, and Bileath over his shoulder keeping an eye on him.

And the whole day, whenever Ansool shot a passing glance at his quiet love when she didn’t realize he was looking, he saw a darkened shadow hanging across her face.

She broke the silence later that evening, when they were both lying in bed together, exhausted, sheets wrapped around their bare legs, panting from the exertion slowly fading to normal breathing.

“I lied to you earlier. About how I hurt myself.”

“I know,” he said simply.

“How?”

“Your wing twitches when you lie.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I thought you’d tell me when you were ready.” He shrugged and somewhere deep in her chest, encased in fuladh, her heart melted.

“It wasn’t a battle. I was flying back to the siege, after visiting you. And then suddenly there was smoke in my nose and in the air and I couldn’t breathe and I went crashing down to earth, landed hard on my wing and my shoulder.”

“What, you think I’d think less of you for an accident?”

“No. It wasn’t that.”

She went quite for a second.

“I landed in a mass grave. Hundreds of my men’s bodies doused in oils, burning, flesh charring and crisping.” Her voice caught at the end.

His stomach turned.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. The Daeva are inhuman beasts.”

Bileath sat up next to him, piercing eyes staring at him.

“It wasn’t the Daeva. It was your brother.”

His blood ran cold.

“What?”

“He ordered my units into a charge through a flooding river. It was suicide. Pointless suicide, and he still gave the order. They said they wouldn’t go without their commander. Without me. So he set the imperial guard on them. Put them to the sword, made them kneel. And then he gave the decimation order.”

There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. “What is that?”

“A field punishment for mutinous troops. Every unit selects one man amongst themselves, and kills him. Slits his throat like a dog. And then he had them stripped of their augmentations and their bodies burned. He wanted them marked as traitors to the Empire, because they wouldn’t kill themselves without me to lead them into the fire.”

“That’s— that’s not possible—“

She cut him off. “He admitted it to me, Ansool. He didn’t give a damn. It was nothing to him. He ordered the deaths of two hundred of my men as easily as you purchased that basket of dates. An exchange. Blood for obedience.”

Ansool was up now, staring at the wall silently. She pressed the opportunity.

“I need you to sit down, my Lord.”

“No. And don’t call me that.”

“Fine. But sit down. Please.” She reached a hand out, grasping his and pulling him back onto the mattress.

“What?”

She inhaled, and then leapt before she lost her nerve. “The discontent among the officers has escalated, now. I was approached by some of them. They know.”

“About what?”

“About us.”

Suddenly, time seemed to slow for Ansool. Everything felt glacial, heavy, like pushing through honey. It took a monumental effort to say the next word.

“How?”

“Spies in the city. The night meetings — we weren't careful enough. They’re threatening to expose us to the guard — to Qabar — if I don’t help them.”

“Help them do what?”

“To prepare you to take the throne before Qabar can.”

He breathed heavily for a few seconds before speaking. “Tell me their names. I’ll have them charged with treason.”

She inhaled. “No.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of them. Mutiny in the ranks is nothing novel, there have always been—”

“I’m not afraid of them. I agree with them.”

And then time resumed its normal pace, and he snapped his neck around.

“What?”

“Your brother is a madman, Ansool. I’ve held my tongue for a long time but this is too far. This is unforgivable. If he’s allowed to take the throne when your father passes—" She cut herself off, shaking her head. “The empire is doomed. Amoni-Ram will not survive his rule. I will not survive his rule. You may not either.”

“This is sedition. You’re talking about a coup,” he said, his voice steadily rising. “I won’t allow it. I demand you tell me the names of these generals, Bileath.”

She hissed at him, sudden fire in her voice. “You are not in a position to demand anything from me.”

And they were glaring at each other across the bed. She’d never seen him enraged before.

“What, then?” Ansool spat. “You protect your co-conspirators while they make plans to kill my brother in the street?”

“There doesn’t need to be blood. Qabar doesn’t have to die.” Much as he deserves to.

This gave Ansool pause. “Explain,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose and turning to the wall.

“I don’t know the full details. But they say that it will not involve death unless you make it so.”

She was glad he was turned away, so he couldn’t see her wing twitch.

She continued. “They just want you prepared to assume the Fuladh Throne on a moment’s notice, to ensure the empire is never without an emperor.”

In spite of the situation, he scoffed. “It might as well be.”

“And that’s part of the problem,” she insisted. “Think about it. Qabar was somewhat restrained when your father was still around. But with him gone, he has no one left to control him.”

She wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t been like this ten years ago. Still hotheaded and aggressive, maybe, but that was just how he was. He’d never progressed to anything truly awful. Nothing like this.

“I don’t want the throne. I’m not a ruler! I’ve never wanted to be, never pretended to be!”

“Look at me.”

Reluctantly, he dragged his gaze up to meet hers.

“Do you, in your heart of hearts, think Amoni-Ram will survive the reign of terror Qabar will bring?”

His throat tightened as a flood of memories rushed through his head. Qabar brusquely telling off their mother for her counsel, insisting he was the Shahhal, not her. Qabar, shoving one of the visiting shahs to the ground over a perceived slight to his honor. Qabar at his father's side, overseeing the mass beheadings of the rebels from Ulma-Ram. He was silent for a moment.

“Please leave.”

Bileath’s heart sank. “Ansool—”

“Please, just— just leave. I need to think right now.”

She slipped off the mattress, gathering her things. Then stood, turning to him.

“Know this. I will not do anything — anything — without you at my side. If you can match my gaze and tell me you believe the empire will survive Qabar on the throne, I will put an end to this right now. If they tell the guard and both of us have to flee this city, I will do it at your side. I am yours.”

She stood, waiting for an answer until he nodded.

“And I am yours. You have my silence. I just need to be alone.”

Bileath slipped into the garrison, offering a token salute to the surprised night guards manning the gate. They hurriedly let her through, and she passed through the plaza, now bereft of soldiers in formation or drilling. Just a wide open, empty-space. The main garrison building had a few chambers in the rear for generals temporarily without accommodation — which, she supposed, included her tonight.

Maleeyn unlocked the door with a heavy brass key, eyes still bleary. “We weren’t expecting you, Bileath.”

“I thought I would have other arrangements tonight.”

“It’s no trouble. Get some rest.” He gave her a concerned once-over as he handed her the key. “You look like you could use it.”

She nodded, thanked him, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. It was a simple, clean chamber — a soft bed, a desk, a washbasin, and a window looking out over the plaza. Sterile, military, without any character or personality, warmth or homeliness. She dropped her things in the corner, stripped off her armor, and fell into the bed.

The room felt awfully cold.

The next evening, Ansool’s bed lay empty.

The prince strode briskly through the streets, rubbing his golden eyes and tightening his robe. It was the small hours of the night, before the sun had risen, and the only people in the streets were the nighthawks, drinking their tea and admiring the hashish-fueled illusion of the prince of Amoni-Ram being led through the city by a servant.

“I’m sorry, my Lord. I wouldn’t have woken you if I hadn’t had to,” Larat explained apologetically, walking just a few feet ahead of him.

Ansool didn’t even have the brainpower to tell him off for the honorific, and simply groaned in response. His contingent of the imperial guard flanked the pair, and their formation moved briskly through the streets in the direction of the palace.

Night in Amoni-Ram was a beautiful thing. At sunrise, the dying rays would set the towers alight in gold, and that sheen would fade for the next hour as the city drifted into darkness. And then the power conduits would be flipped, and the high posts at each corner would buzz to life, casting a glimmering yellow-white light over the streets. The merchants would activate their own small lights for the customers who came in late, most people would wander to their homes. Amoni-Ram was never truly empty, but in these hours, it was the closest it would ever come to being unoccupied — no massive crowds. Just people.

Ansool flashed his face to the palace guard, who let his party in. They moved across the courtyard, slipping into the interior maze of the palace.

“Where is she?”

“The throne room. The guard have sealed the room, but a small crowd of courtiers is forming outside.”

He sighed. “Then we ought to take the servants’ corridors.” This was a practiced affair for him, and they moved through the tight corridors, ignoring the watchful eyes on them, left and right, until they found themselves at a small side door. Ansool turned to his friend and his guards.

“Stay here.”

They nodded, and he slipped inside alone.

The throne room of the Grand Palace of Amoni-Ram was a staggering sight to an outsider. A vast, wide-open space, high dome overhead, its interior lined with gold-and-red-and-blue tilework and mosaics depicting the empire’s rise. Twenty men could stand shoulder to shoulder and fit comfortable inside the massive doom. Below, huge fabric veils hung, stretching from one side of the room to the other to offer shade when the roof was opened in the winter months. The floor was intricately made with overlapping and interlocking tiles of ceramic and steel in a knotted, infinitely-complex pattern, and Ansool’s feet clicked across them as he approached the Fuladh Throne, and his mother lounging in it.

“Hello, Mother.”

Halana finally noticed him, eyes glazed over.

“My looove!” she slurred the words. Ansool quietly noted the empty bottle sitting next to the throne.

“Mother, what are you doing?” he asked as gently as he could muster.

She giggled, curling up in the embrace of the throne. It didn't dwarf her as much as he expected it to.

“Taking my place.”

“Mother…”

“I never wanted this. Do you know that?”

“Never wanted what?"

She waved a hand vaguely across the throne room.

“Your father took the throne early, barely a boy," she leaned forward. “So I was barely a girl. Must have been… fifteen, when we wedded.”

He frowned. “I didn’t know that.” Then he ran some numbers in his head. “Then you would’ve been… thirty, nearly my age, when you had me. Why wait?”

She snorted. “Wait. No, no waiting. Not by choice.”

A pit began to form in Ansool’s stomach.

“What?”

“I was a girl, love. Not a woman, yes. I had barely lived. No idea who I was. Why would I want to throw away my life, for what? To be the caged bird in a faraway palace? No, no. It wasn’t fun, not at first. I wouldn’t have it. But your father is your father. Stubborn. Stubborn." She trailed off into silence before speaking again. "Wanted me, and decided he would have me.”

“I thought you and Father loved each other.”

“Men love the idea of us, of having us." She shrugged. "Children don’t need to know about the troubles of their parents. You and Qabar didn’t need to know about the beatings and the threats.”

The pit grew larger.

“Beatings?”

“Oh, oh, yes." She straightened, telling the story. "A year in Ulma-Ram’s dungeons, making me into his perfect wife. Chains. Razors.” She raised her left hand — the middle finger of fuladh. “Not all augmentations show devotion.”

“I— I thought—”

“That your father was a good man?”

She scoffed, wine-drunk.

“He is his father, and his father before him. Take and take and take and take…” Her voice drifted away. “You like to possess. Like to have. You like your empires vast and women quiet. Hayth, Qabar, you. And now I sit here, and he rots in his bed.”

“Why?”

The question seemed to catch her off-guard. “What?”

"Why stay? Why rule in his stead? He’s feeble, infirm. Utterly dependent on you. You could walk away.”

“No, no. Not… for him. For the empire. It needs a leader. Even if he lies brain-dead while I whisper edicts in his ear.”

“Manipulating the Emperor is sedition.”

Suddenly she hissed at him. "Sedition. Sedition, nothing. I am doing what I can to preserve this collapsing house. I control the nobles. Harram keeps a hold on the Legion. And your presence unifies the people and the clergy. We can only hold the throne and kneel and pray Qabar’s son is better than his father.”

“I thought you had faith in him.”

“I love him. I love my son. More than you could ever love anyone. But I look at him, and all I see is your father's eyes.” She smiled sadly. “Without restraint. He will do all his father did and more. He will hurt people because they aren’t what he wants them to be..”

She went quiet.

“And I still love him, despite it all. I cannot stop loving him, so I will not be able to stop him. The only thing I can do is go down to the temple in the night and kneel and quietly pray to Mekhane that he doesn’t come home through no fault of mine.”

Then Halana rose unsteadily, shakily descending the steps from the daïs until she was inches away from him. The stench of drink was heavy on her breath. She raised a hand, patting it against his cheek.

“I want you to marry. I want you to find a girl, and to marry, before I’m gone. You’re good. You’re not like your brother or father yet. I won’t let you be. So if you hurt her,” she said, patting his cheek. “I’ll kill you.”

He didn’t speak as he guided her to the side entrance to the throne room. Larat sheepishly turned his face away.

“Escort her to her quarters,” Ansool told the guard. “Seal the doors behind her and let her sleep it off. Disperse the crowd outside. Tell them it was me.” They bowed, guiding the empress away.

He and Larat watched them go, stink of alcohol fading with her.

“She’s not well,” he said lamely.

Larat shrugged. “Who of us is? She’s lucky to have you, at any rate.”

“To manage her?”

“To step up when she can’t. You speak with a born authority.”

“I don’t like to.”

“Those who do, rarely should. Should I walk you back to your apartment?”

Ansool sighed. He’d barely slept before the guard had woken him, assaulted by fragmented dreams. The night before had been completely sleepless. He was tired enough to collapse right there on the floor.

“I don’t think I’ll make it back.”

Larat nodded. “I’ll have them prepare your old chambers. Just for the night.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s either that or in the stables with the horses, my friend.”

He barked out a laugh. “Fine.”

Bileath swooped down to a landing on the roof of the tower. The sun was setting in the distance, and Ansool was sitting on the flat roof, eyes closed. He didn’t turn as she approached and took a seat next to him, not quite touching. They watched the sun cast the city aflame.

“It’s beautiful,” she finally said.

“The first time I saw you was when I was seventeen. Father was in the last stages of his illness, and General Maleeyn wanted me and Qabar acquainted with the military command. He brought us to the garrison, introduced us to the various high generals. Himself, Harram, Uthram. You. I don’t think you even noticed me at the time, I barely spoke. I had no interest in military affairs, let Qabar do all of the gladhanding. But from the second I laid eyes on you, I knew you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”

“I noticed you,” she said quietly. “I thought the same.”

He was glad the setting sun hid his blush as he continued. “But it took me another five years to say anything. Because I was so terrified of hurting my brother. Taking what was his. The guilt of just wanting you ate me up inside, and so I tried not seeing you. I never went to the garrison, I left the palace, and still you infested my thoughts until I couldn’t bear it anymore. If I was going to feel guilty, I might as well live deliciously for it.”

Her hand snaked on top of his, and he didn’t pull it away. “I’m glad you did.”

“I’ve never wanted to hurt him. I love him.”

“Do you think he’ll stay his hand the same if he finds out about us?”

He shook his head. “No. He’ll have us tortured and executed, because I took what was his. But I don’t love people because they’ll love me back. I just love them. And it’s more than that, anyway.”

“How so?”

“The empire needs a leader. Qabar, for all his talents, can’t lead. And I don’t want to.” He laughed. “What a sorry state of affairs.”

“You can’t run away from what you have to do.”

“So people keep telling me. How exactly do these friends of yours plan to avoid a civil war? Qabar won’t just stand down, and two princes claiming the throne is asking for war.”

“I’ll ask them when I return to the siege camp.”

“Then we’d best get your wings fixed quickly. I have the parts downstairs.”

“We can afford a few more minutes,” she said. He nodded, and she curled into his shoulder as they watched the sun dip below the horizon.

“I’ll do it. Assume the throne, if I have to. I just don’t want to hurt him. That’s all I ask.”

“You won’t have to.”

Her wing twitched, and they both pretended not to notice it.

There was a wretched air in the camp when she returned. She landed late, near dusk, just as the sun had been swallowed up by the jungle around the city. The dotted lights of the vast camp cut through the brush, and she quickly made her way over.

The soldiers greeted her with stiff salutes and nods. Distantly, the steady boom-BOOM of the artillery sounded out over the camp. It made for an odd rhythm — soldiers, so used to the barrage, would naturally pause a moment before, hear the distantly deafening thump, and then resume conversation like nothing had happened. Every so often, a screaming hiss would sound out as the Daeva returned fire, and those closest to the city would dive into their trenches and under cover. The rest simply waited for it to pass.

Under the cover of one of the artillery barrages, she heard something — a scream, sharp and loud, cutting across the air of the camp. From the charges, maybe? She froze, waiting to hear another noise, but nothing came, and none of the soldiers seemed to register it. After a few seconds, she carried on. Perhaps her imagination.

She found Harram outside the command tent, taking quick sips from a flask. She raised an eyebrow at it as he tucked it back inside his breastplate.

“It’s tea,” he assured her, motioning her inside. She ducked into the tent, and immediately straightened as she realized they weren’t alone. Five lieutenants, all wearing the colors of Harram’s legion, standing around the command tent. She looked at him.

“Speak freely. They’re trustworthy,” he said, crossing to the central table. “Lohn, watch the door.” The one farthest away nodded, taking position outside the tentflap. The rest just watched as Bileath approached the map table.

“Did anything happen while I was away?”

“You mean another suicidal charge? No. He made a mistake the last time, and he knows it — our soldiers despise him now, and doing it again now would risk open rebellion from his forces. They’re loyal to us now, not him.”

“So. Where are we?” Harram continued.

“He’s… open to the idea of assuming the throne, if we can arrange it.”

A collective breath was released from around the room.

“That’s good. That’s very good. But that easily?”

“… I told him his brother wouldn’t be harmed.”

A sharp inhale.

“That’s not how this plays out,” Harram said. “This plan doesn’t work with him still alive.”

“Why not?”

“He’s lost the support of the legion, of the clergy, and of the people, but he retains key supporters among the governors and nobles. That, crossed with his parentage, is enough to support a legitimate grab for the throne. And he’s a petulant, juvenile child. He will never, ever accept being ousted, not like this, not by his younger brother. As long as he draws breath, we’d be tempting civil war.”

“It took a lot for Ansool to even consider taking the throne. I got you there. You’re asking me to push him to murder.”

“I’m asking you to show him what needs to be done. You don’t need me to remind you what happens if you can’t.”

“Just… give me time.”

The lieutenants exchanged glances.

“What is it?”

Harram spoke deliberately. “The situation has… changed. We’ve learned that the Daeva’s defense is on the verge of collapse.”

“What? How?"

"I'm… not sure. But Qabar's lieutenants seem sure of it, more sure than they've ever been. They know something we don't. A weak point, maybe. Planning a large push."

"How long?"

“A week, perhaps two.”

A week out from the end of the longest siege in the history of the Legion. The prospect was like a shot in the arm.

“Why is this a bad thing?”

“If Qabar takes the city before you can prepare Ansool—”

“Then he’ll return to Amoni-Ram and be coronated,” she finished, realizing. “We’ll never get another opportunity.”

Harram nodded. “We need you here when we pierce their defenses. But after that, I think I can get you sent back to Amoni-Ram as an advance party. You have to ready Ansool then. There is no other option.”

She let out a soft hiss of air. “I’m not even sure I’m ready.”

“You have to be, as does he. This is too tight a window for error. I was hoping that he’d be ready now. Foolhardy.”

“He’s not like us, Harram. He's not a killer."

“Emperors must understand how to take a life. When he is in that throne, then I can rest. Until then, keep on as you are — allow no one to suspect anything is amiss, least of all the dog. He must feel as safe as a lamb until the knife is being dragged across his throat.”

“Ah. My pretty little bird returns.”

Bileath bowed her head slightly. “My Lord.”

“You took your blessed time in Amoni-Ram, didn’t you?”

“Prince Ansool needed to acquire the parts to repair my wing, my Lord. Apologies.”

Qabar nodded, easing into his seat in his tent. She was standing in the middle, hands clasped behind her back.

“How is my brother?”

“He’s well.”

“Good. I love the boy. It’s best that he stays behind the safety of the city walls.”

For a moment, she thought she saw something unfamiliar in Qabar’s eyes — a sheen of sincere wistfulness, maybe.

“Yes, my Lord.”

There was a commotion in the far corner of the tent, and Bileath turned just in time to see two members of the imperial guard leaving, carrying a body between them. The body of a Daeva boy, bleeding from the mouth, skin marred by cuts and bruises and burns, face half-transformed between man and beast, rich brown eyes — the same eyes Bileath had seen at the end of a collar, being pulled towards this side of the camp so many weeks ago. Even from this distance, with the half-second glance, Bileath could tell the child was dead. Time seemed to slow, and she barely registered Qabar’s voice addressing her.

“A Daeva assassin. Snuck into my tent in the dead of night, while you were away. Tried to sink a knife into my chest, but my guard managed to capture him. Your duties falter, Bileath. I wonder if you’re not better served in a non-combat role with the other women.”

“An assassin.” The boy's body was frail, emaciated. She would've been surprised if he had the strength to draw a blade, much less use it. What didn't surprise her were the jagged wounds sure to never heal right, the meticulously-applied burns — signs of slow, methodical torture.

"Quite depraved of them to use their children for such things. But he was old enough to hold a blade. I decided he was old enough to be interrogated. Gave up some useful information before he… wore out."

'Wore out'.

A corpse, being dragged from the Shahhal's tent. The screams she had heard over and over from the far side of camp, dismissed as her imagination. She knew how Qabar had his information on the teetering defense now. He simply plucked the only people in the city not zealous enough in their spirit to ignore the agony of their flesh: children.

This was beyond depraved. This was monstrous. Even in wartime, there had to be boundaries, and this was far, far beyond those boundaries.

Bileath raised her eyes. Qabar matched her gaze, daring her to say something, relishing the thrill. He was pushing her, she realized, seeing how far his bird’s loyalty really went. How much she would tolerate in the name of duty. Her hand closed around the hilt of her sword, and her muscles tightened to make the lunge, one thought running through her head: he dies for this. He dies for this.

Then there was a strong hand on her shoulder, pulling her back and weighing her down. Harram’s gauntlet, his eyes locked with hers. He said nothing, but the message was clear. Safe as a lamb, until the knife is being dragged across his throat.

Every single instinct in her screamed to leap and pierce his chest with her blade, to deliver some meager justice for the corpse being dragged outside the tent. Damn the cost, damn however much blood needed to be spilled to balance the scales. And then she remembered the two hundred bodies burning in that field so many weeks ago, and the expectant eyes of her men as she swore on their memories: never again.

Her white-knuckle grip on her sword slowly eased, and she felt herself drift away, watching the scene from outside as something else took control, moving her muscles and speaking in her voice. “It won’t happen again, my lord.”

“See that it doesn’t. You are dismissed.”

And then she was leaving the tent, and walking away, and Harram was walking briskly after her calling her name as she ignored him, pushing through the crowd of soldiers, leaving the camp behind as she approached the fields of bodies, casting her gaze across them until she found what she knew she’d find: the body of the Daeva, twisted and mangled, tossed onto the heap of the thousands already-dead.

Harram came up next to her.

“He was a child. An innocent.”

Bileath didn’t lift her gaze as she felt her soul ease back into her body, stomach twisted with bitter rage. “They always seem to lose the most, don’t they?”

“Qabar deserves to face justice for this.”

“Then why stay my blade?” It wasn’t a question, not really — both of them knew the answer. But Harram answered anyway.

“Because there’s no justice to be found here, none we can deliver without getting ourselves and a thousand other men killed in the process. Who’s going to deliver their justice?”

She didn’t have an answer.

He continued. “The Shahhal's justice is at the bottom of a cup of tea shared with his brother in Amoni-Ram.”

“His brother is an innocent too.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that while you were gone.”

“And?”

“And I changed my mind. You don’t have to convince him if you don’t want to. I’ll do it myself.”

He said it so even-handedly that it took a second for it to register. She whipped her neck around.

“You said the imperial guard would immediately know, that they’d fall upon your army. Thousands would die. You, certainly.”

“They probably would. And I probably will. Still. A risk I’m prepared to take, to stay Qabar from the throne.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Because too much innocence has been lost already.” They both stared at the Daeva boy’s mangled body. “I won’t allow Qabar to compromise my honor, to force you into an impossible choice. I respect you too much for that. At least I’ll die with my integrity.”

He spoke of his own death so casually, the tone one might take for a bargain found at the market. That’s what this was, for him — cost and benefit. Him and maybe thousands of their men dead, just to kill Qabar.

But she had a way to kill him with no other casualties.

“Chances are you’ll fail,” she said bluntly. “Besides. It’s too late. You were right the first time. I can’t protect Ansool forever.”

“He’s the only one in that palace with a clean conscience,” Harram pointed out gently. “Are you sure you’ll still love him once you strip that away?”

Are you sure he’ll still love you?

Bileath was still looking into those rich brown eyes, now bereft of any life behind them. “War makes bastards of us all.”

Chapter IV

Harram’s words proved prophetic. Thambarat’s walls fell a week later.

She was in the air the evening it happened, soaring high above the city, scouting it out. The sound was deafening, nearly knocking her out of the air — and when she regained control, she banked and laid her eyes on what they had been sat waiting nearly a year for: the southern wall of Thambarat, lying blown apart and aflame from a single well-placed artillery shot that had hit a reserve of flammable oil within, as if they had known exactly where it was. The city lay like a wounded animal on its side, soft flank entirely exposed.

The cathartic scream she let out was only heard by the birds, and then they too were gone, left behind as she dived towards the city, flood of Mekhanite soldiers underneath her charging through the gap in the wall, following their commander screaming into the maw of Hell.

Thambarat stood in the space between two rivers, due far north of Mamjul. Whoever controlled the city controlled the rivers, and whoever controlled the rivers could move troops closer to the Daeva capital than anyone had ever come before. And so the Daeva had been the first to conquer it so many centuries ago, and it had stood as a bastion of protection for their traders and farmers and wandering ascetics since. Manmade cuttings from the rivers flowed through the city itself, bringing fresh water under the walls.

Thambarat fell in the space between two rivers, forced to kneel after a year of siege by the Golden Legion. For five days and five nights, they looted the city, taking with them its priceless treasures — and no prisoners. The Daeva ran routed, the swords of the Legion falling on them without mercy. The symphony of artillery was replaced by screaming until the last Daeva priestess died and the commander sank to her knees, washing her face in the river running red with blood, asking a silent goddess for forgiveness for what she had done, what she had yet to do.

“General?”

Bileath turned. She was in a room in the citadel, smooth stone walls packed with priceless artworks and gems. Probably the bedchambers of some priestess or governor. There was a bloody stain on the mattress. She tried not to look at it.

It was one of the soldiers, panting, sticking his head through the doorway. “It’s Prince Qabar, my lady. He’s demanding to address the officers.”

“Where’s Harram?”

“I don’t know, general. He asked for you.”

Bileath nodded, following after him. They marched quickly through the citadel. It had the heavy grey-stone construction the Daeva loved, interspersed with thick vines as hard as any fuladh. Most of it had been looted, but they had yet to install their own command structure inside to hold the city. Harram would be in charge, no doubt — the soldiers were already calling it his victory, his achievement, which she was fine with. There was no arguing that he’d given up the most to ensure this victory; that it would go next to his name in the histories felt like adequate repayment. His first command would be rebuilding the shattered wall, of course, but she would get to that once she saw what petulant demand Qabar was—

Her stomach dropped when she saw him, in the central courtyard surrounded by the imperial guard and crowds of muttering soldiers, with a figure bound and kneeling next to him: Harram.

“Ah!” Qabar clapped. “General Bileath joins us.”

“What is this?”

“This,” he said, drawing his blade and pointing it at Harram. He was scowling, on his knees, writhing against his bonds. “Is a traitor.”

Bileath narrowed her eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

Qabar waved his blade in the air as he spoke. “For the past three months, General Harram has had contacts inside the walls of Thambarat, feeding them knowledge of where our forces would strike and when so we could be more easily repelled.”

The muttering from the soldiers increased in intensity.

“He has done this, because he lost faith in our strength. He began to believe that Thambarat’s walls would not fall, that we would eventually be exhausted and forced to slink back to Amoni-Ram with our tails between our legs, and was buying his own position high in the upper echelons of the Daeva. A most vile kind of traitor — that who would sell out his own troops for his own neck.” He dragged the tip of the blade gently across Harram’s throat.

That was impossible. Harram’s plan rested entirely on Thambarat falling in the next week. It made no sense that he would’ve been cooperating with the Daeva, and staring at Qabar’s golden eyes, she could see that even he did not believe what he was saying.

“You remain as stupid as you are barbaric, my Lord,” Harram spat.

The flat of the blade came around, striking him in the back of the head. “Silence, traitor. You have given up the lives of countless men to secure your own legacy.”

And with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Bileath realized they had both made a crucial error. They had underestimated their quarry. They had taken Qabar for an impatient fool, unskilled in the arts of war, only capable of the most direct, brutish charges. That he didn’t notice or care the massive loss of life he was absorbing, and assumed himself insulated from any consequences.

But now, looking at his golden eyes relishing in Harram’s misery, she could see they had been fatally incorrect. This was it, the masterstroke — in one fell swoop, Qabar had assured his legacy. The siege had taken so long and been so catastrophic because of a single traitorous general, not because of the prince. His strongest political enemy was to be executed in the manner of traitors, securing his command and rule. Harram’s name would be stricken from the record, the victory of Thambarat going attributed to Crown Prince Qabar instead. And the no quarter order meant that not a single Daeva was left alive to gainsay the accusation.

The dog had been hunting them too, she realized. And they had wandered blindly into his trap. Her throat tightened, and her hand fell on the grip of her sword, taking a step forward.

Then she stopped at the slight, almost imperceptible shake of Harram’s head. Invisible unless she had been looking for it, he matched her gaze. No. You cannot allow yourself to be found out.

She suppressed the urge, but Qabar noticed the step.

“Eager for justice, bird? Worry not. You’ll have your chance. But for now… Do you have anything to say in your defense, General Harram?”

Harram raised his head. Even now, kneeling, he had a strong, proud air about him. This was a man of honor, and Qabar’s pitiful attempts to bring him low could not rob that from him.

“Your accusations are false, meant only to pad yourself as the taker of Thambarat. Kill me if you want, if it brings your rotten soul some momentary peace. You cannot change reality: you are a stupid child, and the blood shed here drenches your hands, not mine.”

The foot came around from the left, kicking Harram in the jaw and sending him sprawling.

“Silence. I will not be condescended to by a traitor. I find you guilty of high treason, General Harram. You will be executed in the manner of traitors.” He looked around. “This is no Court of Rubies, but it will have to do.”

Bileath never saw a flash of fear cross Harram’s eyes, not even for a second. He never dropped his gaze, not as Qabar stepped away and four members of the imperial guard approached, one grasping each limb and raising him into the air. Even as he screamed, shrieking as the connection between flesh and metal gave way, blood leaking from the gaps between his stumps and his prosthetics, and his soldiers pushed forward against the line of imperial guardsmen, shouting. Even as his screaming was replaced by the screaming of metal as the fuladh gave way, limbs shearing off and blood spraying onto the stone as he fell to the ground, writhing in agony, his screams rising over the shouting from his officers. Every movement sprayed more ruby-red blood onto the ground, mixing with the leaking oil from his prosthetics, a pool of fluids to die in.

Then Qabar’s voice rose over his agonized screaming. “You will lie here, taking hours to die. Or you would, were I not an honorable master. In respect to your years of service, I will grant you one mercy. A quick death.” Then he turned. “General Bileath. Cut his throat, and put an end to his traitorous life.”

She froze. Harram was still screaming, writhing limbless on the ground, dying. It was over for him, he’d lost too much blood already — he would not survive this. A quick death was, indeed, the only mercy she could grant him now.

You cannot allow yourself to be found out.

And so, all her officers staring, she choked down the bitter, incandescent rage at this monster, this wretch, and nodded, taking a shaky step forward, hand drawing a dagger from her belt loop. The same dagger she had thought about cutting Harram with so many weeks ago, but now he was not threatening her. His eyes were matching her gaze, somehow cutting through the unimaginable pain. She approached, kneeling gently, as he gurgled, throat filling with his own blood.

For the living and the dead. Never again.

She placed the edge of the knife against his throat.

“Your last words, General Harram.” Qabar announced.

He said it so softly, so quietly, that only Bileath, cradling his head in her lap, could have heard him. “I die for my empire.”

And she dragged the knife across his throat while she held his head, safe like a lamb, and eventually he stopped moving, proud nose up, no honor behind those eyes, nothing at all.

She let Harram’s head drop to the stones. Qabar approached from behind. She didn’t have to restrain herself from cutting his throat out; her muscles were too exhausted to raise herself up.

His fingers teased her hair. “Go now. Fly back to Amoni-Ram. Tell them of your master’s victory, and tell them to prepare for his return. I will re-enter not as a prince, but as an emperor.”

She felt herself nodding dimly, then rising to her feet, stumbling back into the citadel, into the room she had taken as hers. Pulling the box from under a shelf, unclasping it, removing Ansool’s memory-machine, now clicking and whirring and functioning perfectly.

She set it down on the stone slab and placed her fingers into the slots, and thought of Harram.

The walls of Amoni-Ram held four gates, one in every cardinal direction, each as tall as twenty men. They were as strong and thick as the walls that held them, capable of being barred with hydraulic locks in case the city were ever besieged. But of course, that was impossible, because the enemy would never reach Amoni-Ram.

The eastern gate was gargantuan — moving it by hand was an impossibility, and so it relied on a huge mechanical coil-and-pulley that inched back agonizingly slowly, pulling the huge doors apart while Ansool watched. When the gap was wide enough to fit several men, he advanced, imperial guard forming a protective diamond around him.

There was an organized force waiting outside the gates, stretching far back, and with one person at its head. All the caution in his form evaporated upon seeing who led the formation. He ordered his guard back, rushing ahead into the cool night.

“General Bileath!”

She sank into a kneel.

“My lord.”

“You return early. With good news, I hope?” he asked, looking around her unit. A relatively small force: just a few hundred troops, some of them mounted, surrounding the train of some fifteen landcrossers (the wide, many-legged cargo vessels). They weren’t in marching formation, he realized. There was a pattern to their positioning, but not one he knew.

“Thambarat has fallen. We’ve occupied the city in the name of the Emperor.” Her voice was flat, emotionless.

“Mekhane’s grace.” He felt a knot in his shoulder relax. Finally. “What is all this, then?”

“The cost.” The words dripped with a fury and bitterness he’d never heard in her voice before. Them she turned, shouting an order. One of the landcrossers backed up, presenting its cargo doors. They were yanked open, and Ansool caught a glance of what was inside: stacked coffins. His heart sank.

“The victims of the Daeva?”

Bileath shook her head as she stepped inside, dragged one of the coffins out herself. It scraped against the packed sand as she brought it before her prince and began undoing the lid.

“No. No, the Daeva killed thousands more than this.” She leaned closer to him. “These are just your brother’s victims.”

She pulled off the lid, and his breath caught.

General Harram, salt-and-pepper beard, curly hair. He was dead now, skin pale, dried brown blood staining the underside of his neck where his throat had been cut. His prosthetics had been sheared off, the metal twisted and fragmented, but lovingly lashed back to his limbs.

General Harram, who had practically lived in the palace when his father first fell sick, supporting his mother as they set up the system to manage the Emperor’s condition. General Harram, with the broad smile that he’d always worn when amusing the two princes as children, bouncing Ansool on his knee and entertaining Qabar with war stories. General Harram, who had gifted Qabar his first blade and taught him how to use it.

“Harram. He… killed Harram?”

“He accused him of some made-up treason. Found him guilty, and had me execute him.”

Ansool could scarcely breathe. “…Why?!”

“Because he wanted the only man who could challenge his power out of the way. Because he wanted Thambarat to be his victory, and his victory alone. Because he’s insane.”

He dragged his eyes away from Harram’s mangled form as the other soldiers opened the other landcrossers, quietly removing their cargo. More and more coffins, more and more bodies. Officers, soldiers, all dead, bodies charred and burnt and dirty, prosthetics torn away before being lovingly recovered and reattached, giving them some dignity in death. Hundreds of bodies, all draped in Bileath’s standard.

He turned to her, and her eyes were hard.

“Loyal soldiers, put to the sword. My soldiers. Harram’s blood is on my hands.”

“It’s not your—”

“Yes, it is. I should’ve cut Qabar’s throat when I had the chance,” she spat, and in her quiet fury, he couldn’t even argue. Who could, confronted with this horror? He went silent, both of them watching the coffins be carried off the machines, and he realized why he didn’t recognize the formation: it was a funeral procession.

He looked down at Harram’s ugly, mangled corpse, staring back at him.

“I wanted this to end without bloodshed. I really did,” Bileath whispered. “But this is too much.”

He didn’t say anything.

“This blood is on your hands too, Ansool. You let this happen, just as I did.”

Harram’s dead eyes pierced him, staring into his soul.

“Blood needs to be paid in blood. And every drop of blood Qabar has in his body isn’t enough to atone for this.” They were both looking down at the dead man between them. “But it’s a start.”

He couldn’t breathe.

“Qabar’s given the order that the bodies of traitors are not to enter Amoni-Ram. We’re not leaving our men. We’ll stay here, until the flesh rots and the bones turn to dust. I will not abandon them again.” She turned to him, eyes incandescent with rage, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Or you can do what you should’ve done ages ago, and admit what your brother has become.”

Hundreds of corpses, hundreds more soldiers refusing to abandon their comrades. Expecting him to do something, to give an order. Expecting him to rule.

“Qabar does not rule Amoni-Ram. Not yet. Bury the dead in the cemeteries. Full honors,” he found himself stating. The soldiers lumbered forth, lifting the coffins and beginning to carry them through the city gates.

He looked to Bileath. She didn’t look back at him.

Ansool stumbled through the streets, mind adrift somewhere else.

Bileath led in front of him. They were both cloaked again — she had sneaked him out of the apartment, but now it was the dead of night rather than the day. The spice-markets were silent, there were no teashops open, even the hashish-dens had quieted. The pair of them walked through the streets, utterly silent.

He couldn’t focus enough to ask where they were going. If he tried to think, his mind would flash with the image — Harram’s dead, pale face, all blood drained, eyes popping out. His prosthetics sheared apart and his throat stained with his own blood.

Killed by his brother.

The phrase kept echoing through his head. Killed by his brother. All of those men, not just Harram. It bounced around his skull until he was gently pulled forward by Bileath and he realized they were at the palace gates. He dropped his cloak.

“My lord. Apologies. We didn’t realize.”

He nodded absentmindedly and they let him through. Still holding his hand, Bileath led him across the courtyard, up the stairs into the palace, through the servant corridors, until they reached the side door and pushed in, into the throne room.

He finally acknowledged the journey as she led him across the tile and to the daïs, and sat him in the fuladh throne. He let it happen. He hadn’t sat on this throne since he was a child too small to realize what it signified.

“Why are we here?”

“Because you need to understand,” she said simply, slipping a hand inside her breastplate.

“I understand. I saw the bodies. I saw Harram—”

“No. You need to understand.” She withdrew her hand, containing a small white-ceramic cylinder marked with indentations and bumps.

He dimly recognized it.

“My machine.”

She nodded. “You’re not going to understand unless you see it for yourself. So,” she said, placing the cylinder into the slot on the throne’s armrest, moving his hand into the depression. “See.”

The throne began to click and grind from underneath him, and he was about to rise to his feet and shout, but then the throne room wasn’t there anymore.

Instead he was standing on a field-turned-graveyard. This wasn’t battle. These were endless corpses, stacked on top of one another, flies swarming the rotting flesh. They went on as far as the eye could see, stretching to the horizon, intermingling between Daeva and Mekhanite. The stench of death invaded his nostrils, his stomach turning. And then he found himself turning, eyes planted in someone else’s body.

Qabar, at the far end of the killing field, the brother he had not seen in so many years. He was older, his nose sharper — a darker, heavier air about him. Carried himself high even as the soldiers marched in front of him, dragging more bodies and flinging them into this interminable pit of death. There were thousands of corpses here, at the least.

He felt his fists clench around the hilt of a sword, involuntarily, as Qabar smiled.

Then he was in a battlefield, pressed prone to the ground, explosions overhead. Terror gripped his heart, the fires were blinding. He was pressed against a corpse — a Mekhanite, whose head had been split in twain, his brains leaking out over Ansool’s pauldron. They were smashed into the corner of this bridge while other soldiers rushed headlong into the fray, screaming, firing their bolts. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He could only watch, pressed between corpses, as a Daeva tree-beast tore out of the gate to the city, arms swinging, the sheer force of the swing eviscerating several soldiers.

Then it cut to him standing behind Qabar on a hill, overlooking the charge. Watching it fail, be repelled, the screaming, the shouting. Watching his brother casually shrug in the face of such carnage, return to his tent and his meal.

And then he was in the body of his love, Bileath, sinking to her knees, watching his old uncle Harram twisting and writhing in the stone courtyard, screaming like a man possessed as he bled from every limb. Unable to intervene, casting a hopeless glance at Qabar, who was watching Harram die with satisfaction — no, glee on his face. Glee at a job well done, glee that his enemy was dead, glee that he had gotten away with this brazen lie. Sheer, manic excitement that no one would be able to stand in the way now. Those golden eyes matching his.

And then those golden eyes became the rich brown of a Daeva boy, being dragged away from Qabar on a lead, and again, being limply dragged by his neck from the back of Qabar’s tent, bleeding all over, dead, and again, lying twisted and splayed on so many other corpses, so many other victims.

And then he screamed, screamed with the impossible weight of knowledge of what his brother had become, and it was over, and he was on his knees in front of the throne, and Bileath was helping him up, holding his shaking form as he pressed his forehead against her shoulder, panting.

“You saw it.”

He nodded, still shaking.

“You know what you have to do.”

“I… I don’t know if I can.”

She helped him up, drawing a vial from her breastplate. Corked, full of something white. Pressed it into his hand.

“I said I’d be with you through it all. But I’ve done all I can. I can’t help you, show you more than I have already.”

“How… do you bring yourself to do it? To do these things?” he choked out, visions of the battle fresh in his mind.

She didn’t answer for some time. Finally, she managed: “You… step away from your body. And you let something else take over, something unburdened by honor or thought. And you let it do what needs to be done.”

He stared at the vial, filled with horrified uncertainty.

“If… If I do. How much, for it to be instant.”

Bileath thought about Harram’s words. One drop, and the priestess had suffered for weeks. The full vial would’ve killed her instantly.

And then she thought about Harram’s dead face, no light behind his eyes, prosthetics torn apart, life and body destroyed for his cause.

“One drop.”

He found himself leaving the throne room alone, letting his feet carry him. He tried not to think about what he’d agreed to, but his mind swirled with the visions, implacable. His brother with a sword held high above Harram's neck. His brother next to him in the pantries, feasting on sweets stolen from the kitchens. His brother watching, bored, as the bodies was carried out of his tent. His brother falling asleep by his bed when he had been sticken with fever as a child.

He didn’t bother with the servants' corridors, walking directly through the vast hallways and over the mosaics and tiles. The tapestries on the walls told stories he didn’t pay attention to as he swept through the palace, through once-familiar courtyards and halls and gardens, no destination in mind. The few courtiers and servants sunk into bows on seeing him, and he didn’t care enough to tell them to rise.

He’d run through these same hallways, once. Chasing his brother and being chased in turn, laughing, shouting, grabbing and tackling. But that had been when they were children, before his father had taken to raising Qabar “as an Emperor ought to be raised.” Before they had stopped playing together and Qabar had spent more and more time in the garrison. Before he turned cruel and hard as he grew older, decrying his younger brother as a soft-shelled weakling.

Before Ansool had left the palace at sixteen so he wouldn’t have to see what his brother was becoming.

The sight of the hallways didn’t bring back warm recollections anymore. Just a sinking feeling, the pain of memories he didn’t want to think about. He looked out over what was once a garden — the plants had been torn out, now, but he still remembered the purple-and-gold flowers and the lush greenery surrounding them as a teenage Qabar rubbed dirt into a cut on his younger brother’s knee.

“Shush,” he had said “Don’t cry, Father will be upset.”

Ansool had stopped his sniffling immediately, eager to follow his brother’s commands. “Why?”

“Father says weakness is for girls and cowards. You have to be strong,” he responded, rising. “Like an emperor.”

And from this angle, through his collar, the young Ansool’s eyes saw the constellation of cuts and bruises and scars underneath Qabar’s tunic. Some old and faded, most fresh. Reaching out to touch them as Qabar recoiled, shoving his dear brother backward into the dirt.

“Don’t touch me,” Qabar snarled like a cornered dog, straightening his tunic while Ansool watched, eyes wide, unable to excise the image of what he had seen.

And then the memory was gone, and Ansool was a man again, sitting in the now-bare gardens, and his head was in his hands, and he was crying bitter tears for the brother he had lost and would never have again.

Just before the sun rose, he found himself leaving the palace, wandering in a daze to the academy grounds. It was early in the morning and most of the clerics were indisposed, so nobody was there to express their admiration or kneel. He was glad; he didn’t think he would be able to handle it right now.

He spread his robes, sitting on a bench across from Bumaro’s Tree as it caught the light of the rising sun. And, between the glimmering gold-and-green leaves and the pale wood marbled with fuladh, he saw the dark, creeping brown of the fungal rot on one of the branches, eating away just underneath the surface, no matter how perfect the leaves looked.

It had gotten worse from his last visit, and now threatened to escape from this branch to the main trunk of the tree. He stared at it, at the thinning space between the rot and the trunk, until the sun fully rose and the clerics began arriving, casting sidelong glances as the seated prince. Eventually, one approached him.

“My Lord? Are you alright?”

The voice sounded distant, muffled, as though speaking through a blanket. Ansool kept staring at the tree.

“My Lord?”

Finally, his lips moved.

“Shear it. We must cull the branch to save the tree.”

The cleric nodded, somewhat taken aback, and had it arranged posthaste. Ansool still sat, watching as another cleric arrived with a ladder, and took a saw to the midpoint of the branch, cutting it away until it groaned and fell to the ground, exposing the interior flesh of the tree.

It was rotting from the inside.

It was a day of celebration in Amoni-Ram.

The streets, usually busy, were now utterly packed. There was hardly room to squeeze between two people — entire families were out, dressed in their finest clothing with freshly-polished fuladh, the women in newly-done makeup and their hair prettied. The men had been released from their work for the day, save for the marketmen; they meandered through the crowds, exchanging grilled meats for coin. There was a buzz of excitement in the air, electric and pervasive. Like a lumbering wave, the crowd contracted towards the Eastern Gate, moving in slow motions.

Normally, the walls of Amoni-Ram were off-limits to all but the guardmen. The restrictions had been slightly relaxed for the occasion — nobles, merchants, the wealthy and influential found themselves lining the eastern portion of the Wall, leaning against the battlements with their children, oohing and aahing with excitement as the great cloud of dust approached from the distance.

Eventually, it took form.

A grand army, twenty thousand men deep, stretching far into the horizon, throwing up sand as they marched. Landcrossers moving foot by foot, Legion soldiers with their golden arms and armor, imperial guards holding up the feathered standards of the Shahhal, approaching steadily closer to Amoni-Ram. When they grew close enough to make out the figure leading them, another wave of excitement shot through the crowds on the walls, and from there to the masses in the streets.

And eventually, more whispers began to pass through the crowd, followed quickly by shouts and calls to move, to back away. The sea of people parted to allow the passage of the Prince of Amoni-Ram and his imperial guards, bearing the standard of the city. They sank into deep kneels — for today was a day of great respect for the dynasty.

Ansool let himself be carried along, like a bird on the desert currents, his mind lost elsewhere. He was in his finest robes, imported and hand-stitched, intricate tailoring and gilding with real fuladh. General Maleeyn was to his right; Bileath was to his right. He wished he could reach out and squeeze her hand.

They marched forward, surrounded by a circle of imperial guardsmen, until they reached the open plaza before the Eastern Gate.

“At your order, my Lord,” Maleeyn whispered.

Ansool nodded. His legs felt shaky — had he eaten since last night? He dismissed the thought, and raised his voice past the hoarseness into a shout.

“Open the gate.”

The guardsmen heard him and repeated the shout, and the guards on the wall repeated it again, and soon a hundred men were echoing the command. The pumps sprung to life, rumbling as they pulled the chains back, moving the massive gates back on their rails.

The army marched in to wild screams and cheers. The landcrossers pushed in, surrounded by officers carrying armfuls of looted treasures: Daeva statues, artworks, weapons, shields, richly-decorated suits of armor, woven robes from their priestesses. Huge strings of petrified wood charms dangled from their necks as Amoni-Ram roared in triumph and approval for her returning sons.

And then the soldiers parted, the crowd sunk into a deep bow in a wave from front to back, and Ansool laid eyes on his brother — Qabar, clad in fine gilded armor, riding a chestnut stallion into the plaza. He dismounted, raising a hand to quell the cheers from the people, before approaching Ansool, the only one not kneeling.

“Brother.” They embraced, Qabar’s armor digging into his skin. Ansool kissed both of his cheeks, no joy in his eyes.

“Brother.”

“You look well.”

They were in the Court of Lions, blessedly alone. The parade had taken most of the day, the pair of them riding on twin horses in a spiral through Amoni-Ram, slowly approaching the palace. Ansool’s back was drenched in sweat; Qabar was little better. So they both sat on the expensive chaises and cushions, staining them, uncaring.

Qabar smiled.

“I am well. These victories have brought honor to my name. To our name.”

Ansool nodded, leaning back. It was strange — his brother’s face was at once familiar and unfamiliar. Not the same face he had borne when he left so many years ago, but Ansool had seen this new, sharp, hard face in Bileath’s memories. It was like recognizing something from a dream.

“Do I have something on my face?”

“Hm? Oh, no. Sorry.”

“Quite alright. I must look haggard after so many months on the battlefield.”

“… No, you look quite fine, actually. Your hair is still cut short.”

“Oh. Well, I had an attendant do that before I arrived.”

Ansool peered into his memories, into Bileath’s memories — Qabar’s short hair, trimmed ever-so-neat by attendants with golden shears, while his soldiers had their beards matted with dirt and blood and grime.

“Of course.”

“In any case, I’ll have the attendants here handle it before the coronation.”

Ansool’s breath caught in his throat.

“You must be excited.”

His brother shrugged.

“I take no joy in assuming the throne. It’s just duty.”

And before he could stop it, the vision passed through Ansool’s head, of Qabar holding a sword over the neck of the only man standing in his way to the throne, of his golden eyes alight with the sheer glee of it all. His stomach turned. The same golden eyes he had, the same golden eyes that had looked on in concern when he had broken a bone as a child, that had matched his gaze while rubbing dirt into his wounds. The eyes of a murderer, of a madman.

“You don’t think it’s better to wait, perhaps?”

“Wait?” Qabar leaned forward. “Why would I wait?”

Ansool fidgeted, hands tying themselves into knots while the pit in his stomach expanded. “This news about Harram, I can’t help but think the people might want time to—“

“Don’t take that traitor’s name.”

“I still can’t believe it. He bounced us on his knee as boys. He served the Legion faithfully in the east. I don’t know why he would turn traitor now.”

Qabar shrugged. “Who can say why a coward does what he does?”

“… You’re absolutely sure he was a traitor?”

“I wrested the admission from the lips of a Daeva assassin sent to cut me in my sleep. She gave up Harram by name. By name, Ansool.”

Ah. The assassin.

Ansool lowered his face into his hands to avoid showing his own eyes, lest his brother see the fury in them. Even clasped in darkness, all he could see was Harram’s face, rendered in bloody detail in his— no, Bileath’s lap. Gurgling, choking on his own blood, begging for the sweet mercy of death. And then, again, cold and lifeless in a casket carried from Thambarat. The Legion’s most honored warrior — he should’ve come home to the hero’s welcome Qabar received.

Instead he came home in a casket.

Ansool forced his fists to relax and rose to his feet, muscles outside his control carrying him to the cart in the corner of the room. The presence of the vial on a string around his neck weighed more than any load. Hands shaking, he raised the pot, pouring the tea into two ceramic cups.

“I see. And your plans after the coronation?”

Qabar looked to the painted ceiling, decorated richly with murals of past kings and absent gods. He didn’t notice his brother unlooping something from around his neck. “I can’t say I’m too sure, in all honesty. I’ll have to marry, obviously.”

Have to.

“Do you intend to follow tradition, in that regard?” Ansool asked flatly, emotionlessly. He rolled the small vial between two fingers, watching the liquid flow, fingers uncertain. Hesitating.

“Take the Shahansha, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose so. Bileath isn’t fit to be an Empress, but she’ll make a fine toy in my harem for a few years.” He grinned at his brother. “Uncouth thoughts, maybe, but have you seen her? Can you blame me?”

Ansool’s fist tightened. His breathing slowed, and time slowed with it.

He reached up, uncorked the vial, and tipped it, letting a single drop slip into the tea. Then it was gone again, slipped into a pocket of his robes, and he was serving the tea for the both of them, and watching his brother lift the cup and drinking from it and—

And then it was an hour later, and Ansool was doubled over in the courtyard, one hand on the wall as he vomited into the flowerbed, eyes wide and bloodshot with the weight of what he’d done. And Bileath was next to him, holding his hair back, holding his shoulder as he collapsed into heaving, wracking sobs.

It took six days for Qabar to die.

On the first day, he grew suddenly ill, and the feast in his honor at the palace was postponed. He waved a hand, assuring Halana that he was quite fine, quite prepared for the ceremonies tomorrow, before retiring to his quarters. Sickness from the long journey, from the shock of returning home.

On the second day, his attendants found him in the morning, white sheets stained with red. He was on his knees on the balcony, head through the bars of the railing, vomiting blood into the courtyard below. With what words he could make out, he insisted that he was fine, that the sweat matting his hair was nothing.

On the third day, the healers and alchemists came, rushed from across Amoni-Ram to treat the ailing prince. The finest minds of Amoni-Ram brought their concoctions, their tinctures, poultices and potions, and the terrified empress held her son's head up from his pillows while he struggled to sip what the healers promised would cure whatever he had been stricken with.

On the fourth day, the true pain began. He bled into his eyes, rendering him blind, and his nose gushed more freely. He became weak and unable to move without assistance from his attendants or his now-weeping mother — not that he did, lying writhing in bed with agony. He couldn’t form the words to say where it was coming from, just laying with his back arching and his lungs screaming until they were dry. The sheets twisted around his legs, and he drenched himself in his own sweat and urine.

On the fifth day, he received a visitor.

He had been moved from his chambers to a more secluded, private and open wing of the palace, with the hope the fresh air would help him. Healers and servants milled about, unwilling to open the doors to his chambers, the muffled screaming audible just beyond it.

They caught sight of the prince’s twisting form as the visitor opened the door to enter, and then it was closed again.

His visitor took a seat in the chair by his bed and waited, patiently. It took a few minutes, but eventually the miasma of pain wore away, and Qabar’s hands groped his way across the bed to feel the prosthetics of his visitor.

“Bileath,” he gasped. “You came.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Come — come closer.” He half-hissed it, hands scrabbling up to her arm and blindly pulling her close. “Bileath. You were always loyal to me, to your master. Yes?”

“My lord?”

“The healers can do nothing. This — this is no natural illness.” He cut himself off again as another blinding-hot flash of pain made all of his muscles arch. He groaned through gritted teeth as it passed and his body relaxed. “I— yes, I must have been poisoned. Poisoned.”

“Would you like me to fetch the guard, my Lord?”

He shook his head wildly, not looking at her. With his shirt off, she could see a constellation of scars and unhealed burns across his chest. She idly wondered where they came from on a boy raised in such luxury before dismissing the thought.

“No. No, no. Too late.” He laughed, throat hoarse. “I’m dying. Harram’s last laugh, maybe. That insipid, traitorous wretch.”

Then he pulled her closer yet, blind eyes focusing on nothing.

“Protect him. Protect Ansool for me. The dynasty cannot die. The empire cannot die with me. You must protect Ansool.”

It took a moment for her to bite back the bile and answer.

“Yes, my Lord.” Then she leaned closer.

“Larq. Saad. Mofin. Hashar.” And on she went for minutes, naming the names seared into her memory, fuladh fingers wrapped tightly around Qabar’s arm, staring into his blind, pathetic, terrified eyes while reciting the names of the two hundred dead laid to fitful rest in Amoni-Ram’s graveyards.

“Harram,” she finished. Then he heard her rising to her feet.

“No,” he whimpered. “Please. Don’t leave me alone.”

Nobody answered.

On the sixth day, Qabar Bumaro, Shahhal, Crown Prince of Amoni-Ram, Heir to the Fuladh Throne, died.

The imperial guard flanked Ansool as he stared off into the distance. In front of him, the clerics waved their incense censers, herbs burning, smoke rising into the sky of Amoni-Ram. His mother was leaning on his shoulder in her black veils, weeping openly, sobbing just quiet enough not to be heard under the chanting from the clerics. They read from the old texts, the first prayers, when Bumaro the First was laid to rest by his son. In some dim part of his mind, Ansool appreciated the irony.

There were thousands of people attending the funeral, outside the palace gates. Clutching each other, weeping, sobbing prayers for their lost prince — felled by disease just after single-handedly wresting the jewel from the crown of the Daeva. The vile work of their priestesses, no doubt. Vengeance would come eventually, but today was a day of mourning.

The inner party was inside the courtyard, in the Court of Swords, where generations of the Bumaros were interred in neat, simple rows. A different fuladh sword speared into the dirt of each grave — an old tradition. They had no need for their weapons anymore, after all.

His mother continued to weep as the prayers drew to a close, the three clerics circling the empty grave retreating to the rest of the crowd. Maleeyn was there, all the high clerics, shahs and governors that could arrive in time. Bileath was by his side, wings folded. Eyes low, heads hung. A few cried as the coffin was carried out by the imperial guard and placed into the grave. Most didn’t.

Finally, as the fuladh casket was placed inside, and the dirt was filled over, the high cleric looked to Ansool. He moved robotically, without thought or consideration. Stepping forward, grasping Qabar’s sword, kneeling before the grave. And then spearing it into the dirt.

There were no words to say. Nothing that could absolve him of this.

His mother’s sobbing was the only sound in the courtyard now. The cleric gingerly touched his shoulder. He barely felt it.

“It’s time, my Lord. The Emperor is waiting.”

The door to the throne room slammed heavily behind him. The imperial guard were stationed outside, sealing the entrance. In the vast, magnificent hall, he was alone now.

Except for his father.

He was lounging on that same chaise, now placed just in front of the throne. Eyes milky, unfocused, sucking in wheezing breaths. Draped in the finest silk robes and jewelry from across the Empire he had once ruled with an iron fist.

Ansool approached, heels clicking against the tile. There were no guards in the hall, no one to judge, but he still felt compelled to sink into a kneel for this dying man. Not that his father would ever notice; the sucking breaths didn’t so much as skip a beat. But Ansool did regardless, kneeling at the side of the chaise, where his father’s hand dangled limp.

“My lord. Qabar is dead. I am your only heir now.”

Wheezing.

“You are to abdicate, as you always promised. Grant me the throne to rule.”

Sucking. Ansool looked up.

“Father?”

The rasping breaths echoed out through the hell. His eyelids were lowered.

“You aren’t going to do that, are you?”

In spite of himself, looking at this husk of a man, Ansool felt rage well up.

“You aren’t going to abdicate, because you can’t. You have no throne to abdicate. You’re not a ruler. You’re not even alive.”

This diseased old thing, more machine than man, mechanically clinging to life. This figure had once ruled and dominated the palace. Ruled and dominated him.

“You’re responsible for all of this. For Qabar’s killing. You made him into you, as your father did to you. All too eager to mark the same bruises.”

His hands shook with blind, red-hot rage. He snatched out, ringed finger hooking around his father’s sheer robe and pulling it away, exposing his chest. Almost completely machinery, wires and pipes poking into and under his skin, keeping his blood warm and pumping. Sucking pumps keeping his kidneys filtering and his liver alive. What little flesh there still was was dominated by cuts, age-old burns, scars older than his son was. His lip hung lazily, drool collecting at the tip.

Ansool’s voice shook. “You miserable old bastard. I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this. But you made it so. It’s the only thing you’re capable of, isn’t it? Taking and ruining other people, making them what you want. Mother. Qabar.”

The drool dripped.

"Me."

Ansool’s lip curled. And he moved without even really being aware of what he was doing, fingers dancing across his father's chest, flicking switches, pulling out pumps and cables.

"You brought me to this. You and the rest of this damned dynasty," he spat. "I take, and I cannot be certain it is for the right reasons, and not simply because you have made me this way. Not simply because I wanted what he had. Because this cursed blood infests me."

Fluids spilled, the rhythm was disrupted, and then everything was being yanked out or smashed, crushed until it shorted and died, and the Emperor’s breathing was erratic and Ansool’s hands were still moving, bitter tears in his hardened eyes—

A hand wrapped around his wrist, and he looked up in shock.

Hayth’s fingers, suddenly possessed with an iron grip, locking Ansool’s movements.

“Father?” Ansool gasped, trying to pull away fruitlessly. He couldn’t — this was the strength of the dying.

His father's mouth hung open, dead silent. But the milkiness was gone from his eyes, replaced by a sputtering golden — the dying embers of a once-great fire. With a wrench, the son pulled away, and fell backward heavily. He lay sprawled on the tile, staring up. His father’s gaunt, sunken appearance goring into him.

The two of them said nothing, staring at one another. Then Hayth raised one long, bony finger, pointing it dead at his son, face aghast, golden eyes peering at what awaited him in the the next life. A whisper escaped his lips.

"My son."

"Father." Ansool scarcely dared to breathe. "Yes. It's me."

"Qabar. My son."

In shock, Ansool's gaze matched his father's, and in that moment, two pairs of golden eyes staring at each other across the throne room, Ansool saw a mirror — a revenant, empire incarnate, a bloodsoaked dynasty as old as Amoni-Ram itself. The same golden eyes buried in his own skull.

And with that, Hayth Bumaro, Emperor of the Broken Empire, Lord of the Fuladh Throne, shuddered and died.

Bileath lay in her cot, staring at the sandstone ceiling. It had been a few days since the Emperor’s death. Ansool had left the throne room, visibly shaken. The imperial guard collected the body. They had known this was going to happen — they had merely expected Qabar to be the one to do it.

They had knelt when Ansool exited, his robe dragging behind him. Greeting him not as prince, but as emperor, Sovereign of all Amoni-Ram. She had been there, seen the shock on his face. Seen his faraway eyes, lost in a different place while he let his body do what needed to be done. She was familiar with the experience, but his face had been so empty. His proper coronation was not for a few days.

A noise roused her from staring at the ceiling. She sat up. She was in her room in the garrison — really only for sleeping, so no one would ask where she was laying her head at night. Most of her things had been moved into it for the time being, at least until the coronation.

It was the forest-beasts. She had almost forgotten about them — the small wood-woven cage, containing the little creatures. They were her little secret. She approached the cage.

One of the forest beasts was eating one of the others.

For a moment, she thought it was the one she had given the poison to. But no. That one had been the bully of the litter — fat, white-skinned, with turquoise stripes along its back. This one was leaner, with a shelling pattern. She remembered it. It’d been meek and timid, toadying to its brother. And now here it was, choking down one of its smaller brothers almost-whole, pinkish blood staining the stones around them.

She stared at it, frowning, unable to move.

Ansool stared at the man in the mirror, unrecognizing.

This wasn’t him. He didn’t live in the palace. He didn’t wear gems and jewels. He certainly didn’t wear these robes, gilded and intricate and as long as three men, dragging along the tile floors. He wasn’t a king.

But here he stood, the man in the mirror looking back at him.

He heard a noise, and turned. The door opened, and in the half-second it did, he could hear the outside — the imperial guards holding the door, preparing to escort him to the throne room. The nobles and dignitaries and courtiers and generals and governors all milling about, chatting with each other, counting themselves lucky to witness a new coronation in Amoni-Ram within their lifetime.

Then the door closed again, and Bileath was standing there. She approached.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Everyone’s waiting.”

“I know.”

He returned to staring in the mirror as Bileath came up to his side. Her own armor was freshly-polished and the fabric repaired from the damage it had taken in battle. Her sword hung by her side.

“This wasn’t how I ever thought it would be.”

“I know,” she said. “Nor did I.”

“Did it have to happen this quickly?”

“The clerics don’t want to leave any gap in succession. Qabar’s death has startled them.”

His death. So casual, so easily attributable as an act of nature.

“Bileath?”

“Yes?”

"How can you be sure you did the right thing for the right reasons?"

"Are there wrong reasons?"

He looked at her, and imagined her stripped of her finery, locked away in Qabar's harem-house, never to see him again. "There are always wrong reasons."

She thought about it for some time. "I don't know. But we did it. And now it's over."

He looked at his hand, looked at the signet ring on his finger. The ring marking him as the Shahhal. The ring that was his brother’s for so many years. “I… will never be forgiven for it. I will never forgive myself for it.”

“You had to. You know it as well as I do, as well as anyone.”

He didn’t say anything.

“War makes bastards of us all.”

She didn’t expect him to twirl around, grab her shoulder, crazed look in his eyes.

“No. No! There is honor in war. There is no honor in this.” He raised the ring. “War didn’t make me do this. There is… a demon, a devil in my blood. In Qabar’s blood, in my father’s blood, in his father’s blood. In my son’s one day, no doubt. My mother was right. Bumaros — we take, and we take, and we ruin. We take and we ruin lives.” His voice was strangled, pleading. “There is no escaping this cursed dynasty. I am a prisoner to it. You are a prisoner to it.”

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, but said nothing.

“War doesn’t turn us into bastards,” he spat bitterly. “This wretched empire does.”

Bileath brought up her other hand, supporting him as he sank into a chair.

“But it stands regardless, and as long as it stands, someone will lead it. It could have been Qabar. It will be you, and you will rule with the finest of intentions.”

“As did my father.”

He didn’t say anything for quite some time.

“If I ever become like them — monsters, inhuman, rotten by that damned throne — I want you to cut my throat in the night. This is the nature of this empire. No one will control me.” He looked at her, golden gaze matching hers. “I need you to.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Swear it, Bileath. Or we’ll leave right now. Ride into the desert, and leave this corroding city behind. I need you to swear you have it in you to kill me, just as I killed Qabar, when the time comes.”

“… I swear.”

Her wing didn’t twitch.

“I have no one left, do I? Father, Qabar, Harram. All gone."

"You have me. You'll always have me."

He sagged into her.

"I am yours."

"And I am yours."

She helped him to his feet, and Ansool Bumaro, Sovereign of Amoni-Ram, Emperor of the Broken Empire, Lord of the Fuladh Throne, opened the door.

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