If the Emperor is the heart of the Empire and the people are its lifeblood, then the Hall of Records is its memory. No matter how hopeless I feel, coming here reminds me of all the Martials have built in the five hundred years since the Empire was founded.
"All Empires fall, Blood Shrike."
When Cain steps from the shadows, I reach for my blade. I have thought many times about what I would do if I saw the Augur again. Always, I saw myself remaining calm. Silent. I would hold myself aloof from him. I would give him nothing of my mind.
My intentions vanish at the sight of his accursed face. The passion with which I want to break his frail neck astounds me. I didn't know I could have this much hate in me. Hannah's pleading fills my ears--Helly, I'm sorry--and my mother's calm words as she knelt for her death. Strength, my girl. My father's ring cuts into my palm.
But as I draw the blade, my arm freezes--and drops, forced to my side by the Augur. The lack of control is enraging and unsettling.
"Such anger," he murmurs.
"You destroyed my life. You could have saved them. You--you monster."
"What of you, Blood Shrike? Are you not a monster?" Cain's hood is low, but I can still make out the inquisitive gleam of his gaze.
"You're different," I spit. "You're like them. The Commandant, or Marcus, or the Nightbringer--"
"Ah, but the Nightbringer is no monster, child, though he may do monstrous things. He is cloven by sorrow and thus locked in a righteous battle to amend a grievous wrong. Much like you. I think you are more similar than you know. You could learn much from the Nightbringer, if he deigned to teach you."
"I don't bleeding want anything to do with any of you," I hiss. "You are a monster, even if you--"
"But you are a paragon of perfection?" Cain tilts his head, appearing genuinely curious. "You live and breathe and eat and sleep on the backs of those less fortunate. Your entire existence is due to the oppression of those you view to be lesser. But why you, Blood Shrike? Why did fate see fit to make you the oppressor instead of the oppressed? What is the meaning of your life?"
"The Empire." I shouldn't answer. I should ignore him. But a lifetime of reverence dies hard. "That is the meaning of my life."
"Perhaps." Cain shrugs, a strangely human gesture. "I did not, in truth, come here to argue philosophy with you. I came with a message."
He pulls an envelope from his robes. At the sight of the seal--a bird winging over a shining city--I snatch it from him. Livia.
As I open it, I keep one eye on the Augur.
Come to me, sister. I need you.
Yours always,
Livia
"When did she send this?" I scan the message quickly. "And why did she send it with you? She could have--"
"She asked, and I acquiesced. Anyone else would have been followed. And that would not have aligned with my interests. Or hers." Cain touches my masked brow gently. "Fare thee well, Blood Shrike. I will see you once more, before your end."
He steps back and vanishes, and Harper appears out of the dark, jaw clenched. Apparently, he likes the Augurs as much as I do.
"You can keep them out of your head," he says. "The Nightbringer too. I can show you how, if you like."
"Fine," I say, already making for the palace. "On the way to Navium."
We soon reach the balcony of Livvy's apartments, and I do not spot a single soldier. Avitas is stationed below, and I'm reminding myself to yell at Faris, who captains Livvy's personal guard, when the air shifts. I'm not alone.
"Peace, Shrike." Faris Candelan steps out of the arched doorway that leads into Livvy's quarters, his hands up, short blond hair a mess. "She's waiting for you."
"You should have bleeding told her it was stupid to summon me."
"I don't tell the Empress what to do," Faris says. "I just try to make sure no one hurts her while she's doing it." Something about how he says it makes the hair on my neck rise, and in two steps, I have a dagger at his throat.
"Watch it with her, Faris," I say. "You flirt like your life depends on it, but if Marcus suspects she is disloyal he will kill her, and the Illustrian Paters will believe he had every right to do it."
"Don't worry about me," Faris says. "I've got a lovely Mercator girl waiting for me in the Weaver's district. Most spectacular hips I've ever seen. Would have been there by now"--he glares at me until I release him--"but someone needed to be on duty."
"Two people," I say. "Who's your backup?"
A figure steps into the light from the shadows beside the door: a thrice-broken nose, deep brown skin, and blue eyes that always sparkle, even beneath the silver mask.
"Rallius? Ten hells, is that you?"
Silvio Rallius salutes before flashing a grin that made knees weak at Illustrian parties across Serra for nearly all of my teenage years--including my knees, before I learned better. Elias and I hero-worshipped him, though he is only two years older. He was one of the few upperclassman who wasn't a monster to the younger students.
"Blood Shrike." He salutes. "My scim is yours."
"Words as pretty as that smile." I don't return his, and he realizes then that he's dealing with the Blood Shrike and not a young cadet from Blackcliff. "Make them true. Protect her, or your life is forfeit."
I slip past them both and into Livvy's bedroom. As my eyes adjust, the floorboards near a tapestry creak. Cloth whispers as the contours of the room come into focus. Livia's bed is empty; on her side table, a cup of tea--wildwood, from the scent of it--sits untouched.
Livia pokes her head out from behind the tapestry and motions me forward. I can barely make her out, which means any spies within the walls can't see her either.
"You should have drunk the tea." I am careful of her wounded hand. "It must hurt."
Her clothes rustle, and a soft click sounds. Stale air and the smell of wet stone wash over me. A hallway stretches before us. We step in, and she closes the door, finally speaking.
"An empress who bears her pain with fortitude is an empress who gains respect," she says. "My women have spread the rumor that I scorned the tea. That I bear the pain without fear. But bleeding hells, it hurts."
The moment she says it, a familiar compulsion comes over me: the need to heal her, to sing her better.
"I can--I can help you," I say. Bleeding skies, how will I explain it to her? "I--"
"We don't have time, sister," she whispers. "Come. This passage connects my rooms to his. I've used it before. But be silent. He cannot catch us."
We pad down the hallway toward a tiny crack of light. The muttering begins when we're halfway down. The light is a spy hole, big enough to admit sound but too small to see through very clearly. I glimpse Marcus, bare of armor, stalking back and forth across his cavernous quarters.
"You have to stop doing this when I'm in the throne room." He digs his hands into his hair. "Do you want to have died just so I can get hurled off the throne for being insane?"
Silence. Then: "I won't bleeding touch her! I can't help that her sister's gagging for it--"
I nearly choke, and Livvy grips me. "I had my reasons," she whispers.
"I will do what I must to keep this empire," Marcus growls, and for the first time I see . . . something. A pale shadow, like a face glimpsed in a mirror underwater. A second later, it's gone, and I shake myself. A trick of the light, perhaps. "If that means breaking a few fingers to keep your precious Blood Shrike in line, so be it. I wanted to break her arm--"
"Ten hells," I breathe to Livia. "He's barking. He's gone mad."
"He thinks what he's seeing is real." Livia shakes her head. "Maybe it is. It doesn't matter. He cannot remain on the throne. At best, he's taking orders from a ghost. At worst, he's hallucinating."
"We have to support him," I say. "The Augurs named him Emperor. If he's deposed or killed, we risk civil war. Or the Commandant swooping in and naming herself Empress."
"Do we?" Livvy takes my hand with her good one and places it on her stomach. She doesn't speak. She doesn't have
to.
"Oh. You--that's why you and he--oh--" Blackcliff prepared me for many things. It did not prepare me for my sister's pregnancy by the man who slit the throats of our parents and sister.
"This is our answer, Shrike."
"His heir," I whisper.
"A regency."
Bleeding skies. If Marcus disappears after the child is born, Livia and Gens Aquilla would run the Empire until the child came of age. We could train the boy up to be a true and just statesman. The Illustrian Gens would accept it because the heir would be from a highborn house. The Plebeians would accept it because he is Marcus's son and thus represents them too. But . . .
"How do you know it's a boy?"
She turns her eyes--my eyes--our mother's eyes--to me, and I have never seen anyone look so sure of anything in my life. "It's a boy, Blood Shrike," she says. "You must trust me. He already quickens. By the Grain Moon, if all is well, he will be here."
I shiver. The Grain Moon again.
"When the Commandant finds out, she'll come after you. I have to--"
"Kill her." Livia takes the words from my mouth. "Before she finds out."
When I ask Livia if Marcus knows of the pregnancy, she shakes her head. "I confirmed it only today. And I wanted to tell you first."
"Tell him, Livvy." I forget her title. "He wants an heir. Perhaps he won't--" I gesture to her hand. "But no one else. Hide it as best you can--"
She puts a finger to my lips. Marcus's muttering has stopped.
"Go, Shrike," Livvy breathes.
Mother! Father! Hannah! Suddenly I cannot breathe. He won't take Livvy too. I'll die before I let it happen. "I'll fight him--"
My sister digs her fingers into my shoulder. The pain focuses me. "You'll fight him." She shoves me toward her room. "He'll die because he's no match for your anger. And in the frenzy to replace him, our enemies will have us both killed because we would have made it easy for them to do so. We must live. For him." She touches her stomach. "For Father and Mother and Hannah. For the Empire. Go."
She shoves me out the door, just as light floods the passageway. I race through her room, past Faris and Rallius, flipping over the balcony to the rope tied below, cursing myself as Marcus shouts, as he lands the first blow, as the crack of another of my sister's bones echoes in my ears.
PART II
INFERNO
XI: Laia
FOUR WEEKS LATER
Darin and I jostle through the sea of Scholar refugees on the rutted dirt road into Adisa, two more tired bodies and dirty faces amid the hundreds seeking sanctuary in Marinn's shining capital city.
Silence hangs like a fog over the refugees as they plod onward. Most of these Scholars were turned away from the other Mariner cities. All have seen homes lost, family and friends tortured or murdered, raped or imprisoned.
The Martials wield their weapons of war with merciless efficiency. They want to break the Scholars. And if I don't stop the Nightbringer--if I don't find this "Beekeeper" in Adisa--they will.
Shaeva's prophecy haunts me. Darin and I discuss it obsessively, trying to make sense of each line. Bits of it--the sparrows, the Butcher--dredge up old memories, scraps of thoughts that I cannot quite grasp hold of.
"We'll figure it out." Darin glances over, reading the furrow in my brow. "We have bigger problems."
Our shadow. The man appeared three days ago, trailing us as we left a small village. Or at least, that is when we first noticed him. Since then, he's remained far enough away that we cannot get a good look at him, but close enough that my blade feels fused to my palm. Every time I don my invisibility in the hopes of getting closer to him, he disappears.
"Still there." Darin chances a look behind us. "Lurking like a bleeding wraith."
The circles beneath my brother's eyes make his irises look almost black. His cheekbones jut out, as they did when I first rescued him from Kauf. Since our shadow appeared, Darin has slept little. But even before that, nightmares of Kauf and the Warden plagued him. Sometimes I wish the Warden back to life, just so I could kill him myself. Strange how monsters can reach from beyond the grave, as potent in death as they were in life.
"We'll lose him at the city gates." I try to sound convincing. "And lie low when we get in. Find a cheap inn to stay at where no one will look at us twice. And then," I add, "we can ask around for the Beekeeper."
Under the guise of adjusting my hood, I glance back quickly at our shadow. He's close now, and beneath the scarf that hides his face, his red, sickle mouth curves into a smile. A weapon flashes in his hand.
I spin back around. We wind down from the foothills, and Adisa's gold-flecked wall comes into view, a marvel of white granite that glows orange under the fading, blood-streaked sky. Along the eastern wall, a mass of gray tents blooms out for nearly a mile: the Scholar refugee camp. In the bay to the north, sea ice floats in fat chunks, its briny smell slicing through the dirt and grime of the road.
Clouds sit low on the horizon, and an estival wind blows in from the south, scattering them. As they part, a near-collective gasp ripples through the travelers. For in the center of Adisa, a spire of stone and glass soars into the sky, pinioning the heavens. It twists like the horn of some mythical creature, impossibly balanced and glowing white. I have only ever heard it described, but the descriptions do it no justice. The Great Library of Adisa.
An unwelcome memory surfaces. Red hair, brown eyes, and a mouth that lied, lied, lied. Keenan--the Nightbringer--telling me that he too wanted to see the Great Library.
She tasted sweet, boy. Like dew and a clear dawn. My skin crawls thinking of the filth he spat in the Waiting Place.
"Look." I nod to the throngs gathered outside the city gates, pushing to enter before they close at nightfall. "We can lose him there. Especially if I disappear."
When we are closer to the city, I drop in front of Darin, as if adjusting a bootlace. Then I pull on my invisibility.
"I'm right next to you," I whisper when I stand, and Darin nods, weaving quickly now through the crowd, using his sharp elbows to muscle forward. The closer we get to the gate, the slower it goes. Finally, as the sun dips into the west, we stand before the massive wooden entrance, carved with whales and eels, octopuses and mermaids. Beyond, a cobbled street curves up and disappears into a warren of brightly painted buildings, lamps winking in their windows. I think of my mother, who came to Adisa when she was only a few years older than me. Did it look the same? Did she share the awe I feel now?
"Your guarantor, sir?"
One of the dozens of Mariner guards fixes his attention on Darin, and despite the seething crowds, he is coolly polite. Darin shakes his head in confusion. "My guarantor?"
"Who are you staying with in the city? What family or guild?"
"We're staying at an inn," Darin says. "We can pay--"
"Gold can be stolen. I require names: the inn where you plan to procure rooms and your guarantor, who can vouch for your quality. Once you provide names, you will wait in a holding area while your information is verified, after which you may enter Adisa."
Darin looks uncertain. We do not know anyone in Adisa. Since leaving Elias, we have tried several times to get in touch with Araj, the Skiritae leader who escaped Kauf with us, but have heard nothing back from him.
Darin nods at the soldier's explanation, as if we have any idea what we will do instead. "And if I don't have a guarantor?"
"You'll find the entrance to the Scholar refugee camp east of here." The soldier, who until now had kept his attention on the pressing crowd behind us, finally looks at Darin. The man's eyes narrow.
"Say--"
"Time to go," I hiss to my brother, and he mumbles something to the soldier before quickly shoving back into the crowd.
"He can't have known my face," Darin says. "I've never met him before."
"Maybe all Scholars look alike to him," I say, but the explanation rings hollow to me. More than once, we turn to see if the soldier follows. I slow down only when I spot him at
the gate, speaking with another group of Scholars. Our shadow also appears to have lost us, and we head east, making our way to one of a dozen long lines that lead into the refugee camp.
Nan told me stories of what Mother did when she led the northern Resistance here in Adisa, more than twenty-five years ago. The Mariner King Irmand worked with her to protect the Scholars. To give them work and homes and a permanent place in Mariner society.
Things have clearly gone to pot since then.
Even from outside the boundaries of the camp, its gloom is pervasive. Bands of children wander through the tents ahead, most far too young to be left unaccompanied. A few dogs slink through the muddy roadways, occasionally sniffing at the open sewers.
Why is it always us? All of these people--so many children--hunted and abused and tormented. Families stolen, lives shattered. They come all this way to be rejected yet again, sent outside the city walls to sleep in flimsy tents, to fight over paltry scraps of food, to starve and freeze and suffer more.
And we are expected to be thankful. To be happy. So many are--I know it. Happy to be safe. To be alive. But it's not enough--not to me.
As we get closer to the entrance, the camp comes into clearer view. White parchment flutters from the cloth walls. I squint at it, but it's not until we're nearing the front of the line that I finally make out what's on it.
My own face. Darin's. Staring out sullenly beneath damning words:
BY PERSONAL DECREE OF KING IRMAND OF MARINN
WANTED:
LAIA AND DARIN OF SERRA
FOR: INCITEMENT OF REBELLION, AGITATION, AND CONSPIRING AGAINST THE CROWN
REWARD: 10,000 MARKS
It looks like the posters from the Commandant's office at Blackcliff. Like the one from Nur, when the Blood Shrike was hunting Elias and me and offering a massive reward.
"What in the skies," I whisper, "did we do to King Irmand to offend him so? Could the Martials be behind it?"
"They don't bleeding know we're here!"
"They have spies, just like everyone else," I say. "Look back, like you see someone you recognize, and then walk--"
A commotion at the back of the line ripples toward us as a squad of Mariner troops marches toward the camp from Adisa. Darin hunches down, taking refuge deeper in his hood. Shouts ring out ahead of us, and light flares sharply, followed quickly by a plume of black smoke. Fire. The shouts quickly turn to cries of rage and fear.