Empire of Dust (7 page)

“And yet you don't have papyrus or ink with you?” asks the younger one. She finds herself tongue-tied.

“It just so happens I have something in my pouch,” the kind one says. He picks up a blue bag on the floor and brings out a small scroll. “A Sharm merchant gave me a list of merchandise he agreed to pay in taxes to deliver to the satrap of Gordium, but there was a mistake so he wrote a second one. I planned to soak the ink out of the first list, but you may use it.”

Now she needs to ask for ink. She's almost prepared to cut herself with a meat knife and dip her fingernail in her own blood to write, if that's what it takes, but the courier brings a bronze cylinder out of his bag without asking, and opens it into two halves. In the top half he unlatches a little door and removes a sharp pointed stylus. From a lower compartment he takes out a cake of ink and a small stone container of water.

Zo thanks him and seats herself at another table, trying to collect her thoughts. She should put the date and location at the top so Cosmas will know when she was here. She pours a few drops of water onto the cake of ink and dips the stylus into it, scratching into the softening ink.
The Royal Road Inn 374 in Korama
, then stops. “What is today's date?” she asks, looking up.

“The twelfth of Mordad,” says the gray-haired courier.

The twelfth of Mordad? How could that be? She ran away from Sardis on the...on the... It must have been the twenty-first of Tir. Only three weeks, but it seems more like a year at least. She writes the date and looks in dismay at the list of merchandise. Will Cosmas understand that she wrote in between the lines of someone else's list? She has no choice but to hope.

When she is finished, she reads the letter:

Taxes To Be Paid by Arash of Sharm

Cosmas, I am alive

Sixteen fat sheep

I ran away to be with you

Four barrels of beer

But was captured by slavers

Three large amphorae of wine

I was freed, but am heading east

Five barrels of black olives

My dearest love, I wish I had

Nineteen sturdy goats

Space to tell you everything

Two large brown and white bulls

I will return to you soon

Two barrels of peas

Wait for me, my love.

She blows on the ink, and when it is dry, turns the papyrus over and writes on the top
Cosmas, son of Borzin, Captain, Ninth Regiment, near the village of Hamda, a full day's ride east of Sardis.
Then she rolls it back up and hands it to the courier along with a gold daric, which glints in the lamplight.

“Very well,” he says.

Returning across the courtyard, she feels as if a boulder has been removed from her shoulders. Cosmas will get the message in a week at most, given that imperial couriers ride almost as fast as lightning. She did it. Against all odds, she sent the message. And against all odds, she finds herself in Korama. As she and Ochus head north up the mountain paths to find a flying horse, they are sure to find villages. And in those villages, there should be some wise man or woman who knows more about the mysterious Spirit Eaters. She
will
find one. She
will
change her fate.

She will escape Ochus. She will marry Cosmas and together they will raise their child, without the interference of kings, or queens, or crippled princes of Macedon.

Hope rises as she climbs the pitch-black staircase. For the first time in ages, she feels that everything is going to be all right. But a moment later, she knows she celebrated too soon.

At the top of the stairs, blocking the narrow corridor, a man holds a lamp, the light making it appear as if his angry eyes glow like carnelians.

Ochus.

Chapter Six

JACOB EXAMINES THE
edge of his sword, scrapes it over the whetstone again, and lays it on the wobbly corner table. He stands up and looks out the arrow slit window for the source of the smell wafting into the little room. Black smoke billowing from a pyre in the far courtyard of the old fortress makes him want to shudder. But he fights the urge.

He knows it's the duty of the Aesarian Lords to burn magic from the world, but as a new recruit, he doesn't know any of their secrets. And sometimes he wonders if—when he eventually does learn them—he will like them.

Too late for that now. He is sworn to the Aesarian Lords. For life.

He runs a hand over a flaking, water-stained fresco, so damaged he can't even tell what the faded strokes of paint once represented. This abandoned fortress must have been built in the time of Achilles. As the bruised and battered Aesarian army approached it after losing the battle with Alexander, it seemed to Jacob that Pyrrhia was like a vicious animal crouching high on a hill, its back against a cliff, suspicious, angry, and ready to pounce.

The Lords chose the fortress not for comfort, he realizes, but for defensibility: a single, steep path leads up to the only entrance where, immediately after their arrival, the men built a new gate of thick oak sheathed with bronze and iron. Since then, they have also reinforced the walls and dug the wells deeper to help withstand a siege as they await the Aesarian regiment from Nekrana, sent by Supreme Lord Gulzar himself. Jacob has learned that the power of the Aesarian Lords spreads farther than he ever suspected, with growing regiments throughout all of the known world.

There's a good reason for the Lords to strengthen Pyrrhia's defenses, Jacob knows. Over the past several days since the battle, Alexander's envoys asked repeatedly if the Lords had captured Princess Cynane the night of the library fire. He was willing to pay a large ransom for her return, but the Lords responded by categorically denying that they had ever even seen her. If Alexander learns that they lied about having Princess Cynane, the treaty is void. Alex will attack to rescue his sister. He will have to. Family honor will demand it.

A groan interrupts his thoughts, and he turns to see that the princess is coming back to consciousness. She lies chained to a table, bruised and filthy, her long black hair matted.

“Water,” she whispers, her voice as scraping as his sword on the whetstone.

Jacob hesitates a moment—he's not supposed to help her—but then he pours water from an
oenochoe
into a clay cup, and brings it to her lips. She raises her head to drink greedily, then shuts her eyes before lying back down with a heavy sigh.

It doesn't seem right to do this to Cynane. She's just a girl, even though she is tall and strong and trained as a warrior—and killed two Aesarian Lords when they infiltrated Pella, before Lord Bastian kidnapped her and smuggled her out of the ancient drainage tunnels below the palace to their military camp.

When Jacob lived in the palace of Pella, first as a royal guard and then as an Aesarian Lord in training, he saw Princess Cynane striding about in her breastplate, sword, and boots. He wouldn't have dreamed of talking to her then, but the limp form in front of him is a far cry from the lonely princess who hid behind her barbed tongue.

“Princess, you should tell them what you know. They will be back soon,” he says, setting the
oenochoe
back on the table with a hard click. “Why did the fire in the library not harm you? Why do you heal almost immediately when they torture you? What kind of
magic
do you possess?”

Her eyelids flutter, and it takes a moment for the onyx eyes to focus on his face. But when they do, she smiles. “I know you,” she says hoarsely. “The victor of the Blood Tournament.”

“Yes,” he says. That was only four weeks ago, and yet it seems like centuries.

She shifts her weight and grimaces. “You brought your lover, Katerina, to Pella with you from that village—what was it, Trissa?”

“Erissa,” he corrects her automatically, but he doesn't bother to correct Kat's relationship to him. He and Kat grew up together practically as family. He knows she considers his brothers to be her brothers, too, and that she loves his parents as if they were her own. But his relationship with her began to change in the last year. Though they only kissed three times, he'd be lying if he said he doesn't think of her that way. But he is no longer that peasant boy with time on his hands to pine for his childhood love.

He returns to the window and looks out. White ash floats on the air, along with a heavy odor of strange sulfur.

He hears a low, gurgling sound from across the room. It's laughter. Cyn's laughter. “You may have won the gold Alex so desperately wanted, but he took your lover. Oh, didn't you know?” she says, correctly interpreting Jacob's quick turn to face her. “They were
always
in bed together.”

“That's a lie,” he croaks, his mouth suddenly dry as sawdust. Kat insisted many times that her bond with Alexander was not a romantic one, that it was something very different.

“You saw them together, did you not? You wanted her, did everything to get her, but lost her. It's not your fault, though,” she says, her simulated sympathy dripping like honey from her words. “How can an oaf like you
compete against a prince?”

Jacob doesn't say anything. Because he can't. It's like the time he was hunting in the woods and a whirlwind hit. Suddenly trees were falling, lightning crashing, leaves and dirt flying up from the ground to hit his face. The screaming wind tore at his tunic like talons. He didn't know what was happening, where to go, or how to save himself—and he feels the same way now.

He has denied to himself—a hundred times, a thousand times—the possibility of Kat being intimate with Alexander. He tried to push the ugly thought to the back of his mind and slam the door on it. But now the lock from that door has been ripped away, and Cyn's forbidden words have crashed through his defenses.

Cynane laughs weakly before her mirth erodes into a cough, and she has to turn her head away. Her weakness infuriates Jacob—how dare she become silent and leave him with these thoughts? He wants to fight her, to force her to take back what she has said. He knows she can fight. He saw her practice against the king's men many times, and now she just lies there, a lost princess no one really wants to find.

He fights the urge to shake her into action and instead sits back down at the small corner table and draws his sword against the whetstone—long, slow motions to sharpen the iron blade. The sound is excruciating, just like the pain in his chest, but the action makes him feel better somehow.

Maybe not everything Cynane said is true, but at least a portion is. Jacob
did
do everything to win Kat. He wanted to offer her something more than life on the farm making pots and, more selfishly, he wanted her to be proud of him. He risked his life in the Blood Tournament battling twenty-four of the best warriors from across the known world, and he won—for her.

And still Kat wouldn't have him, so he joined the most powerful—both politically and physically—fighting force in the world: the Aesarian Lords. Then, before he could speak with her, the Aesarians' sacred Hemlock Torch exploded, and with it, the chance to be with Kat as well. For Macedon was no longer a tentative ally, but now an enemy who had hidden magic from the Lords.

The last time Jacob saw Kat was on the battlefield. In the midst of war, he had wondered if the recent sword blow to his helmet had addled his brains, because he saw Kat—Kat, the weaver's daughter—fighting a Lord more than twice her size and ably defending herself with a shield and sword. Kat had never trained with weapons in Erissa—so how was she able to fight a Lord? Had she hidden this talent from him their whole life together? But even as a sense of betrayal crept into his heart, he was racing toward her—to help. Because even in battle, even though he had sworn himself to the Lords, his heart had sworn him to Kat long ago, and he could not fight it. Helping Kat was instinct, like breathing air or feeling heat.

And then Lord Bastian had appeared, and Jacob watched in horror as he pushed his sword into her side as easily as one would spit a rabbit.

The spray of crimson blood on her white tunic would linger in his memory forever.

Kat dropped her shield and sword, and held her wound with both hands, as if she could keep the blood inside. She fell at Bastian's feet, and the Lord spat on her body before diving back into the melee.

Jacob knelt beside her in the red dirt, stroking her hair and promising her that when all this was over, they would return to Erissa, and hunt in the meadow and swim in the pond, and that he would never, ever let her get hurt again.

Something glimmered on her cheek, and Jacob was surprised to realize it was a tear. His tear. He had only kissed her twice: that magical evening in the pond before they left for Pella, and that day in the palace when he visited her room, before they got in a fight and he stormed out saying things he would now never be able to take back.

They would have three kisses. This would be the last one.

He bent to kiss the soft lips, so warm and tender against his. At that moment, with death and pain all around him, he felt his sorrow lift. Joy infused him with an inexpressible delight. His arm and shoulder, exhausted from carrying the huge shield, stopped aching. The bloody scrape on his neck from an arrow whizzing past and taking a sliver of flesh with it no longer throbbed. He had the ridiculous feeling that despite everything, it would all somehow be all right. Even now, her breath seemed to strengthen.

“I love you, Kat,” he whispered, as he raised his head. There was movement behind him and the spell was broken. He looked around and saw Hephaestion, Prince Alexander's top lieutenant and right-hand man, running at him with a sword. Jacob leaped up to face him, and their swords rang out again and again until the Aesarians sounded the signal for retreat.

At first Jacob ignored the signal. There was no way he was going to leave Kat there, bleeding. But then he realized she would continue to bleed as long as he and Hephaestion continued to fight. If Jacob retreated, Hephaestion would surely help her immediately. He turned and ran, casting a backward glance. Hephaestion hesitated a moment, looking angry that Jacob had run off, looking like he might chase after him. But then he ran to Kat and knelt beside her.

Later, in the days following the battle, Jacob heard reports that the prince's warrior girlfriend had been seen at the palace. There were whispers that she was an enchantress—how else did she catch the prince's eye the moment he first saw her? How else had she helped defeat the Aesarian Army and survived what was surely a fatal wound? Jacob was confused by the reports of Katerina's supposed magical abilities, but the relief that she had lived overshadowed any other feeling—except for one.

Jacob would never forgive Bastian.

He vowed to pay him back one day, a promise he means to keep. He will train, he will become strong so that he can take Bastian down in whatever way possible. He will look for opportunities for advancement. He will become the best Aesarian Lord there ever was. Hundreds of years from now, people will talk about him. His name will be inscribed on the Wall of Heroes in the Lords' capital of Nekrana in the Eastern Mountains. And most important, he will forget about Kat—or die trying. Because above all he knows he cannot live with the torture of his thoughts. When he joined the Aesarians, they were still loyal to King Philip of Macedon. But that quickly and violently changed. And now Kat is on the opposite side of war. He originally became a Lord to try and impress Kat. It had all been for Kat. But it didn't work. And now, knowing she doesn't want him, he can't risk losing everything he has gained by their protection and training.

The ancient door creaks open and Lord Turshu enters. He has the heavily tattooed arms of all Scythians and the badly bowed legs from being raised on the back of a horse.

“The warrior woman has spirit,” he observes in his melodic accent.

Jacob looks up from the whetstone and grunts. “I suppose you could call it that,” he says.

“Back home, we have many such women trained to fight as warriors. Lord Jacob, don't you find the average Greek woman...boring? Not muscular. Not strong. Not exciting. This one, however, is like a tiger. This one,” he says, picking up a long lock of Cyn's hair and curling it around his finger, “I would very much like to have.”

“Not on your life,” Cyn says, twisting her head as she tries to bite him. Turshu yanks back his hand and bursts into loud laughter.

“Spirit,” Jacob says, nodding. He runs a finger lightly over the sword edge and feels it bite into his flesh. It is ready.

Turshu's eyes crinkle in amusement as he looks at Jacob. “I am come to relieve your watch, Lord Jacob. High Lord Gideon has had to leave the forge for an emergency and wishes you to help Lord Timaeus with his task.” He takes a step closer and adds in a low voice, his broad face serious now, “Have you heard? The Elder Council believes there is a traitor among us.”

Traitor.
The word echoes in Jacob's mind as he thinks of the faces of his Aesarian brothers. Who would possibly—and then he has it. Bastian. Arrogant. Smirking. Self-serving.

“No, sir,” Jacob says, his mind racing. “But thank you for telling me. I'll certainly keep my eyes and ears open. And, sir,” he adds, his spirits lifting at the thought of leaving this torture room and Cynane's tormenting words. “I wouldn't get too friendly with the prisoner. She bites.” And then he strides down the winding stairs and toward the portable military forge set up in an abandoned room off the stables.

The moment Jacob enters he's struck by a wave of heat. He sees thick black smoke rising through a hole in the roof as a wiry figure the size of a twelve-year-old girl shovels coals in the bottom of the forge.