Days of Blood & Starlight(88)

Liraz didn’t know exactly what Karou had said to Akiva this last time, but she knew that it had not been kind, and as the three of them flew on in silence, she found herself imagining what she would say to her in the unlikely event that they ever found themselves face-to-face again. It was a surprisingly satisfying way to pass the time in flight.

“There.” Akiva saw it first, and pointed. The Sword.

In its golden age, Astrae had been known as the City of a Hundred Spires. One for each of the godstars, the spires had been slender towers of impossible height, like the stems of flowers growing toward the heavens. They had been crystal, sometimes mirroring the storm clouds of the emerald coast, other times scattering prisms of dancing light over the rooftops below.

That city had been destroyed in the Warlord’s uprising a thousand years ago. This was the new Astrae, built by Joram on the ruins of the old, and though he had tried to restore the dead city of his ancestors, that had been raised by the lost arts of magi, this by slaves. The spires weren’t even half as tall as their precursors, and they weren’t fluid upthrusts of crystal as the old had been, but were glass, seamed and riveted, held together by steel and iron. Of them all, the Tower of Conquest stood tallest, its silhouette shaped like a sword—the Sword—making an apt symbol of the Empire, especially when its edge reflected the fire of the setting sun, as it did now.

Blood and endings, Liraz thought, seeing that great blade rising red from the distant cliffs. An apt symbol indeed.

She disliked Astrae; she always had. There was an atmosphere of strain and subtle fear, a culture of whispers and spies. How right Melliel had been, calling it a “spider’s web”—even down to the dangling dead displayed to all comers.

The Westway gibbet was the first thing they saw on reaching the city. Beside the fourteen guards there hung another, older corpse that she took for the unfortunate sentry from Thisalene, and yet another pair who’d been hung by their ankles, wings dragging open and catching every breeze to send them eddying in circles like broken dolls. Their crime—or ill luck—Liraz couldn’t guess. She had an impulse to scorch a black handprint into the wood of the support post and burn the gibbet out of existence. Night was falling; blue fire would lick the darkening sky, full of dreams and visions. Not yet, she told herself.

Soon.

The three came down to the Westway and presented themselves for entry to the city. Liraz found herself gritting her teeth in expectation of the greeting Silverswords reserved for Misbegotten, which was, at best, to see how long they could keep them waiting, and at worst, open taunting. Breakblades had no use for soldiers in general: Cloistered as they were in the scented calm of the capital, they only wondered what had taken others so long to win the war. As for Misbegotten, bastards were beneath their notice.

In Liraz’s case, literally beneath. She stood as high as their breastplates; they enjoyed pretending not to see her. Like all Breakblades, these two were near seven feet tall, not including helmet plumes. Maybe a couple of inches were boot heel, but even barefoot they would have been giants. They were giants that Liraz knew she could fell with a stroke, which made it all the more maddening to endure their disrespect.

“Slaves enter by the Eastway,” said the one on the left, bored, without even looking at them.

Slaves.

Their armor marked them clearly as Misbegotten. They wore vests of dark gray mail over black gambesons, with shoulder guards and breeches of black leather reinforced with plate. The leather was worn, the mail was dull, there were dents and repairs in the plate. For the purpose of their audience with the emperor, they wore short capes, which were in better shape than the rest of their uniform since they were rarely worn. Capes were a bad idea—nothing but a claw-hold for the enemy.

Well, that and a place for their badge: an oval escutcheon containing links in a chain. Chain. Supposedly it signified strength in solidarity, but everyone knew it really meant bondage. Liraz thought of the chimaera rebels feeding the slavers their chains, and she understood the impulse. She saw herself tearing off her cape and stuffing it down the Breakblade’s great gorge, but it was fantasy. She did nothing, said nothing.

Hazael, however, laughed. He was the only person Liraz knew whose fake laugh sounded real—disarmingly so. The Breakblade darted a glance at him, brow creasing. Dumb brute, couldn’t tell if he was being mocked. Always assume so, she wanted to tell him. Hazael elbowed her. “Because of the badge, he meant,” he said, as if she’d missed the joke.

She didn’t laugh; she couldn’t even imagine being able to laugh the way her brother did—the tumbling, easy sound of it, the loose-muscled abandon. When she did laugh, the sound was sharp and dry even to her own ears—a hard crust of laughter compared to Hazael’s warmth and give. If I were bread, she thought, I would be a stale soldier’s ration, just enough to live on.

Akiva didn’t laugh, either. Devoid of antagonism or any kind of reaction, he held the Imperial summons up inches from the guard’s face and waited while he read it. Disgruntled, the guard waved them through.

My brothers, Liraz thought, entering Astrae between them. How different they were from each other, Hazael with his fair hair and laughter, Akiva saturnine and silent. Sunshine and shadow. And what am I? She didn’t know. Stone? Steel? Black hands and muscles too tense for laughter?

I am a link in a chain, she thought. Their badge had it right—not in bondage but in strength. She strode between her brothers, three abreast down the center of the broad city boulevard. This is my chain. Their armor was dull in the moonlight, in the lamplight, in the firelight of their feathers, and folk drew back from their passage with looks of wariness. Oh, Astrae, she thought, we have kept you too safe if it is us that you fear. They were neither loved nor respected by the people, Liraz knew, and soon they would be infamous and outcast, but she didn’t care. As long as she had her brothers.