Days of Blood & Starlight

Hellas’s look of smug complacency vanished. “What?”

“Certainly. Traitors must have a public execution, must they not?” said Jael, deliberately not taking Hellas’s meaning. He turned to the bastards, still with that repulsive cheer. “As my brother said earlier, room can always be made on the gibbet.”

“My lord,” said Hellas, affronted and only just beginning to be afraid. “I mean myself.”

“Ah, well. I am sorry, old friend, but you have conspired in my brother’s death. How could I trust you not to betray me?”

“I?” Hellas went red. “I have conspired? With you—”

A cluck of the tongue, and Jael said, “You see? Already you are singing songs about me. Everyone knows it was Beast’s Bane who killed Joram and poor Japheth, too, his own blood. How could I let you leave this room, to go and spread lies about me?”

The magus’s red face drained white. “I wouldn’t. I’m yours. My lord, you need a witness. You said—”

“The bath girl will serve as a witness. She will serve better, because she will believe what she says. She saw the bastard slay the emperor. The rest, well, she’ll be distraught. She’ll believe she saw it all.”

“My lord. You… you need a magus—”

“As if you are capable of magic,” Jael scoffed. “I’ve no need of frauds or poisoners. Poison is for cowards. Enemies should bleed. Take heart, my friend. You die in noble company.” He gave the slightest of gestures—little more than a twitch of his hand—and the soldiers moved forward.

Hellas cast wildly about for some protector. “Help!” he cried, though he had certainly played a part in ensuring that no help would be forthcoming.

The other council members cried out, too. Akiva felt more pity for them, though there was little enough space in his own mounting misery to waste pity on this coterie of cruel, hand-picked fools.

It was a bloodbath. The Silverswords, big useless brutes and already disarmed, struggled and died. One Dominion soldier dispatched both Namais and Misorias—still unconscious—with light sword strokes to their throats. He might have been scything weeds, so dispassionate was the gesture. The bodyguards’ eyes flew open and both experienced the moments of their death with a brief thrash and skid in the dregs of the red bath. The remaining servant girls were not even spared; Akiva saw that coming and tried to shield the one nearest him, but there were too many Dominion, and too many hamsa trophies arrayed against him. The soldiers shoved him back to Hazael and Liraz before silencing the girl’s screams with no evidence of remorse.

They were their captain’s men through and through, Akiva thought as the scene played out before his eyes. He had witnessed—and partaken in—more than his share of carnage, but this massacre staggered him in its callousness. And its cunning. Watching it, and knowing that he would be blamed for it—that the infamy would be his while Jael took up the mantle of emperor—Akiva burned hot and cold, furious and powerless.

He cast wildly about for some trace of the clarity and power that had earlier possessed him, but he sensed nothing beyond his mounting desperation. He looked to his brother and sister; they stood back to back. He could see their strain.

There were four council members besides Hellas; they died more or less as they had watched their emperors die: shocked, outraged, and helpless. Hellas squealed. He tried to get airborne, as if there were any escape in the vaulted glass ceiling, and the soldier’s sword caught him in the gut instead of the heart. The pitch of the squeals sharpened, and the magus grabbed at the blade where it entered him; he clutched it as he sank back to the floor, staring down at it with disbelief, and when the soldier jerked the blade free, fingers scattered. Hellas lifted his maimed hands up before his face—blood, so much blood; it fountained from stumped fingers—and that was what he was looking at, in abject horror and still squealing, when the soldier corrected his aim and delivered a clean thrust to the heart.

The squealing stopped.

“I don’t believe he even tried to do any magic,” Jael observed. “And all that pain to tithe, too. What a waste. A sad waste of pain.”

Then he turned a piercing look Akiva’s way and pointed to him. Akiva tensed to defend himself—or try. His grip on his sword was weak and worsening as sickness pulsed at him from all sides. But the soldiers were well attuned to their captain’s gestures; they did not attack.

“Now here,” Jael said, “stands a magus.”

Akiva was still standing, though he thought not for long. The sensation of so many hamsas trained on him, it dragged him back years to the scaffold in the agora of Loramendi, Madrigal, and how she had looked at him, and how she had laid her head down on the block; how it had fallen and echoed and he had screamed and been able to do nothing. Where had that state of true sirithar been then? He shook his head. He was no magus; a magus could have saved her. A magus could save himself and his brother and sister from these soldiers with their clawed, gnarled trophies, their stolen strength.

Jael mistook his reaction for modesty. “Come now,” he said. “You think I don’t know, but I do. Oh, this display of glamour, the swords? That was very good, but the birds? That was marvelous.” He whistled wetly and shook his head: a heartfelt compliment.

Akiva took care to give away nothing. Jael might suspect, but he couldn’t know the birds had been his work.

“And all to save a chimaera. I’ll admit, that puzzled me. Beast’s Bane, help a beast?” Jael was looking at him, drawing out a pause. Akiva didn’t like the look or the pause. Always, their encounters had played like a high-stakes game: exaggerated courtesy veiling mutual distrust and deep dislike. They had gone far beyond the need for courtesy now, but the captain kept up the charade, and in it there was a ghost of glee. He was toying with a smile.

What does he know? Akiva wondered, feeling certain now there was something, and he would have given much in that moment to put a sharp end to Jael’s glee.

“She tasted of fairy tales,” Jael said. The words struck a chord of familiarity—and a note of dread, too—but Akiva couldn’t place them. Not until Jael added, almost singing, “She tasted of hope. Oh. What does that taste like? Pollen and stars, the Fallen said. He did go on about it, foul thing. I almost felt sorry for the girl, to have felt the touch of such a tongue.”

A roaring in Akiva’s ears. Razgut. Somehow, Jael had found Razgut. What had the creature told him?

“I wonder,” asked Jael, “did you ever find her?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” Akiva replied.

Jael’s smile unfurled fully now, and it was a nasty specimen, malicious and excited. “No?” he said. “I’m glad to hear it, since there was no mention of any girl in your report.” This was true. Akiva had said nothing of Karou, or the hunchback Izil who had hurled himself from a tower rather than give up Karou, or of Razgut, either—who at the time Akiva assumed had died with the hunchback. “A girl who worked for Brimstone,” Jael continued. “Who was raised by Brimstone. Such an interesting story. Far-fetched, though. What interest could Brimstone possibly have taken in a human girl? For that matter, what interest could you have taken in a human girl? The usual kind?”

Akiva said nothing. Jael was too happy; it was clear that Razgut had told him everything. The question, then, was how much did Razgut know? Did he know where Karou was now? That she was carrying on Brimstone’s work?

What did Jael want?

The captain—no, Akiva reminded himself, Jael was the emperor now—said with a shrug, “Of course, the Fallen also claimed the girl had blue hair, which really strains credulity, so I thought, how can I trust all the other things he’s telling me about the human world? All the other fascinating things you left out of your report. I had to get creative. By the end, I believed he was telling the truth, strange as it all sounds, and what I can’t make out is how the three of you failed to report on their advancements. Their