for sure if the Shepherdess existed. Now I’m terrified that she’s not doing whatever it is she’s supposed to do. How can we do our job and protect the spirit world when we know so little?”
Banage shook his head. “As my spirits love to remind me, humans are creatures of blindness and ignorance. We must always remember that although we tend to see this world as ours, we are only tiny pieces of the larger whole and there is only so much we can change. The demons, for instance, we must leave to the League. We certainly cannot fight them, not without risking our spirits. Even if we were willing to face them, we would only be defeated. As for the rest, we can only do what we have always done. The Court will stand by its oaths and do what it can to protect the spirit world from whatever threatens it—wizard, star, or Shepherdess.”
“Master Banage,” Miranda said, her throat going dry. “With all these threats, I have to wonder, perhaps we should take the Merchant Prince’s compromise.”
The Rector’s head snapped to look at her.
“He promised it would only be defense,” Miranda said quickly, before she lost her courage. “Look around, we are alone. The Spirit Court is splitting in two. How can we stand firm when we are so divided?”
“We are not divided.” Banage’s voice cut the heavy air like a bitter, burning knife. “The true Court is here. Those who choose political ambition over their oaths are not Spiritualists.”
“But this is the Immortal Empress!” Miranda cried, her voice pleading. “If this were just a war between countries, I would not question your decision, but the Empress is different. Her first attack was terrifying enough to make the warring kingdoms forget their bickering and unite as a Council to face a common foe. But even united, it took everything we had to turn the Empress away. Now she’s coming to finish the kill, and everything we have might no longer be enough. I don’t like Blint, but I understand where he and every Spiritualist who went to the Council stands. They are fighting to defend their lives as they know them.”
“And there they betray their oaths,” Banage said. “Spiritualists do not fight for their own comfort, but for what is good and right for the spirit world.”
“How do we know the two aren’t the same?” Miranda countered. “Every child in the Council learns about the Empress’s invasion, and the terror trotted out more than any other are the stories of the Empress’s wizards. There are tales of them working together to control enormous spirits of fire and iron, monsters built only for war that fight until they’re torn apart. Those spirits died fighting for the Empress, and though I don’t know for sure what the empire wizards did to whip those poor spirits into such a frenzy, I’d wager Eli’s bounty that it wasn’t nice. Enslavement, or close to it. That is the enemy we face, and you’re saying we should just sit back and let her come? That it is politics to side with the Council and fight her? If anything of that sort went on here, we would mobilize the Court to stop it at once. Is it any different when it comes from across the sea?”
Miranda stopped, terrified she’d said too much. Master Banage’s expression was unreadable in the harsh light, but he didn’t look angry. When he spoke, his voice sounded tired.
“Your reasoning is sound as always, Miranda,” he said. “But no matter what, I can never allow this Court to go to war again beside the Council of Thrones.”
“Why not?” Miranda demanded, frustration rising.
Banage looked up, his dark eyes catching hers with a look that killed her anger in one shot.
“May I tell you a story?”
Caught off guard, Miranda nodded.
Banage got up from his desk and walked over to the window, looking out at the lid of solid stone that covered it.
“I fought in the first war against the Empress,” he said. “I’ve told you about it before.”
Miranda nodded again, though, since Banage had his back to her, it scarcely mattered.
“I fought with the fledgling Council,” Banage said, his voice soft. “With Sara.” He looked over his shoulder. “We were younger than you are now, a year out of our apprenticeships, and newly married.”
“Married?” Miranda could scarcely form the word. She could scarcely believe what she was hearing. “You were married? To Sara?”
“Are married,” Banage corrected her, turning back to the window. “We never formalized our separation. I think we each believe we’ll eventually bring the other around to our way of thinking.”
“But… Sara?” Miranda shook her head. “How? Why?”
“I was young,” Banage said. “Sara is a genius and very charismatic in her own way. I’d like to say she’s changed over the years, but she’s always been high-handed, single-minded, and cruel. However, she was also ambitious in a way I’d never seen. She wanted to do things with magic I’d never even imagined. When the Empress attacked, the lands we now call the Council were in chaos. No one had ever seen anything like the fleet that was pounding Osera’s shore. In her desperation, the young Oseran queen threw away centuries of isolationism and begged for help. Zarin was the first to respond, and Sara went with them.”
He took a deep breath. “I’d known for some time that Sara was drifting away from the Spirit Court, doing her own work with money from the Whitefall family. When she said she was following Whitefall to war without even asking permission from the Rector, the Tower Keepers, who did not yet understand the threat of the Empress and had no interest in risking themselves for Oseran pirates, threatened to strip her of her rings and kick her out of the Court. And they would have, but I volunteered to go with her as the Court’s eyes on the front. That was how I ended up at her side when the Empress’s forces made their second, largest attack on Osera.”
“The project she was working on for Whitefall,” Miranda said, wide-eyed. “Was that the Relay?”
“It was,” Banage said, his voice strangely strained. “The Relay was the only way we kept ahead of the Empress’s forces. By this time, rumors of the Empress’s army were beginning to catch up with its actual size. More and more countries, seeing that this could well spread to their lands if left unchecked, began sending their armies to the coast. But they were a rabble, a hodgepodge of men who’d spent centuries fighting each other. Only the Relay could coordinate them into a force capable of meeting the Empress’s fleet, and Alber Whitefall knew it.
“But that came later,” Banage said, waving his hand. “Before the other countries joined in, Queen Theresa’s ships with their ever-burning fire were all that held the Empire at bay. The event I want to tell you about happened late at night the second day of the attack. I’d left Sara with Whitefall and gone to help the Oserans repel a charge. The Oseran clingfire were simple spirits, easy to direct. I had made a cliff out over the bay and was using my fire spirit to guide the clingfire throwers and sink the incoming ships. But then my stone spirit was hit by one of the Empress’s war spirits, and I fell.”
“You fought a war spirit?” Miranda said, breathless.
“Not at first.” Banage’s voice grew raw. “I fell nearly fifty feet into the sea. My stone spirit shattered beyond repair trying to break my fall. I would have died there, if not for him. As it was, my fire spirit went out when I hit the water. I managed to swim to shore, but I was disoriented. I’d never lost a spirit before, and now I’d just lost two. I did not know what to do with the enormous emptiness that is left when the connection vanishes.”
He stopped for a moment and sat very still. Miranda held her breath, afraid to make a sound. At last, Banage continued.
“When I made it to the beach, the Oseran guard was fighting the siege spirit, or trying to. Swords did nothing. The spirit killed a dozen men as I watched, and then it turned to me.”
Banage lowered his head. “I was terrified and enraged. I knew I was about to die. That I would be crushed, and all my remaining spirits crushed with me. So I did the only thing I could think of. I opened my soul and took control of the siege spirit.”
Miranda’s breath caught in her throat. “You Enslaved it?”
“I tried to,” Banage said, his voice very low. “Desperation is no excuse. I tried to take control of the spirit to save my life in violation of all my oaths. Tried, and failed.”
Miranda looked away, scrambling to get her feelings under control. The thought of Master Banage Enslaving anything nearly made her sick. He was the Spirit Court, the embodiment of everything it stood for, and yet.
“Failed?” she said. “How could you fail? You are the strongest wizard I’ve ever met.”
“Strength has nothing to do with it,” Banage said, shaking his head. “The problem was with the spirit itself. No matter how hard I pushed, it would not bend to my will. It did stop, however. I think it was confused. But then it looked at me. Not looked, exactly, for it had no head to speak of, but I knew it was studying me. And then it spoke.”
Miranda swallowed. “What did it say?”
“ ‘Loyalty to the Empress,’ ” Banage quoted, tilting his head back. “ ‘Always and forever, I will be loyal.’ And then it turned and walked into the ocean, back toward the ships where the Empire wizards waited.”
