Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Aurelia
I n the first moment after their emperor’s demand, the Rionians gathered in the square stare in stunned silence. A couple of the translators echoing Linus’s words stumble with the end of his missive.
My own jaw has gone slack, though I’ve gritted my teeth to stop it from dropping.
He can’t seriously expect— He’s asking these people to treat him like he’s a godlen.
He’s asking them to put their lives at risk, both grabbing the sheddings from the reefs and braving the vicious fish that will be drawn by the blood. Is this some kind of joke ?
But it’s Linus in all his manic imperiousness, so of course it isn’t.
He folds his arms over his chest, his glinting eyes sweeping over the crowd. “Come on now! What’s the delay? You’re in a far better state than those shipwrecked wretches were hundreds of years ago. I expect my boat within the hour… or I’ll have to assume that you and your royal family don’t hold all due respect for your empire.”
The menace in those last words sends a shiver down my spine. As the translators convey his message to those in the crowd who don’t understand Darium, my gaze catches on uniformed figures all around the square.
Our host of soldiers who’ve traveled with us aren’t the only military figures on hand. There must be at least a hundred other men and women in imperial purple and black poised along the edges of the crowd.
They might have traded the typical skeleton-painted uniforms of the regular army for imperial colors in honor of the emperor’s visit, but the locals will know what they represent all the same. With the rebellion only years distant, there must be hundreds more stationed in and around the capital.
What penalty will Linus have his soldiers inflict if the people of Santia don’t respond to his request quickly enough?
My gaze shoots to the highest military authority beneath the emperor. Axius is standing just a few paces to Linus’s other side. He’s staring at his emperor too, with a flex of his jaw as if he’s chewing on words he’s not sure he should say.
Is the high commander actually considering speaking up in challenge?
Before I can find out, the same worry churning inside me must strike the royal family. Queen Anahi grasps the cleric’s amplification charm and pitches her voice across the square. I can only make out the gist of her Rionian words, but I can tell she’s urging the audience to honor the emperor and follow his orders as quickly as they can. She points to the beach and then the harbor.
With a few twisting currents of confusion, the mass of commoners in the square surges toward the shoreline.
From within our cluster of Darium representatives, Neven makes a rough sound in his throat. He pushes a little ahead of the other nobles around him. “You can’t make them?—”
Raul catches his shoulder before the younger prince can finish his protest. “His Imperial Majesty is within his rights to ask whatever he wants of his people,” he says in a low voice that’s more a warning than an endorsement of Linus’s scheme.
My heart thumps faster with concern both for the Rionian people heading to the ocean and the royals nearby. Neven’s mouth presses flat, but his eyes still flash with defiance.
Will he be able to keep his frustration under control once there’s blood in the water—once people are dying for Linus’s command?
I have no idea how I can moderate my husband’s sadistically grandiose ideas myself. I fight to keep my voice even as I tip my head toward him. “Such a unique approach to confirming their loyalty. Did your father do something similar?”
Tarquin was cold and calculating, but brutally practical too. I can’t imagine him attempting to set himself on the same level as the gods.
Unfortunately, Marc seems to have cared a lot more about his father’s lost guidance than his twin does. Linus simply lets out a cackle of a laugh. “Every emperor must make his own legacy. I intend mine to be a brilliant one!”
I wish his version of brilliance didn’t veer so close to insanity.
The figures reaching the sand are stripping off shirts and trousers to plunge into the water with only their underclothes to hamper them. On the docks, others are yanking steel-tipped spears from equipment bins and leaping into smaller fishing craft.
A lump clogs my throat. They want to be ready as soon as the barama start arriving.
I’ve never seen those vicious fish before, but I’ve heard they can tear open a man in a matter of seconds with their razor teeth.
As the crowd empties from the square into the beach and harbor, Linus strides off the shaded platform into the full heat of the blazing sun. He beckons the rest of us to follow. “I want to get a close look at my glory.”
The Rionian royals hurry along beside us, their expressions mild but tight, as if they’re holding back their anguish through sheer force of will. I glance around and catch a glimpse of Lorenzo with the other princes, his rich brown skin turned grayish with horror.
The first locals are plunging into the water amid the glare of reflected sunlight. How far down will they need to swim to find the pieces of tolk coral? The stuff is apparently similar in consistency to wood, relatively lightweight but sturdy, but its sloughing off the nearby reefs is erratic and infrequent enough to make it impractical as a regular building material.
Not to mention the notoriously sharp ridges that cover much of its surface.
From what I remember of the fable, the difficulty was mostly expressed in terms of enduring the discomfort. But as we draw closer, the salty air filling my nose, I see swimmers surfacing empty-handed and gasping as if the coral sheddings are too far down for them to reach at all.
A few are already hauling slabs at least a couple of feet wide onto the sand. Trickles of scarlet streak across the pinkish gray material from the cuts on their hands.
My stomach lurches. I clamp my lips against the rush of nausea.
My husband really doesn’t care how much he tortures the people of his empire, does he? Especially those he sees as secondary citizens.
Some of the swimmers drop their chunks of tolk coral and dash back into the water. A few crouch in the sand, clutching their hands close to their chests or pressing on longer scrapes across their forearms or legs. One woman muffles a whimper against her shoulder.
More of the city folk rush to pitch in on the land. They grab the retrieved slabs and bring them together, using what simple blades they have on hand to carve the material.
Before I can study their progress for very long, a shout goes up across the water. A figure on one of the fishing boats bobbing at the mouth of the bay jabs a spear into the water, but it looks like a miss.
“Barama!” several voices call in a chorus of warning.
The blood-seeking fish have already arrived. A moment later, a dark, slick back with a ridge of fin cuts through the water’s surface. My stomach bubbles with more nausea.
The creature looks as large as a man. How are the swimmers supposed to fend those off if the people in the boats can’t spear them in time?
Taking the whole scene in, Linus laughs in apparent delight. I catch my hand on the verge of balling into a fist I’d like to ram into his arrogant face.
“Keep it moving; keep it moving!” he calls out in a jovial tone, as if this is all in good fun.
Well, I suppose he’s having fun, even if the rest of us aren’t.
Another fin slices through the lapping waves. The barama veers toward a swimmer who’s just surfaced with a coral slab clutched in his hands.
The man sees the fish coming and flails out with his cargo. The chunk of coral slashes against the barama’s scales. Its sinewy body whips back and forth—and then it dives straight at his belly.
His strangled cry reverberates across the water. I have to look away from his sagging form, from the crimson billowing through the turquoise water, or I’m afraid I’ll give in to my urge to vomit.
Linus lets out an encouraging whoop. I’d like to think he’s celebrating the boat that speeds through the water to get the hunters in position, but he’s just as likely egging on the deadly fish.
A woman drives her spear into the water, and more blood billows in its wake. With a scowl and the help of one of her companions, she hauls the twitching barama into the slim craft.
More spears flash as other hunters stab at the water, but I can make out at least six different fish beneath the surface, flitting deeper into the bay. The breath squeezes from my lungs.
Queen Anahi breaks from our delegation to hurry toward the docks. “We all serve Emperor Marclinus!” she calls out in Darium. “We royals will help deliver his feast.”
As she marches toward one of the boats, her husband and daughter and several other figures in fancy court dress hustle after her. Lorenzo stiffens and then spins toward Linus. He makes a hasty gesture toward his family in silent explanation before sprinting after them.
The nobles leap into boats, brandishing spears of their own. Lorenzo did tell me that spearfishing is a common pastime in every level of Rionian society. I suppose the local court must be decently sure of their abilities.
Queen Anahi hollers more remarks in her native tongue, directing the hunters already on the water. She commands the oar-men steering her craft into the middle of the bay and plunges her spear straight into a passing barama.
She’s clearly earned her confidence. Although I assume her demonstration of “loyalty” is more about protecting her own people than honoring her emperor.
Every nerve in my body is clamoring to take some kind of action myself while more swimmers slump on the beach amid their own blood, while another disappears beneath the waves to the vicious teeth of a barama. The builders have already constructed part of a hull by fitting the carved slabs together in an interlocking pattern, but I can see there’s a lot more boat to go.
As I grapple with my anguish, Linus slides his arm around my shoulders. He grins down at me and then at the panicked scene before us. “Look at how they leap to please us, wife. Isn’t this a grand spectacle worthy of me and my heir?”
“To be sure,” I say, and swallow down another swell of nausea. The locals who haven’t been able to help—young children and those particularly elderly or infirm—are glancing over at us from the remaining crowd.
They’re seeing me tied to him, the two of us together as one unit. As if this mad scheme is as much my idea as his. As if I enjoy it.
That’s not an empress they’ll want to support even after her husband is gone.
Lorenzo’s boat skims by. He rams his spear into the water and appears to mouth a curse he can’t actually voice.
A man stumbles out of the surf, dragging a particularly huge slab of coral with him. One of his little fingers dangles from his hand, nearly severed off. Another gouge streams blood down his calf.
I tense against a shudder, and something inside me cracks.
What does it matter if Linus would object to me lending help, no matter how honorably I do it? I can’t just watch this horror, no matter what he expects of me. The Rionians need to see that I’m strong enough to stand on my own two feet apart from him.
I need to be more than a pawn, whatever else it might cost me.
As my mind scrambles for the best hasty remark that will deflect some of Linus’s anger, I reach out with my gift and a prayer to my godlen. Elox, let me see. What’s nearby that I could use to soothe these injuries?
With a tingle, my gaze tugs toward the mounds of water-smoothed rocks protruding along the shoreline between the harbor and the beach. Their tops are layered with pale green seaweed that’s matted with age and sun.
“Husband,” I spit out, knowing my excuse won’t sound quite right to him and beyond caring, “I think I should ensure all of these loyal subjects are still well enough to continue serving us after today. My godlen calls on me to heal!”
Without looking back, I slip from beneath his arm and dart across the edge of the square to the rocks.
My guards follow with a thud of urgent feet. “Your Imperial Highness?—”
They don’t dare outright tell me to stop, and I’d ignore them anyway. I bend down by the rocks.
The drying seaweed squishes in my grasp, giving off a crisp herbal scent. Yanking my tiny knife from its sheath, I dig it into the layers of aged vegetation.
I wrench off as many swaths as I can in the space of a few thuds of my heart and then stride over to the beach, my guards still in tow. At the edge of my vision, I spot a few of the Rionian nobles who didn’t take to the boats following me and grabbing handfuls of their own.
The man with the nearly detached finger has collapsed several feet from the growing frame of the new boat. I crouch next to him and peer into his face.
“I will help you,” I say in my halting Rionian, holding up a strip of seaweed. “Please.”
The man stares back at me with a dazed expression, too lost in pain to argue. Setting my jaw, I lift his damaged hand, set his finger back in place, and wrap it there with the rest of his fingers and his palm to stabilize it.
I can’t ensure the finger will meld back into place. It’ll probably take a medic to actually reattach the digit. But at least this should stop any further damage and bleeding.
Blood has splattered across the silk of my dress, but I barely see it. How can I complain about a bit of cloth when these people’s bodies have been ravaged for their emperor’s amusement?
I wrap more of the seaweed around the cut on the man’s lower leg. It isn’t a perfect bandage, a little red seeping through, but my gift tells me it should work better than any other material I have close by, and possibly protect against infection as well.
As I move to a woman who’s gripping a wound on her arm, a couple of Rionian nobles hustle past me and start murmuring to other injured swimmers on the beach. The ache in my chest, as hard and sharp as the chunks of coral, starts to soften with a flicker of relief.
Maybe we can’t save everyone from my husband’s tyranny, but we can lessen the harm. I can show I’m more than a bauble decorating Linus’s arm.
While I move from patient to patient, the tolk coral boat continues to grow, looking as if a massive husk sloughed off a reef all at once. The fishing boats hiss back and forth over the water; the hunters haul more barama out of the waves.
Several of the elderly locals set up a spit over a firepit near the edge of the beach. It’s not long before one of the huge fish is roasting over dancing flames, sending a surprisingly sweet meaty smell through the air.
By the time a cry goes up that the boat is finished, my own fingers are raw from twisting clumps of seaweed. I look up from my last patient to see my husband approaching the makeshift craft.
The last few swimmers slog out of the water. The builders carry the boat over to the dock. When they lower it into the sea, it sinks to halfway down its hull and then floats there.
Linus steps into the craft with no hint of concern. While the boat holds him, he raises his arms like he did when he first announced this challenge, as if he’s the one who’s triumphed.
Which I suppose he is.
“I can go forth through all the empire like Jurnus himself,” he calls out. “Now let us feast!”