Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Aurelia
B y the time we’ve reached the palace, I have no time for more than the draping of additional ornaments over my dress and hair and a powdering of my face. As a footman beckons me to the carriages, I grab a purse that matches my gown and hastily stuff it with several strips of cloth and a blood-congealing ointment from my stash of supplies.
Linus might happily throw me to the wolves if I argue with his schemes, but I’ve been able to get away with tending to the loyal subjects who’ve accepted his demands before. I’m simply coordinating my interests with his. Keeping his chaos from overflowing.
As long as I can continue presenting my efforts that way, we’ll see how much I can help the people of Lavira.
It’s only a few minutes’ ride from the palace grounds to the large square I visited this morning, just off the broad royal promenade with its marble arch. We pass between the statues of Prospira and Jurnus, who hold aloft a carved banner of their mingled symbols, and into the grand stretch of polished cobblestones.
A platform covered in purple velvet has been assembled off to the side of the arch. Cookstands set up on various temporary tables roast chunks of spiced meat and fry sugared dumplings that send a delectable mix of scents into the air.
As Linus said, the Lavirian royals are generous hosts. I suppose you get farther in a negotiation if you set the other party at ease by plying them with comforts and treats.
The royal family and its key supporters stand off to the side of the platform. The queen and Raul’s brother shoot warm smiles my way when they notice me studying them, but mostly they circulate among themselves. The energy and chatter of their cluster reminds me of buzzing bees. A rhythm that could lull your senses—and leave you unprepared for a sting.
Raul stands between them with a grin flashed here and a guffaw tossed out there. In the brief glances I allow myself, I can’t help thinking he looks more tense among his relatives and local colleagues than I’m used to seeing him in the imperial court.
Lorenzo’s and Bastien’s ruling parents seemed to disapprove of their temperaments. Raul told me before that his family considered him too volatile as a kid to be part of their true legacy. Can they really be peeved that he hasn’t somehow negotiated their separation from the empire or some other impossible dream?
Tribune Valerisse strides along the edge of the platform, making remarks to the soldiers ringed around us. I notice High Commander Axius’s gaze following her, his mouth set in a stiff line just shy of a frown.
How does he feel about her taking charge of the local soldiers so avidly? I’d have thought their goals aligned, but maybe his ego is bruised that Linus gave orders to her directly rather than through him.
Or maybe he’s simply concerned about our security in general after the spectacle his emperor has made of our past pledging ceremonies.
The square churns with more and more civilians pressing their way in to observe the emperor—and to partake of the royal refreshments. I scan the rooftops and the milling bodies. I haven’t noticed any sign of hostility so far. It could be all the rebellious inclinations were beaten out of these people after their emperor came down on the entire country so harshly.
Linus doesn’t want them to forget his recent triumph. When the soldiers motion for silence and the tumult of the crowd fades to murmurs, he steps to the front of the platform with his chin raised high and his voice nearly crackling with intensity.
“Good people of Lavira! I’m glad to come here before you today and find you all so welcoming. The empire has long steered you in our grand course, and woe betide any who attempt to sever you from our guidance!”
The translators around the square echo his words in Lavirian. I hold back a grimace at the thought of the brutal “guidance” the empire’s forces generally offer.
“Here’s to all the Lavirians who embrace their place in the great tapestry Dariu has woven!” Linus adds with a sweep of his arms toward the sky.
A deluge of cheers follows his display, though I can’t say how many are genuine. Linus looks happy enough with the outward signs of adoration. A smirk stretches across his lips as he steps back to make way for the cleric leading the pledges.
Queen Benvida approaches us first. Her pale hair is coiled demurely away from her faintly lined face, which is the same tawny shade as Raul’s. I can’t help noting that despite the splendor of the palace and our rooms within it, she’s dressed down for the ceremony in a gown less elaborate and only a few modest pieces of jewelry. To avoid looking as if she’s competing with Linus and me in magnificence?
She speaks her promise of loyalty steadily and brightly, not a trace of discomfort creeping into her expression or her tone. But then, what is an expert negotiator but a performer of sorts?
Her husband follows suit, and then her elder son and daughter-in-law, daughter, granddaughter, and a handful of other royals. They all bow to both Linus and then the subtle but now unmistakable bulge of my belly beneath my flowing gown.
None of these vows of loyalty are truly to me—yet. We can change that, one mind at a time.
When the last cousin to swear his devotion steps away, Linus motions to the soldiers at the front of the platform. “Some of you, clear a good space up front here. At least ten paces out and to the sides. That’s right, move them back!”
As a dozen uniformed figures push into the crowd, driving the spectators backward to clear a swath of bare cobblestone, my stance tenses. Here it comes.
Several guards remain poised at the base of the platform. Linus draws his well-built frame as tall as he can and grins at our audience.
“I’m celebrating a particularly significant occasion while I’m here,” he declares. “Today is the anniversary of the day of my birth. I’m sure you’ll want to honor that event with a particularly special reception. And I have something special for you in return. All those who want the chance to join the glory of the empire as never before, send forth your children!”
I stare at my husband for a few thuds of my heart. Did I hear him right? He wants to see the children of Rodrige?
Gods help us, what is he going to do with them?
Even as my flesh turns to ice, the translators repeat his words in Lavirian—and several small figures wriggle out of the crowd into the clear stretch of cobblestones. The guards admit more and more of the youngsters Linus beckoned, some so slight they can’t be more than five or six and others tall enough to reach my nose.
A few are dressed in finer fabrics with elegant trim. Most wear dresses or tunics and trousers that, while vividly dyed, show a roughness of weaving and patches that are faded or stained. From the tight or baggy fits, I suspect many are wearing hand-me-downs rather than clothes bought specifically for them.
It makes sense that the civilians with fewer means would be more willing to risk their children for whatever “glory” their emperor intends to offer. The richer folk probably feel they have plenty to boast about already.
At Linus’s orders, the guards push the crowd even farther back. By the time more than fifty kids have entered the cleared area, my husband slices his hand through the air. “That’s enough. Those who showed enthusiasm first will have their chance at the reward! Keep them far from the stage until they’ve heard their mission.”
As the soldiers gather the pack of children at the opposite end of the otherwise empty ring, I tuck my hands into the folds of my skirts. My fingernails are digging into my palms against the urge to cry out in protest.
Whatever Linus has planned for these children, it can’t be good . Just how awfully is he going to punish Lavira for daring to threaten the empire?
What can I do to intervene that won’t end with my head on a pike as a traitor as well?
I risk a glance toward Raul among his family. All of the other royals have put on the most careful of mild expressions, but their younger prince isn’t capable of such a perfect mask. His jaw has clenched; his eyes smolder.
After my warning this morning, was he able to convince his parents and brother to summon at least a few medics who’ll be prepared to jump in? I don’t see any white robes amid the vibrantly colored outfits that fill the square, but they may be present with more discretion.
It wouldn’t do for Linus to realize that the royals have prepared for carnage.
Linus cracks his knuckles and grins at the watching crowd as if he expects them to be delighting in this moment as much as he is. “While on my journey here, I came across quite an enlightening tale about Prospira’s ventures through Lavira. Are you all familiar with the story of our godlen of abundance and the ‘fruitful’ children?”
With the translators’ hasty repetition, a swell of agreeing murmurs rises from the crowd. Many of the faces I can see look as puzzled as I feel.
Even though the fable takes place in Lavira, it was one of our main Prospiran cleric’s favorites to tell when he spoke to a younger audience—probably because it involved children. It’s said that when the gods traveled the realms, Prospira encountered a town that appeared to struggle to prepare a welcome. When she asked why they felt they were failing to thrive, the families complained that they’d been blessed with so many children, they had too many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe to amass any sort of abundance.
The godlen told them that they must tend to their offspring as they would a garden and the children would bear their own kind of “fruit.” When she returned in a few years’ time, she found that some families had taken her advice to heart and flourished with the skills their children had learned and the help they could provide.
Others had continued to neglect the youngsters, keeping all they could for themselves. Prospira took those children from their selfish parents and finished their raising herself.
When the parents saw what lucrative trades and callings their offspring had taken up, they clamored for them to share the wealth. But Prospira informed them that they’d abandoned their gardens, and now their children would put all their plenty toward cultivating the families of their choice, not their birth.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the tale, not least because it isn’t as if one’s children’s future careers help all that much while you have five barely out of swaddling clothes to feed. I can’t see how it would figure into any test Linus would present, though.
I shouldn’t be surprised that he could twist even a seemingly innocent myth to some awful end. His eyes gleam as he gathers himself for the announcement.
“I intend to spur your children on toward great things just as Prospira did! Today, they’ll learn the value of fighting for their empire while proving the depth of their loyalties.”
At a gesture, two servants scurry forward. One sets a low, narrow table at the edge of the platform in front of us. Another hands a clinking sack to Linus.
He digs into the burlap bag and holds up a small velvet pouch. More clinking sounds ring out at his shake.
“Each of these pouches holds ten gold coins. I have ten pouches to offer you today. The children who can claim them first and protect them best shall have those riches for their families.”
As he sets the ten pouches out in a row on the table, my stomach lurches. My lips part with the urge to say something that’ll set him off course, but no words that I can imagine working come to me. The last thing I want is to provoke him into demanding something even worse.
Before my scrambling mind can find an answer, Linus claps his hands over his head. “Come and get your reward from the empire!”
The soldiers who were keeping the kids herded at the far end of the ring draw back. The children stare at the pouches of gold, some with eyes widened and others narrowed with a hint of skepticism.
They start forward cautiously. For a few seconds, I think this challenge might not be a total catastrophe. They’ll simply race for the table or see it as some other sort of childish game?—
Then one of the more richly dressed boys dashes from the pack. A nearby girl shrieks in protest and hurls herself at him.
As she knocks him to the ground, the entire throng of children erupts into the chaos Linus predicted.
The girl who tackled the first boy scrambles past him, but another girl snatches at her braid and snaps back her head. More kids surge past them, elbowing and smacking each other, tripping over their own feet or legs whipped out to topple them.
One boy’s fingernails rake across another’s face as he shoves his rival to the side. A girl snatches another boy’s collar and punches him right in the nose, only to have him knee her in the gut.
Fabric rips. Feet and knees bang against the cobblestones. Cries and grunts reverberate through the air.
The smallest kids crumple first, bashed and battered by the larger children who overwhelm them. Along the edges of the cleared space, several adult voices cry out.
A few figures push at the soldiers who are ringing the makeshift area. Parents of the victims?
“Mina!” one woman calls frantically, trying to shove right between two of the soldiers.
I don’t even see the uniformed figures move. There’s a crackle in the air from some sort of magical gift, and the woman crumples in an instant.
“Stay back!” one of the soldiers snaps.
The distraught figures nearby pause in their jostling. They can’t risk defying the powers of the empire.
But an empress can.
I spot a little boy huddled farther back, blood streaking from beneath the hand he’s pressed to his temple, and the pained hitch of my pulse propels me into action.
“All the children must be tended to as they need it, as Prospira would see to it!” I shout out, hoping the translators will convey my words as well, and dash off the platform with grunts of protest from my personal guards hustling close behind me.
Please, let Linus see me as playing into the story he established rather than undermining it.
Noticing me coming, the soldiers along the edge of the ring shout to each other and press the crowd aside. “Your Imperial Highness—” one manages to sputter out as I shoulder past him. He snatches at my arm but releases me when I aim a hard look his way.
Linus hasn’t objected yet. That’s something.
I scramble to the fallen boy, wrap my arm around him, and half guide, half drag him farther to the edge of the ring. He whimpers, both blood and snot streaming from his nose.
He might be injured worse than I can see. I murmur soothing words I barely register myself as I fumble for a bandage.
A man who looks like a regular civilian reaches out to me from behind the line of guards. “I’m a medic! I can heal him.”
He must be one of the royal staff, considering the steadiness of his accented Darium words. The queen did send them to mingle with the crowd in ordinary clothes—very clever of her.
I lead the stumbling boy the last few steps to the medic and then cast my gaze around. More children have fallen, slumped or still crawling toward the platform, while the knot of battle shifts ever closer to the pouches they’re hoping to claim.
Another figure hustles to join me, panting in a way that doesn’t suit her carefully polished appearance. “What can I do?” Bianca asks me.
Her decision to join me appears to inspire a wave of activity. Baronissas Damina and Hivette are just leaping off the platform to head our way as well. A few of the Darium noblemen glance around and hustle after them, spurred by some prompt I can’t see. Bastien, Lorenzo, and Raul hurry over to the ring as well, blending in with the other noblemen as if they’re joining the group rather than wanting to support me specifically.
Linus watches all of the furor with a grin that now looks slightly rigid, if no less manic than before. I’ve framed our involvement as part of the lesson. He won’t want to protest openly and risk undermining his own point.
I dart forward and catch the arm of a struggling girl whose shin is bent at an unnatural angle. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her in my halting Lavirian. “You’re too hurt to keep going. We’re going to help you.”
Bianca grasps the girl’s other arm so we can help her limp away from the fray. The nobles on both sides of the ring gather up more of the wounded children, their faces tight with a mix of uneasiness and determination.
I summon another proclamation to match our actions to Linus’s challenge. “Some gardens grow more abundant than others, but Prospira would see all families kept well!”
Over by the platform, one boy has managed to pull away from the fracas far enough to snatch the first of the pouches. His fingers have barely closed around it when another kid dives forward to wrench at his ankles. He tumbles over with a yelp and a crack of broken bone.
As I usher another stumbling child away from the fighting and bandage his bleeding wrist, the yells by the platform get louder. One and another kid grabs a pouch only to find themselves grappling with their competitors. There have to be at least a couple dozen still hale enough to keep battling for the reward, their blows and shoves punctuated with gasps of pain.
And my husband looks so very pleased with the violence he’s instigated in his own honor.
Across the way, Baronissa Damina leads the last of the fallen kids to the edge of the ring, checking the girl’s bruised eye. I slip along the border of soldiers to the area where a few medics are now applying their gifts to those worst wounded.
I’m just skirting their cluster when the cobblestones buck beneath my feet.
The lurch of the ground flings me off to the side. For a split-second, my slippers are skidding on the stones, my fingers clutching only at air.
Then a blast of wind pummels me in the opposite direction. I stagger with it and fall to my knees.
My personal guards reach me a moment later, their faces blotchy with a panicked flush. “Your Imperial Highness—are you all right? What happened?” one demands as he helps me up.
The other glances behind me, the way I was first stumbling, and curses under her breath.
I follow her gaze, and a chill washes over my skin. Someone left a spit pole braced by one of the feasting tables, abandoned as everyone gathered to focus on the ceremony.
If I’d kept falling in that direction—if that sudden wallop of wind hadn’t come out of nowhere—I might have been skewered on the pointed iron rod.
I can’t stop my head from twitching in the direction I last saw Bastien. As I yank my gaze back, Lorenzo’s illusionary voice glides into my head. “We’re watching over you—always. And there’s something suspicious about all these dangerous accidents you’ve been facing. We’ll be twice as on guard from now on.”
Even as his reassurance melts away the chill, my stomach twists. I peer at the ground where I tripped.
Nothing about the cobblestones looks mildly uneven, let alone badly misaligned. And I’d swear I didn’t just trip over them but that they threw me to the side.
As if someone used their gift to manipulate the ground beneath my feet, right when they could toss me toward a potentially fatal end.
Can it be a coincidence—the falling rock in Rione, the carriage horses startling on our journey through Cotea, and now this? If not, the attempts on my life would have to be made by someone traveling with us, not any of the locals.
Someone from the court I now call my own.
Who has a gift that could accomplish all that? Who would want to?
I turn to my hovering guards. “I’m perfectly fine. Just a brief tumble. I should have ensured I didn’t roam too far beyond your reach.”
“ We should have ensured it,” the woman who noticed the spit says, with a guilty dip of her head.
A flurry of rough cheers yanks my attention to the platform. It appears that amid my confusion, the winners of Linus’s challenge have been determined.
Ten boys and girls, their faces scuffed with dirt and clothes askew but smiles triumphant, stand on the platform holding aloft the pouches they won.
“See what abundance even a child can accomplish for the good of their families!” Linus calls out, pacing behind them. “And they can accomplish just as much for their empire, now that they know they have the strength.”
With his guards flanking him closely, he stalks along the line of children again, touching each on the top of the head as if in benediction. “You showed the most fire out of all. I name you protectors of the empire. If you hear or see any signs of threat against me or my Darium representatives any time in the future, find one of my soldiers and report it at once. You’ll be rewarded even more handsomely than you were today.”
Another round of cheers rises up, one I can’t help thinking sounds rather hesitant. My stomach bottoms out.
Linus hasn’t just pitted the city’s children against one another and compensated them for wounding their neighbors. He’s converting them into spies for the empire.