Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Aurelia
T he tightness around my lungs doesn’t ease until I’ve left the square far behind. There’s something freeing about being alone in the carriage—so much more space than I had to myself just minutes ago, no expectant eyes following my every move. No soldiers to worry about except my personal guards, who’ve been with me and never tried to harm me since well before the coronation tour.
The only thing that would make this moment better is if I had my princes here to wrap me up in their embraces. But the memory of Lorenzo’s supportive voice, Bastien’s airy touch, and Raul’s concerned monitoring warms me all the same.
It’d be nice if I could come back to them with more insight than I had when I left, but whatever Elox tells me, at least I’ll return refreshed and ready to put on the face of an empress again.
“There’s a temple of Elox on the far edge of the city, Your Imperial Highness,” the driver calls back to me in accented Darium. “Andov’s temple of the All-Giver is much closer, but I’ll take you wherever you want.”
Every temple dedicated to the All-Giver also honors all nine of the lesser gods our Great God created. I can address my godlen there just as well as at a temple solely for his purposes.
I lean my head toward the window. “The closer one will do, thank you.”
We travel along a few market streets, the storefronts and eateries either closed or quiet with so many of the city’s inhabitants in the square to see their emperor. The Gorician style is to leave their stonework unadorned by artificial color. The buildings are all varying shades of gray with different levels of polish, distinguished mainly by the words and images carved into the blocks and tiles.
No wildfire will ever level the city built here now. Perhaps that fable—and whatever real historical events inspired it—prompted their dedication to using the materials of their mountains.
Their temple of the All-Giver shows the same architectural style. The broad, bulky stone building that reminds me of a military fortress looms at the edge of a small square. But when I step through the doorway, I find a comfortingly familiar interior.
The front hallway leads to a large worship room with a domed ceiling that was hidden behind the exterior parapets. Marble statues of the nine godlen stand around the curving walls, their alcoves draped with silk in their associated colors and matching cushions laid on the floor before them. The Great God is represented by the multi-faceted light that streams down from the peak of the dome over everything below.
I cast my gaze over all the statues, lingering for a moment on Creaden’s stately figure. What does the godlen of leadership and construction make of Linus’s demand in his name?
Has he even noticed, or was his attention drawn by all the other mortals who might have been calling on him at that moment? Our lesser gods might not have abandoned us, but they each have a lot of dedicats to attend to.
The marble representation of Elox stands in a humble pose, one hand resting on a willow-branch walking stick and the other turned so a dove can perch on it. A recent petitioner has left sprigs of lavender at his bare feet.
As I walk over to him, my personal guards wait by the entrance, respectful enough not to intrude on my worship. Not that it matters greatly when I’m going to talk to my godlen only inside my head.
I kneel on the cushion and level out my breathing as I did in the coffin. Flickers of the suffocating sense of being buried ripple through my thoughts. I have to center myself again, digging deep into the peaceful sanctuary I’ve cultivated inside me.
Elox, please, staying my hand can’t be your only message. We both know that sometimes violence must be done to ensure that greater bloodshed doesn’t follow. You’ve seen how my husband behaves. Surely you wouldn’t want him acting as emperor any longer than necessary?
I close my eyes for a time and then lift my face toward the light that touches the statue. In the wavering beams, an image forms. A hand with a knife halts in mid-swing again.
But this time it resumes its movement. Slowly and steadily, it slices through the darkness as if the shadows are a layer of draped silk. The pieces flutter aside to reveal?—
Nothing. I’m only looking at the statue, calmly gazing down at me.
My pulse thumps faster all the same. Is it not that Elox wants me to hold back my efforts completely, but that I should focus on cutting through the outer layers of… something, to what lies beneath? Does he mean severing falsehoods to get at the truth? Removing a barrier so those shrouded in it can go free?
I aim a look of appeal at Elox’s statue, but no further impressions come to me. He’s leaving it to me to decipher his message.
Perhaps he’s telling me that there’s more than one approach that would suit him, and I need to decide which meaning best suits me.
The only thing I’m sure of is that he still wants me to be careful. To take my time and be sure of where I apply my blade, literal or otherwise.
As I push to my feet, the weight of my belly drags on my posture more than usual. Or maybe there’s a different sort of weight in my gut. Doubt condenses into a knot inside me.
The dagger I took from Neven is still tucked in my cloak. When my knuckles brush against the lump through the fabric, so much larger than my own little knife, I see his anger-flushed face as he yelled at me all those days ago. Accusing me of standing by, doing nothing of importance while Marclinus rampages across the continent.
I’m not sure he wasn’t a little bit right, and that fact is going to gnaw at me as long as my husband lives.
I gather my resolve and stride to the temple doors. My guards fall into step behind me in their usual inobtrusive way.
When I step out into the courtyard, intending to get right back into the carriage, a reddish glow glimmers at the edge of my vision.
I pause, glancing over. I glimpse only a brief gleam of red before the spark vanishes down a narrower road across the street.
While I stare after it, the impression of a tug forms in my chest. As if some invisible force is drawing me toward the spot where the light vanished.
A glow like that led me to the tree where I’m sure the Sabrelle-blessed armband is hidden. Does Elox have more to show me after all?
I set off across the courtyard with my leather slippers tapping against the cobblestones. With my authority as empress, my guards don’t challenge my decision, simply follow me to wherever my apparent whim takes me now.
When I reach the street, a glance down it doesn’t reveal any more supernatural light. But the tug comes again, urging me onward.
It isn’t as if I have any reason not to find out what it means.
I walk along a strip of small houses interspersed with workshops and stores. After I’ve passed several of those, I come upon an even narrower alley between two of the buildings.
The inexplicable tug pulls me that way. I glance around to make sure no one’s nearby to protest and then slip down the alleyway.
My unseen guide leads me to a set of stairs carved into the back of a building. I follow the tug up the steps to a rooftop bordered by a low stone wall.
Voices carry from a yard on the other side of the building. Their furtive tone suggests they’re speaking of something they’d rather not have overheard.
My heart thumps faster. I ease across the roof and crouch near the wall so I can make out their words. My Goric isn’t perfect, but since Accasy does a little trade with them, I’m much closer to fluent than I am in Rionian or Lavirian.
“…sure it can’t wait?” one of the men is saying. “The Darium idiots are crawling all over the city now.”
“They have nothing to do with the shipments,” the other replies, sounding a little exasperated. “The contracts have been in place for decades. We’re following our standard agreement. The fancy nobles won’t pay attention unless we do something strange like don’t send the order.”
“I just don’t like it. If they compare the materials to what our own supply looks like…”
The second man sighs. “We’ve been sending the discards to Dariu for ages. That’s all they know. They think they’re getting the best we have. And why should we send them the good quality stuff? They barely pay what it cost to get it out of the mountains.”
“But if they see it while they’re here, they might realize now.”
“They’re not going to look. Their heads are too far in the clouds. I’d bet they’ve had buildings made out of Gorician marble fall on their heads plenty of times without ever imagining the problem was with the blocks it was made of. They just throw around a little more gold and forget about it.”
The first man lets out a huff. “If you’re sure. I’m not taking the blame for it.”
“Every merchant in the country knows the game. They’ve never caught on before, and they won’t now just because they’re prancing around their palace here for a few weeks. Now go see that the order is getting loaded up.”
As they hustle off with a scrape of their boots across the ground, I sink down on the rooftop. My mind whirls with the secrets I just learned.
Merchants from all across the country are sending inferior supplies to Dariu—and have been for decades if not centuries?
The thought doesn’t actually surprise me. I doubt there’s a person outside Dariu who doesn’t resent those who reside in the honored country at the center of the empire. Of course anyone who’s chafing at the empire’s unfair demands will find whatever ways they can to conduct a quiet protest.
Of course the Darium citizens assume their conquered kingdoms will be obedient and offer up the best of their resources for an insulting price.
Great God smite me, it’s possible the same thing happens in Accasy. Do the workers in the forests send the worst of our bream cedar down the rivers? For all I know, they damage some of the logs purposefully, knowing it’ll be blamed on the jostling of the trip.
How many inferior materials and other goods have the Darium citizens been getting all this time without knowing any better? How many of those people have been harmed because of collapsing buildings and other faulty construction?
The poison of the empire has been hurting everyone, even those who are supposed to be benefitting the most.
The enormity of the realization knocks the breath out of me. I press my hand to my forehead.
Over by the stairs, my guards stir. “Do you need help, Your Imperial Highness?”
I give myself a little shake and stand up. “No, I’m all right. I simply have a lot to think about.”
And I do think—all the way back to the carriage and on the road toward the festivities in the square. With every passing minute, one question looms larger in my mind.
If every part of the empire is broken, if its existence leaves no one except perhaps the emperor himself better off… what is the point in trying to patch all those holes? Is it even possible?
The farmers I spoke to in Cotea talked about how the waterways might never be returned to their natural state now that the empire has altered them. Some things, once ruined, can’t be fixed, no matter how much you might want to.
The empire has perpetuated so much harm across the whole continent and across multiple centuries. Elox sent me a vision before about mending fences and tending to the ground we have, but what if the damage has gone past the point of repair?
What if the only way I can end all this misery… is by bringing the entire damned empire crashing to the ground?