Chapter 4
EMERE
The clean white room had traces of old blood here and there where the stains could not be washed out. The Powered light fixture on the wall infused the space with a pale blue light. On a small table by the bed, there was an array of surgical implements neatly laid out for use.
Emere took off his bloody clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, carefully rubbing the wound on his chest with a cloth soaked in medicine. The pain slowly melted away. He sighed with relief. How wonderful it was to not be in pain.
The assassin’s sword also lay on the small table by the bed.
The assassin must have been Cassian, as her crossbow had been, but the sword was Imperial.
The engraved pattern looked like an eye or perhaps a bird; in any case, he had never seen it before.
But there were many legions within the Empire, and it was likely an emblem for one of those.
Rakel was selecting medicine from a cabinet.
Surgeons in the Capital were normally shaved bald, but Rakel tied her long hair up into a knot and covered it with a white cloth instead, in the Ebrian fashion.
She hadn’t had a single white hair ten years ago when they last parted at the Kamori border, but now he could see many of them peeking out from under her surgical headcloth.
Emere had put off visiting Rakel for a long time, but he was here at last. He had pictured several versions of his reunion with her.
She was well within her rights to be resentful, which was probably why he had been reluctant to come here.
Perhaps being almost killed trumped every pathetic excuse he had been making not to visit his old lover and travel companion.
But when she opened the door, Rakel met his arrival calmly, noticing his injury before anything else. He didn’t even have time to say anything beyond a simple greeting, as she wasted no time in treating his wounds.
Even after all those years, and with all those white strands of hair, for a moment Emere felt like no time had passed since they parted ways. There was something comforting and right about her movements, the smell of the room they were in. Right now, he trusted her more than anyone in the world.
“I haven’t seen a wound like this in a long time,” she said, examining it with worry in her eyes.
“People in the Capital don’t get shot by Cassian bolts often.
” The sight of her face brought back many memories from years ago—when Kamori had surrendered to the Empire, when he had fought with his mother before leaving home and wandering the world.
“How does it look?” he asked.
“Just a little bit above this and you would’ve bled out very quickly. Who took out the bolt?”
“I did. I thought it would be all right.”
Rakel frowned and gave him a light slap on the shoulder. “Not again! Your face is as old as a legend but you’re still behaving like a boy!”
Emere’s hand rose to his face. He needed no mirror to tell him there was white mixed in with his stubble now too.
He had met Rakel just a few months after setting out eastward from home.
Emere had been twenty-four, Rakel twenty-two.
They were together for nearly ten years before he left her, and now it had been nearly ten years since he had last seen her.
“I heard a rumor you were married,” he said, changing the subject. “How is your husband?”
“Why, are you filled with regret? Was I your ‘destiny’ all along?” she teased. There was no resentment in her voice, but it didn’t sound entirely lighthearted either. Her eyes were still examining the wound, and Emere didn’t reply.
He had once been a prince of Kamori, and she the daughter of a fallen family of priests in Ebria—her parents had died in prison after being discovered worshipping their Nameless God, which was against the Imperial edict banning their religion.
He and Rakel had traveled the world for ten years, searching for ways to fight the Empire.
They’d been to all manner of places, but it had come to nothing.
Ten years ago, Emere had bid her farewell at Finvera Pass and joined the rebel forces of his brother, the self-styled King Gwaharad … which had also come to nothing.
“My husband died two years ago in the Great Fire.”
“I see,” murmured Emere. Rakel’s expression did not change at all as she continued to examine the wound using a small mirror.
Had her own wounds healed? At Finvera Pass, she had burst into tears at his insistence they part.
Back then, he was so sure that it was the right thing to do for both of them.
He changed the subject again. “You’re not going back home then?”
“To Ebria? No, I’ve put down roots here. I don’t need to go anywhere else. And surgery isn’t the only thing I do here. I have many people to care for.”
“You were always like that. Wherever it was you happened to be staying, you were home.”
“I’m not like you. I don’t change the whole direction of my life just because I had a dream.”
Rakel dipped a stick with a cotton swab into a medicinal bottle. The swab came out soaked in blue.
“I met her. The woman who kept appearing in my dream visions.”
Rakel’s hands froze in midair. Her eyes went wide. “You did?”
“You’ve heard of what happened in Arland?”
“That province where the corrupt prefect caused an uprising? Where the Empire sent a legion to negotiate peace?”
That seemed to be the story circulating around the Empire.
The real story was the stuff of legends—that a princess with a flaming sword had risen, as did the dragon of the volcano, and that the Empire’s army had been defeated by a local militia.
It hardly sounded credible, but the Empire nevertheless would not have been pleased if the truth got out.
“She’s the one who led the uprising. A local widow,” Emere explained. “I helped, a little,” he couldn’t help adding.
“At least one thing happened according to that ‘destiny’ of yours.” Rakel carefully applied the cotton ball to his wound.
Perhaps because of the numbing agent he had pressed on his chest before, he could barely feel her ministrations.
The pain-numbing medicine was a specialty of the Ebrian surgeons.
In their youth, both Emere and Rakel had relied on it heavily during their adventures.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.
“For what?”
“For leaving you like that.”
A shade of sadness came over Rakel’s features.
She looked as if she was about to say something to him but then turned her face and dipped the curved surgical needle into the small pot of boiling water.
She then gently brought the needle to his wound.
A narrow plume of steam issued from the needle tip.
“Hot?”
“No.”
She pierced him with the needle. Still no sensation.
“Don’t be sorry,” Rakel suddenly continued. “You’ve always gone and done exactly what you wanted to do. Don’t pretend you feel sorry for anyone.”
“I had no other choice. There were things I had to do.”
After making another stitch, Rakel let go of the needle, letting it dangle by the thread.
“You know, back then I might have been young enough to buy that. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it since.
” Her voice was strained. “You left Kamori to find a way to fight the Empire. Then you met me, and what did we really do? We certainly didn’t topple the Empire.
After ten years with me, you then said you would go back home, and again your reason was to fight the Empire.
But what did you accomplish there? Twenty years later, and you’re still no closer to liberating Kamori. ”
“It turned out that way, but—”
“Please, look at the Empire. They have legions, gigatherions, the Star of Mersia. They have conquered the world. What can anyone do to defeat them? Why couldn’t you admit it was an impossible dream?”
“But you went along with it for ten years.”
Rakel stood up so forcefully that the stool she sat on fell backward.
“I wasn’t going along with a dream! I was going along with you!”
He had always known that, of course. And that was why he had apologized. But coming from Rakel’s mouth, the truth weighed heavier than ever.
“You know, I’m a Commons councillor now. I may spend the rest of my life in the Capital. Maybe we can see each other from time to time, talk about the old days.”
Rakel said nothing to that. As if to shake off her own annoyance, she turned her head and stared at the wall. The needle still hung by its thread, its white string reddening. By the time the blood reached the needle, Rakel turned back to him.
“I was with you longer than anyone else I’ve been with,” she murmured.
“Me as well.”
“Which makes me doubt you will be here for very long. You’ll find some other star in the sky to chase.”
In the dream vision in the square, Loran had pointed at a single star shining in the black sky and told him to reach for it.
Whenever he saw a star or some mysterious object in his dream, he always went after it.
But the closest he had ever gotten to reaching what he sought was when he met Loran and joined the Arlander rebellion.
Still, was that not enough for one life?
Rakel sat back down and continued to sew up his wound. He couldn’t feel the needle at all. After some final stitches, Rakel finished up and snipped the needle off the thread.
“The numbing medicine will stop working in a little while. If you don’t want to be up all night in pain, you’ll need to apply it twice more. I’ll have your clothes washed.” Rakel paused. “Don’t exert yourself—just stay here for a night.”
He wanted to. His exhaustion over the past half year in the Capital had reached its peak. He imagined himself listening to the light rain thudding on the wooden shutters as he drank warm wine and talked of the past with his old flame.
Emere nodded. Rakel picked up his bloody clothes and dropped them in a basket in the corner.
“I’ll bring a blanket.”
She went up the stairs, her walk and her scent—the faint smell of medicine—exactly as they were in his memory.
The past unfurled in his mind: the dense dust wind of the wastelands of Mersia; the moldy inn where the floods had stranded them in Elvania; the hot, crystalline sands of the Kalikan coast; the Ebrian prayer Rakel would recite before the wooden statue she had always carried with her …
When Rakel came back down with a blanket, she had changed from her bloodied surgical garment to a yellow dress.
Emere was still sitting on the edge of the bed, and she wrapped his shoulders in the blanket and sat down at his right.
Emere hesitantly put his arm around her shoulders and Rakel relaxed against him.
He imagined a younger version of himself with Rakel in a framed picture, hanging in a corner of their minds.
They could never go back in time to the way they were, but the memory would live forever.
They sat like this in silence for a while before Emere finally lay down to sleep.
He dreamed of the wastelands of Mersia. From a distance, like a mirage, came a person.
A small person, covering their face to block the dust. Emere approached.
He couldn’t see anyone else besides this figure, but he could feel the presence of others.
The same feeling he had over a decade ago when he had briefly visited Mersia in person with Rakel.
“Prince Emere.”
The dusty traveler with the concealed face had vanished, and in their place was a young woman in the neat blue dress of Arland, her hair cut to just under her earlobes.
It was the sorcerer who had freed the dragon in the volcano during the Arlander rebellion—Arienne.
She was holding a baby in a blanket that was embroidered with a flower design he did not recognize.
Emere felt a vague familiarity at the sight of the infant.
“I’ve been here before,” said Emere, not returning the greeting.
“You have? What was your purpose here?”
“I wanted to know what the ‘Star’ was that ended Mersia.”
A sandstorm as large as a mountain brewed behind Arienne, looking strong enough to not only tear their clothes from their bodies but their flesh from their bones. Emere grew nervous. They had to get out of there. His feet, however, refused to move.
“Did you find out?” Arienne asked.
Emere shook his head. They had found nothing except red lifeless ground, and a feeling of despair so overwhelming that he couldn’t breathe. If it hadn’t been for Rakel, he would’ve died there.
“If that is also your purpose in Mersia, good sorcerer, I bid you to leave at once.”
“But where must I go instead?”
The storm wailed. Arienne seemed oblivious to the impending wall of dust as it came upon them. Emere covered his face with his arms as sharp fragments ripped at his flesh. He tried to scream, but when he opened his mouth, it filled with dust.
The winds ceased. His pain disappeared. When he lowered his arm, he was in the Capital, on the busy streets below the hill where the Senate stood.
The night air was hot, and everywhere it burned with red-and-yellow flames.
Emere’s eyes were drawn to a young man who was walking up the hill, heading for the Senate. The man reminded Emere of Loran.
Emere followed the young man. He seemed to be wearing a pair of spectacles.
Just as the young man’s walk was about to change into a run, Emere noticed a man he didn’t know lying in the middle of the street, charred and motionless.
Rakel was kneeling next to him, sobbing.
Emere still had an urge to follow the young man, but Rakel caught his attention and he could not leave her behind. Not again.
Then, he opened his eyes. The candle on the small surgical table had burned down to half its size.
Rakel dozed on the chair near the head of his bed.
Emere gazed at her for a while, then glanced at the table where the assassin’s sword lay gleaming in the candlelight, before he closed his eyes once more.