Chapter 34
EMERE
That night, Emere walked alone through the streets to Rakel’s house.
Rakel had said it would be better if he stayed hidden underground while the Elders discussed the situation, but it did not sit well with him that Septima could wake up in a strange place with only Rakel’s assistant, whom she didn’t know.
But what vexed him the most was what he was feeling after meeting Loran in the Ebrian hideout.
Loran had been even more majestic than he remembered. She now exuded confidence that befitted a true king who vanquished the mightiest of the Empire’s vaunted arsenal. It was exactly what he had foreseen in her, ever since he’d met her.
Still, Emere found himself desperately looking for something even greater in Loran.
Something that would lift him up. Something that would vindicate his life of wandering and questioning.
Something that would fulfill his destiny yet unknown.
It was unfair to Loran, or any mortal person, to have such things expected of them, but he still sought it.
Did he worship the image of Loran, like the Ebrians worshipped their Nameless God? Did he believe that she would save him? It was a troubling thought for Emere.
Then there was Rakel’s question, of what would happen if the Ebrians started interfering with the politics of the Empire.
The coming storm first began to brew with Arland’s victory and the Grand Inquisitor Lysandros’s death.
Even if Ludvik could be stopped, could they truly hold back the chaos approaching from the horizon?
How would the Empire take it if Loran intervened in Imperial politics, the same Loran who defeated an entire legion at Arland?
And Emere couldn’t forget that the very Power generator that he stole caused the Great Fire and killed countless people, including Rakel’s husband.
There was no way to make up for what he had done, however unknowingly, and he still couldn’t bring himself to tell Rakel about his involvement.
His action had not only led to those deaths, but also threatened the Senate enough that they turned to Ludvik and the Office of Truth.
Everything was linked. Everything was caused by everything else, and in turn caused everything.
The Tree Lords had taught him that destiny was a moment of choice.
What meaning did a choice have, when you could not predict its outcome?
The Circuit of Destiny had said that one who decided destinies of many was a king. Was this how kings felt?
Bowing his head at every streetlamp and clutching his robe tightly about him, Emere finally arrived at Rakel’s house.
“Forgotten to lock it, has she,” he mumbled as he opened the door, smiling at the memory of Rakel telling her assistant to always keep the door locked. As soon as the door shut behind him, though, something cold and sharp pushed against his neck and his arm was pulled back.
Emere knew a second of surprise and fear before he heard Septima’s voice. “Councillor?”
“Yes, now please remove your knife,” Emere replied wryly.
His arm was freed, and the knife removed. Emere stepped away and looked back at Septima. Despite her bandaged chest, she had put on Rakel’s white robe that usually hung in the surgery, and she held a scalpel in her hand.
“What happened to the young woman who was here?”
“I woke up and found myself in an unfamiliar place,” said Septima, “so I gagged her and tied her up upstairs.” She sounded so justified that Emere almost nodded as if she had put a child to bed.
“She’s just a surgeon’s helper! Please release her.”
Septima picked up the wanted poster on the surgical table and shook it in front of him. “I would like a detailed explanation first, if you will. What happened to my men? Where are we?”
Emere gestured for her to sit and told her of everything that had happened—how they had tried to escape the labyrinth, but Septima had been struck by the Zero Legion’s bolt.
But he would not mention the Ebrians and their secret congregation, and it felt impossible to even speak Loran’s name.
Even if Septima was on his side, he could not ignore the fact that she was an agent of the Ministry of Intelligence.
She did not seem satisfied with his story, grimacing as she patted her wound. “So what do you plan to do now, Councillor?”
“We must stop Ludvik.”
“And is that why you came all the way here to see your old lover?” Septima said dryly. “To summon the help of the Ebrians?”
Emere forgot to breathe. “What?”
“Ebrians always gather around their god, and we know of such a congregation in the Capital. They seem harmless, and we let them be so that we can use them as bargaining chips when we need something from the Office of Truth. I understand your hesitation in sharing your plans with me, but you must understand that you can’t fight Truth while keeping all your secrets to yourself. ”
“That wasn’t my first strategy in coming here,” Emere replied truthfully. “But surely the Ebrians, more than anyone else, do not want the Office of Truth to come into power?”
“We are dealing with an Imperial office that commands the Zero Legion. Not even all the Ebrians of the Capital—even if you could gather all of them together—could ever win against these people.”
But perhaps things would be different if King Loran succeeded in her alliance-building, though he would never mention Loran to a Ministry of Intelligence agent, however disgraced she might be.
The fact that the ringleader of the Arland rebellion was right here in the Capital might be an even more urgent matter for Septima than the Office of Truth’s machinations.
Sighing, he turned his head. The front door creaked in the night wind.
“Forgot to lock it again.”
Just as he walked up to it and held his hand out to close it, a white light shone through the open door.
Septima shouted, “Councillor, duck!”
The door shattered into pieces before him like ice.
Emere managed to duck even as he was sent flying backward, but a fragment hit his temple.
A whistling noise intensified until he could no longer hear anything.
Septima shouted something, but all he could make out was that her lips were moving.
His vision blurred, then faded to nothing.
Emere stood on the red wastelands once more. Dizzying images and sounds, indecipherable conversations assaulted his senses as he struggled to breathe. He didn’t understand the rage and sorrow filtering through him, but there had to be an end to them. The thought made him calm.
He must’ve lost consciousness in the attack, and Cain or the Circuit of Destiny had pulled him here in that moment.
“The Circuit is strange. It was made by people out of people, but it doesn’t think like people. What happens when over three hundred Powered corpses gather in one place? I’ve been here for some time and still can’t understand it.”
Cain’s voice. There he sat, in a simple wooden chair. Emere turned to him.
“Do you know who attacked Rakel’s house just now?”
Cain turned his gaze toward the distance for a moment before meeting Emere’s eyes again. “A detachment of the Zero Legion of the Office of Truth. I don’t know how they discovered your whereabouts. Septima seems to have escaped somehow.”
Someone must’ve spotted him coming back from the congregation.
“I’ll be dead soon,” he said. If he wasn’t dead already.
Cain shook his head. “They’ve taken you alive. Ludvik must have unfinished business with you.”
Emere scoffed. “Business? I’m a nothing, a dreamer who spent his life chasing after foolish hopes, barely more than a title. And not even a title anymore, now that I am a wanted man.”
“That isn’t so. You have the destiny of a king.”
This came from a different voice—Loran’s voice, though he could now hear the difference from the real one he had just recently heard in the underground congregation.
“Enough with the riddles!” Emere strode up to the vision of Loran, who had appeared before him as he spat out his words.
The Circuit masked as Loran looked back at him, unperturbed.
“It is a king who decides destiny. Your time is drawing near.”
Emere glared at Loran, this avatar of the Circuit of Destiny. His body was being held by the Office of Truth, and his destiny was to be decided by Ludvik, a man who had already tried to kill him and who could now do it at his leisure. But Emere decided destiny?
“I refuse to listen to you anymore,” Emere scoffed. “The real Loran is already here in the Capital. I’m not the one who will defeat Ludvik. It will be Loran, King of Arland, and the Ebrians in the Capital who do it. They are the ones who shall decide destiny.”
As the words left his mouth, he felt an emptiness in his chest, which quickly filled with a feeling of powerlessness. Of course he would never be king; of course such a destiny was never in his future.
A hint of sorrow passed over Loran’s—the Circuit of Destiny’s—face. But Emere found the feelings of something that wasn’t even human anymore impossible to understand.
Cain said, “We don’t know what Ludvik wants, Councillor. I will try to help you any way I can from here. But you must never give Ludvik what he wants.”
Loran turned to Cain. “Cain, you must not interfere with what these two will do.”
Cain stood. “My dear dead sorcerers, I think I have come to a decent understanding of how things work in here.” He smirked. “If you wish to stop me, try.”
On the red earth, against the violet sky, Cain and Loran stared at each other. Emere felt a pressure in his chest, as if a clawed hand were gripping his heart.
Something cold hit his face. Emere screwed his eyes shut and opened them.
The wasteland was gone, and Emere was tied to a wooden pole.
Before him stood a burly woman holding a dripping bucket, and next to him stood Ludvik, wearing armor over the dress uniform of the Office of Truth with the tassels of golden thread to represent his native Tythonia.
“Your Royal Highness, how tragic our reunion is under such unfortunate circumstances. But you already understand why we must meet this way.”
A full moon hung in the sky. Orders were being barked somewhere, with answering choruses of affirmation.
Clanking armor, turning wheels, marching feet …
The sounds came with the occasional flash or glimmer of Powered pale blue light.
Emere saw a group of soldiers in white armor pass by some paces beyond him.
Then another, this time in Powered white armor.
It must be the day the Office of Truth had planned for so long.
Ludvik stared up at the sky and said, “Now, this very moment, is our destiny.”
Emere found himself, of late, getting quite sick of destiny.