1 Order
“Of the Dark Elsar, there remains none so beguiling as Lady Ruin. Her smile holds the fulfillment of every desire. But as you close the distance, a trapdoor springs beneath your feet, and you are forever lost to the Dark Reaches.
People of Edessa, hasn’t she found us here?
Unease foments in our city, and we know the source.
Eight months ago, Head Tetrarch Aelius met his end at the hands of a northern girl.
Despite his flaws, he should have been properly tried in a court of law.
Instead, he was gutted in public like an animal.
The girl and the madman she serves pronounced themselves judge, jury, and executioner and use the supposed Summoning of Lord Death to legitimize their dark deeds.
Now, omens plague our lands. Riots and plague in the crude north. A woman in crimson—Ruin’s preferred color—saunters about as Head Tetrarch. The madman is Magus Supreme, which also anoints him as Headmaster to the Academiae to oversee the education of our children!
Ruin has taken this land by coup. But there is hope. The Elsar ask us to resist evil. We rid ourselves of one woman who tried to govern us. We must do so again. Demand an Inquisitorial Hearing to bring these acolytes of Ruin to justice.
If they can lay claim to violence, so can we.”
—excerpt from a Cleric’s sermon in Aelius’s Quarter
Eighteenth day of the Month of Frost, eight months after the Great Unraveling
Most days, all Sarai saw was blood.
Its iron-rich tang trailed her from Edessan courtrooms to discreet bits of vigilantism to her dreams, where she, on occasion, still relived a night that had altered the course of her life. Then, eight months ago, had come a reckoning that had changed her future.
Today, the crowd bayed for blood too. This time, it was hers.
The Amphitheatrum Aequitas fenced her on all sides, stage and prison.
Snowcapped white marble and intricate arches quaked with the tread of eager feet.
A midwinter gust ruffled the tendrils escaping from her braid as spectators from Edessa and the most devout parts of Ur Dinyé jostled each other across the five tiers of seating in the land’s largest courthouse, angling for a better view.
She hadn’t seen a more heavily attended trial than the Great Unraveling—the public’s term for her Summoning of Death and killing Aelius eight months ago.
Of course, that was why she was here today.
Even if they refused to call it a trial.
“Silence!” A stentorian voice sliced through the crowd’s chatter. “This Inquisitorial Hearing is convened.”
Hearing. Sarai grit her teeth. Gods, the words they use to obfuscate a thing’s purpose.
A host of men emerged from the Petitors’ Entrance to the Aequitas, sporting beige and blue robes and an irritated mien at the subtle insult. Cassandane had politely but firmly refused them entrance through the main doors, though she couldn’t deny the Inquisitors access to the Tetrarchy’s seats.
The priests of the Elsarian Order, Ur Dinyé’s dominant religion, parted like a wave at the dais.
Four Inquisitors took the Tetrarchy’s seats, dark blue–edged robes spilling against the marble like the waters of the Meridies Ocean.
Master Cleric Linus and his Clerics fanned out their lighter robes and arrayed themselves on the steps.
The same ramrod-straight backs, the same sneer on all twenty faces.
She stilled when an Inquisitor openly raked her over with gray eyes. An odd, white veil shrouded the lower half of his face from philtrum to jaw, leaving his nose and gaze bare, but there was no mistaking his amusement. Her half-frozen hands curled into fists.
“Petitor Sarai of Arsamea,” Inquisitor Blasius, who had called for silence, surveyed her from behind his beard with the aplomb of a man who’d caught a rat in a trap. “Tibi gratias ago for coming.”
Not that I had a hav?d choice. “I’m happy to make the time.”
Jeers rose from the white and silver banners waving from the eastern flank of the Aequitas. Aelius’s acolytes were out in full force to witness the verbal bloodsport they had demanded.
“Yes, there’s the matter of time.” Inquisitor Verentia cocked a dark eyebrow, her thin lips pursed.
It wasn’t lost on Sarai that the only woman to have ascended the ranks of the Elsarian Order had taken the seat usually occupied by Cassandane.
“Eight months for an Inquisitorial Hearing. An unprecedented delay.”
“Edessa had only two Tetrarchs until the Month of Seeding. My caseload was equally without precedent.”
“Remind me again, why we were missing two Tetrarchs?” Satisfaction radiated off Verentia when Sarai exhaled. “You threw the capital and the land into chaos. You can’t claim victimhood after the fact.
Sarai swallowed past the knot in her throat when the crowd roared their agreement.
Why did this hurt? She was no stranger to dislike.
The sour folk of Arsamea had made her youth a living hell.
Aelius and Tullus had broken her body and left her seething at the wrong man for four years.
Her dearest friend had delivered her into their hands.
And the debacle with the scuta even before then certainly hadn’t endeared her to the public.
Yet, there was a new virulence to the past eight months.
People had been content to support her and Kadra when they had been seen as running counter to Aelius’s established government.
Now, Kadra was the established government.
Every time he burned someone alive, justice began looking a lot like tyranny.
“Let’s begin.” Blasius stood, lifting both hands to the sky in an echo of Aelius’s statue towering over the Aequitas, still smiling benignly skyward. “Today, we, the Inquisitors for the High Elsar, call to Truth, to Wisdom, to crack open the heart before us such that we may discern—”
That’s my hav?d heart you’re talking about. Her fists went white-knuckled as he invoked all six gods of the pantheon of the High Elsar—Wrath had been relegated to the ambiguous Elsar again. Anger and exhaustion warred for purchase in her gut.
In the weeks after the Unraveling, she had dared envision her future: long years of righting wrongs with the man she loved. But her eyes had been too hopeful. Governance was a game of likability. She had lost before she’d had a chance to begin.
It had begun innocuously enough.
Outrage had swept Ur Dinyé after the reveal that Aelius’s fulgur scuta, or lightning shields, were in fact lightning rods designed to prey on the devout while dispossessing them of their land when the inevitable bolt struck during stormfall and razed their homes to brick and ash.
The Metals Guild had borne most of the public’s scorn, but the Elsarian Order and the over-religious had seen their share of mockery.
And that had been her first mistake—assuming that groups that had fallen from the height of power would accept defeat.
Assuming that they would be too busy licking their wounds for immediate retaliation.
First had come their ousting of Aelius’s replacement Tetrarch.
Like Harion, Marzia had allied with the Guilds to fund her campaign and bought herself a victorious election, but Sarai had felt sorry for her when she’d fled the capital three weeks later after Aelius’s Quarter had impeached her for incompetence.
Then, throngs of hecklers had begun appearing at her trials with Kadra.
Marzia had been practice. She was next.
Protests, false accusations of Aelius’s martyrdom and of her and Kadra having committed a coup—she hadn’t expected any of it to stick.
But repeating a lie long enough and loud enough gave it credence.
Over months, a fringe belief had become a competing truth—an easy thing in the insular capital of Edessa, the proud jewel of Ur Dinyé’s south.
Because as much as she sought to do right by its people, they preferred a scapegoat for their woes.
Aelius’s devotees had known that the Tetrarchy wouldn’t prosecute her.
So, in a devastating blow, they had allied with the Elsarian Order to spread venom.
She had finally understood it then. The Unraveling had affected too much across the land: politics, religion, and the rule of law.
Too many had lost power because of her. Now, they would reclaim it by discrediting her.
“All will be well,” Gaius had insisted yesterday when she’d shown as much interest in her amphora of wine as Anek did in men. “You’ve nothing to hide.”
“That’s just it!” She had slapped the hapless table with mounting hurt. “I shouldn’t have to prove a thing! Thousands saw me Summon Death.”
“You can show people the truth, Petitor Sarai. But you can’t make them believe it.”
“Then what good is showing it to them?”
Gaius had wisely said nothing.
A dull roar rumbled through the audience. Inhaling sharply, she searched for who had spiked the commotion. Her gaze caught on the front row. A wave of relief nearly sent her to her knees. They came.
Garbed in her customary bronze-edged crimson robes, Head Tetrarch Cassandane entered the court’s most opulent seating box—traditionally used by Petitors.
Her stunning features pulled into the same strained smile that had graced it since the Unraveling.
The country hadn’t reacted well to its first female Head Tetrarch.
No doubt the minutiae of her expressions would be picked apart by the crowd.
Anek followed Cassandane, fiery curls loosely contained at their nape. Sarai’s throat tightened at the wink they shot her. Short black hair slicked to his skull, Harion sauntered in with a haughty sniff. Here to see who wins and ally with them no doubt.
And then, him.
Magus Supreme Drenevan bu Kadra, her very heart, strode into the box with predatory elegance. The morning sun ran adoring fingers over his silhouette, limning a face that was a monument to ruthlessness and a map of severity.