Nolyn Read online

  Nolyn continued to stand, feeling oddly restrained, trapped by his own intent, forced to follow his father to whatever absurd end they were headed to. At that moment, he had no idea where that would be. And for all his nonchalance and casual indifference, Nolyn didn’t think his father knew, either.

  “I was certain it was punishment for something, but I was wrong. It was a gift. Couldn’t have convinced me of it at the time, but that’s what it was. By suffering more than everyone else, I grew strong, and because I didn’t complain, I gained the respect of my peers. My father forever gagged those who would point fingers and say I had it easy or that I was weak because I was born privileged. His poor treatment made me their equal. Instead of servants, my father gave me brothers. Instead of resentment, I was gifted respect. In place of doubt, I had earned confidence in myself and in the eyes of those around me. In my ignorance, what I had believed to be unwarranted cruelty was love—at least the sort showed by an Instarya to a son.”

  Nolyn wasn’t certain what to say to that. If words were blows, Nolyn would have been down on his back with his wind knocked out.

  This isn’t at all what I expected.

  “You’re not like me, of course,” Nyphron went on. “At least that’s what you want to think. You’re a different sort altogether, aren’t you? You would never treat your son the way I treated you, never treat your wife the way I treated mine, and you certainly wouldn’t rule the empyre the way I have.”

  “That’s mostly why I’m here.” Nolyn thought he could get in a few jabs of his own in and turn the tide of the battle in his favor.

  His father was quicker. “Of course it is. You came to implement change because you know you’re my opposite. You are nothing at all like me, and as such, you’re perfectly suited to enact the changes necessary to fix the world, right?” His father smiled wryly. “I certainly would never have led a rebellion against the ruler of my people the way you’re doing now. Oh, wait. I did, didn’t I? Well, be that as it may, I hear you’ve gathered a group of exceptional warriors, each of whom is renowned for combat skill—seven of them, correct? Did you know there were exactly that many Galantians—one of whom was considered to be the greatest warrior in the world? You don’t have anyone like that in your little squad, do you? Someone quiet, someone else who’s loud, perhaps someone from a different culture but who fits in just fine?”

  Nyphron took another sip of wine.

  Nolyn didn’t know which to be more concerned about: his father’s intimate knowledge of his activities or the obvious connections he was making.

  For a moment, Nolyn suspected the emperor had planted a spy in his midst, but he quickly discounted the idea. He didn’t need a spy. More than a hundred men had witnessed his activities since landing at Vernes. He’d hardly made his presence or intent a secret. He would also know about Amicus—the rest might even be guesses.

  Nolyn had had enough of letting his father swing away. My turn. “Over ninety percent of the people in this empyre are human. Yet of the eleven provinces, only two are governed by men. One is a temporary appointment, and the other is about to be replaced by a Fhrey. Not a single human has a position of genuine authority here at the palace. The same is nearly true for the provinces. The treasurers, city tribunes, censors, nearly all the legates, most of the prymuses, the judges, advocates, prefects, and lawyers are Instarya. The ten biggest corporations, including the gladiator schools and chariot teams, are also run by Fhrey. And then, of course, there’s the emperor himself. For an empyre born from a war to end the tyranny of Fhrey dominance, this is pretty messed up.”

  Nyphron rolled the cup between his two open palms. “When you put it that way, it sounds quite unfair.”

  “And how would you describe it?”

  “Necessary.”

  Nolyn wondered if it was a simple bluff, or if his father really had a reason. “How so?”

  “The Instarya are in charge because they must be.”

  Not a reason. That was exactly what he expected his father to say. So blinded by pure prejudice he—

  “Humans, you may have noticed, have the life span of gnats,” his father went on. “They learn a job, just become proficient at it, and then they die. Reliability comes with age. To run an empyre this size, I need stable leaders, not power-hungry, short-lived humans. That way invites disaster. It’s all quite romantic, this notion of a people having a say in how they are ruled, but the reality is that humans are not capable of long-term thinking. It’s not their fault. Their short existence reduces the distance of their vision. They focus only on today, or tomorrow, and frequently fixate on yesterday. That’s no way to guide an empyre. When the fate of the world is in your hands, gambling is an unaffordable luxury, and idealism is often burned on the altar of reality. Longevity grants knowledge and experience that humans couldn’t possibly obtain in their half a century. When choosing who should fill a position, emotion—or a sense of social justice—should never have a say. The choice must be determined by who can do the job the best. You wouldn’t send your worst soldiers into battle to defend your home just because they feel left out. When the future is at stake, you send your best and brightest, the elite of your society. That is what the Instarya are. Your mistake is seeing us as different. You’re focusing on race instead of common sense. Your time among the rank and file has caused you to see the Instarya as something other than equal members of the empyre.”

  He’s accusing me of intolerance? Absurd just received a new definition.

  “But they aren’t equal,” Nolyn protested. “They’re privileged. Instarya aren’t even tried in the same courts as humans.”

  “Equal doesn’t mean ‘the same.’ Humans are equal to one another, and yet, no two are identical. The members of your squad are superior to other members of the legion. Among humans, they are the elite. And yes, being the best affords certain privileges. They are called rewards. Without them, there is little incentive to be the best, and no one wants a society of mediocrity. Also, it would be a travesty of justice for Fhrey to be judged by a court of humans. People—even Fhrey—tend to resent their superiors, and such a thing would only invite spiteful attacks.”

  The way he spoke, the manner in which he said things, the sheer magnitude of his confidence made every word sound true.

  But it isn’t.

  Nolyn countered, “Being emperor doesn’t make you right. It only means you should be right, and in this I know you’re wrong. The Fhrey’s longevity and their privilege cause them to believe they are better than those they govern. They can’t help but lose empathy for humans, to see them as a lower class, as animals that don’t need to be treated with dignity. And while you may be right about the shortsighted nature of humans, I know of no one who would prefer the enlightened rule of a foreign race over poor self-rule. That’s why you rebelled against Lothian.”

  Nyphron looked confused. “He and I were of the same race.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t see it that way, did you? To you, he wasn’t merely Fhrey. He was of a different tribe, so unlike yours that they were almost a different race. He was Miralyith, and you were Instarya. The Miralyith told you they were the elite, didn’t they? Both of you were Fhrey but of two lines that had split long ago into different cultures with divergent values. He lived on the far side of the Nidwalden in luxury and refinement while members of your tribe were forced to scrape by in the wilderness. That galled you, drove you to rebel against its rule. And if I were speaking to Lothian right now, he would make the same argument you just did. That the Miralyith are better suited to rule because of their indisputable advantage of magic. Don’t you see? It’s the same thing, and the humans want just what you did—a voice.” Nolyn took a half step forward. “Have you ever considered that you might believe the Instarya to be superior merely because you are one? That you see your own strengths clearly but are blind to your faults? How can a member of only one of two competing groups fairly evaluate people and accurately assign the titles of elite and superior? Yo
u would need someone capable of fairly representing both groups.”

  Nyphron chuckled. “Let me guess . . . you?”

  Sephryn reached up and took down the long bow. It came off the hooks easily, and she held it in one hand. The old weapon was as airy as a hollow bone—lighter than she remembered. Her fingers wrapped around the grip, and memories returned.

  “You’re overthinking,” Moya had said as she tutored Sephryn so many centuries ago.

  Sephryn was holding the bow straight out with her arm locked, the string pulled back as far as she was able, an arrow nocked. She had her left eye closed, her right eye open, looking down the length of the shaft.

  “What are you doing?” Moya asked, hands on hips, an eternal scowl of disapproval on her face.

  “I’m aiming.” Sephryn struggled to hold the bow steady. Audrey wasn’t weak, and Sephryn didn’t have the strength to bend her fully. Pulling the string as far as she did, Sephryn’s arm grew tired and began to shake.

  “Aiming? What do you mean, aiming?”

  Her mother knew exactly what Sephryn meant. Moya’s feigned ignorance was being used to belittle her daughter. By treating Sephryn’s actions as ridiculous, as so unthinkable as to warrant a dumbfounded question, her mother drove her disapproval home. There was no reason to be so insulting, so dramatic, so condescending, and little things like that increasingly irritated Sephryn. Perhaps her mother had always been demeaning. Maybe Sephryn never noticed before because she was too young to see; back then, it was all she noticed. Sephryn was twelve, just starting to make the turn from child to woman, and in that transition, Moya’s rule by ridicule had risen to the next level.

  Sephryn let the arrow fly. It missed the acorn by a foot.

  “What do you want from me? I have to aim. How can I hit a Tetlin acorn the size of a—”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Watch my . . . are you serious?” It was Sephryn’s turn to pretend ignorance and ask a question that wasn’t actually an inquiry. Only twelve, but she was old enough to realize she had mimicked the exact action she had seen as a fault with her mother.

  I might not be able to hit the acorn, but the nut hasn’t fallen very far. That unpleasant recognition, the horrible truth that she might be a reflection of her mother, sparked a need to lash out, to fight against the inevitable. At the time, she hadn’t realized her reaction was more proof of how much of Moya there was in Sephryn. She even went to the unconscious effort of placing her free hand on her hip. “You curse like the Tetlin whore herself and—”

  That’s when Moya hit her. Not hard, merely a slap, but it hurt, and the sting to her cheek was the least of it.

  Sephryn didn’t want to cry—not in front of Moya. She wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction. Sephryn clenched her teeth, willing her emotions to stay down. The effort made her shake just as the bow had.

  “Don’t you ever swear by that name again,” Moya ordered. “Do you hear me?”

  Sephryn did nothing more than blink.

  “I don’t know where you get such language,” her mother continued, shaking her head.

  Where I get it! Sephryn had been furious, sucking air in and out of her nose so forcefully it made her nostrils flare.

  “Take another arrow,” Moya ordered. “And this time don’t think. Don’t aim. It’s like throwing a ball, a single fluid motion. Draw down. Pull to your cheek. Arch your back, press your shoulder blades toward each other. Don’t think—feel. Let your body take over. Arch like the wood, then release the tension and fly.”

  Fuming, teeth still clenched in mute rage, Sephryn loaded the arrow. She wasn’t thinking about the acorn a hundred feet away; she was fixated on her mother and the tingling heat on her cheek. She wanted the lesson to end.

  Sephryn drew Audrey. In her anger, she found the power to pull the string deeper than ever before. Without pause, she loosed the arrow. She did so without thought, without care, without overthinking.

  The acorn split in half.

  For an instant, Sephryn couldn’t believe it. She’d tried to hit that thing for days. Only once had she gotten close. That time the arrow hit dead center, and the nut was cut into perfect halves.

  “See?” Moya said. That single word, bathed and dressed in coarse condescension, shattered Sephryn’s moment of triumph.

  Moya ruined everything.

  “And she’s still at it,” Sephryn said to herself as she ran her fingers along the carved wood. She hadn’t touched the weapon in a long time. Now, she stood in the growing light of morning before a dead hearth, remembering the day when she was twelve and her mother had slapped her.

  Sephryn’s fingers continued along the upper limb and down to the grip. That bow had been such an important part of her mother’s life that it felt as if she might still be in there somewhere, the weapon haunted by Moya’s spirit.

  Why did she hit me?

  Centuries later, Sephryn still didn’t know. Moya was famous for her crude language and behavior. Maybe it was a case of do as I say, not as I do, but Sephryn had cursed in front of her mother before and never heard a peep about it. Thinking harder, Sephryn couldn’t recall a time when Moya had cursed by the name of the Tetlin Witch, even though almost everyone else did. The phrase had become so common it had lost its power and fallen out of favor. By the time of that archery lesson, the term was considered too tame for most. Why Moya had taken such offense must have been because of her mother’s tall tales.

  Supposedly, Moya had met the witch. The incident was one of her mother’s most outlandish stories—the one where she died and had tea and cakes with the gods and every famous person who had ever lived. The chronicle ended with Moya’s return to the land of the living just in time to witness the birth of the empyre. Sephryn suspected that story started as a myth, an ancient yarn Moya had heard around the lodge fire in her youth and into which she’d inserted her own name and those of her friends.

  But a more likely explanation was that Moya had been drinking the day of that archery lesson. Sephryn’s mother hadn’t cared much for wine or beer, but that spring, the year in which Persephone died, she’d discovered a fondness for both.

  Moya took the empress’s death hard, but the serious drinking occurred thirteen years later when Roan passed. By then, Moya was in her sixties. Sephryn had grown strong enough to pull Audrey deep, and she was consistently hitting acorns at five hundred feet, but her mother’s eyes were too weak by then to see. Wrinkled and stripped of her ability to shoot, Moya had begun her campaign of epic tirades against Sephryn’s eternally youthful father. The drinking added bite to her bitterness. That’s when things went bad. The last fourteen years of her life, Moya had put the Tetlin Witch’s notoriety to shame.

  The original string and arrows are upstairs.

  Sephryn had squirreled them away under floorboards shortly after moving in, back when she rented the middle floor. She’d only just returned to Percepliquis after Moya’s death. Her father had insisted she take the bow, said it hurt him too much to see it. The sight of Audrey was painful for Sephryn, too, and she would have stuffed it under the floorboards, but the gap between the support beams wasn’t large enough to accommodate Audrey. Substituting new arrows and string, she had used the bow when angry to release her frustration. The last time was after her argument with Nolyn. After that, the bow had lived in a corner of the room, wrapped in a cloth. Sephryn couldn’t recall how it got above the mantel. She must have put it there at some point but couldn’t remember when or why.

  For her current undertaking, Sephryn felt the need to use the old arrows.

  After eight hundred years, the quiver and string might have turned to dust. She headed toward the stairs. Only one way to find out.

  Sephryn hadn’t been to the second floor since the murder-kidnapping. Ascending the stairs was something she did slowly. She heard the creak of each loose step. The sun was growing brighter, morning well on its way. She didn’t know how long it would take to pry the arrows and string out, and if they
hadn’t survived the years, she wasn’t sure what she would do. She had plenty of practice arrows, which would likely do the job, but they weren’t designed to kill. The ones under the floor already had. She also wanted a bit of practice to warm up. Then she would need to locate a good spot to shoot from such as a rooftop near the Imperial Plaza. There was so much left to do. Sephryn had an emperor to assassinate.

  Light was coming in the window of the palace, faint and hazy, but the sun was on its way. Given his father’s admissions, Nolyn didn’t expect an attack anytime soon. He’d lost his bid to take the throne without striking a single blow.

  “So it’s not ambition but self-righteousness that drives your bid for power?” Nyphron said in a form of conclusion. “Not sure how I feel about that. Must have gotten that kind of mindset from your mother. She was that way.”

  Standing before his father in the light of a brightening Founder’s Day, a quick calculation left Nolyn with equally poor choices.

  “So what now?” Nolyn asked.

  “You’re the one who barged into my house. You tell me.”

  Nolyn wished he could. There was an outside chance that if he killed his father, he might be capable of persuading the legions to back him. That hope was slim, though, since serving an emperor wasn’t nearly as enticing as being emperor. Against their superior numbers, Nolyn had little chance of prevailing. There was also a possibility that his father would forgive him. Lastly, Nyphron could be bluffing. He obviously knew about the rebellion, but he might be lying about the successful bribes.

  Nolyn laid a hand to his sword.

  “Hold on,” Nyphron said. “You’ve already made one ridiculous error. Allow me to prevent you from making a bigger one.”