Chapter Four

  1.

  The cawing of crows and the barking of dogs alike were muffled inside the Riverside veranda. Tiled in tarnished mosaic from a Suva merchant’s haughty tenements, the tall-ceilinged hall was a usual haunt for sweaty soldiers and their sweethearts, both willing and unwilling, as well as captains of respectable trade vessels, smugglers, and “guests of the state.” Even though the structure stuck out like a sore thumb in the run-down hamlet, its public status meant the gazes of society were often turned away in fear, making it a perfect spot for all acts unacceptable.

  A slight woman stood against the grills on the veranda ledge, her face covered by an overwrap, idly dropping rice into the river and watching the fishes fight over morsels. After a few minutes, without turning, she murmured, “Your Unug seems to keep you for longer and longer.”

  A man from behind her chuckled, “Jealous much? But don’t you worry, Love. It’s nothing but how I could and must ensure he has enough to send Onsoona. Honestly, the man wants me to dig peanuts out of granite. As if I were one of those parlor-trick magicians, or maybe God, when even squeavils would refuse to live in this god-forsaken country. But I forget myself. As much as I think you are better than the fishheads you live with, I should not be so outspoken to hurt one like you.”

  “Lilek,” Love sighed. “First, I admire your sense of social etiquette. Second, you are not going to appreciate this, but they are as much an irritant to me as they are to you.”

  Lilek drew a sharp breath. The exhale following could not be heard. A few more seconds of watching skin-colored fish, and Love needed to look at Lilek to divine his thoughts. He was not someone given to frequent silences.

  The disapproval on his face would have been comical had Love not felt a twinge of worry about what he really thought of her that moment. “What is the matter?” she asked, helplessly admiring the pistol on his left hip. As ambitious and pragmatic as she was despite being born in a tanner’s family, Love couldn’t help caring deeply for this man’s opinion of her.

  “Love, you may not realize this, but loyalty to one’s hearth is the first step toward loyalty to the Empire. I am a servant of the Empire, and, as much as my function is hated here, you can’t just let that turn you against your parents, ancestors, neighbours and friends. It’s disrespectful. Besides, merhumans belong to the Empire. I can resent all the wasted potential here, but you can’t just forsake your home for greener pastures elsewhere.”

  Love gaped at Lilek; in their six-month relationship, never once had he referred to her people as merhumans, choosing instead the epithet of “fishy scum” or “finnicky finnecks.” She felt a flash of anger at his inconsistency, calling out the place she hated all her life, the place that held no place for her, then switching sides and criticizing her the moment she echoed those sentiments.

  “So, do you expect me to stay in these festering marshes for the remainder of my life, languishing in rot just because my place is under the faulty, termite-infested leg of the chair that is the Empire, holding it up? I don’t think that’s the best way to express, or even learn loyalty to the Empire that surely values talents like yours and mine? Besides, what happens when the Empire decides your place to be under some other leg, and not this particular one, here with me?”

  Then, seeing Lilek’s frown unchanged, she added, “I have much more to offer this empire, Lilek, and it is not getting done sitting at home knitting loincloths or cleaning grape juice from the occasional saddle.”

  “What saddle?” asked Lilek sharply.

  “There, I knew that would interest you.” After a while of talking, she said, “So, maybe you should take me to Unug and get me a job. Despite our mutual dislike, I know when every little leaf in this village shakes in the wind. Besides, you’ll be there, my handsome knight, to protect me from anything untoward, and we’d only see more of each other.”

  Even the steadfast Lilek couldn’t resist that string of words, and the rest of their meeting was blissfully ignorant of the jeers of traders in the room beyond, or the storm clouds marching ever closer, garbed in darkness that would shame the night. Love’s smile felt aglow when they were about to fall asleep, and Lilek looked at her with the intensity of a stone knight. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, Love,” he said, “and despite my other beliefs, don’t think I don’t know you’re made for better things. It’s just that you’re fighting the gargantuan mountain of everything I have seen, known, and done so far, and what does it say when you’re able to shake that mountain at its very roots? All I have ever admired was the Empire, but these days, the Empire sometimes appears as you. Damned woman.”

  2.

  If Love had been seventy, not twenty, and if she'd been chivvying a bevy of grandchildren to bed instead of mourning a dead forbidden lover, she would have taken a moment to pause, think, or plot. But grief and its twinned senseless rage take their dues where they can, so she found herself caught in a storm of fury, denial and a hatred that had soured tenfold since the last time she’d seen Lilek on the veranda. She and her fellow villagers now sat huddled in crammed positions on the same veranda, but the rapt anxiety on their faces was a horizon away from Love’s detachment.

  A bunch of interrogating soldiers stood on a makeshift podium made of upturned boats, lesser ranking officers lining up the walls and the ledges, hands never far from their swords. The smell of mud and seaweed made them more impatient than usual, in turn making the villagers fidgety and Love’s older sisters more sniffly.

  “We know,” began the tallest man for the fourth time, “that you lot saw nothing, heard nothing, and smelled nothing even as two hundred men disappeared into thin air. As if Official Unug sold them as slaves to Emre, then made off over the Sea of Tartoses in a dinghy himself.”

  “What of it?” snapped a shaky voice from somewhere in the middle of the mass.

  “They walked off willingly, of course, because who doesn’t want to live like a war prisoner?” said the soldier silkily, glaring at the merhumans. “But all you saw was that Lilek, a completely unremarkable soldier, was standing before the village administration, watching the building burn before he, too, disappeared. This could only mean two things.”

  No one spoke.

  “One,” continued another soldier, as though in a prearranged play, “Lilek is some great saboteur, perhaps sent over the Canu ranges by one of the Southern powers. He effectively hid his skills from us, learnt a great deal about the Empire, and then wiped out three garrisons. A legend. A myth. He could be watching us from the dark currents even as we speak.”

  The crowd still said nothing. A few individuals could be seen adjusting their postures, probably barricading themselves against fear-driven bowels.

  “The other is more disturbing, if more plausible,” said a third man with warts on his nose, “A small village of merhumans, out in the middle of nowhere, got a bit too jealous of the fireworks over Suva and wanted to cash in. Lilek was their accomplice. They draw the garrisons away on some foolhardy mission and turn them over to some enemy for bloody gold. Their ambition comes from jealousy of the good human, not from grit, and they forget their place in hubris. After all, gold can be blinding.”

  The pause that came over might as well have torn itself open to pour out a brood of implications. The villagers, however, stewed in their collective, pungent fear, oblivious to the impending doom.

  “I have led a lot of investigations,” resumed the first interrogator, “and seen a wide variety of miscreants. Never have I seen one like you lot. Yes, you’re afraid, but not enough, and not in the correct manner. Your stories are awfully coordinated, and strangely minimal. It’s the symmetry in your conspiracy that is further belied by the pure innocence of your stories. To be honest, these symptoms may have sufficed for someone else, but your positionality calls for a third factor to rule falsehood out.”

  The third man pointed at a place on the ground where three nails lied. “Well then, there’s about five hundred fish people here. That makes five thousand nails on the hands and another five on the legs. I suppose we’ll go through at least a thousand?”

  “Apologies. It’s gonna be a long time, and we don’t have no food here.”

  There were multiple gulps in the darkness, and many glances darted here and there. The children must have been hungry by now, but not one made a sound.

  “Please start with me,” a weary, resonant voice stood up from the background. Jhorka was wounded, but the woman had always had stone within her.

  “Why give you all the attention, honey? Were you Lilek’s principal whore?” mocked one of the soldiers.

  A tugging from her knees made Love realize she had not only risen up from her lonely corner, but was also marching forward with purpose. She noticed her parents frantically gesture that she hide back into the crowd, but with a curt shake of her head, she turned back to the soldiers, who watched her keenly.

  “We loved each other, he and I, but he was killed, as were the rest of your colleagues. He did not kill anyone,” said Love, grief slithering out her eyes despite the shut gates of pride.

  “How would you know? Were you the principal whore instead of this old ragbag?” jeered one of the soldiers from the veranda.

  Love, quick to anger and wrestling with her grief alone, snapped. “I said he loved me. Are you deaf, or are your ears too small to catch one word edgewise? He was everything for me.”

  “Hold on. You said he didn’t kill anyone. Who did? They were killed?” the lead interrogator curtailed the taunter’s forming retort.

  “Every villager here could tell you a huge part of what happened when Unug died, and they hold much more probable surmises about what happened that night. Yet, you don’t have the brains or the energy to take their slipshod story apart!”

  “Answer only what you’re asked,” replied the interrogator coldly. “What do you know?”

  “Well, I wasn’t there. But I heard of an archmage. A stranger with a temper, and they called him Lilek. My Lilek would never kill anyone without a reason, never. Why don’t you tell them?” Love turned to her villagers helplessly.

  The fear of the merhumans had finally burst forth. The smell of sweat intensified, making the place nightmarish to breathe in. Half of them verbally denied Love’s statements, even as their blanched faces gave them away. The other half clamoured for her to sit down and to shut her mad thoughts up.

  “That’s not all!” Love insisted. “Around now, there’s far fewer of them, I swear! Usually, there’d be far too many more orphans and urchins milling about the place. I swear it, I don’t see many of them.”

  “She’s lying!” cried Jhorka desperately. “She has always been a bit out of it. Always fighting with someone. She’s just trying to get us in trouble with fantasies!”

  Love’s temper pushed beyond her capacity for self-control, and she made a mad dash at Jhorka, intending to rip all the hair out of that nasty skull.

  The same soldier that had needled her stepped into her way, holding her in a way that was too unwholesome, making her struggle furiously to break free. His fetid breath passed right by her hair as he whirled her around towards the interrogators. “There, there, honey. We need more information out of you yet.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “No, that’s alright,” the lead interrogator said nonchalantly. “We have enough for now. An archmage is troubling. These people clearly know more, but we’ll need time to get it out. We’ll begin tomorrow morning. In the meantime, watch over this prostitute; she’s valuable.”

  “I’m not a prostitute!” Love snarled.

  “Shut up,” the soldier said from behind, “Unless you want us to show you exactly why you’re one.”

  Love had thought all grief had been wrung out of her, turning her limbs into stone forever, but hot tears still came out at his insult.

  “Fine. Call me that; I don’t mind,” she appealed to the lead interrogator, “But tell me that you at least believe me! That Lilek was honorable; that he lived and breathed for the Empire! Tell me that you’ll honour him and bring his murderers to justice!” But the man turned away without acknowledging her, conferring with his colleagues instead.

  “Don’t take it personally, woman,” one of the soldiers around her said. “But you could never be Lilek’s lover, and it’s you who’s sullying his name.”

  “What’s wrong with being his lover?” challenged Love, her frustration back at the surface. “You are aware that every year we have hundreds of our brides marrying your men. Besides, all of us here know how many of our women you have sought in those places you call trade houses. What is so surprising about Lilek and I intending to start a life together?”

  “Because a human is more than their body,” the soldier bit out. “It’s fine to seek a body, but only the worst of our men would stoop to satisfying himself with just that. You, on the other hand, seem not to realize it. You speak like one of our pleasure sources who is new to the market, thinking sass will help where fate has failed. A human and animal cohabiting does not elevate the animal’s status, it tarnishes the human.”

  “Ronoe, that’s maybe a bit too much. She clearly loved him. Let her be,” murmured another soldier.

  “What do we do with these, boss?” asked a soldier of the interrogators, indicating the cowering villagers.

  “It was all Gollum’s fault!” several old women cried out from the crowd, terror foaming on their filmy eyes. “He has never listened to reason!”

  The room erupted into chaotic noises once more. The lead interrogator held a hand up, “Hold them all for the night. Don’t let a fly through, and be careful with the prostitute. We’ll start early morning. First, torch the surrounding villages, then Riverside. Let’s find out if they value their properties as much as they should. Her Ladyship will also reach by that time, and we’ll tell her of the one that co-operated as well as the many that didn’t.”

  The villagers, struggling with denial, told themselves the order was only to spook them, for without them, Suva and the Empire would not have an overflowing coffer or a thriving economy. When reality knocked on the corners of their minds, they steadily ignored it. United by Love’s betrayal and still holding on to the devastating hope brought by Mer, they sat together, long into the night, while Love sat by herself and looked only at the fire. It was Jhorka’s son, clear-eyed for once, who spotted the thick columns of smoke curling up on the sky over Leva and Ova next morning. Many of them wailed, and a few of them tried to find the interrogators again to try and forestall their destruction, but couldn’t find them anywhere. What they found was a new force, strong by a thousand bodies, stridently marching toward their village, freezing their sluggish blood in its tracks.

  3.

  The insects that dogged their camps seemed to multiply disproportionately every time Verna sighed. Next to her, Khembi, for the first time since their march began from Strovinkaya’s palace, was completely silent clomping along the muddy roads. The constant gap between the outriders and the main column let Verna breathe fresh air instead of the caging stink of unwashed bodies, uncleaned teeth, and the subtler stink of old gore from weapons. The weapons of magic, while exempt from blood and entrails, still managed to stink from communal handling and the many secondary uses to meet their handlers’ needs.

  Behind them, the column stretched long, surprisingly leaving little destruction in its wake. For all his faults, Khembi ensured the soldiers did not litter much or make egregious messes. His was a way of delicate, courtly cruelty — despite being on the move for three days now, his outriders still looked fresh and ready for battle.

  The same could not be said for Lady Strovinkaya. She was in a carriage drawn by two volcanics and two horses, her girth not leaving room for even maids to ride with her. Only she could think of adding two volcanics, only faster than green tortoises, to two horses, only slower than a telemorph relay. Verna felt sorry for the sods, stranded in a foreign land where few spoke Volcanu, treated like animals, most likely sold by their families for some bodily defect or another.

  It was with the intention of finding more out about them that Verna had approached the woman, but after a two-hour long discussion always circling back to her value as chattel, she finally decided it was enough and simply leaped down from the moving carriage, joining the mages practicing their art. Soon, however, she realized they held no intriguing objects of inquiry, and she was at the risk of revealing her identity if she objected to too many of their traditional methods. The rest of the days were spent in Khembi’s company or with the soldiers barely recruited. The former begrudgingly told her about his military campaigns, especially the successes, and the latter had jokes she kept seeing in her dreams and waking up in fits of laughter. They were scandalized to see Verna not blush to a single one.

  But finally, the village said to be the epicenter of the recent disturbances came into view, and Verna sighed for what she hoped was the last time. Here was a chance to clear this up, and preferably a bath after that. But the sight that she came to shocked her into speechlessness.

  Old people, women, children, and a few weak-looking youths were all that greeted them. Not one of them smiled, even in wonder, instead looking like this was the last minute of their lives. This was what the system Verna was also a part of evoked. They were afraid to see her.

  “My Lady,” a tall bald man bowed entirely too deeply.

  “Athor, my favourite,” rumbled Strovinkaya with contentment. “What have you for me?”

  “Quite a lot, My Lady. You will not have to linger here for long. There was an archmage.”

  “How interesting. An archmage in my backyard. I wonder exactly which of my peers has started to think his nose too tall for his own good?”

  “The headwoman lied, My Lady. A prostitute confessed to us.” Strovinkaya’s nose curled at the word.

  The soldiers brought a bleeding old woman out, red marks left by lashes cutting deeply into her cheeks. Salty tears flowed down her nose and lips, and the muscles in her neck quivered now and then. Verna couldn’t stop herself. “Good mother, what may your name be? And why do you look like this?” she asked.

  The woman responded to her in barely a whisper, “I am called Jhorka, Lady. As for my state,” and to Verna’s utter horror, she collapsed, shuddering with sobs seemingly wrenched from some unknown depth of the river itself. “I... did something... te-terrible, and I did not surrender to the local garrison and now...” and her weeping overtook her so completely that she raised her trembling hand and pointed somewhere to the north.

  Verna did not understand at first, but thick smoke in that direction soon caught up with her slow brain. Villages were burning.

  “Who did this?” asked Verna, a strange anger taking her over. “Was it this man called the Great Lilek?”

  Jhorka only sobbed harder while the rest of the village stood frozen in horror. Then, one of the youths stepped forward and said, “No, My Lady. It’s not him, although I am pretty certain that it was within his capability. It is done by y — I mean, our soldiers because we did not give them satisfactory answers when they questioned us yesterday about the deaths of so many soldiers recently.”

  “So you knew about it and did nothing!” boomed Strovinkaya, who looked more like she had found a target for her wrath than she was interested to find out the truth. “You know that harbouring traitors is a punishable offense, young man. Now, this village will be made an example of, with all of you burned alive with your precious huts.”

  “B-But, Lady, they have nothing to do with it, it is all my fault!” sobbed Jhorka. “They are only lying to h-help me, but I committed the mistake.”

  “Mistake? As though it is a child’s play. Mistake! Woman, you committed a crime. A CRIME! Do you hear me? And they are committing one,” jerking her head toward the villagers behind Jhorka, “by harbouring you.”

  “What did you not have? You were given a place to live by me. Food from my silos. Soldiers to protect you from criminals. Yet, you let an archmage walk right into MY village and massacre MY men? Not one of you has any scratches while all my men died. How could this have happened if you were not all complicit?”

  The lead interrogator coughed at this.

  “Please, My Ladyship, I beg of you!” wailed Jhorka. “They had nothing to do with it. Please let them learn from it; please give them a chance! I was the one —”

  “You talk too much,” then, turning to her interrogators, she said, “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. Leave the headwoman alone. Leave one of the good houses alone. I’m in need of some good food and a good sleep. She can make me the food. Burn the rest.”

  But Verna stepped forward and held up her hand. “No.”

  “Excuse me? Do you defy me?”

  “No, My Lady. I only think we need to question them further to know the whole truth, as there are too many layers to this,” trying to keep her strange anger in check.

  “Layers? If only you would decide to see those layers in a suitable dress, my dear, instead of repeatedly questioning my choices. You are a guest, one sent away for her own protection. So hold your tongue,” snapped Strovinkaya.

  Verna knew that she should back down, apologize, then fade into the line of soldiers. But she couldn’t. She thought of the illness her mother suffered for long, unable to share with a Verna too taken by her own studies and discoveries. Little Jacub who depended on her to keep him safe from the rest of their conniving cousins. She thought of the cursed moment she realized her hobby improvements to a darned lever mechanism were put into his uncle’s pet guillotine, needing a smaller blade now. She also thought of Sili, scared of losing her father, but considerate enough not to ask her to do something about it. Last and worst of all, she thought of Biherl who died for an archmage he knew nothing about, and because she stood by and let it happen, acting all surprised and helpless.

  So she couldn’t keep quiet. She spoke the words she’d never thought she would end up saying: “Stop. They are my subjects. I am Princess Verna Woodman, third in line to the Woodman Empire, and these people are under my protection.”

  The heretic princess! Mad Verna! Woodman! The strange one! The whispers spread like wildfire among the soldiers. The villagers merely stared at her, bewildered. Strovinkaya, however, only smiled like a cat debating a mouse.

  “Your Highness, first, how do you expect these poor fools to believe you are a princess without all the trappings of one? You have been acting most peculiarly, or in the language of this company, in a slovenly, shameless manner,” said Strovinkaya. “And even if they believed you, they are first and foremost my subjects. I heard you were a well-informed one, if a bit strange and unattractive. What makes you think you can just saunter into my land and claim it as if it belonged to your grandfather? No offense to him.”

  “This offense to the Woodman family will be remembered,” Verna said coldly.

  “My dear, you’re the throwaway embarrassment of a has-been family mainly occupied with their own survival these days. I’m the sovereign of four million souls, the breadbasket of the entire Empire, and a respected peer to nobility from the Western Cities. Words are a cause for humiliation if not backed by power, and you force me to teach you that lesson. Now sit down and watch how legal proceedings are carried out in a functioning part of the Empire.”

  “No!” Verna shouted, as some of the overeager soldiers started lighting up torches, preparing to throw them on the buildings.

  Strangely, even after being denied for so long, the mage at her core wasn’t scared. She first willed the river water to break into droplets and turn the air into heavy fog. When the wind seemed like it would refuse to carry the water, she also heated it up to make it do her bidding. Then she made the fog rapidly move through the columns of soldiers, quick enough that Strovinkaya’s mages couldn’t throw up a defense. There was no time. With her fog in place, She began to conjure up multiple scenes — a sunny garden, a rainy hill with a tiger, a bird-filled forest — and forced it on the minds of the mages still reeling from the fog. She had no way of knowing how much of it worked, but the panic of ordinary soldiers also helped. Strovinkaya screamed at her people to fight the mad princess and subdue her.

  The chaos got worse as the merhumans, not sure what was happening, began to disperse in all directions, some of them falling right upon Strovinkaya’s men. The soldiers’ confusion saved many, but some were not so lucky. “Merhumans, to me!” Verna screamed. And then she got hit by a particularly large chunk of wood right on the nose, making her head spin.

  Several things happened at once. Her fog dissipated for a moment. She saw Strovinkaya looking straight at her, and whatever she saw, Strovinkaya had no nerve to handle it. Verna saw her vanishing into the soldiers, all the while calling for someone to capture Verna and put her inside a cage to subdue her crazy magic. The merhumans realized she was trying to help, and they had a goal to converge on. Horribly, the mages also realized the same thing.

  The attacks of the mages, streams of invisible heat, were followed by lashes of water and air. The magical riflemen also knew where to aim now, and a few shots rung out in the haziness. Verna tried to thicken the fog, but abandoned it as too strenuous. Instead, she built a shield of water before them, forty feet in one direction and ten more than her biggest so far. More shots came now, and several of them penetrated through her thin shield. Something bit into Verna’s foot, perhaps a rock. She tried to launch another perceptual attack, and almost passed out from the headache that came, darkening her vision.

  “Lady,” someone shouted from behind her. She ignored it. “Princess!” it was more urgent.

  “I am trying to give you time to flee. Just go!” she said, her voice thin with strain.

  “Drop your shield for a moment,” said Jhorka, coming up beside her. “I know some magic.”

  “They have a dozen mages. We are nothing in comparison. Besides, they are shooting.”

  “It’ll be alright. The others are running as we speak. Let me also buy some time.”

  It was a dubious proposition, but they had no way out, and Verna had no energy left to consider the merits of the plan. Undoing her shield almost made her faint from the relief. “Now, Jhorka!” she rasped.

  The woman didn’t need telling twice. She kneeled on the ground like a pious devotee, and the river rose behind her with a rageful rumble. It spilled out at her call even faster than the fog had come for Verna, coming to wash everything away. Even as she fell, spun, and charged with the currents, her lips pulled back into a thrilled smile. This was merhuman magic!

  She had no recollection of what happened next, except that her body stopped hurting, and that she went to sleep inside the river, strong old arms wrapped around her, never letting her slip.