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Behind him, the soldier he hadn’t recognized spoke from the doorway, having entered without summons or permission. “Oh, I should clarify,” he said, smirking away. “I didn’t mean a celebration of yourvictory. Sir. But of ours.”
Jael sputtered.
Drawing sword from sheath in one smooth motion, Liraz rose from her chair.
“Karou,” said Akiva, as they moved silently through the camp.
“Yes?” she whispered. The deserted camp was eerie, but she knew it wouldn’t stay this way for long. The troops would arrive soon enough, and then it would be dangerous for them to stay. If they were going to move on Jael, they should do it now.
To her shock, though, Akiva abruptly dropped his glamour.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, alarmed. They were in full view of a guard tower, and Jael’s personal escort had scarcely dispersed. They could be anywhere. Why, then, didn’t Akiva look concerned?
Why did he look… amazed?
“That soldier,” he said, indicating the emperor’s pavilion, and the guard who had just slipped inside it behind Jael. “That was Xathanael.”
Liraz.Jael had to blink because the queer cloak of darkness shifted and seemed to move with her as she came out from behind the desk. Long legs, long stride, no hurry. Liraz of the Misbegotten came forth with an escort of darkness, and her hands were ink-black with all the lives she had taken, and the darkness that cloaked her had taken as many or more. Moving like mercury, it resolved into forms by her sides.
There were two of them: winged and feline, with the heads and necks of women. Sphinxes, and they were smiling.
“Misbegotten and revenants together, if you can credit it,” said the soldier behind him.
“My brother Xathanael,” said Liraz, in such a calm way as though she were a hostess here, to make polite introductions. “And do you know Tangris and Bashees? No? Perhaps by their popular name, then. The Shadows That Live?”
This Jael could notcredit, though he saw it with his own eyes: Liraz, as deadly as she was splendid, standing between The Shadows That Live. The Shadows That Live.In a camp like this one, during the chimaera campaigns, there had been no greater terror than these mysterious assassins.
Ice cut through him. It was when he thought to call for his guards that the full realization descended on him, belatedly and like a cage: The camp was taken, and so was he, and by now his guards must be, too.
His guards, maybe, but not his army. Jael’s hope rallied. They were his salvation, headed this way, and in numbers to easily overwhelm the paltry force here. Numbers. Let even Akiva strive against such numbers. Jael couldn’t fall into the same trap as last time, and let himself be taken as leverage. He eyed the sphinxes. One of them winked at him, and he shuddered.
“A bravura strategy,” he said, stalling. “Enemies unite.”
“It’s your own gift to Eretz,” Liraz replied, “and I’ll make sure you’re remembered for it. ‘The Several Days’ Emperor,’ you’ll be called, because that was all the time you had, and yet, in it, you not only dissolved the Empire, you accomplished the extraordinary feat of uniting mortal enemies in a lasting peace.”
“Lasting,” he scoffed. “As soon as I’m dead, you’ll fall right back at each other’s throats.”
Bad choice of words.
“Dead?” Liraz regarded him with surprise. “Why, uncle. Are you unwell? Pla
Jael strained, listening for some sign that his army was drawing near. She must have noticed. She shook her head ruefully, as though she were sorry for him, then looked a question at the smirker, who nodded.
“Good.” She turned back to Jael. “Come. There’s something you should see.”
Jael didn’t wish to see anything she wanted to show him. He thought to draw his sword then, but the sphinx who had winked at him came at him in a blur half-cat, half-smoke, and wreathed around him. A daze overtook him—a sweet, soft stupor—and he missed his chance. Liraz disarmed him as though he were a child or a drunk, tossed his sword aside, and shoved him toward the door and out into the camp.
Before anything else, he saw Beast’s Bane dead ahead. Instinctively, he flinched. Come to kill him as he said he would, and Jael’s guards were scattered and gone?
But Beast’s Bane wasn’t even looking at him. “Liraz!” he cried, and there was joy in his voice that should have burned Jael, but he scarcely noticed it, fixing instead on what Liraz had brought him out to see.
Like a storm cloud overhead came the shadow of an army. It was tremendous, spa
And it wasn’t his.
He stared up, head craned back and all else forgotten, trying furiously to calculate the number those ranks represented. They should have had no more than three hundred Misbegotten, even if they had all survived the attack in the Adelphas. Even if…
The smirking soldier. “They put up a valiant defense,” he had said, and so it would seem. Of the troops hovering overhead, a fair swath were clad in Misbegotten black. And the rest? Chimaera were among them, yes. They didn’t keep the same steady formation as seraphim, but were just what could be expected of them: wild beasts, no uniformity in shape or size or dress. They were a bestiary shaken open, and godstars help the angels who allied with them.
Godstars help the Second Legion, then, for Jael saw, through a haze of fury, that they made up the bulk of this sky-borne force, steel-clad and plain in their standard-issue armor, no colors, no standards, no crests or coats of arms. Only swords and shields. Oh so many swords and shields.
And there, from up the mountains, came his own white-clad Dominion, overmatched, and caught off guard, and Jael had no choice but to stand on the ground and watch as the two forces faced each other across a gulf of sky. Emissaries ventured out from both sides to meet in the middle and Jael spat in the grass, laughing in the faces of bastards and beasts, and declared, “Dominion never surrender! It is our creed! I wrote it myself!”
Let them fight, he willed now with a fervor that verged on prayer. Let them die, and whether they win or not, take traitors and rebels with them to their graves.
They were too distant for him to see who spoke for them, let alone guess what was said, but the result became clear when the Dominion dropped low in the sky—beyond a rise in the swaying grass and out of his sight—and came to ground in the mode of… surrender.
“Maybe they’re not surrendering,” said the smirking soldier in false consolation. “Maybe they all just really had to piss.”
Jael didn’t see them lay down their swords. He didn’t have to. He knew he had lost.
His Eminence, Jael Second-born, Jael Cut-in-Half—the Several Days’ Emperor—had lost his army and his empire. And surely now his life.
“What are you waiting for?” he screamed, launching himself at Liraz. With a neat step and parry she sent him face-first into the ground, and with one well-placed kick turned him over, gasping, onto his back. “Kill me!” he coughed out, lying there. “I know you want to!”