Short Swords: Tales from the Divine Empire (The First Sword Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Hunted

  I: Death in Tranquillity

  II: Retribution

  III: The Kindly Ones

  Romana’s Hour

  Summer’s Leave-Taking

  All the Trees in the Forest

  The War Cry Sounds

  Author’s Note

  Preview of Book 4 in the First Sword Chronicles

  Appendix: Gods and Immortals of Pelarius

  Copyright

  Hunted

  I

  Death in Tranquillity

  “Oh, Miranda, don’t you look lovely?” Portia cooed as she stood in front of her, surrounded by the sweet-smelling flowers of the palace garden, her golden hair falling down around her face as she smiled that lovely smile of hers.

  Miranda smiled. “Portia. God under the waves, Portia it’s…it’s so wonderful to see you.”

  “Miranda,” Portia whispered, but this time her voice had more of a discordant hiss about it, a sound like a serpent creeping through the garden in which they stood.

  Miranda frowned. “Portia? Is something wrong?”

  Portia laughed. Not her laugh, no, it did not sound so sweet, so pleasing to the ear. This was the laugh of someone else, or something. This laughter had an edge of cruelty to it, like a hundred thousand knives leaping from her mouth to prick Miranda. “What’s wrong, she says? What’s wrong? You are what’s wrong Miranda, you murderer!”

  Miranda shook her head. “No. No, Portia, I didn’t-“

  “You promised to protect me and you failed,” Portia snarled. “And then you murdered thousands of people throughout the city. You burned them all to ashes.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Miranda whispered. “I…I was so upset…about you…”

  “Then you should have saved me,” Portia yelled. “You should have protected me and my baby as you said you would!”

  “I know,” Miranda sobbed. “I know. I wasn’t clever enough, I wasn’t fast enough. I ought to have…I should have…”

  “Retribution is coming, Miranda,” Portia hissed. “Every day it gets closer and closer. And in the end it will devour you as you devoured so many.”

  Miranda’s eyes widened as Portia’s body began to burn. She turned from the beautiful Empress that Miranda had known into a bloody, lifeless corpse and then she began to burn. The flames began at her feet and then worked upwards, consuming her as Miranda’s fire had once consumed Prince Antiochus, Portia’s murderer.

  “Portia, no!” Miranda yelled, but Portia did not seem to mind the flames. She did not scream as Antiochus had, or Messalina Verra either. Instead, as the fires burnt her up to ashes…she laughed. She laughed as the yellow flames consumed her. She laughed as she turned to dust. She laughed until there was nothing left of her at all.

  “Portia!” Miranda screamed, and then her eyes snapped open as she awoke with a startled gasp.

  “Hush, hush now, it’s alright, I’m here,” Octavia murmured, wrapping her arms tightly around Miranda. They were both in the large bed in the master bedroom, but it would have been truer to say that only Octavia slept in bed, while Miranda slept in Octavia’s embrace. Alone she could scarcely even get to sleep, and while even with Octavia’s help the nightmares still tormented her, at least she felt at least a little rest during the night. Miranda felt Octavia’s arms, warm and strong, around her, she felt her soft tawny wings enfolding her, she felt Octavia’s breast as a pillow for Miranda’s head.

  She felt Octavia’s body against hers, the only spot of warmth and comfort for her in her present circumstances.

  “I’m here,” Octavia murmured. “And you’re safe.”

  Miranda glanced upwards; Octavia’s face seemed to hover over her, framed by golden hair and with golden eyes to match set in it like gold adornments to a statue. She smiled, but her smile was subdued by her knowledge of what Miranda had just gone through.

  “I know,” Miranda murmured, reaching up with one trembling hand to stroke Octavia’s cheek. “Thank you, for being here with me. I don’t know what I was thinking trying to send you away.”

  “You were trying to do the right thing,” Octavia murmured. “You just didn’t realise that the right thing was letting me make my own choice.”

  Miranda nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.”

  “You had another nightmare?”

  “Yes,” Miranda said.

  “Was it the same as before?”

  “Yes,” Miranda said again. “Portia… oh God, Portia. She called me a murderer, she said that retribution was coming…and then she burned. And there was nothing I could do stop it.”

  “She’s dead,” Octavia said. Her voice was soft and gentle as she ran her fingers through Miranda’s silver white hair. “She’s gone, Miranda. It’s terrible, I know, but…these dreams…you can’t save Portia.”

  “I know,” Miranda said. “I know that but…if I ever stop wanting to then I’ll be truly lost.”

  Octavia frowned, creasing her brow and knotting her slender eyebrows nearly together. “Miranda…I’m worried about you.”

  Miranda laughed. “I’m worried about myself.”

  “I’m serious,” Octavia said, taking her fingers out of Miranda’s hair. “Do you think…do you think that maybe you keep having these nightmares because you want to?”

  “Are you saying I should forgive myself?” Miranda replied. “Are you suggesting that I should not feel guilty? After everything I did?”

  “You weren’t yourself.”

  “But it was me,” Miranda said firmly. “And I should regret that, as I do. If I don’t…what kind of monster would I be if didn’t feel guilty for the blood on my hands?”

  Whatever Octavia might have said to that, if she would have said anything, was pre-empted by a firm and insistent knock upon the door to their room.

  “Filia Miranda, Filia Octavia,” the callow voice of Lieutenant Marcus Cornovius came through from the other side of the door. “Are you fit for company?”

  Miranda sat up, gently removing Octavia’s arms from around her. “I’m afraid not Lieutenant, we’ve just woken up.”

  “Then I’ll have to ask you to dress quickly, Filiae,” Lieutenant Cornovius said. “Major Severus presents his compliments and asks you to join him in the north garden as quick as possible. I’ll wait outside until you’re ready.”

  “Is there no time for breakfast first?” Miranda asked.

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Best if you see for yourself, ma’am,” Lieutenant Cornovius replied.

  Miranda looked at Octavia.

  “What do you think is going on?” Octavia asked.

  “Nothing good, judging by the urgency,” Miranda replied. “But we can’t avoid it by staying in here, much as we might want to.” She threw off the covers as she shuffled out of Octavia’s lap and embrace, and swung her legs out over the side of the bed. It was only then that she remembered that she had left her walking stick a little too far away last night, leaning against the wall at the very limits of her ability to reach it.

  “I’ll get it,” Octavia said.

  “No, I can reach,” Miranda said, a little more sharply than was needed. She leaned out, gritting her teeth as she stretched her arm out as far as it would go…and knocked the ebony walking cane onto the floor, where it rattled upon the wooden boards.

  Miranda huffed, and her expression was abashed as she glanced at Octavia. “Would you mind getting t
hat for me please?”

  “Of course,” Octavia said, managing a slight smile as she clambered out of bed and retrieved Miranda’s stick. There had been a time, not too long ago, when Miranda’s self-reliance would have forced her to climb out of bed herself, in spite of the pain to her withered leg. But love had smoothed the edges of her pride, she felt less helpless in accepting help, at least when it came from such as Octavia, who didn’t care that she couldn’t walk without help, or even that she possessed magic such as hadn’t been seen in five hundred years. Octavia saw the whole of her, and accepted her in all her greatness and her flaws, and that she accepted those flaws…it made it easier for Miranda to accept them too.

  Miranda threw on a light blue dress that hung loosely upon her shoulders, something of a return to the sort of things that she had worn in Corona province before her ill-starred adventure in Eternal Pantheia. Certainly it was a far cry from the riches she had displayed during her brief time as the Empress’ favourite. She was definitely not in favour now. She still had one piece of jewellery with her, Portia’s necklace, which Romana had given her after the defeat of Quirian, but she did not wear it. Miranda never wore it. It had been given to her to remember a friend, not to adorn her own throat for the pleasure of Octavia.

  Once Octavia was dressed, in a white strapless and backless blouse that left her wings free and unobstructed, they headed out of the room, and found Lieutenant Cornovius waiting in the hallway outside, just as he had promised.

  The younger and junior of the two officers of Miranda’s guard detail looked visibly harassed as he waited for Miranda and Octavia, his brown eyes wide with anxiety and his skin stained with sweat. He was wearing his uniform, as an officer of the Imperial Household Foot, but it seemed to fit more ill on him than usual, and from the way he froze in place in the middle of the hallway Miranda guessed that he had been pacing up and down.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant, I hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long,” Miranda said. In truth she wasn’t half as ready as she would like to be, her hair felt terrible and she hadn’t had time to wash more than her face, but Lieutenant Cornovius had claimed that it was urgent and so needs must. She would get ready properly later once whatever this had been sorted out.

  Cornovius nodded. “Thank you, Filia, please come with me, as quick as you can.”

  “Do you want me to carry you?” Octavia asked.

  “No,” Miranda said. “I can get there myself. There’s no need for that much speed is there, Lieutenant?”

  Lieutenant Cornovius hesitated for a moment. “No, I don’t think so, Filia. Not unless you, with your power, can raise the dead. Come with me.”

  Miranda and Octavia followed Lieutenant Cornovius through the villa. After the deaths of Portia, Demodocus, Antiochus and Quirian, after the night of madness that Quirian had arranged in order to take his long overdue vengeance upon the Empire that had slaughtered his entire people, Princess Romana had despatched Miranda to a villa not far from Ilpua, one of the many estates held by the Imperial family, there to remain indefinitely until Princess Romana decreed otherwise. Miranda had to admit that, as much as she disliked being kept under house arrest in all but name – and as much as she had to admit that she deserved it, and that Princess Romana would have been within her rights to have decreed a far harsher punishment for the things Miranda had done – the villa was a fairly comfortable place to reside. Some kind of summer retreat for the Imperial family, as she understood it, at the intersection of every corridor stood a statue of some beautiful boy or pretty girl sprung from old tales of Ausonia and Pantheia, often in athletic poses and almost always with nothing on. The corridors were painted red on top, down to about waist level, and then white below that, and already torches flickered in the sconces to cast light where the sunlight from the windows could not reach. They passed the interior courtyard, where the roof disappeared to open up a fountain to the skies, and permit the shrubs placed round about to breathe. They passed the shrine where candles burnt before the icons of the Novar gods, past the portico where more candles burned underneath an image of the Empress Aegea, and smaller portraits of Romana, Demodocus and Portia underneath. It bothered Miranda a little that Romana’s image was larger than that of her dead brother and his wife, but then she supposed that that was only to be expected in many ways.

  And then they passed out of the house altogether, and came to the north garden, where statuary was the order of the day rather than the flowerbeds found in the east, or the ornamental forest found to the south, or the water features found in the west garden. As they approached across the lawn Miranda could see their destination clear enough: the clump of about ten or a dozen men standing not far from a statue of a naked man with a bow, gathered together around something – or someone, given Cornovius words – on the grass. Miranda’s leg ached a little as she quickened her pace, eager now to find out just what was going on, and to find out as quickly as possible.

  Miranda’s guard, they were not so called but that was what they clearly were, consisted of two officers and thirty men under the command of Major Alexander Severus. Of the two officers, Miranda preferred Lieutenant Cornovius’ conversation, if only because he didn’t give the impression of actively disliking her, but again, fairness demanded that she acknowledge that Major Severus could have interpreted his authority from Princess Romana to make things much worse for her than he did. She was allowed to walk through the grounds each evening with Octavia, she was kept well-supplied with books to read – Miranda reckoned that she had read as much in these past couple of months as she had in the entirety of her nineteen years beforehand – and she was not made to feel a prisoner.

  Except when she looked into the eyes of some of the soldiers tasked with her ‘protection’. Then she felt a prisoner, if only because she could see how much they hated her.

  Though they were all men of the Household Foot, many of them had been in the regular army at some point previously, including Major Severus himself, and they were armoured for the most part as regular legionaries, in lorica segmenta, with the large tower shields of the legions, spatha in their scabbards and pila in their hands. Those who, like Lieutenant Cornovius, wore the lighter mail cuirasses and spears of the Household were in the distinct minority. They also tended to be the younger men, those who had seen no service in the line of battle before their appointment to the dignity of the Imperial Household.

  There was a roughly even mix of the older veterans and the younger fellows on the lawn as Miranda approached, although the veterans were in a slight majority. Both old and young men looked disturbed by whatever it was that they could see and Miranda could not.

  “Filia Miranda Callistus, Major, and Filia Octavia Volucris,” Lieutenant Cornovius announced in an officious tone.

  “Of course they are Lieutenant, who else would it bloody be?” Major Severus snapped. He stroked his grey moustaches impatiently, though his tone remained civil on the surface. “Filia Miranda, thank you for coming.”

  “Of course, major,” Miranda replied, not seeing the point in mentioning that he hadn’t given her much choice. “What can I do for you?”

  “Probably nothing, but I had to try,” Major Severus said. “Move aside, men. Filia, what do you make of this?”

  The soldiers shuffled aside, and Octavia let out a gasp as she beheld what it was that the two of them had been bundled out of bed to see. Miranda, who had seen a great many things during her time tending to the sick and injured of Lover’s Rock, was able to maintain her outward composure better, but even she had to confess to herself that she had never seen anything quite like this.

  There were two dead men lying on the ground before her. That, unfortunately, was nothing new to her. She had witnessed death on a far greater scale during Lysimachus’ assaults on the houses of Quirian and Lord Manzikes, and she had caused death on a far greater scale during her night of madness and furious grief for poor Portia. Octavia had seen as much herself, but what had made her gasp, Miranda though
t, was not that there were two dead men in front of them but what had been done to both of those dead men.

  Both of them had had their tongues ripped out. Their mouths were covered in blood, and Miranda could see the severed tongues lying not far away, also covered in blood which had stained the grass beneath them. Their hands had been cut off; Miranda could not see the hands themselves, just the blood pooling around their severed wrists. The strangest, and most disturbing thing, however, was that both men had been slit from throat to navel, through their armour, which had parted like an orange peel at the touch of the knife, opening their whole bodies to the elements like a pair of dissected frogs.

  And then, by the looks of it, something had been done to their insides. They were black as soot, with…was that ash? Yes, ash inside of them. In fact there was more ash than there was anything else, as if their insides had been forcibly burned away. Burned away like Portia in her nightmares…

  Miranda forcibly cleared that image from her head. She had to focus, when there were so many eyes upon her. Ash. Burnt. It was very nasty, and she had no idea how it was done.

  She looked up at Major Severus. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for them, Major, if that’s why you called me out here.”

  Severus snorted. “Trust me, Filia, if I’d thought that there was any chance of that I wouldn’t have let you take your time getting out here.”

  “She’s better at making corpses than at saving them,” spat Sergeant Major Mezentius. He was, perhaps, the oldest soldier present aside from Major Severus, though his hair and beard were still black with only the odd hint of grey here and there. He had only one eye, and the patch he used to conceal the other could not obscure the nasty scar above and below it, but he made up for it by glowering enough for both eyes out of the single dark orb that he had left. Just as he was glowering now, his tone vicious rather than mocking, casting blame rather than making light of a grim situation.

  Miranda was tempted to glare right back at him, but in the circumstances she decided it was better to respond calmly. “Even I don’t have the power to bring back the dead, only the gods can do that. And these two have been dead for some time, I think.”