The old family villa was empty, except for the servants, and they were only dullscales.
When Magistrate Secaius’s drudge trotted up through the front gardens, he saw the flurry of movement in the windows. Servants, bustling and tidying and sweeping in anticipation of his judgment. Five of them stood out front on the marble steps, awaiting his presence.
He ignored them all, even as they offered to help him off his drudge. They read his sharp movements—how he unsaddled his leg with a kick, the way he jerked his clothes back into place—with fear on their faces.
As it should be.
But unless they did something special to invoke his ire, Secaius would continue to ignore the dullscales. They were already afraid of him, no point in taking out his anger on them.
The gloves were not dead, thank the gods. Only out of power. He walked up the sweeping steps and into his chambers and threw open the doors to his sanctuary: a sunlit roof terrace that faced the ocean and all the sunset’s crimson gold.
There, in the center of the terrace, was a glass box sitting on a pedestal. The glass was not cloudy; rather it was almost perfectly transparent, like a set of spectacles used by lawyers and some of the elder cyrans. It was also perfectly positioned to catch the sunlight almost every hour of the day.
He undid the locks, lifted the lid, and laid his gloves inside, one at a time, the white fabric resting perfectly against the perfect silver-leafed base. At their wrists, a ring of lights lit up, indicating they were gathering power.
Magistrate Secaius felt a knot between his shoulders unclench.
He’d been worried that those disgusting tentacled xenos, the Historians, had ruined them. But no, they had only drained their power somehow.
He would have to remember that when he came back to visit.
Secaius leaned over the railing, letting the sun warm his scales. From here, he could see the great harbors, a lighthouse fixed between. He could see the other villas and their lush grape gardens and statue parks rolling down the nearby hills. He could even see the smudged stain of the slums that littered the outskirts of Cyre, where all the dullscales made their wretched homes. Not to mention xenos, he thought acidly.
The human.
The human was everything. Bring him to the Emperor, and the gift of immortality will be yours. Then, he could focus on cleaning up this once great city.
Another thought occurred to him then. The Emperor was still asleep, wasn’t he? For all Secaius knew, he would slumber for another century or two.
What if I took the human myself? What if I could become immortal without the Emperor’s help?
A traitorous thought. He was surprised by how much it tempted him. What might I learn from the human? Even a dead one would yield so much. But if I can find him alive . . .
A throat cleared politely behind him, pulling him out of his reverie.
Secaius turned in time to see Ociphor push another servant out the doors onto the sunlit terrace.
The servant was shaking with nerves. He stuttered when he spoke. “M-m-magistrate.”
“What news?”
“One of your beacons has gone out. The one on Gaiam.”
Once, this news would have shaken the Magistrate. In his younger days, when he first burned for the power of rule, any slight backstep would send him into a spiral of rage.
But here, rage would not serve him. In fact, he had expected this. Everything on Gaiam always went wrong. Almost two decades ago, when the astraticians first opened the gate to Gaiam, Secaius had walked in with his first legion barely two thousand soldiers strong.
And the whole city—millions of primitive xenos—had crumbled before him. They had spears and arrows, while he had guns and artillery. And a single borrowed Fang.
The Cauldron had fallen so easily. Too easily. Rogue elements in the city fought for fifteen years before he finally squashed the final vestiges of their movement. Public crucifixions were a simple way to fix most any xeno problem, Secaius found.
But still, the more money and time he poured into that supposedly profitable planet, the more he learned that nothing on Gaiam ever went according to plan. Yes, there was something wrong with that planet.
He had planned for his assassins to fail. They were only a distraction, something to prevent any one faction from laying claim to the human before he did.
Well, the servant couldn’t know all this. This dullscale knew the news he was delivering and probably thought these were his last moments in life.
Which meant Secaius had complete power over this poor, lesser creature. Something like that took time to create. No sense in wasting that.
“Where was the beacon last?”
“Underground, Magistrate.” The servant took a shuddering breath. “Almost twenty miles.”
“And nothing of the human?”
“No, Magistrate.”
Secaius stroked the scales on his chin, feeling their smoothness and their slightest imperfections. The servant flinched at the movement.
That’s what I get for hoping, he said.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to go back to that sweltering planet and all its rotten, vegetal smells. Not to mention the stink of birds.
Gods, did they reek.
“What does the Queen say about all this?” Secaius asked.
“The Queen is . . . ah . . . Magistrate . . .”
“Well?” he said, making the servant shrink back and speak all at once.
“The Queen is missing. Nobody knows where she is. One of her servants said she must have gone to the day markets, but we have no confirmation.”
“Ah. Missing. Of course she is. Very well; leave me.”
“Magistrate?” The servant blinked up at him as if he couldn’t believe the Magistrate would simply let him walk out of here.
His scales were an ugly green color, like the ocean covered in shadow. Only the barest trace of shine, tracing the very corners of his scales, suggested any true cyran blood in this one at all.
A born servant.
Yes, no sense in wasting this one. Right now, he needed every hand at his disposal. Especially the ones that feared him.
“I said you can go now. I have work to do. Make sure I am not bothered for the rest of the night. Oh, and bring me wine. And that scholar’s drink, from the roasted seeds. Qavhan or whatever it’s called.”
That night, the Magistrate locked himself in his study with the demand that he should not be disturbed for any reason and went to work.
When the morning sun rose over the cyran hills, crowning the Emperor’s stony head with a halo of light and peeking through the windows of his study, it found the Magistrate still at work.
Command came naturally to him. It was all about confidence. Give the right assurances to your subordinates, and they would die for you, by the thousands, millions of miles from home. And you barely had to pay them for it. But that was the dullscale mind for you.
But politics and command were two very different beasts.
In politics, everyone was rich, and everyone was confident. No amount of money or bluster could secure victory.
In politics, your friends were also enemies in waiting. And throughout his years campaigning in the Veneratian, the High Magistrate had made many, many friends.
Today, he would speak to them. He would listen to all their questions.
“What do you know of the human?” they would ask. “What should we do?”
If he gave away too much, they might pursue this human prize on their own. Consuls Vorpei and Deioch or any of their contenders might seize the stage and proclaim a plan to move forward. He could not abide a threat to his position.
But if he gave them too little, they would know how weak his position was.
Magistrate Secaius had not wanted to ask for help. But he was only a governor. His legions were for occupying, not for mobilizing. And there was a human in his city. Without help from the other Venerate, he would lose any chance of capturing the human for himself.
Spiderachs. As if they would ever capture a human.
Fortunately, the Magistrate had the only weapon keen enough to hold the Veneratian’s attention: the promise of power.
Birds were singing outside of his window, fluttering in and out of the sunlight. Proper birds, small creatures with emerald wings and citrus bodies that could fit in the palm of your hand. Not those disgusting avians one found on Gaiam.
There was a knock on his door. Ociphor peered inside. “Your honor, I waited until the last possible minute. The Veneratian will convene on the hour.”
“Bring me a chariot, Ociphor.”
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“One is already waiting for you, Your Honor.”
Secaius sighed happily. Yes, Ociphor had truly found his calling. The perfect servant.
“I have also summoned a retinue of your guards, Your Honor.”
“Oh, send them away.” Secaius waved a hand.
“Magistrate?”
“Why should I need protection? I am home.”
Secaius left Ociphor so he could ride through the streets of Cyre blessedly alone. His gloves were back on his hands and sitting at a good 12 percent power. More than enough for his needs today.
Cool ocean breezes and the baking heat of the sun followed him as he hovered down the Vium Eldiem, the Way of the Elders.
Along the broad avenue, lush bushes had been trimmed into waves of leaves that seemed to beckon him forward. Sculptures dedicated to figures from the First Faith gleamed in the sunlight, and fountains babbled in the gardens.
At one fork in the vium, a statue of the Twins stood triumphant before the white domed temples and lived-in row houses. In the First Faith, the Twins were the ones who had discovered the first gate buried under these ancient cyran hills. A thousand years ago, by the priests’ count.
And here was another statue. Lethinaean, First to Go Forth, wielding her lightning spear.
Over there sat Sculpos, with those angular lines running in parallel along his scalp, his head propped in his hand as he contemplated the civil laws that would forever abolish the old monarchies and cement the cyran people together in one united republic. All this, while the one they called Emperor yet slept.
The First Faith was rich with legends like these. And one day, Secaius knew his own likeness would be immortalized upon the Elder Way. Greater than Sculpos, surely. Perhaps I will tower over the Twins themselves.
Sparse cotton clouds sailed across the sky, covering up most of the Scar. Sea birds and grain birds and travelers from afar whirled in flocks, flying from the rafters of one noble house to roost under the marble eaves of another. A sweeper construct moved methodically around the avenue, spraying its leavings into the gutters.
There were xenos scattered among the street vendors and day workers, but the xenos looked properly destitute, beggars maybe, which was the only fitting profession for them. A line of priests walked and made their acrid, smokey offerings to an open-air temple.
At the end of the Vium Eldiem, the Veneratian sat huge and heavy. A massive onion-shaped dome made of purest marble, leafed in shining bronze. White flags lined the highest buttresses and jambs, billowing like the sails of an old war frigate.
Massive olive trees lined the vium, spreading their speckled shade over the approach to this grand building. As he stepped under the white stone eaves of the Veneratian, inhaling the smell of wine, the sweat, and the centuries-old marble dust, he could not help but smile.
Until he heard the shouting. Had they already begun?
The Veneratian was large enough to seat all eight hundred of its lords plus four thousand citizens, more if they crowded in. Not to mention the maze of underground service tunnels.
Today, the Veneratian was full. Even those occupied off world sent their representatives, and the citizens’ seats were overflowing.
A middle-aged cyran noble was standing on the stage, sunken at the center of the Veneratian. His voice was full of fire and passion, but it was obvious to Secaius that none of the crowd was here to listen to him.
This Venerate—this lowly tribune, by the looks of him—had seized the opportunity to preach. “Cyre is not defined by her borders. Cyre is not a question of tongues, or species, or creed; Cyre is a dream. To reach the highest peak of civilization. What better path than to invite all who are willing, all who are worthy? Why should we guard this dream like jealous crabs clinging to a piece of flotsam?”
Most of the Venerate sat in clusters, idly flapping their fans as they talked and whispered to each other about this war or that trade. Some of them took great fun in heckling the speaker, throwing food and insults at him. But he plowed on with his speech. Worse, a few citizens up in the high seats appeared to actually be listening to him.
“We all worship the same gods! You cannot deny this.”
Pandering to the lowborns.
Dullscales were born to believe, but only a few Venerate offered devotion to the Faith. And those that did did so quietly.
“How many xenos pray to the divine, just like us? You have only to look out upon our city and see! Many belong to our Faith. They outnumber cyrans ten to one, as they hailed from far-flung worlds across His Glorious Empire! If we would but bring them into our ranks, would they not live and die to lift up our magnificent Empire?”
“No!” someone shouted from the Venerate’s seats.
The tribune continued as though the whole crowd were cheering with him. “Who shall deny their right to follow in the footsteps of our eternal Emperor? Who shall deny their right to citizenship?”
“I shall!” someone in the audience said, which drew a round of laughter.
“Me too!” another voice said. More joined in, until all the Venerate were mocking the young noble.
A familiar voice cleared the air, amplified by a glittering piece of old tech she wore around her throat.
“Lords, please,” Consul Vorpei boomed. She nodded at the young cyran noble, whose scales were blushing a deep blue with furious passion. “Tribune Kirine, you’ve had your time. I think we’ve all heard enough of your righteous preaching for one day.”
“The people of the worlds will not stand for this treatment. This cannot last!”
“People?” she said. “You call those things ‘people’?”
Laughter from the other Venerate. The sound of it warmed Secaius’s heart.
Kirine was about to start shouting again when Vorpei’s voice quieted him. “Tribune, your time is done.” Her tone was anything but kind.
The upstart Venerate shut his mouth. Reluctantly, he bowed his head and swept off the stage. The jeers and mocking laughter of the others followed him out of the Veneratian.
Then, someone spotted the High Magistrate standing at the top of the marble steps. “He’s here!”
A thunderous wave of whispers rolled around the Veneratian. Secaius basked in the attention, letting it fill him with the pride he had rightfully earned. The human had been found on his planet, under his discretion.
Never mind that I don’t have him yet.
“Ah! Magistrate Secaius!” Vorpei gave an echoing clap, the scales of her hands glittering in the light. “What news from our newest province?”
“It’s good to see you, Consul.” Secaius bowed his head, but not so deeply that his respectful manner might be mistaken for subservience.
A throat cleared from across the auditorium. Consul Deioch, a black-and-silver-scaled cyran who always wore that grim, silver mask over his face, which gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. He thinks he’s the Emperor’s chosen, doesn’t he?
Today, Deioch was surrounded by droves of sycophants and other Venerate who no doubt owed him vast sums of money. Secaius bowed to Deioch, showing the same deference he had to Vorpei.
He let the silence linger a while longer as he strolled over to the flat, marble stage at the center of the Veneratian’s private forum. Pulled back his shoulders, letting his gaze pass over all the Venerate gathered here. Savoring. This is the moment upon which everything shall follow.
A thousand years from now, I will remember this day.
“Honored ones,” he said. “My fellow lords. I come from Gaiam with, and I do not exaggerate, news that will forever change the fate of all cyrankind. A child of the stars—a living, breathing human—has been discovered on the planet entrusted to me by the Emperor’s Law. They name him Savior, and I pray that it may be so.
“But the denizens of Gaiam are a vile, abominable force. The Savior has been taken.”
He could see the questions threatening to burst from their lips. If they did, they might slow his speech and confuse it. Or worse . . .
Secaius raised his hands, silencing them before anyone could shout out: “How did you let this happen?”
“Do not ask how! The power of the gods is beyond us all. Know only this, my comrades: this Savior lies in the palm of my hand, and I have only to close my fingers. But I want to share this historic moment with you, oh esteemed ones. Lend me your wealth. Lend me your force of arms, and I swear to you, this victory will be ours. The Emperor Who Sleeps is watching us all. I promise you this: your funds will return to you multiplied tenfold. Your forces will march home enhanced a hundred.
“Hear me and hear well, Venerate. Those who support me will share in the Emperor’s recognition. The human must be delivered by any means necessary. The Emperor wills it.”
***
Secaius, the Magistrate of Gaiam, wore a smile wide enough to swallow the sea.
The other Venerate should have eaten him alive for failing to capture the human. Instead, he was now the richest cyran in all the Empire.
After teasing the Venerate with answers, stringing them along the path he had so carefully constructed, he had every lord, from the lowly tribunes to the consuls themselves, eating out of the palm of his hand.
Instead of reprimanding him for his failure, instead of stripping him of his post, they clamored for his favor and offered supplies, troops, and coin in delightful amounts.
“My compatriots,” he said, “what I need most of all is your vote, today. Vote to open the gate immediately, and I will put a swift end to all our fears.”
In exchange, he offered the implications of legally held promises. Of course, Secaius had no intention of following through on these promises. The glory was his. The human would be his. Why should he share the Emperor’s gift with anyone?
The vote was swift and unanimous. Even Vorpei and Deioch cast in his favor, a rare vote for the two rivals.
Thus, the Magistrate was walking out of the Veneratian, his eyes bright and his shoulders straight, already planning his return to Gaiam, when a large, dominating shape peeled off from the wall.
A dullscale cyran blocked his path. His scales were the color of wet mud, and long whiskers trailed from his face. Why doesn’t he cut those off? Muscles and fat and a tall stature, though not as tall as Secaius’s. If he didn’t have his gloves, she could probably snap him like a pine branch.
“Magistrate Secaius,” a voice said from behind him. “A word, if you have the time.”
Vorpei was still sitting in the benches, surrounded by her loyals and the other leeches. She waved them off, and they scattered with great reluctance and many hateful glances at Secaius. But it was the hungering gleam in Vorpei’s eye that gave him pause.
Obviously this was a trap. But what kind?
“How may I serve, Consul?” Secaius said, keeping his voice cool.
“Floratian, we are so proud of what you’ve become. To gain such heights, when your father was, well . . .” Vorpei did not finish the sentence, though the insult was clear. His father’s house was once known for churning out esteemed governors and renowned consuls. But that line had long since withered, begetting only weak wills and muddy jewels of which his father was widely regarded as the muddiest.
Secaius only smiled at her words. “Thank you, Consul. It is a pleasure to serve the people of Cyre, and I plan to do so for many years to come.”
“Of course you do.” She weighed him with her eyes, taking him in from head to heel. “But you are doing such a fine job with Gaiam. If a bit bloody for my tastes.”
“Bloody? How many cities burned during your last campaign?”
Vorpei gave a shark’s-tooth grin. “Too few. But blood is the coin of war. And the Cauldron lost its war a long time ago.”
Secaius did not let his smile slip. He could stand the insults until the world ended as long as, in the end, he had his way.
“Forgive me!” Vorpei clapped her hands. “As consul, I have so little time to govern, like you. But one phrase you said leaped out at me. You said the human was ‘in the palm of your hand.’ Did I hear that correctly?”
He blinked, but he kept his face a perfect mask. “A figure of speech, Consul.”
“I see,” she said, nodding her great head. She never blinked. “I see exactly what you did. But do not worry, I do not wish to salt your waters. No, I find life is easier if we help those who help themselves. Thus, I come to you with an offer.”
“You are too kind, Consul,” Secaius said, inclining his head in a slight nod. But what is your price?
“You must capture the human. It cannot be killed. This thing, this gift, is far too precious to be squandered. Think of all we could learn from it. Think of all we could take.”
“I have said as much already,” he said impatiently. “What do you want?”
She laughed, a booming guffaw that echoed through the Veneratian. “Oh, you must think me so simple. You already know what I want. You will cut out the others. We will share this prize alone, Secaius.”
“In exchange for what, exactly?”
She sucked in her breath. Her scales shone like amethysts and opals in the sunlight filtering in through the windows along the domed ceiling. Shadows of doves fluttered above.
“I long for war,” Vorpei said. “The smell of battle. The hunt for victory. Perhaps you understand, Secaius, though I heard you had quite a time gathering Gaiam under your control. Yes, well, I do not plan to be consul forever. Share the human with me, alive, and I will recommend your name for the consul’s chair.”
Next to immortality, what was consulship? But there was no reason he could not have both . . .
Still, he hated the tone in her voice. She spoke as if he had already accepted her offer.
Nothing is binding, he reminded himself. She will break her agreement as soon as it suits her, and so will you.
But I am the better of us, he thought. And he truly believed it.
“And the rest?” Secaius asked.
“I would be willing to contribute half my own fleet to your efforts to prove our new alliance. Yes, even that ship. Naturally, you would be in command, since Gaiam is your planet.”
The Magistrate’s heart stuck in his throat. He had one ship to his name, and it was little more than a personal shuttle that only worked in the brightest sunlight.
The conquerors needed their fleets, not to take more planets from more primitive xenos but to maintain control over each other. There was nothing more dangerous to Cyre than a cyran. And while this was a living god come back from the dead, he expected the Veneratian to clutch their ships all the tighter.
But here was Vorpei offering half of her entire fleet. Half of her military might.
He swallowed, hard. Trying not to sound too eager. “What will Deioch say?”
“Do you really care?” She grinned, her lips spreading to show her dyed-black teeth.
Secaius returned her smile.
They shook hands, and Secaius’s smile did not falter an inch under her crushing grip.