Eight solemn-faced metalmasters lined the narrow platform stretching toward the pit. She raised her arms to acknowledge the crowd and made her way to the pit’s edge—where the Archon stood with a tiny, satisfied smile.
As the door to the cage creaked open, the Archon extended his arm toward it. “You can choose to save them. Or not. What really matters is saving your own skin.” He turned to her, blinked twice. “Isn’t it?”
Save them. Rielle peered into the cage, and when she saw to whom the Archon was referring, the sudden rise of dread made her stagger.
Three tiny cages rose slowly from the maze’s teeming cogs. Inside each stood a child, wailing in fear.
As the crowd began to notice them, shouts of anger and horror arose from the stands.
“Are you mad?” Rielle cried.
“They are orphans from the Low Streets,” the Archon explained. “No one will miss them when they’re gone. Except, well…” He glanced up at the furious crowd. “They might, I suppose.”
Understanding sank into Rielle like a slowly twisting blade. The maze was deadly enough as it was. She would have to fight hard to survive it—and to save three children on top of that seemed impossible.
But if she didn’t…
She glanced up at the bellowing crowd.
The Archon’s smile grew. “Your move, Lady Rielle,” he said.
Rielle did not hesitate. She turned, flung off her stiff coat, raced to the waiting door of the cage, and jumped inside.
22
Eliana
“The Emperor is a hunter that never tires. A storm that never sleeps. How do we best such a creature? The answer is simple: we cannot. If the entire world turned as one to destroy him, again he would rise—and again and again.”
—The Word of the Prophet
“Who are you?”
Eliana startled to hear the Emperor’s voice. She’d imagined it before, entertained wild fantasies of storming his palace in Celdaria and slitting his throat before he had the chance to talk her out of it.
Whispered conversations in Lord Arkelion’s palace had told her the Emperor’s voice could worm its way inside your mind and heart, make you helpless to resist doing whatever he suggested. Which Eliana had long ago decided was nonsense. A voice couldn’t control you; anyone who said otherwise was a fool.
But never, in all her blood-soaked daydreams, had Eliana imagined the Emperor’s voice to sound quite like this. A purpose lived there, beneath the rich tones—resolute and unmovable, ancient and sly.
She stepped back, stumbled over an imperfection in the terrace stone. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“And yet you did.” The Emperor approached, hands behind his back. “I can’t see you very well. Can you see me?”
“A little.” Her vision swirled and shifted. She felt tempted to rub at the air, as though to clear a fogged window.
“How curious.”
“I’ll just…” She wanted to turn away and run, but the inexorable blackness of his eyes held her in place. “I’ll be going now.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. No, I think—”
He froze. Expressions she couldn’t altogether decipher cascaded across his face: horror, joy, astonishment.
Rage.
“You,” he whispered hoarsely, all the loveliness gone from his voice. In its place was a terrible, ragged longing. “It’s you.”
Eliana met the terrace railing at her back. “What?”
Swiftly he moved closer, reaching for her. “Stay there. Where are you?”
A great shudder shook the terrace, throwing Eliana to the side. She pressed her hands against the palace wall to keep herself from falling…
And suddenly, the palace, the city below, the Emperor, were all gone.
The red walls of Lord Morbrae’s dining room stood fast and close around her. His slack face stared up at her, eyes clouded and gray.
Like the eyes of an adatrox.
She pushed back from him, fell hard to the floor, scrambled away.
“Who are you?” Lord Morbrae asked, rising jerkily from his chair. Reaching for her, just as the Emperor had done. His voice had been cut in two—part his own, part the Emperor’s. “Come here. Come to me.”
A blast sounded from outside. Eliana recognized it as the detonation of a bombardier.
Simon.
Remy had told them everything, and now Red Crown was going to destroy this outpost, with her inside it.
Despite herself, she smiled. What a budding rebel her little traitor brother had turned out to be!
The room shook; the dishes on the table rattled, and Lord Morbrae stumbled. Three of the four adatrox stationed around the room hurried out the door, unsheathing their swords. A wineglass fell to the floor and shattered.