Wolves of Empire [EPIC DARK FANTASY] [Book One Complete]

Thirty-Six

Sephara

Empyria, the Imperium

24th of Tantus

Her father said nothing as she handed him the papers and didn't speak for a long time after he digested them. Sephara perched tensely on the edge of her seat in his office; Valerian's response would dictate the ultimate fate of the Imperium, she realised. With these letters, he could prove to the Imperium that the Caetoran, his Warmaster, the Captain-General of the Praevin, and the Castrian ambassador had incited war with Kalduran and were systematically trying to murder the Boratorrens. It should be enough to unseat Janus Tyrannus. Enough to launch their insurrection and gain the support they needed to triumph.

She opened her mouth, preparing to shatter the thick sheet of silence glazed over them both, when he lifted his hand and pre-empted her.

"I think it may be best if we do not release this yet," he said.

"Publicly?" Sephara asked. "That's wise, I suppose. Mendacium still doesn't know who I really am or what I know. Let him continue to think that for a while, until he drops his guard again."

By necessity, she'd told her father of her continued seduction of Dexion. It'd been the only way of explaining how she'd gained possession of the dagger and the key. He hadn't been impressed, perhaps remembering Endarion's suggestion to her that she seek out the Heaven's Paramours and assuming she'd applied what she'd learned there, but her success ensured he wouldn't press the issue.

Valerian's hand played along the surface of the topmost sheet, the list of names Khian had first proposed. They'd always suspected the Caetoran and his family, but to have proven it, to have found a written record of Janus's vendetta against their family, was jarring.

"I am suggesting we do not inform my brother," he said quietly.

"You're not serious," she replied automatically. "He deserves to know. He was targeted. The mother of one of his children was targeted. If what's written there is to be believed, his children themselves may eventually be targeted."

"We need more time," her father countered. "And I can guarantee that, should he learn the truth, my brother will do something monumentally stupid. This insurrection was planned with the intent of the two of us being dead and gone by the time it was ready. This was to be your accomplishment. Yours and Kaeso's and Daria's. I cannot justify unleashing him. He would ruin everything we plan, and he would likely ruin the Imperium as well."

"He would act in defence of our family," Sephara said, biting back her outrage. After everything she'd done in pursuit of her uncle's task, her father now wanted to keep what she'd learned quiet?

Valerian shook his head. "I know him better than you. He would destroy us all in the pursuit of revenge. I suspect he is going mad again, and this would only break him sooner."

"And when he finds out you withheld information that would stop the war with Kalduran?"

"He would never know."

Sephara jolted to her feet, her head spinning. She braced herself against his desk. "What if the Caesidi try to kill him again? He won't know what we know, so he can't prepare. What if he's killed?"

Valerian met her bristling anger with a weathered face rendered cold and unfeeling. "Sacrifices are necessary."

She punched the table. "We've already sacrificed too much. Soon enough we'll have sacrificed so many of our family there will be no one left to champion the Boratorren name." She gathered the papers and fell back into her seat. "I won't let you kill us all for the sake of your pride. If you won't give these to Uncle's worldstrider, I will."

Her father heaved a resigned sigh and held out his hand. He looked ten years older in that moment, utterly defeated. Perhaps there existed a kernel of care within him, buried so deep he often forgot it was there. "You make a fair argument," he muttered. "I will pass these on to Palla Hasund tomorrow, during her scheduled worldstride to here. I will hold you responsible for everything that follows."

"Just like that?" she said, her jaw almost hanging loose. "You let me win the argument?"

He inclined his head. "You will have a hand in ruling the Imperium one day, and I will be long dead. If you want to set it aflame before you can even claim the throne, who am I to stand in your way? Between you and your uncle, our plans will likely be ruined anyway."

She snorted. "It would've been easier to admit you didn't want to risk your brother," she said. When he raised a questioning brow, she added; "You wanted me to challenge you, otherwise you would've taken the letters, hidden them, made excuses, and let what would happen, happen. No one would've known but us."

He didn't reply, but that was enough for her.

She rose from her seat and made for the door without another word.

"Well done, Sephara," her father said, almost too quietly for her to hear.

―

The sun had set the overhead sky aflame by the time Sephara rose from a fitful sleep the next morning. Her uncle's task complete, she found herself empty and hollow, as if her pursuit of Novissa's assassin had been all that sustained her for the last few weeks. She briefly considered seeking out Dexion, but fear of discovery—especially now he knew she'd stolen from him—kept her away.

But it was more than that, she admitted to herself. The captain-general, whose bed she'd shared, whose arms she'd been embraced by, whose warm smile had favoured her, was the Arisen mastermind of the Caesidi. He was an immortal, powerful beyond belief, hidden in the mundane shell of an Imperial man. She didn't trust herself to be able to stand in his presence and not buckle beneath the weight of her knowledge, beneath the potency of his power as a former godking believed thousands of years dead.

She mentally scoured back through all their interactions, searching for hints, dissecting every word spoken, every touch shared. Though she'd always assumed Dexion performed some minor role within the conspiracy against her family, she hadn't wanted to entertain the possibility of him being the mastermind. Or one of them, at least. It made her rethink their relationship, a romance she'd been enjoying, despite the circumstances, and wonder if he'd used her as she'd used him. Keeping her close so he could control what she discovered, as he'd told Khian.

Stolen novel; please report.

As the disguised daughter of Valerian Boratorren, an innocent courtship had never been her destiny. She'd not particularly cared about that, preferring brief dalliances that didn't intrude on her work.

But Dexion hadn't been a brief dalliance. Arisen or not, she'd grown to care for him.

I'm not in love with him, she told herself, but, if I hadn't discovered the truth, I might've found myself leaning that way.

Instead of seeking him out, she wandered down into the city proper in the late morning to stand before the statue of the Iron Wolf on the Path of Triumph, where it had all begun. Rather than paying for one of the city's primitive thunderships to ferry her from her father's estate to the Path, she devoured a handful of hours by walking, her hands in her pocket and her head lowered. She let her mind empty of everything that had crowded it these past weeks; the matter was out of her hands, and she had nothing else to concern herself with besides the immediate ramifications of what she'd discovered.

Her uncle would by now know what she'd learned. Sephara had departed Valerian's estate before Hasund's scheduled 'stride, an absurdly immature part of her unable to be in such close proximity to the passing over of those papers. Her father feared what would happen once Endarion knew who had tried to kill him, and perhaps he was right and Sephara had just made a horrendous mistake. Rather than speak with Hasund herself to verbally confirm the evidence, Sephara had scurried away like a fearful child, as if that absolved her of all that might follow.

What Endarion did next would decide the fate of the Imperium, of Kalduran, of their family and of the Tyrannus Dynasty. She looked up into Endarion's stone visage and wondered what he'd do, half a world away and in the middle of a war.

"They didn't really capture him, did they?"

She startled, leaping away from the voice and reaching for a weapon she'd neglected to wear today. Pivoting to face what she was certain was a Caesidi assassin with a dagger poised to take her life, she instead found an unfamiliar, un-shadowed face.

He was tall, taller even than her father and uncle—perhaps seven feet—with skin pale enough to suggest north-Drasken heritage. His neat hair was stark white, though not the white of an aged man, but rather the unblemished white of a silent, snow-carpeted tundra. His eyes glimmered sapphire, dancing with amusement and something else, something implacable. As if he'd seen everything there was to see and far more beyond and been entertained by it all. The eyes of an ancient creature, in a youthful face.

He was clothed in a flowing coat stylized to give the impression of armour, though she'd never seen such a dress on anyone before. It was too long and cumbersome to be Imperial, and too heavy to be Castrian. The fur lining the neck and wrists hinted at Drasken, or at least somewhere cold, where the extra padding would be useful.

When she took all of him in, a strange sense of oddness assailed her, as if she glimpsed what wasn't truly there. There was an energy radiating from this man, and she felt as if he should have been ten times the size to justify such raw power.

A mage?

But she wasn't an aasiurmancer, to be sensitive to the presence of fellow magic users.

"Fear not, I'm not Caesidi," he said, his voice low and powerful, almost soothing.

"Then who are you?" Sephara asked, bunching one hand into a fist.

If the man noticed the gesture, he said nothing of it. "An interested third party," he replied instead. "A potential ally, if I may be so bold." He paused, perhaps waiting for her affirmative. She relaxed her hand, as much of an answer as he'd get right now. "You did well, by the way, to learn what you did. I can assure you your uncle will act on the information, and the Imperium will be feeling the shockwaves very soon."

"How could you know?"

The man clasped his hands before him, affecting a harmless, scholarly pose. "You'd be surprised by what I know," he said, his mouth twitching into a small smile. "Though I am more concerned by what I don't know."

The man's height intruded and Sephara, tired of craning her neck to meet his eyes, took a pointed step back. "Such as?"

"Who directs the Caesidi?"

She considered saying nothing, but something about him made her want to confide in him. "Dexion Mendacium."

A shake of the head. "He answers to someone, I think you found," he said. "The Arisen is just as much under another's control as the Caesidi. Whoever it is wanted war between the Imperium and Drasken. Given your connections to Mendacium, I think you can discover this."

"I did what was asked of me. I found Novissa's killer for the Iron Wolf." A memory flashed behind her eyes, and she recalled her torture of the Caesidi assassin who'd been responsible for Novissa's death.

"Let me make you an offer, then," he said. "Novissa was my agent. Her role was to protect Arch-General Boratorren, to mould him into a fighting force the likes of which none can stand against. One day soon, we will have a use for him, but you would serve a different purpose. To combat this threat, I need to know who I am fighting."

"Are you an Imperial?"

A shrug, casual. "It's quite beside the point, but not in a long time."

"Why are you interested in the Imperium, then?"

"This is about much more than a single nation," he said. "Whoever controls Mendacium desires far more than the Imperium. I will need people like you to stand by my side."

She considered him, then cast a glance around the thoroughfare, wondering if anyone had seen this strange man appear behind her. "What Novissa carved on her dagger, 'immortals killed me'. Did she know there was an Arisen in the Imperium?" It would be a bit of a gut-punch to learn the woman whose death she was trying to unravel had been a step ahead of her to begin with.

"She likely suspected," the man said. "Her role was never to interfere, but she must have inadvertently done so anyway."

Sephara had a thousand questions for the man. Why had Novissa, a magic-less woman in a magic-hating empire, joined a renegade mage order? What was Endarion being moulded for? What was this man's motive? Why, when they were supposedly long-dead, was an Arisen involved?

Most pressing of all: how did this stranger know what she'd discovered? Only herself, her father, her uncle, and the worldstrider Palla Hasund had access to the documents she'd found, and those latter two only recently. She knew she hadn't leaked them, and she doubted Valerian or Endarion would be so careless, which left only the enigmatic cavalry-general.

Was Palla a Fensidium agent like Novissa?

Sephara didn't voice her suspicion, settling for, "What would you have me do?"

"Simply put, find whoever unleashed Dexion Mendacium and his Caesidi."

She remembered the conversation Dexion and Khian had shared at the Castrian Embassy. Dexion had told the Warmaster, I answer to my superior. Not to you. That meant there was someone even more powerful than him, someone who could command an immortal godking.

"Who are you?" she asked. Even as she spoke, the answer came to her. The note she'd found in the drawer in the Embassy, claiming a man named Sudarium oversaw the Fensidium, whose dagger Novissa had wielded. This man had just claimed Novissa as his agent, hadn't he? "You're Rexan Sudarium."

He nodded.

Sephara folded her arms. "Your writing is a little dry. And it might've been a bit more convenient if all the information about the Caesidi was in one book. Maybe something to work on with your next volume?"

He chuckled, deep and genuine. "Noted."

"I'll do it," she said, hoping her voice sounded more certain than she felt. "If only because these people targeted my family, and what you're telling me suggests they're not even nearly finished, even if the kill list is."

He acknowledged her acceptance with a dip of his head, then clicked his fingers. The air a few feet ahead of him burst open like the bloated innards of a rotted carcass, though the smell emanating from it was the sickly-sweet aroma of magic. Within the tear: iridescent spiralling lights, a million and one colours clashing together in a blinding storm. She felt like she stared at the nexus of the universe, trying to comprehend everything in existence in one brief glance.

"A worldstrider," she whispered. It explained how he'd appeared without her hearing him.

"Stay close to the Arisen," Rexan Sudarium said. "There's a small compartment at the base of the statue of Canisius Thurinus on the Path of Triumph. We'll leave word for each other there." He stepped through the portal he'd torn into the fabric of the world. Without fanfare, it snapped shut behind him, leaving Sephara doubting the meeting had ever occurred.