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

Seventeen

Sephara

Empyria, the Imperium

22nd of Satimus

There hadn't been a significant public execution in Sephara's lifetime, much less one held in Traian's, the largest and most popular of Empyria's many arenas. She knew the moment Dexion received the formal invitation what it concerned, and yet another part of her shrivelled up and rotted away inside.

For the past three days she'd been holed up in the Praevin compound, occupying a small set of spare rooms Dexion had set aside for her. She couldn't stomach the thought of going outside and had been cloistered in the bedroom with nothing but her malicious, traitorous thoughts to keep her company. If Dexion wondered why she took her supposed employer's imprisonment so hard, he never said anything. He must've been suspicious of her, but she didn't have the mental capacity to foster concern.

Her most prominent thought was of what her father had said to her, just after he'd consented to giving Palla the incriminating information to present to Endarion.

I will hold you responsible for everything that follows. Of course, he'd absolved her of blame during their final conversation in the prison beneath the Tower, but he'd likely just been trying to at least somewhat repair their broken relationship. They both knew she'd killed him, just as much as Kaeso inadvertently had. Without meaning to, she'd ensured her uncle lived at the cost of her father.

She'd been so sure Valerian was untouchable. So sure they all were.

Dexion knocked on her door on the fourth morning of her stay, and she roused herself from her morbid daydreaming to answer him. Having sensed she needed space, he'd only bothered her to bring her food and water, and to tell her he'd managed to secure temporary ownership of Valerian's estate, if she wished to return there. Somehow, she knew she wouldn't be able to stay in that house knowing her father would never come back.

She yanked the door open and grunted a half-hearted greeting. Dexion's eyes tracked down to her bedraggled clothing, the same shirt and trousers she'd been wearing the morning of her arrest, then back up to her face, his expression bent with concern.

During the previous few days, she'd entertained the idea of revealing to him that she knew of his Arisen nature and pleading for his help. The man had once been a god, after all. Could he not help her father? Could he not blast apart the prison and pluck Valerian from captivity? While he was at it, could he not save her uncle a job and murder the Caetoran?

But no, he'd probably just kill her if he knew she'd compromised his identity.

He said nothing, instead pushing a thin slip of paper into her hands. Practised handwriting adorned it, and it took a few read-throughs for her addled mind to comprehend.

Dexion,

The traitors are being dealt with this afternoon, and the Caetoran wishes for you to bear witness. A number of the city's present nobles will also be attending, to see what happens to those who dare plot against my uncle. You will have a seat in his royal box, for you and the commoner whore you pulled from the cells. I wouldn't suggest ignoring this event; your loyalty is already in question, and I should think it is now obvious what happens to traitors.

Traian's. Mid-day. I will see you there.

Khian

"It's today," Dexion said. His voice, though soft, proved a rusty knife to the silence of Sephara's mourning. She unconsciously canted her head towards him, now accustomed to her injured right ear. Even days after being kicked in the head, sounds remained muddied, and voices echoed oddly.

"I'm so sorry," Dexion continued. "I honestly thought Janus would keep hold of Boratorren, use him as leverage against the Iron Wolf."

"I'd better get ready, then," she replied, speaking with false surety. A part of her had known it would end like this. Janus Tyrannus didn't respect the unspoken rules of the Imperium, so why would he spare his cousin, even if Valerian was a Corajus? For any of them—her, her father, her uncle—to have ever assumed they were invincible seemed foolish now.

Dexion reached out to touch her, and she let him. "You don't have to attend."

"You wouldn't understand, but I do." She almost told him then. The words were on her tongue. I'm Sephara Boratorren. He's my father. Please help. Logic cleaved through her foolishness; as much as she might like the man, Dexion remained her enemy. He was also the man Rexan Sudarium wanted her to continue spying on, and though she hadn't given her assignment from the renegade mage much thought lately, now more than ever she needed the reality of it to ground her.

He accepted her decision with an inclined head, then removed his hand and backed away. "An hour?" he said. "I'll come and get you and we can go together."

She used the time to indulge in a cold shower, for once grateful to be in a place lacking the superior plumbing of most noble estates. If given the option of a hot bath, she might've drowned herself. Instead, she used the chilling water to blast four days' worth of dirt from her body, and four days' worth of depression from her mind. She changed into a clean pair of trousers and a plain shirt, with an unembellished blue Praevin coat over the top.

The routine of preparing herself to face the world let her ignore what she prepared herself for. Allow herself to dwell on what was to come, and she'd drive herself insane. Or, worse, do something stupid in trying to save her father.

I'm not to blame. I'm not to blame. I'm not to blame. The thought became a mantra.

But she was to blame. She knew it. She screwed up her hands and clawed at her skull, then in her frustration turned and punched the nearest wall. The sharp pain in her knuckles faded slowly, giving her the focus she needed to draw back to herself.

This was the path she'd chosen for herself and her family. She owed it to them all, her father most of all, to see it through.

When Dexion came for her again, he asked if she wanted to take a thundership to the arena. It was only a short distance from the Praevin compound, but he thought to spare her the walk, to give her a final few moments of privacy before Valerian was murdered. She declined, if only because to walk would be to delay the inevitable; she clung to the childish hope there'd be a last-minute intervention.

The sun hung an hour from its peak by the time they set off, and it beat down on them cruelly. Summer had arrived in the Imperium with some force, bereft of the calm happiness Sephara had associated with the warmer months as a child. To the adult Sephara, summer only meant the bleached white stones of Empyria glowed a little more harshly than in other seasons. She expected, after today, she'd come to associate it with something much more horrific.

Still slightly unbalanced by her kicked ear, and burdened by the glare in her eyes, she swayed as she walked. Dexion threaded his arm through hers to steady her, and she thought that they might look like a normal couple enjoying a late-morning romantic stroll. No one knew this man was an Arisen, just as no one knew she went to watch her father die today.

"Valerian's son is still missing," Dexion remarked as they walked, looking across at her.

"Is he?"

"Officially, so are Iana and Lexia," he added tonelessly. Of course, he'd already told her where the pair were, and the fact he apparently hadn't told anyone else seemed significant. "But it's Kaeso the Caetoran cares most for. He had it in mind to cull the entire family, but that doesn't seem to be working out for him." He shot her a smile, as if he weren't the man who'd tried to arrange the deaths of her father and uncle. "The Iron Wolf and his daughter in open rebellion and likely marching on us as we speak. Valerian's heir unaccounted for. And the other daughter, Valerian's, suspiciously absent throughout it all."

She struggled to stay calm. With Dexion's arm around hers, he'd feel her tense and know she concealed something. Had he made physical contact with her only to judge her reaction to his words?

"Other daughter?" she mumbled.

"Little known fact that Valerian has two children, but yes, there's a daughter. Early twenties by now, name of Sephara. Supposedly she's still in Akerdia, but agents the Caetoran sent there to seize her found no trace."

The Caetoran had sent men after her? It made sense, to wipe out the entire opposition, but she'd thought herself insignificant enough to exist purely as Silvia Barum.

"My employer never mentioned her," she said. "I didn't even know he had a second child."

Dexion shrugged one shoulder. "Few do."

By then they'd reached the looming, oval structure of Traian's Arena. The vaulting arches comprising its colossal outer walls resembled the bleached ribs of some gargantuan monster, and Sephara fought a wave of revulsion. The tall, narrow threshold of the arena's entrance was already crowded, and throngs of eager citizens spilled out across the street in tangled queues. Opportunistic merchants threaded the spectators, utilising this most morbid of occasions to foist their products on unsuspecting customers at a steep markup. Thieves traversed the human maze, using the chaos to slip in and out of pockets unnoticed by all but Sephara, who only spotted them because she scanned the crowd in search of distraction.

Dexion steered them around the boisterous bustle, which Sephara noted was overseen by purple coated Castrian soldiers. Still wrapped around her, Dexion bristled at the soldiers, and she was again reminded of the rift forming between him and the Caetoran. She could still capitalise on it if she focused for long enough.

Using his rank and Khian's personal invitation as a battering ram, Dexion ploughed through the soldiers set up to admit attendees. He exchanged heated words with several Castrians, but Sephara was too wrongfooted to notice; she'd just seen a couple of citizens, after prompting, give a small handful of coins to one of the guards.

The Caetoran was charging an entry fee.

Not enough, it seemed, to murder her father in public; he also profited off it. For reasons she couldn't explain, the thought ignited her tamped anger, and she'd marched halfway to the guard when Dexion's hand on her forearm drew her short.

"What's wrong?" he asked. Then his eyes followed where she'd been headed and understanding dawned. "I didn't expect any better."

Her gut blazed with unreleased violence, but she followed in Dexion's wake as he directed her past the rank of guards awaiting payment and plunged them into the winding hallways that threaded around the arena proper. A frequent entertainer within Traian's, Dexion guided them expertly through successive checkpoints as they wound their way up towards the royal box. It jutted out halfway up the concentric rings of seats, its face open to the arena, its sides walled so the Caetoran didn't have to suffer the regard of the peasants.

The man himself was already present, seated in what Sephara assumed was yet another replica of the Invictum Throne. Unlike the one gracing the Prodessium, padding adorned the seat that, small as it was, still somehow managed to dwarf the emaciated Janus Tyrannus. A few chairs arrayed around him in a sycophantic half-circle, and though she didn't know the names of the occupants, she recognised them by the emblems on their coloured coats as the Corajus of the Reigns allied to Janus: Uldhen, Odynia, and Daresgar.

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Janus twisted around as they entered. He bared his teeth in a feral smile at Dexion and ignored Sephara completely. For her part, she refrained from launching herself at the bastard and tearing his head off with her bare hands. It would do no one any good to get herself killed now, even if she ensured the Caetoran preceded her into the Abyss.

"Captain-General, so glad you could make it," the Caetoran crowed, then nodded towards a pair of empty seats furthest away from him. They were tatty and stained, the insult obvious, but Dexion said nothing as he and Sephara claimed them.

"Your bedwarmer as well, I see," the Caetoran continued, earning himself a collective chuckle from his lackeys. "A bit young for you, is she not, Mendacium? Then again, like attracts like, and she has the look of a base-born bitch."

"How well the Caetoran knows me," Dexion replied.

Sephara had never been in the direct presence of the Caetoran before. All her father and uncle's manoeuvrings had made of this man an irredeemable beast in her head, but in person he was a sallow-skinned, brittle-boned creature, aged beyond his years, with the watery eyes of a weak constitution. He was so perfectly mortal, so undeniably human, Sephara wondered why her family had spent so long plotting. Why not just kill him? He looked like he couldn't withstand a half-hearted slap, a theory Sephara desperately wanted to prove just then.

"Did the Caetoran not consider my suggestion?" Dexion said.

Janus scratched at a beardless chin in mock consideration. "Ah, you mean where I spare a man who has, for years, been plotting treason against me? The same man whose brother even now marches this way with the intent of toppling me?"

Sephara looked to Dexion in the pause before the Caetoran continued. He'd tried to vouch for her father?

"As valuable as he might be in calming his rabid dog of a brother, I much prefer him dead," Janus said. "I suppose, had you been around at the time, you would also have asked me to spare Aemilia Calerus and the Elerius family, yes? You've a soft heart, Captain-General. It takes steel to rule an empire. It takes a true man to be brave enough to dispatch of his enemies when he has the chance."

Sephara swallowed her derisive snort. Aemilia and the Eleriuses had been eradicated because of their ties to the Boratorrens, specifically Endarion. The evidence had been unfounded, falsified by a Caetoran fearful of their growing influence. It had been this blatant attack against Endarion, first against Estrid, his lover at the time, and then Aemilia Calerus, his wife, which had birthed the Boratorren brothers' desire to overthrow the Caetoran. In trying to cow a perceived threat, Janus had himself created a greater one, like some kind of witless self-fulfilling prophet. And to suggest he'd been brave in what he'd done? A disgusting lie.

By then the arena had filled almost to capacity. Sephara leaned over the shallow parapet, her disgust fermenting at the sight of an excited crowd thousands strong. Traian's usually hosted harmless entertainment like the duels Dexion indulged in, and to have authentic bloodshed was a novelty. Factor in the controversy of the arrest of Valerian and his allies, following so closely on Endarion's defection, and the public execution had become an unmissable event.

The arena itself remained bare, except for two ominous poles driven deep into the sand, set far enough apart to hold a person.

"This is the bodyguard, yes?" Janus prompted, yanking Sephara's attention back to him. "I ought to allow the Castrians to interrogate her. Perhaps she knows where my cousin's son is."

Dexion's hand enveloped her own and squeezed reassuringly. "I have already ascertained her innocence."

"How can a man be objective when he is fucking the person in question?" This from the Corajus of Uldhen, a bull-faced relative of Arch-General Byrria Dumerian. "Maybe she's poured sweet lies into your ear and you, too enamoured with her to see past your own cock, don't know it."

Dexion's next words were snarls, and she wondered how easily he could, as an Arisen, dismantle them all. The fact Janus pressed him so cruelly suggested the man himself was unaware he baited a god. "I'm flattered by your concern for me, but it's misplaced. Perhaps look to your own relationship before you take a strange interest in mine." Dexion shot Dumerian a sharp smile. "I've heard rumours that wife of yours has entertained the Iron Wolf over the years. Are you not good enough for her? Now that I mention it, your children do seem to bear a striking resemblance to the Boratorrens."

That shut the bastard up, and an eruption of cheers from below stalled further arguments. The spectacle had commenced.

The rumble of the gates being hauled open reverberated through the royal box, perched directly above. Khian Tyrannus strode out onto the sand, resplendent in a gold-trimmed military-style coat of Tyrannus purple. He stopped a short distance into the arena, turned and saluted to the royal box. They weren't so far up that Sephara couldn't behold the smug smirk flashing amidst the burnished skin of his face.

"Honoured citizens of the Imperium of Adhistabor," the young man bellowed, an expert at projection. The crowd roared approval and he threw his arms wide as if to soak it all in. "You are here today to bear witness to the Caetoran's unshakable justice. I have in my custody a collection of traitorous individuals who took it upon themselves to decide, for the rest of us, that Caetoran Janus Tyrannus is unfit to rule. They would raise themselves up in his stead, and place upon the Invictum Throne one of their own, a Boratorren. Do any of you out there today want a Boratorren ruler?"

Khian had already succeeded in turning the common citizens against the Boratorrens when he'd accused Endarion of razing Dykumas without cause. Whether Endarion's guilt could be proven had become irrelevant because his defection had affirmed anything Khian might wish to claim about them all. The explosion of answering jeers, infinitely louder than the roars of approval, didn't surprise Sephara; she deafened herself to it, for once glad she only had one working ear.

"In time, the mad dog Endarion Boratorren and his pack of delusional sycophants will be dealt with, but today we are fortunate to be able to inflict justice upon those the Iron Wolf colluded with. Today, we can mete out the punishment that will face all of those who call themselves an ally of the Boratorrens."

Sephara had greatly troubled herself over the details of her father's execution. What method would the Caetoran select, and how long would he ensure Valerian suffered? Typically, nobles in the Imperium were killed privately, either in their cells or when under house arrest, always by strangulation. Shedding noble blood had always been frowned upon, and strangling had long been labelled a dignified alternative. But Valerian had done far worse than any executed noble before him, in Janus's eyes. His noble blood would be shed, of this Sephara was certain.

Caelinus Naevon was the day's first victim. A pair of burly Castrians dragged him out from beneath the royal box and threw him at Khian's feet. Stripped of his Reign colours and left only in shirt and trousers, Caelinus had lost his nobility. Though his exposed skin displayed no signs of torture, five days of imprisonment left him pale and malnourished, and he put up no fight as Khian raised him to his knees and stood behind him.

"This is Caelinus Naevon, formerly Corajus of Asineo, and elder brother of the traitor Ricardus. He has been found guilty of treason, and the sentence is death."

From a coat pocket, Khian produced a rigid length of wire, barbed along the middle with small spikes. He looped the un-barbed ends around his hands and pulled it around Caelinus's neck, yanking the man back towards him. It wasn't the length of ribbon usually used against nobles, but instead a barbaric kind of garrotte. As Caelinus thrashed against his killer, attempting to pry the wire around his throat loose and gasp in air, his struggles tore at the wounds the wire's cruel teeth had already inflicted in the soft flesh of his neck. By small degrees he gorily slit his own throat as he asphyxiated, and the indignity of it made Sephara suspend her own breathing as if in sympathy. A winded hush descended upon the crowd, and into the silence stole the ragged, wet gasps of Caelinus trying to pull air into a butchered windpipe.

Khian wore a rictus grin as he tightened his grip and pulled upwards, hitching the garotte into the underside of his victim's jaw. Though it alleviated pressure on Caelinus's neck in favour of sawing a weeping wound beneath his chin, by then the damage had already been done. When Caelinus's struggles faded with his life, the Warmaster bellowed a bloodthirsty laugh and started yanking at the dying noble's neck. It was an animalistic frenzy, and the crowd clamoured for it like starved wolves for a fresh carcass, their baying fracturing the silence into an ugly chorus of cutting shards. Caelinus had long expired by the time Khian ceased his ministrations, the Corajus's blood soaking them both. His neck had been cleaved down to the spine, and Sephara almost vomited at the sight of her father's friend sagging emptily to the sand. A life rendered down to meat.

Behind her, the Caetoran and his lackeys clapped. She felt the weight of Dexion's eyes on her and the pressure of his hand around hers but refused to look away as Caelinus Naevon's brutalised body was dragged away, leaving a parted line of crimson sand in his wake.

She kept her eyes anchored on the carnage below as, one by one, her family's captured allies were slaughtered in a gory procession. Khian called out their names and their guilt in a voice that never wavered, and strangled them with arms that never tired, his mouth split in an eternal grin that never weakened. She didn't personally know those who followed Caelinus to his death, but she was familiar with their importance to her family's plans. Calvus Valens, Corajus of Quendinther, was chief among these, both his and Caelinus's deaths proving that bearing one of the highest political ranks in the Imperium didn't deter the Caetoran's so-called justice. Without them to fund them, supply them, support them, Endarion and his forces were isolated out beyond the border, just as Sephara herself was now isolated within the city.

Fourteen trails of blood carved through the sand by the time Khian, saturated in gore and almost cannibalistic in his derangement, called out the name she'd been dreading.

"I bring to you now, at the climax of this day of righteous punishment, the overseer of the plot against the Tyrannus Dynasty." He threw his hand towards the gate beneath the royal box, and her father appeared, held fast between two huge soldiers. He was kicked to his knees before the Warmaster, who spat at him. "This is Valerian Boratorren, formerly Corajus of Denjin, and the Caetoran's own cousin. He was once as powerful as any man could hope to be, yet he craved more. He craved the toppling of the Imperium, the slaughter of its rulers, and the genocide of its loyal citizens." At this the crowd's screaming threatened to shatter Sephara's eardrum all over again.

The two Castrians wrenched Valerian to his feet, one of them drawing the knife at his hip. With brutal efficiency he cut Valerian's shirt away, revealing a lean, pale chest surprisingly untouched by Khian's cruelty.

As the Castrians strung her father up between the two poles, Khian shifted his attention to the royal box. "This is how the crippled old dog, the Iron Wolf, was punished. He survived his twenty lashes. Can his older brother, I wonder?"

One of the Castrians handed Khian a coiled whip, and the Warmaster prowled around Valerian's fastened figure, a predator personified. To his credit, her father didn't flinch, and his stern face betrayed no fear.

The first lash was sudden, Valerian's cry of pain chasing the crisp whipcrack. As stoic as he might strive to be at the end, her father wasn't a soldier, wasn't accustomed to pain. The sight of him straining against his bonds made her grip her seat hard enough to break fingernails.

Another lash, another cry. The bright spatter of blood on sand, Khian's exultant bellow as he brought his arm back for the third.

Without thinking, Sephara surged forward, braced against the parapet as if she meant to leap over it. Her father raised his head between strikes, his eyes catching hers. For a perfect moment, the world was suspended and only the two of them existed. Her desire to leap down and save him must've been clear, because he shook his head, a single, sad movement punctuated by a weak, pained smile. Dexion's hand on her shoulder guided her back down to her seat, and Valerian hung his head as the whipping continued.

By the time Khian finished, her father's blood painted his flesh and drowned the sand beneath him. But he remained lucid. Sephara suspected the Warmaster had gone easy on him, and the reason why became apparent when Khian discarded the whip and gestured to one of the soldiers. They handed him a knife, wickedly curved and maliciously serrated, and Khian trailed it almost lovingly along Valerian's exposed throat.

"Let this day be known as the day the Caetoran triumphed against his dissenters," Khian called, and then plunged the knife down.

Not into Valerian's throat, as everyone had expected, but into his stomach. Khian dragged the blade sideways, roaring into her father's face as Valerian unleashed a strangled scream in reply. Sephara couldn't look away, not even as Valerian's steaming guts spilled from the jagged disembowelling wound Khian had inflicted, not even as his lifeblood fountained messily out after, not even as his screams weakened to a drawn-out, agonised whine.

As if the torture itself wasn't enough, Khian reached into the emptying cavity with his free hand and forcibly unspooled the viscera still anchored within Valerian's body. A wrench produced a stubborn rope of slimy pink intestine even as it reaped a pitiful groan from Valerian. When Khian extracted his hand, gore and bodily fluid painted him halfway to the elbow, and he marvelled at his dripping palm, seeming to ignore his victim for a moment.

It took a millennium for Valerian's taut muscles to slacken, for his head to drop, for the flood of blood cascading from his opened innards to patter to a stop. His death was a lingering thing, drawn out by Khian's refusal to slit his throat and grant him that slim mercy.

She didn't exactly know when her father's life bled out with the rest of him—her head was pounding too loudly for her to concentrate—but he'd been extinguished by the time Khian used the knife to saw his head off. The Warmaster struggled with the task, having to grasp Valerian's limp head by the hair and hack through the spine with his serrated blade. Even from up in the royal box, Sephara heard Khian's savage grunts as they punctuated the sick crack of bone and wet tear of sundered muscle and tendon. All else was silent, the frothing crowd muted by a combination of horror and awe.

At last, Khian turned with his grisly prize in hand and held it up in offering to the royal box. The gory display of Valerian's body, stripped utterly of all humanity and dignity, seemed to frame Khian. Sephara looked beyond the Warmaster to the jagged stump of her father's neck, to the blood still feebly pulsing from the grotesque stump. Tremors rippled along his bound limbs in horrid mimicry of pained animation. His guts coiled snake-like on the sand between his legs, still gently smoking with the warmth of life not quite dissipated.

She forced herself to rip her eyes away, to look to the mass held aloft in Khian's grip.

It was only when her father's dead eyes, still wide with his final excruciation, stared back at her that she was finally able to look away.

-- End of Part One --