Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

“I can’t risk it any longer, Ly,” he said. “I need to set the sails now.”

“OK.”

He thumbed the firing studs on the rockets, launching the projectors into the sky. Redeploying sails in flight was tricky business, something only daredevils tried. Luckily, the prince was a noted daredevil.

The light sails snapped into place a thousand feet over their craft, just as they were skimming treetops. The instant he had tension on the lines, Brennan hit the winches, bringing in the line and dragging the skimmer up into the skies again.

“Keep an eye out,” he said over his shoulder. “Let me know if you see anything coming our way.”

Lydia nodded, not that he could see it, but he knew his sister well enough to know she’d done it anyway.

Spotting military skimmers wasn’t easy. They used light sails in the nonvisible or sky-matched spectrum and didn’t leave contrails like reaction craft. And considering the paint scheme most of them used—a neutral gray underneath and earth tones from above—spotting them by eye was a distinct challenge.

As he gained altitude and speed, Brennan started to breathe a little easier.

Flying was the one part of his life he’d felt real control over. When he was at the sticks of his skimmer, there was no one who could tell him what to do, how to act. He was free.

Freedom was, perhaps ironically, something a scion of the Scourwind blood didn’t get to enjoy very often.

“I don’t see anything,” Lydia said from behind him. “I think we’re OK?”

Brennan twisted slightly in place, turning to look out behind them. The smoke was curling up in the distance, blacking out the skyline of the capital.

“No, Lyd, I don’t think we’re going to be OK for a long time,” Brennan said as he tightened up the lines, bringing his skimmer up into the first wind layer.

Corian walked through the debris, stepping casually over bodies as he made his way to the front of the room.

“Disappointing” was all he said aloud.

“The Cadre elected to destroy their records rather than let them fall into our hands, sire.”

“Yes, it was a risk,” Corian said. “We never had enough assets inside the Cadre section to secure their mainframes. How many Cadre can we confirm dead or captured?”

“None captured. Perhaps fifteen dead? No more than that.”

Corian laughed bitterly. “Fifteen. And now they’ve gone to ground. This will get bloody.”

He turned and walked out of the Cadre computer mainframe room, shaking his head.

“So very damn bloody.”

The city was looming in the distance as an old, ramshackle skimmer skirted the edge of the detection perimeter. It was a wind craft that had seen better days, and in fact barely seemed to hang in the air behind ephemeral light sails.

“I see major damage to the city and the palace, my lady.”

Mira Delsol sighed as she worked the controls, bringing the cobbled-together skimmer around so it wouldn’t trip perimeter security.

“So we’re too late.”

Gaston nodded from where he was standing on the deck, observing the capital through powerful lenses. “It would appear. The damage appears days old at least, perhaps longer, and the Caleb Bar is holding position over the city. It is not flying the Scourwind colors.”

Mira nodded, thinking hard. “New plan. I know a few drop sites and secure communications systems. We’ll go to ground, see if we can figure out exactly what happened. I’m not going anywhere near the capital until I have that information and a plan.”

Gaston nodded, setting the lens down.

“I rather believe that is a damn good idea, my lady.”

Mira tightened the sail lines, bringing the skimmer up into the wind layer, and turned away from the capital.

The cloaked figure made his way through the crowds, occasionally pausing to rest. The city was one of the outlying metropolises of the empire, only a few hundred miles from the nearest God Wall. In the distance out past the walls of the city, you could see the God Wall rising to tower over everything, reaching out past the atmospheric envelope and into the cold emptiness beyond.

In the city, however, that symbol of the unknown had long since been relegated to everyday scenery, and it was the God Wall that the cloaked figure was looking at as he rested. After each brief rest, he once again pushed his way through the crowds of the market bazaar, finally ducking into a narrow alley and knocking on a doorway deeply shadowed within.

The door opened silently and he stepped inside, waiting until the door closed before throwing off his cloak.

“Did you find anything?”

“No,” William Everett said, shaking his head as he took a seat. “The rumors seem to be false.”

His contact nodded, unsurprised. It wasn’t the first time in the weeks since the coup that they’d tracked down rumors of the missing Scourwind heirs only to find nothing at the end of the search. The only good side of it was that the forces of the new emperor weren’t having any more luck than they were.

Every semiclandestine unit in the empire had orders to be on the lookout for the Scourwind twins, but so far nothing but rumors and ethereal stories had appeared since the day Edvard had died. None of it was common knowledge. Regular police and guardsmen couldn’t be informed without spreading rumors across the surface of the world in an instant, but the directives should have been enough to catch even the wiliest of criminal fugitives.

Had anyone asked prior to that day, no one would have bet that Brennan and Lydia Scourwind of all people would have a chance in the burning skies of evading an empire-wide search, and yet they’d done just that. William himself couldn’t believe it, and he knew them better than most.

Brennan was an overly pampered troublemaker and a dedicated pain in the ass to anyone in authority. His rebellious period against his father had started when he was barely thirteen and had still been going strong. Lydia was just as pampered, though her personality couldn’t be more different. She had embraced the cute image of her as a princess and acted it at all times. It won her few close friends but many admirers willing to do almost anything she asked.

The two of them should have been captured within a week of escaping the palace, though, in his mind, reports of Kayle being killed on the roof where Brennan’s flyer had been stored explained their escape.

“Thank you for your help and hospitality, my lord,” William said.

Lord Baron Kennissey waved off the honorific. “The Scourwinds were allies for a long time. They deserved more support than they received.”

“I believe this.” William nodded soberly. “However, it is difficult to hold for allies when you’re being ambushed.”

“We should have seen it coming.” The baron sighed. “Now Corian is moving to solidify his control over the Senate. The fighting has spilled out of the capital. We have reports of confused resistance being slaughtered by Corian’s legions. I do not believe that those who support him in the Senate expected Corian’s brutal response to relatively minor defiance.”

The baron laughed bitterly. “More than one of those fools is learning just who they backed. Scourwind may have been a hard man, but Corian has no inkling of how to manage the empire. He only knows how to command armies.”

“I know.” William nodded.

Corian was noted for the near fanatical loyalty of the soldiers under his command, but the man didn’t know how to manage allies. If you weren’t one of his soldiers, you were a nonentity at best … an enemy at worst. He’d begun by quickly taking the forward Scourwind allies out of the Senate with brutal efficiency. Baron Kennissey had only avoided this so far by virtue of being more interested in managing his own lands than spending time in the Senate and the capital.