Evan Currie - Heirs of Empire

They quickly accelerated to just over nine hundred and fifty miles per hour, well above the speed of sound in the lower atmosphere but just under it where they were flying.

Above the sails, the skies were more spectacular than Brennan could describe. He’d rarely been up this high; his own skimmer wasn’t rated above the first layer. The blues and greens that made up the mottled patchwork of the sky were incredible without the atmospheric haze to distort them.

Kennick looked back over his shoulder and noted the direction of the kid’s gaze.

“You ever see them through a steady scope?” he asked.

“What?” Brennan looked down.

“A steady scope,” Kennick repeated. “You ever see the sky through a steady scope?”

“No, I don’t think I have.”

“Lakes, forests, and deserts,” Kennick told him. “That’s what makes up the colors you see. It’s unimaginably huge, but the whole sky is full of lands we’ve never been to.”

“Really? But, why not tell everyone?”

“Most people don’t care, and the few who do … they tend to try and get there,” Kennick said. “I’ve seen dozens of expeditions go out. Most never come back. We’ve measured off the size of our world, you know. It’s a little over half a billion square miles … almost perfectly square, at that.”

Brennan’s eyes rose up again and he looked closer at the sky, this time not at the blues and greens, but at the dark-gray-and-black lines that marked them off in a square grid.

“Exactly.” Kennick knew what the boy was looking at. The same thing he’d looked at when he’d learned the size and shape of the world.

“How many are there?” Brennan asked, mouth dry.

“Worlds like ours?” Kennick shrugged. “I think the calculation was somewhere around three hundred million. All bounded by the same God Walls the empire and surrounding territories are surrounded by.”

Brennan almost couldn’t comprehend it. Hell, he couldn’t comprehend it. He’d learned so much more since fleeing the palace than he’d ever been taught inside it.

“The empire discouraged exploration a few generations ago,” Kennick said, “mostly due to the loss of people and resources, but also because no one has figured out yet how to cross the God Walls, so there’s little point. Small groups still try, usually funded by private concerns, eccentric backers, and so on. Most of those are looking for pockets of resources they can return to the empire with, though, and don’t tend to stray more than a few weeks’ travel from our borders.”

“It seems like such a waste,” Brennan said finally.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Kennick chuckled softly, but a glimpse of the ground below them caused him to shift. “All right, we’re over the flats. Let’s tuck and stow the sails and glide in.”

Brennan glanced down. “Clear. Confirm. Comply.”

He dropped the sails and wound in the lines, getting the projectors ready for the next time he needed them. At their current altitude there wasn’t much atmosphere for the stubby wings and control surfaces of the Naga to really bite into, but they were moving fast enough that speed partially made up for that. They held for a while, then slowly began to descend through the layers into thicker atmo.

“Everyone knows about the Great Desert,” Kennick said as they descended, “but this is a much more interesting place.”

Brennan looked out, waggling the Naga a little to give him a better view.

It didn’t look all that interesting to him, mostly just a nearly unending stretch of brown and white. The white was a little startling, though. He’d heard about the area, however, and managed to dredge up the bit of trivia to mind.

“This is where the empire produces salt, isn’t it?”

“Righto, kiddo,” Kennick said with a laugh, “though it’s more accurate to say that this is where we mine salt. All that white you see below is nearly pure salt, just waiting to be processed for the table. It’s the remains of an ancient seabed that dried up long before we arrived.”

Brennan had only read about seas before, though he knew that they’d existed. The empire had lakes and a few small rivers, but a body of water grand enough to be called a “sea” was something out of children’s stories.

“What happened to it?”

“We don’t know,” Kennick answered. “There’re signs that there used to be a lot more water here than there is now, but it was lost somewhere, somehow. One more mystery, I’m afraid.”

“Since I left the palace, I seem to be finding more and more of those, and fewer and fewer answers.”

“That’s ’cause you were taught the basics, which aren’t exactly lies, but they’re geared for general consumption. The empire doesn’t publish everything it doesn’t know, kid,” Kennick said. “I’m sure you’d have learned most of this eventually. Can’t imagine the emperor letting you slide, even if you weren’t the heir …”

Kennick hesitated, then grimaced. “Sorry, kid.”

Brennan sighed, but he didn’t feel like making a big deal about it. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not the heir, and I hope never to be. My brother would have done the job well, but Lydia … I think she was born for it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kennick said honestly. “I really hope you’re right.”

They glided lower over the flats for a while before Kennick had Brennan deploy the sails and bring them back around.

William Everett stood on the deck of the cruiser, one of the largest skimmers ever built, and looked out over the thick layer of clouds moving in. So far they’d had little luck tracking down the Andros Pak and her erstwhile captain, but now it was only a matter of time.

Corian was on the move as well, his eyes spreading out across the empire, and someone was going to locate the corsair sooner or later. William only hoped that it would be the loyalists and not Corian’s thugs.

“Commander Everett, sir.”

William turned and nodded to the attaché who’d stepped up behind him and straightened to attention. “News?”

“Yes, sir.” The attaché handed him a modular interface and returned instantly to attention.

William turned back to the rail, looking again at the clouds before he clipped the module into his own system and retrieved the secured message. It was a communiqué from one of his contacts, and for the first time in many weeks, William Everett smiled.

“Tell the captain we have a course and a destination.”

“Yes, sir!”

Corian scowled from the secure command deck of the Caleb Bar , his eyes on the myriad interface displays that circled him. So far the Andros Pak had remained undetected, and with it his key to securing his position among all the remaining sides of the conflict.

Having the Scourwind heirs under his control would end most of the infighting and secure the cooperation of the majority of the loyalist supporters. Few from those ranks actually cared about the heirs. They just preferred that an unbroken line of succession be maintained. It was partly tradition but also partly useful propaganda that kept the masses in check.

The heirs would also provide excellent figureheads to take any of the ire that his coming plans dredged up. A few years of running the peasants into the ground and he might just be able to do away with the Scourwinds and their name entirely.

First, however, he had to find them.

Mira Delsol.

The woman’s very name dripped with venom in his mind, as though even the thought of her was enough to cause injury. It was a name that seared his mind every time he felt a phantom pain in his missing leg and every time someone snuck up on his eyeless left side without him spotting them.