Rachel Aaron: Spirit’s End

“Change your mind?” the boy said, looking up.

“Not as such,” Monpress said. “Happy as I would be to let you sit out there until you starved, it seems that my conscience is heavy enough without a boy’s life weighing on it. I’m not agreeing to anything, mind you, but since it’s clear you’re the suicidally stubborn type, you might as well come in and eat.”

The boy grinned from ear to ear and rushed inside so fast Monpress was nearly knocked off his feet. The boy sat down in Monpress’s chair and began devouring the duck like he’d never tasted food in his life. The thief sighed and walked over to rescue his wine before it, too, disappeared into the boy’s maw.

“What’s your name?” he said as he spirited his drink to safety.

“Eli,” the boy gasped between bites.

Giuseppe frowned. “Eli what?”

The boy shrugged and kept eating. Monpress sat down with a sigh, sipping his wine as he watched the boy reduce his fine roast duck to bones. The child was cracking them to suck the marrow when he caught Giuseppe looking.

“What?” he said, shoving a leg bone into his mouth.

“Nothing,” Monpress said. “Just trying to shake the feeling that I’ve let my doom in by the front door.”

“I wouldn’t fret about it too much,” Eli said. “I was planning to come down the chimney once you’d banked the fire anyway.” He flashed Monpress a smile before spitting out the bone in his mouth and reaching for another. “When do we start training?”

Monpress drained his glass and poured himself another. He briefly thought about continuing his denials, but he was rapidly running out of energy to fight the boy’s seemingly endless optimism. “Tomorrow morning,” he said, taking a long drink.

Eli’s eyes widened, and his face broke into an enormous grin. “What am I doing?”

“Fetching a cask of whiskey from my stash up the mountain.”

Eli’s face fell dramatically. “Whiskey? Why?”

“Because, if you’re going to be staying here, I’m going to need it,” Monpress said. “Finish your supper. I think a speck of duck still exists.”

Eli gave him a skeptical look before turning back to the far more important task of making sure no bit of duck flesh escaped his attack.

Outside the little cabin, far from the cheery light of the little fire, the white shape of a woman vanished into the deep, drifting snow.

Eleven Years Later

The vast desert that stretched across the Immortal Empire’s southwestern tip was still and quiet in the moonlight. At its edges, the coast was calm, the ocean lapping tiredly against the beaches. The great storm that had raged for weeks up and down the continent’s seaboard had died as suddenly as it began, the clouds dissipating in a handful of seconds to leave the night sky clear and blank as though there had never been a storm at all. Only the wreckage of the sea towns and the wall the Empress had raised to protect them remained, an improvised barrier standing awkwardly at the edge of the placid sea.

Suddenly and without warning, a light cut through the stillness. All across the dark desert, white lines appeared. They sliced high in the air, forming long needles of light that dangled several dozen feet above the sand. One after another they appeared until the sky was full of them, their white light filling the desert until it was bright as noon, and then the quiet shattered as the Immortal Empress’s invasion fleet fell through the white lines and crashed into the dunes below.

The palace ships slammed into the sand, their great keels cracking against solid ground. Without the water to keep them upright, the boats toppled immediately, rolling onto their sides like falling horses. The night was full of cracking wood as hulls splintered and masts snapped like twigs, and then, as the white lines faded and the ships settled into their deathbeds, the cries of men rose to drown out the groaning of the boats as the Empress’s army, the largest army ever raised, began to pick itself up.

At the head of the now grounded fleet, a large crowd was gathering around a boat that had lost its prow. Even in the chaos, word spread quickly, and the soldiers surged like ants from their toppled ships to gather around the palace ship with the broken hull at the very front of the fleet where, rumor had it, the Empress herself was buried under the wreckage. Up on the deck, the ship’s captain was already at work, shouting orders to a crew of fifty strong men as they hauled the top half of the broken mast off the deck where the Empress had fallen.

They found her lying in a crater of broken wood. Her golden armor was shattered and the cloth beneath was stained bright red with blood. When they saw her, the soldiers fell silent, struck dumb at the possibility that the Immortal Empress, the undying, unquestioned divine ruler of the world, could possibly be dead.

But then, with a groan, the Empress opened her eyes. The men flinched back. Some fell to their knees, others simply stood, shocked. The Empress paid them no mind. She just pushed herself up, throwing off the remains of her golden armor to free her arms.

“Empress?” her captain whispered.

The Empress didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at her men. Her attention was entirely focused on getting to her feet. When she was standing at last, she reached out and tapped the air in front of her. No sooner had her finger moved than a new, thinner white line flashed in the dark, dropping through the air to just above her feet. The moment the line stopped growing, the Empress stepped through it, leaving the dark desert full of broken ships and moving into a world of pure white light. When she was through, the line shimmered and faded, leaving her soldiers staring in vain at the empty place where their Empress had been.

Opening a door through the veil to Benehime’s private world without the Shepherdess’s permission was forbidden even to stars. Nara didn’t care. She stomped through the portal, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the blinding white. But even before she could see, the Empress knew exactly who was waiting.

Benehime lounged in the air, her white hair falling over her body like a cloak. Behind her, the Lord of Storms hovered like a glowering black shadow. A small, distant part of Nara’s brain noted that the Shepherdess must have pulled him back together not long ago. Bits of him were still shifting between flesh and cloud, giving him that wild look he always got when he was fresh from his true form.

His expression, however, was solid as sharpened steel and locked on her with a look of pure disgust as Nara stumbled forward. But even as she registered his presence, Nara put the Lord of Storms out of her mind. He was beneath her notice. All that mattered was the Lady and the creature she held in her arms.

The thief sat in Benehime’s lap like a dog. The travel-stained clothes he’d worn on the beach were gone, replaced by a pure white fitted jacket and trousers tucked into tall white boots. The Shepherdess held him close, one hand around his waist, the other brushing over his thigh like she was petting him. The thief had the good sense to keep his eyes down as Nara approached, but the Shepherdess looked straight at her, absently stroking the boy as she regarded her former favorite through narrowed, white eyes.

I do not recall summoning you here, Empress.

For the first time in her life, Nara’s rage was so great that even the sound of the Shepherdess’s voice couldn’t shock her out of it. She stopped right in front of the Lady, breathing the cold, white air in great gasps until, at last, she managed a single, coherent word.

“Why?”

Benehime tilted her head, laying her ear against the thief’s chest. He is my favorite, she said simply. I thought I’d made that clear.