Emperor Forged Read online

  At some stage, I needed to talk to him and determine why he was still here.

  For now, I had a dragon to prepare for.

  Chapter 30

  Black scales, glittering magical barriers, fiery breath that melted steel at the touch, and claws that glowed with imminent death. Even in sleep, Lyria haunted me.

  I found myself wandering down the corridors of Talepolis’s citadel late at night. My destination was Miya’s room. In the siege, she had shown a level of raw power that I hadn’t seen from any herald before her. Given the preparation time necessary, it had no doubt been difficult to use against the other dragons, but my imagination had begun to run wild about what it might be capable of in the coming defensive siege.

  Light was coming from her room, the door wide open. We had taken over otherwise empty rooms on the third floor. Daywalkers didn’t really sleep so much as become less active or meditate, much like elementals, so these rooms had remained unoccupied since the prince and his entourage had vacated them. The prince had typically ruled from elsewhere, only using the citadel when he needed to appear imposing rather than for his day-to-day activities. The building was so disused that the servants were still busy dusting half of it. Elsewhere in the city, there was a small palace that I imagined somebody had cleaned the blood off the walls of by now, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

  I paused, hearing voices from within. Eavesdropping wasn’t my intention, but this was the first time Miya had true privacy for some time. If she enjoyed it, I certainly didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Normal oni clans have only one mother?” one voice asked, which I identified as Ilsa.

  It was Miya who answered. “Yes. The Deridh Clan is special, as it is the last clan.”

  “The last… Why? You said that when you first arrived, too.”

  “According to the mothers, with the coming of the badlands, we lost most of our kin. Most clans were reduced to next to nothing. Some to children and others the elders. To survive and cross the wasteland to find a new home, we banded together,” Miya explained. “Now there is one clan, the last clan. Each mother represents a lost clan that may once again be in a future we must build ourselves, stone by stone, oni by oni.”

  I found myself frozen at the door, listening to a conversation I had every reason to be part of. Surely Miya would tell me this if I asked. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to enter the room and instead merely listened at the door. The hum of a nearby wisp and the sound of Ilsa’s and Miya’s voices were the only things to be heard in the night.

  There was a long pause, and I heard a noise that could very well have been a sob from Ilsa. Or perhaps it wasn’t. “That’s… So all this time, you and the oni have been desperately trying to survive. I think only Mykah was the one who realized. Fighting for food and a home. Now you finally have it. Are you… Miya, are you sure it’s fine for you and the oni to be down here fighting like this? This is a chance to be building that new home, stone by stone.”

  “Aren’t we building that home?” Miya said, although something about her voice made it sound like her heart wasn’t in it.

  “That’s not what I mean. You’re down here, protecting those who are building it. This is the chance to shape your future home. Tell me, what do you want out of this territory that you now have? When Lyria is pushed back and things are settled enough that you can think entirely about the oni, what is it you want out of a new oni clan? You, Yasno, Hish—all of you must have your own desires for a home.”

  The room went silent. I strained my hearing, wondering if Miya was instead speaking very softly. Something about this made me think that it was very personal to Miya, that she wouldn’t speak openly about it. In fact, everything about the oni that wasn’t entirely military-focused had always been off-limits, I felt. It was why I kept away from it, despite things always feeling a bit odd.

  “Our home is what it is. We are at home now, building it. That is how it is for us and how it must be. It is what we must do, as oni,” Miya said. I frowned. What kind of non-answer was that?

  “Miya, what do you—” Ilsa began to say, raising her voice before suddenly cutting herself off.

  Trying again, Ilsa lowered her voice to her normal pitch. “There’s a whole lot of oni up north, farming away and asking you for advice. But you, Yasno, Hish, and a bunch of other oni are down here fighting a dragon who could kill you all instantly. Vasi didn’t even offer to come help when we told her that Lyria had bypassed her. What is going on?”

  The sound of Miya’s voice was ordinary, but at the same time, it was very different from how she normally sounded when talking to me. “That is how it is for us. That is why we are building our home here.”

  Something clicked in my mind. Us. She wasn’t talking about all oni with that word.

  If I excluded Miya, there was only one type of oni in my army. I called them all oni, but that was at the urging of one person. It was Miya who had told me to call them all oni. Hish had actually called herself a demi-oni. Vasi had called them “oni designated for military service.” What was going on here?

  I needed to talk to Miya now. I needed to—

  “We need to talk,” Ilsa said, holding onto my arm as she stood outside the door.

  Chapter 31

  “I’m assuming you’re not going to complain that I was eavesdropping,” I said once Ilsa had led us to a nearby receiving room. It was sparsely furnished, with just a table, three plush chairs, and a set of cabinets. At least it had been dusted.

  “No. In fact, it helps that you heard that. The look on your face when I stepped out told me that you understand what Miya means,” Ilsa said. Her words praised me but her face didn’t. She looked put-out.

  “I’d accept that praise if you didn’t look so annoyed.”

  “Ha. Criticism taken,” she said, looking around the room and beginning to rifle through the cabinets. “Is there anything to drink in here? Oh, there’s some coffee in here. You don’t mind soldier’s brew, right?” She was talking about the powdered crap that the mages had learned to produce a few decades back from the fine elvish stuff. Despite the name, most soldiers would kill for it—it was far better than the almost gelatinous garbage that was actually drunk by most soldiers once it had been reheated by magic for the hundredth time.

  As she made the coffee with a ceramic jug and her own magic, she continued to talk. “I don’t mean to be annoyed. It’s just… You taught me everything I ever learned about the oni. Every conversation I’ve had with Miya and the others has confirmed it. This entire venture has confirmed it. They’re not barbarians. They’re people who lost their home and wanted a new one. It just so happened to be ours. Then I found out something new and, well, you had already figured it out.

  “It felt like I had discovered some new magical theorem in my tower, gone to my magister and found him writing it up on the board right then and there.”

  Given that the first lesson of magical theory was that nothing I would ever discover was actually new, what Ilsa described was a pretty common experience. Somebody, somewhere, had discovered every magical theorem before it had been lost in the Decline, or the destruction of a continent, or it was actually in the margins of some ancient mage’s notebook and it therefore wasn’t actually my discovery. Ilsa had moved away from the field of magical research early, however, so she had yet to have the joy of discovery brutally beaten out of her by reality.

  The coffee cups clinked against the glass top of the table and brought me out of my thoughts. I glanced down and noted the lack of milk in the coffee. I’d have to raid Hish’s room and steal her tea if I couldn’t find some decent coffee. I was no elf, but still, this definitely deserved the moniker of “soldier’s brew.”

  We sat in near-silence for several moments. Both of us thought about what we had just heard from Miya as we faced one another. A wisp hummed in the torch above us. I preferred more directly powered magical torches rather than these wisp-powered torches. My preferences meant little without a cent
ral generator and proper wiring. Evidently, the citadel predated such advancements, and no retrofitting had been undertaken when the city had been converted to a capital.

  It occurred to me that I didn’t know how old the keep was. The city itself was easily centuries old, if not a millennium. Not that it had been a city in the time of the kaisers.

  “Not going to say anything?” Ilsa asked, still looking put-out.

  I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not your teacher anymore. You pulled me in here. It’s time for you to give me advice.”

  Her mouth dropped open and I worried that she would drop her cup. She put it down. While she played with her drink, I chose my next words carefully.

  “Ilsa, you said for yourself that it’s time to allow those under me to achieve everything they can. That they are capable of great things if I don’t restrict everything to what I do myself,” I said. “You’re doing great things, right now. Yes, I realized what Miya meant. But tell me, who was Miya talking to?”

  Ilsa licked her lips nervously. Her eyes moved between the coffee and my face. “I did talk to her but you—”

  “Given what she said, do you really think it would be easy for her to say it to my face?” It hurt to admit that. It hurt a lot more than I had expected it to. I needed to deal with that fact before talking with Miya.

  “No, probably not,” Ilsa said. Then she finished her coffee. “Archangel, that’s bitter. You’d think there’d be better coffee here.” She paused before continuing. “In other words, I took another step in becoming your adviser. I wanted this. Maybe I got a little too caught up in the heat of the moment. Sorry. Now we need to work out how to help Miya.”

  Nodding, I finished off my own coffee and placed my cup down. I covered the cup with my hand when Ilsa made a gesture to refill it, grimacing as I did so. The laugh she let out in response brightened up the room.

  “So, my lovely adviser,” I began, “what do you think she needs? I know what the problem is—I can write the magical theorem on the board for all to see—but I think only you have gotten close enough to Miya to know the answer.”

  Ilsa leaned back in her chair and stroked her chin in thought. “Did anything she say stand out when she spoke earlier?”

  “Us. We. The oni. The clan,” I said. “Did Miya ever once refer to herself?”

  “Exactly,” Ilsa said, nodding in approval. I got an odd sense of familiarity from this situation. “Has she ever spoken about herself other than when we first met her?”

  “No” was the short answer. What did she talk about when I first met her? She had been rather lost then.

  Miya had spoken to me about how her purpose had been fulfilled and that her life was mine. At the same time, I had asked for military assistance from the oni in exchange for abandoning the Arium Bulwark. I received an army of single-horned oni and Miya. Did she consider this her new purpose now that she was no longer the Herald of the Oni?

  I felt like I had discovered the root cause. A single conversation had caused this. Miya slotted herself into a role so that she fit in somewhere during a time of chaos. The problem was, she was a square peg going into a round hole.

  In this case, she had two horns where everybody else only had one.

  Ilsa clicked her tongue at me. “You know, I was playing role reversal. Going through the scenario like how you taught me: run through the situation and ask leading questions. It’s not as fun when I watch you reach the conclusion after one or two questions.”

  Ah, so that was why this felt so familiar. “I’ve had some very good teachers and decades of experience picking people and scenarios apart. Whatever my actual level of emotional intelligence may be, tactics and strategy do rely on understanding your opponents, and that applies to your allies as well.”

  I sighed and moved onto the hard part. “So Miya refuses to view herself separately from all the oni under her. All of whom have just one horn. What next?”

  “Make her remember that she is a single, living, breathing person who can do things that all the other oni can’t,” Ilsa said, although there was a shadow on her face as she held up two fingers. “There’s two parts to this. The first is the easiest but also the most dangerous,” she continued. “You saw what she did to the inner wall of Talepolis. The last step on your journey isn’t just empowering Yasno, Hish, and the others with the tools and tactics to fight alongside you. You need to recognize when they are your equal and are as useful as you in battle. Miya isn’t going to help you fight Lyria. She is the key to victory.”

  That was a big ask. I knew Lyria’s power. To risk not just my life, but Miya’s…

  I saw the look on Ilsa’s face and remembered the conversation we had before Talepolis. If I didn’t step forward, what was the point of all of this? Had I not visited Miya’s room to ask her to help me battle Lyria? Whether it was for vengeance or something else entirely, Miya was here because she wanted to be here. It was time to recognize her as an equal.

  “What’s the other thing?” I asked Ilsa.

  To my surprise, I didn’t receive a verbal answer. Not immediately.

  Instead, Ilsa got up out of her chair and sat in my lap. I could see hints of tears in her eyes. She leaned in close, touched her lips to mine, and kissed me deeply. We continued kissing for a very long time.

  “I want you to myself,” Ilsa said, her voice thick with emotion. “But I want this world, and this empire, to change so much more. Miya needs you as much as I do. Possibly much more, but I won’t say that. Ever.

  “Take her, Mykah. Remind her that she’s not just one of the oni. She’s Miyasa, and she should be very proud of that fact.”

  Chapter 32

  I paused outside the door to Miya’s room and looked in. Miya sat on the floor in a red dress. She was maintaining her bow, oiling the wood and checking for any damage from the battle. The string—if you could call the steel cable she used to propel the ballista bolts she fired a “string”—was missing, so she was presumably doing something with that as well. I knew something about proper bow maintenance. Unfortunately, “something” was about all I could recall right now.

  Miya was breathtaking in her beauty. Whether it was her hair, her eyes, her skin, her body, or everything about her, I wanted it. Wanted her.

  Ilsa was pretty, but my connection with her was emotional, a bond that had made it easy to respond to her desire back in Tornfrost Watch. Miya was a woman that I lusted for. I trusted her as well, but it wasn’t the reason I would form any relationship with her if she wanted one. It would help, but ultimately, it would be because I wanted her body. We didn’t know each other well enough for any other bond to have formed yet.

  That wasn’t fair to her, I felt. At the same time, I couldn’t dismiss Ilsa’s advice so easily. If Miya wanted me, then perhaps there wasn’t a reason not to begin a relationship. I still wasn’t certain of the morality of it. Miya had shown interest in me in the past and I had Ilsa’s blessing, but forming a relationship with two women at once was a step I had not pictured myself taking.

  I had put this off long enough, I realized. If I waited any longer, Miya might actually go to sleep. I had given it a night, slept on the idea that Ilsa had planted in me. Now I was here, ready to empower Miya to fight alongside me. And maybe ask Miya to do something entirely different with me, if she was interested.

  “How’s the bow, Miya?” I asked her as I entered. “I assume it came out better than the gatehouse?”

  She whirled on the spot, fast enough that I worried for her neck and waist and also fast enough for me to notice her chest whip about. Whatever happened tonight, I was going to be noticing her movements for a long time to come. Letting my focus slip had that cost. I knew from experience with certain other women that I had difficulty not paying attention to their bodies when I should know better.

  “Mykah. Let me get you some tea,” she said, putting her bow to one side and rising.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt you,” I said as I looked for somewhere to sit. Only
her bed, unfortunately. Or perhaps fortunately. I sat on the frame at the foot of her bed, which was a little too narrow to support me properly.

  Frowning at me, Miya proceeded to ignore what I said and put her bow to one side. She retrieved a small tea set from her bedside cabinet and made some for us, looking over at me with a confused expression. If I wasn’t mistaken, this was one of Hish’s tea sets.

  “You’ve never visited me at night before. Or in my room,” she said. “I’m glad I asked Hish for something to entertain guests with. Ilsa said this morning that this happens sometimes.”

  Impressively unsubtle, Ilsa. So unsubtle that even Miya caught onto the scheme. I shrugged in response to her unvoiced question.

  “I had thought that was from Hish’s collection. Out of curiosity, why does she have so many of them? They look so old that I wonder if they predate the Reforms,” I said, changing the subject.

  Miya hummed as she carried the small ceramic tray with the tea set. I wasn’t exactly sure where she planned to put it, given the lack of a table or chairs. On the ground, as it turned out. I imagined Hish glaring angrily at her boss, given how seriously she seemed to take her tea.

  “You have likely guessed as much, but our history is as storied as your empire’s is. Hish’s collection is one from the lost clans, and her grandmother cherished it. It’s a relic from when the oni had a civilization far to the east, before the badlands came,” Miya said, her face turning slowly sad.

  I had heard this and already guessed the toll the badlands had on the oni. For the Empire, which had retreated to the western coast, that toll had been the loss of our guardian archangel. To the rest of the world, it had cut out entire civilizations. The oni had clearly been among them.

  Passing me up a cup of tea, although without its saucer, Miya continued. “So much has been lost. Even more has been sacrificed since. Perhaps more will be in the future. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, Mykah, but I will now. What you have done for us these past few months outweighs whatever you think you did to us in the past decades. You are everything to these oni. To all of us. You—”