EMERE
The clean white room had traces of old blood here and there where the stains could not be washed out. The Powered light fixture on the wall infused the space with a pale blue light. On a small table by the bed, there was an array of surgical implements neatly laid out for use.
Emere took off his bloody clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, carefully rubbing the wound on his chest with a cloth soaked in medicine. The pain slowly melted away. He sighed with relief. How wonderful it was to not be in pain.
The assassin’s sword also lay on the small table by the bed. The assassin must have been Cassian, as her crossbow had been, but the sword was Imperial. The engraved pattern looked like an eye or perhaps a bird; in any case, he had never seen it before. But there were many legions within the Empire, and it was likely an emblem for one of those.
Rakel was selecting medicine from a cabinet. Surgeons in theCapital were normally shaved bald, but Rakel tied her long hair up into a knot and covered it with a white cloth instead, in the Ebrian fashion. She hadn’t had a single white hair ten years ago when they last parted at the Kamori border, but now he could see many of them peeking out from under her surgical headcloth.
Emere had put off visiting Rakel for a long time, but he was here at last. He had pictured several versions of his reunion with her. She was well within her rights to be resentful, which was probably why he had been reluctant to come here. Perhaps being almost killed trumped every pathetic excuse he had been making not to visit his old lover and travel companion.
But when she opened the door, Rakel met his arrival calmly, noticing his injury before anything else. He didn’t even have time to say anything beyond a simple greeting, as she wasted no time in treating his wounds.
Even after all those years, and with all those white strands of hair, for a moment Emere felt like no time had passed since they parted ways. There was something comforting and right about her movements, the smell of the room they were in. Right now, he trusted her more than anyone in the world.
“I haven’t seen a wound like this in a long time,” she said, examining it with worry in her eyes. “People in the Capital don’t get shot by Cassian bolts often.” The sight of her face brought back many memories from years ago—when Kamori had surrendered to the Empire, when he had fought with his mother before leaving home and wandering the world.
“How does it look?” he asked.
“Just a little bit above this and you would’ve bled out very quickly. Who took out the bolt?”
“I did. I thought it would be all right.”
Rakel frowned and gave him a light slap on the shoulder. “Not again! Your face is as old as a legend but you’re still behaving like a boy!”
Emere’s hand rose to his face. He needed no mirror to tell him there was white mixed in with his stubble now too. He had met Rakel just a few months after setting out eastward from home. Emere had been twenty-four, Rakel twenty-two. They were together for nearly ten years before he left her, and now it had been nearly ten years since he had last seen her.
“I heard a rumor you were married,” he said, changing the subject. “How is your husband?”
“Why, are you filled with regret? Was I your ‘destiny’ all along?” she teased. There was no resentment in her voice, but it didn’t sound entirely lighthearted either. Her eyes were still examining the wound, and Emere didn’t reply.
He had once been a prince of Kamori, and she the daughter of a fallen family of priests in Ebria—her parents had died in prison after being discovered worshipping their Nameless God, which was against the Imperial edict banning their religion. He and Rakel had traveled the world for ten years, searching for ways to fight the Empire. They’d been to all manner of places, but it had come to nothing. Ten years ago, Emere had bid her farewell at Finvera Pass and joined the rebel forces of his brother, the self-styled King Gwaharad… which had also come to nothing.
“My husband died two years ago in the Great Fire.”
“I see,” murmured Emere. Rakel’s expression did not change at all as she continued to examine the wound using a small mirror.Had her own wounds healed? At Finvera Pass, she had burst into tears at his insistence they part. Back then, he was so sure that it was the right thing to do for both of them.
He changed the subject again. “You’re not going back home then?”
“To Ebria? No, I’ve put down roots here. I don’t need to go anywhere else. And surgery isn’t the only thing I do here. I have many people to care for.”
“You were always like that. Wherever it was you happened to be staying, you were home.”
“I’m not like you. I don’t change the whole direction of my life just because I had a dream.”
Rakel dipped a stick with a cotton swab into a medicinal bottle. The swab came out soaked in blue.
“I met her. The woman who kept appearing in my dream visions.”
Rakel’s hands froze in midair. Her eyes went wide. “You did?”
“You’ve heard of what happened in Arland?”
“That province where the corrupt prefect caused an uprising? Where the Empire sent a legion to negotiate peace?”
That seemed to be the story circulating around the Empire. The real story was the stuff of legends—that a princess with a flaming sword had risen, as did the dragon of the volcano, and that the Empire’s army had been defeated by a local militia. It hardly sounded credible, but the Empire nevertheless would not have been pleased if the truth got out.
“She’s the one who led the uprising. A local widow,” Emere explained. “I helped, a little,” he couldn’t help adding.
