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  THE MOON ROGUE

  Arc of the Sky Trilogy, Book 1

  L. M. R. Clarke

  The Moon Rogue © 2019 by L.M.R. Clarke. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by The Gilded Quill

  www.thegildedquill.co.uk

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Castrum Press

  Visit the publisher’s website at www.castrumpress.com

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Printing: March 2019

  Castrum Press

  Print Edition

  ISBN-13 978-1-9123274-5-4

  Table of Contents

  THE MOON ROGUE - DEDICATION

  WORLD MAP

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THE SUN EMPEROR - CHAPTER ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

  "To Barry, my unwavering Heart."

  World Map

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mantos

  Mantos Tiboli, Imperial Prince of the Masvam Empire, was heir to the throne by a hairline crack. Two eggs had rested in two divots on two identical stone pillars. Identical wrought-iron branches curved around them, rising into tall spikes surrounding the leathery spheres. Everything the same, everything equal, both eggs cared for the same way in the same warm air. It was a miracle, something unheard of, even in the annals of time. Never before had two eggs been brought into the world together—not since the time of the gods themselves.

  Armed guards and males of the household watched over them. They stared, eyes never leaving the leathery shells, waiting for the blessed moment when the future emperor would hatch. But which one would it be? The larger egg, black dappled with gold? Or the smaller one, silver and smooth and glinting in the candlelight? It was rumored that courtiers and potwashes alike took bets, though it would mean their heads if any were caught. To bet on the future emperor was shameful, but the glint of coin was too great a temptation.

  Mantos emerged from his silver egg first, all razor claws and stubby tail, golden eyes glimmering. His first sight was a joyful smile, and the first sound he heard a whoop of joy.

  After the briefest of moments, brother Bandim escaped from his black and gold shell, too young to see and hear that the joy was less for the second hatchling. The spare.

  It was only by virtue of that brief moment that Mantos found himself standing at the edge of his father’s bed, twenty-one cycles later, on the cusp of becoming emperor.

  Bandim lingered further away, cloaked by shadow. He stared at their dying father, unblinking. “Is he awake?” he asked.

  Slowly, Mantos shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Will he wake again?”

  Mantos paused before he answered. The truth stilled his tongue, until duty bade him answer his brother. “I don’t know.”

  For the longest time the brothers stood in the lavish bedchamber, watching the erratic rise and fall of their father’s chest, listening to the rattle of his breath and the spluttering of the candles. This was the same bedchamber they had been hatched in. It was the bedchamber that would become Mantos’ upon his father’s death.

  And what then? Mantos thought as he fingered the fine embroidery of the bedspread. His claws passed over the scenes picked out in golden thread: conquests, killings, triumphs. His stomach lurched. Soon the crown will fall upon my head, as will leadership of the largest empire in the land. An empire that swallows everything in its path. An empire that I want nothing to do with. His eyes flicked to Bandim. But an empire I must command. The alternative is unthinkable.

  Until losing his speech three days before, their father, Emperor Braslen, had still commanded his advisors, poring over crinkled maps that servants brought to his bedside. He was still talking strategy, showing Mantos the next steps in his grand plan.

  “We will break the Metakalans once and for all,” Braslen had said. Despite the wheeze in his voice and the tremble in his hand, fire blazed in his eyes. “Too long have they held out against us. Now that the Selamans have been crushed, we can focus our attention on Metakala—but don’t forget, we must leave enough military might in Selama to quell any rebellion. We will roll our borders into Metakalan lands, and then we will strike against the Althemerians. Metakala is nothing more than a stepping stone to our true quarry. The Althemerian queen disrespected me twice: once when she denied my marriage offer, and again when she would not marry her daughters to my sons.” The fury in Braslen’s eyes made Mantos want to step back, but he held firm. Braslen snarled. “We will crush them.”

  Dutifully, the prince listened and nodded at the right times. He knew the Selamans had been crushed. He’d been there. He’d planted the Masvam flag in their capital. He’d torched the banner that once hung in their ornate long hall. He’d slit the throat of the queen beneath its flaming remains. Crushed wasn’t even the right word. Decimated was closer to the mark. Crops and shipyards set alight in white-hot flame, cities brought to ash and ruin, females and younglings trampled to death on the streets... And for what? Mantos thought. Land? Power? He suppressed a snort. More like rebellion. More like death.

  As always, he dared not share those thoughts. Once, he’d had a confidant, but... Mantos shuddered. Fonbir and I dare not communicate about these matters any longer, he thought. Princes on opposing sides of an impending war... It isn’t prudent, as much as my heart aches for him.

  An obedient son, Mantos always played his part. He was a scholar, a diplomat, and most importantly, a warrior. It was expected. As the heir to the Masvam throne, he could be nothing else. No matter what the Metakalans or the Althemerians or the Linvarrans might believe, he thought, the Masvams saw their males as soldiers, protectors, while other cultures denigrated theirs. Males were nothing more than simpering pets to them, those lands with queens and empresses. That was why they resisted Masvam rule with blood and steel. They saw Masvam ideals as dangerous, against the natural way. But how could that be
? The Masvams followed the Light and did as the goddess commanded. We inhabit the holy words, where the male is power and strength, Mantos thought. They live a lie, where females are leaders and warriors. It’s against the natural way. Our way is the natural way.

  Mantos sighed and dropped the hem of his father’s bedspread. Bandim came a little closer, his face lit by the fine white candles their father favored.

  Like Mantos, Bandim had a fine figure. They were tall and wiry, strength without bulk, and favored their mother’s coloring. Their skin was a deep brown, and their armor—thick scales running in patterns across the body—was burnished gold, with straw-like head fronds straight and black as night. In the light, Bandim’s eyes were opalescent yellow, just like Mantos’. Both princes were adorned with jewelry: rings, bracelets, and fine gold chains that wound around their curving horn crests, dripping with colored gemstones. They wore identical pendants around their necks: two crossed Tiboli lightning strikes with a round shield between them. Their jewels were bright but their robes were black, a sign of respect for their dying father.

  Soon they would wear white. White to help Braslen’s spirit find its way to the temple, then to the Light.

  But not yet.

  Bandim fell in beside Mantos and clasped his sharp claws, polished to fine black points, against his flat stomach. His horned tail shifted, the thick bulk lying against the fine muscles of his legs.

  “He doesn’t have much time left. His life’s thread is ready to snap,” Bandim said. There was a pause, and his tone shifted. “You will continue with Father’s plans, won’t you?”

  It was phrased as a question, but said as a command. You don’t care that he’s passing into the Light, Mantos thought. All you care about is the opportunity it brings for you, brother. You’ve never hidden your disdain. Don’t try to, even now that he’s dying.

  Mantos drew himself to his full height, the scales of his neck unfurling. They widened like a golden ruff, licking at the periphery of his vision. He stared at his brother. Hard.

  “I have given my word,” he said.

  Bandim twitched his tail and raised himself to meet Mantos’ eyes. His own neck pulsed, the scales unfurling in a mirror image of Mantos’.

  “Words are words,” he said, speaking with the wise and confident tone that had fooled many housemasters and teachers. One quality Bandim had in abundance was intelligence, even at the cost of kindness and compassion. “You can speak them and still not believe them. I know you’ve given him your word.” He drew his scaled brows low, raised a claw, and pressed on Mantos’ scaly chest plate. “But the question is, have you given him your heart?”

  Mantos’ nose slits widened. He narrowed his eyes. “Do not presume to touch me, brother.”

  Bandim chuckled, though it was a mirthless sound. “Don’t presume to act as if you’re already the emperor.”

  With deliberate slowness, he withdrew his claw. When he smiled, his sharp teeth glinted. His face, so like Mantos’ own, was patterned with scaled armor, his eyes deep-set and golden. His brows were fine, his mouth lined at the corners. It was like looking in a cracked mirror, the features similar, yet in some way distorted. Mantos wished they were more different than alike. He despised how similar they looked, being such opposites. I am of the Light, Mantos thought, and he dwells in the Dark.

  His neck scales didn’t retract until his brother stepped away.

  “Leave,” Mantos said, turning back to their father. “I want to be alone with him.”

  Bandim lingered for a moment, then gave a shallow bow. He turned, robes whirling, and was gone.

  Alone, Mantos listened to his father’s shuddering breaths. He brushed a translucent frond from Braslen’s forehead.

  “I fear my brother won’t obey me when you’re gone,” Mantos whispered. “What shall I do then? How can I command an empire if I cannot keep my own house in order?”

  His father didn’t reply.

  Mantos huffed a quick breath and shook his head. Even if you were awake, you wouldn’t answer, he thought. You’d push it back on me. “What will you do to get your house in order? How will you force your brother to obey?” But those are your ways, Father, not mine. I’m not like you, and I’m not like Bandim. I wish... Tears welled, but Mantos pushed them away. I wish that just once, we’d seen eye-to-eye. That just once we could have been father and son, not emperor and emperor-in-waiting.

  Wishing was, as his father always said, for fools. Exhaling long and hard, Mantos remained at the bedside, waiting, trying not to wish.

  The Vigil was a long-held Masvam tradition. Offspring stayed with their waning parent, waiting for the flesh to die, the thread to finally snap. Mantos’ first duty as emperor would be to share word of his father’s demise. There would be no herald. There would be no grand ceremony. Clad in white, he would walk onto the balcony of the speaker’s bowl. It was an ancient thing, built by emperors of long ago, allowing their voices to carry to the hundreds in the assembled crowd. Mantos would stand at the ornate balcony rail and wait to be seen. There would be courtiers stationed below, their eyes ready to catch a glimpse of the imperial prince. As soon as one saw Mantos, their wail would fill the courtyard.

  “The emperor is dead!”

  A wave of white would spread across the empire: white clothes, white flags, white banners. Mantos would stand on the balcony as the bells tolled, staring across the stone city to the temple. He would remain in place until the beacon blazed in the cloak of night, starting his father’s journey to the Light.

  I never truly thought I would be here, he thought. I imagined Father would live forever. Braslen of House Tiboli had reigned for thirty-five cycles. More advanced in age than their mother, he was on the cusp of old age when he took the crown.

  Mantos clenched his teeth. Mother. Someone should tell her.

  Phen of House Yru had been a beauty in her youth, so Mantos was told. For as long as he remembered, she’d been a sickly female, whose wits had long deserted her. Not long after his hatching, his mother had dropped him. Clattering down a flight of stairs, his tiny body had been broken. The details changed depending on who told the tale, but each telling ended the same way. On seeing the youngling, broken and dead, Mantos’ mother had screamed her grief. From the depths of the palace, a temple novice appeared, whisking the dead body away.

  Something had happened. Something magic. Something Dark. And Mantos had returned from the dead.

  But instead of rejoicing, his mother had blamed herself for the folly, and was never the same again.

  Mantos placed a claw on top of his father’s papery palm. Braslen didn’t stir.

  “Would things have been different if the accident hadn’t happened?” he asked. “If mother hadn’t lost her wits?” Flashes of Bandim’s fury flickered in his mind. “Would my brother hate me less? Might he even love me?”

  No response. Mantos lifted his father’s claw. He rubbed circles on the leathery armor of the back of his hand.

  Prince Mantos was good at many things. He was skilled with a sword and bow, and his mind was as deadly as any weapon. Not one book in the ornate palace library had escaped his greedy eyes. Yet there was one thing he couldn’t master: deciphering his brother. How can we look so alike and yet be so different? It was a puzzle he couldn’t solve, no matter how many books and scrolls he read.

  The solution had eluded their father, too.

  “Your brother is a strange sort,” was his standard response. “He concerns himself too much with lore and with...unsavory beliefs.”

  Unsavory beliefs, Mantos thought. That’s a meek turn of phrase for the worship of a demon. Rumors lurked in every corner of the palace and down every dank alleyway of the city. Prince Bandim was in league with a Moon Rogue and the false goddess Dorai—what a joy it was that Mantos was to be emperor, and not such spawn of the Dark.

  Of course, Bandim never showed his true face to his father. To Braslen, the rumors were folly, nothing more than jealous slander propagated by opposing hou
ses. It didn’t matter what they said. What mattered was that his second son was as pure as the first. Even Mantos knew it was a lie, and he sometimes wondered if a shadow of truth lingered in his father’s gaze as he looked on the younger brother. But it didn’t last long. As always, the emperor concentrated on Mantos.

  “You must lead the empire to new glories,” Braslen said, grasping his startled son’s hand in his shaking talons for Mantos had thought him unconscious. “Finish my work and spread the reign of House Tiboli from sea to sea. Continue what my father started, and plant the seeds of glory for your younglings and your youngling’s younglings...”

  There was a rattle, and a slow wheeze. Braslen’s grip slackened. Those were the last words Emperor Braslen of House Tiboli spoke to his son before he slipped truly into unconsciousness.

  As it turned out, they were the last words he spoke at all.

  BANDIM

  Bandim didn’t draw his hood over his horned head. His face was clear for all to see. Why bother? It’s no great mystery where I’m going. And who could move against me?

  His cloak swept behind him in a sable wave as he made his way to the outskirts of the city. The buildings, fine stonework that glimmered in the setting sun and arched windows to accept the Light, gave way to darker coils of decrepit towers. What they see above shows the foolishness of the Light, Bandim thought. The Dark is pure and shows more truth than their Light ever will.