The Sun Emperor
THE SUN EMPEROR
Arc of the Sky, book 2
L.M.R. Clarke
The Sun Emperor Copyright © 2019 by L.M.R. Clarke. All Rights Reserved.
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
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.
L.M.R. Clarke
Visit me at www.castrumpress.com/authors/lmr-clarke
Printed in the United Kingdom
First Printing: May 2019
Castrum Press
ISBN-13 978-1-9123273-2-4
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
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
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
For my grandmois and grandpois. Never forgotten
CHAPTER ONE
The rain poured and poured and poured.
The late Merish deluge hammered them incessantly, pulling their moods down with the sodden weight of their clothes. Emmy and her friends trekked along a road churning with mud. The baked ground of Middlemerish surrendered to the rain as the season began to turn. Emmy shivered as rivulets of cold water ran through her fronds, dripped from her horn crest, slithered down her face and under the neck of her tunic. The elation of her outburst seemed a thousand cycles in the past. Now they had only rain.
Of all of them, Rel remained most jubilant, though weariness made her body sag more than the rain. Emmy stayed in step beside her, reaching out when Rel stumbled. The wilt in her friend’s stature frightened Emmy more than the Masvams could. Rel was the strong one. She was unstoppable, but she was also exhausted.
“Don’t worry,” Rel said, half-breathless in a way that made Emmy’s stomach tighten. “Bomsoi will ensure we receive a good welcome in Kubodinnu. I can’t guarantee feather mattresses, but at least you’ll get a bed.”
In front of them, Zecha groused, rubbing his back. “Anything would be better than the ground.”
Charo chuckled and slung an arm around his waist. Her reddish fronds stuck out in a haze. Water sluiced from her to him, melding them together like a two-headed drenched creature.
“I’d take the hard ground over the cold embrace of death any day,” she said. “We were lucky. That could have been our fate.”
“Never!” Zecha said, leaning into Charo. “With you around, I’ll never die. Even if a demon came to claim me, I think you’d fight them back.”
“Oh, Zecha,” Charo said. “You’re a soft thing.”
Emmy rolled her eyes as the two went about their playful flirtation, though she still smiled. Quite why folk insisted on giving each other compliments more sopping than her clothes remained a mystery. Why fawn upon one another? Surely truthful simplicity was the best course, such as being there when a friend needed you, just as Emmy was with Rel now.
Exhaustion and the deluge slowed Rel more than any Masvam sword. By the time the grand spire of Kubodinnu appeared, hovering like a shadow in the haze of the rain, Rel’s boots barely lifted from the muddy road with each step. Emmy didn’t need to ask what made her so weary. It was easy to reason out. If I’d summoned a huge wind to carry us to safety, I’d be exhausted too, she thought. Rel had said nothing about the cost of her actions, but Emmy knew enough to slot the puzzle pieces together. They walked due to Rel’s exhaustion, not sailing through the skies on her magical wings. Nothing comes without cost, Emmy thought, magic or not.
That thought sent her mind skipping through memories like a stone. Emmy bounced between remembrances of Krodge and the cost she’d paid for her relative safety and her apothecary’s knowledge. The ‘lessons’ she had learned on her knees and written in her blood, but also the lives she’d saved from the Breathstealer’s Plague or horrific wounds, all because Krodge had given her the knowledge to treat them.
The thought, also, about the fact that she was alive and not drowned like an unwanted vaekit. Krodge could have killed her without anyone knowing. Or she could have killed her and dangled the dead hatchling from her claws as proof she’d rid Bellim of a demon.
Krodge had done none of these things. The reason she took Emmy in still eluded her, and the fact she would never know why weighed on Emmy’s mind.
Shaking off the feeling with the rain, Emmy returned her attention to Rel. At least she knew why Rel had taken her in. It was her duty. However, Rel had been compelled to look after Emmy’s welfare, where Krodge had not. Emmy had received more compassion and kindness from Rel in the short time they’d been together than Krodge had shown in her entire life. Emmy gave a tiny shrug. Folk were complex.
She opened her mouth to ask how much longer their walk would take when Rel stumbled over her muddied boots. The older female went down like a sack of rocks. Emmy’s fast claws grabbed fistfuls of the drenched cloak around her shoulders, but Rel was too heavy. Emmy’s muscles burned with her intervention, but she at least managed to stop Rel’s face from planting in the churned mud. The rest of Rel’s body slumped into the quagmire.
“Rel!” Zecha and Charo rushed back to haul her from the mud.
Throat tight, Emmy spoke. “Sit her up.” Rel’s soaked head lolled on her shoulders, limp as a poorly-stuffed doll.
“Rel,” Emmy said. She pulled her friend’s eyelids open and peered in. Rel’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. “Rel!”
The sharp word hit as well as a slap, and Rel roused, her head still wobbling but her eyes clearer. She blinked and raised her muddy hands, her Althemerian bracelets shifting, before she passed her vision down to her mud-covered body. She was coated from torso to tail-tip, though the incessant rain was already clearing strips through it.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice hoarse and thin.
“You need to rest,” Zecha said. “You’re worn thin.”
Rel m
ade to protest, but Emmy folded her arms and shook her head. “Zecha’s right,” she said. “This healer was taught well, and this healer knows when someone needs to rest. We’re not going any further until I say so.”
Looking from Emmy’s taut face to Zecha’s expression of concern, then to the worry on Charo’s brows, Rel didn’t try to protest. Instead she moved her claws in sharp flicks, trying to rid them of the mire. “May I at least rest under a tree instead of in this swamp?”
Emmy’s face softened, and she motioned for the others to help her lift Rel. “Of course.”
They pulled Rel off the road and toward the trees, resting her back against a tree trunk. In the vague shade of the leaves the rain lessened, though fat droplets dripped from the leafy canopy above.
One caught Emmy right in the eye, and she winced. “For the love of the goddess, I’ve never seen this much rain!”
Rel managed a thin chuckle, though she didn’t open her eyes. “Welcome to the end of Merish on Althemer. Don’t worry. The rain will soon give way to sleet and snow.”
“Fantastic,” said Emmy, deadpan. “That’ll be even better.”
Chuckling, Charo pulled the cloak from Rel’s shoulders and began to wring it out. “You could never survive in the north. In Haetharro it snows nearly all cycle around.”
Zecha pouted and plucked the other edge of Rel’s cloak, following Charo’s lead and wringing rainwater and mud from it. “No thank you. Mr Charber always called me a sun youngling if ever he saw one.”
He stopped as if surprised by his own words. His pout slipped into a genuine frown, and his hands slowed.
Emmy squeezed his shoulder. “Wherever he is, I hope he’s okay.”
It took a moment for Zecha to reply, as if he’d been swept away into memories of the male who had taken him in as a lodger and had become so much more. “I’m sure he is.” But his tone didn’t match his words.
Soon enough they had made Rel as comfortable as they could in the damp undergrowth at the edge of the tree line. Emmy pulled what she could from what remained of the medicine pouches at her waist, and mixed a rainwater paste in the palm of one hand. She dipped the tip of one claw into it and tasted the concoction. The bitterness twisted her face, but she nodded.
“I’m going to rub this on your gums,” she said as she positioned herself on her haunches in front of Rel. “It’ll revive you a little.”
The older female grunted her reply and kept her eyes closed. She consented to Emmy’s ministrations with a sour face, though Emmy suspected it was more from the taste of the paste than anything else.
“Truly disgusting,” Rel said when Emmy had finished, “but appreciated. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Emmy said. “Now don’t move from that spot until I tell you to.”
Rel gave a soft chuckle. “Yes, Mistress.”
The word made Emmy freeze, though she snapped herself from it quickly enough that she hoped Rel didn’t notice. How many times had she said those words to Krodge? The memory was less than welcome.
To cover herself, Emmy plastered on a smile as she rose. “I’m going to look for something for us to eat. There has to be some shrooms or edible bark close by.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Charo. “Zecha can stay with Rel.”
The only male among them gave a shallow bow and settled on the sodden ground beside Rel. The Bonebreaker’s eyes closed.
“I’ll protect us from raindrops and stray blades of grass,” Zecha said.
Charo’s face darkened. “Or the real threat of Masvam raiders.”
Rel kept her eyes closed. “Most likely not this far inland. but I’ll appreciate Zecha’s kind company.” She cracked open one eye and turned it on Emmy, her tone turning serious. “Don’t stray too far.”
Nodding, Emmy turned toward the dark of the forest with Charo at her right shoulder.
They had walked out of earshot before Charo said anything. She slid her gaze to the side, eying Emmy. “You didn’t like it when she said ‘Yes, Mistress,’ did you?”
Emmy placed her hands on the bark of a common redbark tree. Dampness came more from the humid air than any rainfall. “I didn’t.”
She worked one talon into the bark to pry a chunk off, not looking at Charo. She sniffed the freed strip before chewing one end. It tasted of ash and moss, but it was as close to food as they might find in the absence of berries or shrooms.
Charo placed a hand on Emmy’s arm and squeezed. “I understand.” She glanced around, gesturing at the forest. “Being in here brings back poor memories for me too.”
The bark fell from Emmy’s fingers, forgotten as concern for Charo rose. It didn’t cross her mind that forests might be an unwanted reminder of how Charo came to be in her life.
“You should have stayed with Rel instead of Zecha,” Emmy said, her eyeridges coming together in a soft look. “I didn’t even think.”
Giving a shrug and a mild smile, Charo waved off her concern. “It’s okay. I can’t avoid forests forever. The memory’s not so bad. Just a little unpleasant to remember what’s been done to me.”
Working another strip free, Emmy nodded. “I know how that feels.” As she peeled the red bark back to reveal the fresh light wood beneath, her expression morphed into a frown. “You never told me exactly what happened that day. Nothing beyond the basics.”
Charo stilled for a moment, before reaching out to help Emmy pull more bark free. “And you told me you weren’t a Moon Rogue,” she countered, though she smiled playfully. “Looks like the truth about that is complicated.”
The name ‘Moon Rogue’ stung, but not as much as it would have back in Bellim. Emmy shrugged and shook her head. “I didn’t know there was anything rogue-like about me when I told you that. Until Rel, I didn’t know there was anything remotely special about me at all.”
Charo’s hands filled with strips as she worked her way around the tree trunk. Emmy watched her claws pluck at the softened bark, the tips burrowing into the wood underneath. Charo caught her look and returned it with a smile.
“You’re more than magic powers, which you still need to explain to me,” she said. “But you’re special for a lot of reasons.” Suddenly the tree had Charo’s full attention, though she kept talking. “You saved me, and then took me in when you knew as much about me as a passing cloud. I could have been anyone, a thief or a killer.” Her voice stumbled on the last word, though she recovered before Emmy could say anything. “You treated me with more compassion than anyone else ever did. To me, that’s more special than freezing flames or chasing off hoards of Masvams.”
Clutching her bark strips in one hand, Emmy pulled Charo into a brief embrace. Her friend’s thickening fronds were sharp against her unarmored cheek. Charo’s arms, thicker with muscle now than they had been when they first met, wrapped around Emmy’s back and shoulders. Such affection was still too unknown for Emmy to be comfortable, so she released Charo as soon as she could.
“I’m glad you came into my life,” Emmy said. “I’m not glad you had to get stabbed for it to happen, but I am glad you’re with me now.”
“I’m glad I came into your life too.” Charo’s voice faltered as she tried to speak. “I thought I’d died in ways beyond being stabbed. You and Zecha have showed me there’s still a reason to be here, and I’m very grateful.”
She wasn’t crying, though her eyes glistened. Emmy slipped her hands onto Charo’s scarred forearms and nodded. Charo’s words cut to her core. She understood all too well how it felt to have little reason to live. The fact those words were spoken by someone so young cut even more deeply. Fourteen cycles. How could just fourteen cycles be so horrific?
“Maybe one day you’ll tell me about your life before, hmm?” Emmy asked. “You know my pains. I’d like to know yours.”
Charo’s gaze darted away for a moment. “I will tell you, one day.” Her eyes returned to Emmy’s. “Right now we need to find something more than redbark to eat, or we’ll have a very sad supper.”
Chuckling, Emmy’s lips parted in a smile. “Agreed.”
CHAPTER TWO
By the time Emmy and Charo returned with handfuls of bark and a few grayshrooms, Zecha had managed to light a miraculous fire in the downpour. After the meager meal, they had to travel on. Emmy’s concoction had revived Rel enough that she could walk again, albeit labored, and with the aid of a sturdy fallen branch Zecha plucked from the undergrowth.
The rain had finally ceased, leaving behind the heady, ripe scent of the end of Merish. They had a little more ground to cover before they reached Kubodinnu, but after traveling from the Hutukeshu encampment, any distance felt too long. Rel smiled as Emmy supported her along the road. Even tired, Haelo still bobbed on her hip. No one else could take the sword, its weight only bearable by Rel.
“We’re nearly there,” Rel said. “Soon we’ll be with Bomsoi and you’ll feel her joy first-claw.”
Emmy looped one arm through Rel’s crooked elbow. She gave her a nervous smile. “I’m scared,” she said. “At least I think that’s what I’m feeling.”
“Try not to worry,” Rel said. “Don’t think of her as a goddess. Think of her instead as a sister, or a mother.”
Emmy chuckled, though it sounded tainted with self-depreciation. “I don’t know how to think like that. I never had either.”
“Well, now you have both,” Rel said.
Warmed by the words, Emmy ducked her head. “Thank you. Not just for what you said, but for everything. Thank you for looking for me, and then for looking out for me and keeping me safe. And for telling me about my folk and myself.” Breaking off, Emmy twisted her lips. “Sorry.”
Rel placed a hand on Emmy’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’re welcome. You don’t have anything to apologize for. I should also thank you.”
“Thank me? I haven’t done anything.”
Rel pinned her with a look that was more disappointed teacher than loving sister. “That isn’t true.”