The Spirit War (40 page)

He recognized the place at once. They were in the hall that ran through the center of the royal guard’s headquarters at the top of the palace. They’d come out next to the barracks door, but the barracks were empty. So was the hall. Josef’s stomach began to sink. This was the heart of the guard. Given the current crisis, it should be crawling with soldiers as the reserves reported in, but the floor was silent. His face set in a grim line, Josef drew the Heart. He turned the sword in his hand, testing the grip in his palm. An echo of power flowed back like a greeting. Josef held the sword close as he tugged open the door to the stairs leading up to the watchtower. Nico fell in behind him, skipping from shadow to shadow.

The stair was a narrow spiral ending at a heavy door that was usually guarded and locked. But there were no guards now, and the heavy door hung open a crack, as though someone had just stepped inside and forgotten to close it. Pressing his body flat against the wall, Josef reached out with his sword, opening the door with the Heart’s blade.

Even though he knew it was coming, the sight of the watchtower stopped him in his tracks. Men lay sprawled on the floor, their white faces still wide with shock above their severed necks. Josef took a quick count. Fifteen bodies, all guardsmen, far too many for the small tower. Josef set his jaw and raised his eyes to the only figure still standing.

Adela stood beside the table where the Council wizard lay slumped in his chair. Her helmet was off, and the dark braid of her hair hung free down her back, which was turned to Josef. For a moment, Josef thought maybe they’d snuck up on her, but before the thought could even finish, Adela turned to face him with a warm smile.

“I told you one day we’d be done pretending.���

Josef cursed. No point in hiding now. “Adela,” he said, stepping fully into the doorway. “Stand down.”

“Little late for that, husband,” Adela said. Her hand moved, and Josef raised his sword, but she wasn’t drawing a weapon. Instead, she held up something small, round, and blue between her fingers.

“What’s that?” Josef said with a sinking feeling.

Adela’s smile widened, and she clenched her hand in a fist. There was a sharp crunch, like an eggshell breaking, and then she opened her hand again, letting broken glass and a tiny amount of water fall to the floor.

“It
was
a Relay point,” she said, shaking the last drops of water from her fingers. “The last Relay point in Osera.”

Josef stared at her, trying to put words to everything that was going through his mind. But he wasn’t Eli. Words didn’t come easily. In the end, he managed only one.

“Why?”

“Because it is my duty,” Adela said calmly. “And because I have waited my entire life for the day when I could leave this miserable dirt scratch of a kingdom.”

“
Duty?
” Josef roared. “The queen raised you up from nothing! Defended you and your mother when everyone else wanted you cast out. She made you an Eisenlowe, captain of her guard, and this is how you repay her?” He swung his sword over the dead soldiers. “You have a twisted sense of duty,
princess
.”

“And what of that matters to me?” Adela sneered. “I serve a higher power than you could ever imagine.” Her voice grew deep and resonant as she spoke, and her eyes lit with a fire Josef had never seen there before. “There is no loyalty except loyalty to the true queen of the world,” she said. “No duty except in her service.”

Josef was beginning to wonder if she might be truly mad. “What are you talking about?”

Adela reached down and drew her short sword with a metallic hiss. Josef braced himself, but she didn’t point the blade at him. Instead, she held the sword in front of her with the flat side facing him. Josef was so busy trying to guess her ploy, he didn’t see the words etched into the metal for several seconds.

Sleepers wake. I am coming.

Josef’s eyes darted from sword to swordswoman. “Who is coming?”

“Who do you think?” Adela laughed, swinging her sword until the point was leveled at the eastern window.

Josef kept his eyes on her, but she made no other moves. Finally, he risked a glance. He had to glance twice before he realized what he was looking at. There, miles out on the line where the Unseen Sea met the sky, the horizon was peppered with tiny dots running north and south as far as he could see.

“Oh yes,” Adela said as the realization broke over his face. “The Immortal Empress is here at last to finish what she started two and a half decades ago.” She brought her sword back around, aiming the point at Josef’s heart. “We are the sleepers,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “For years we’ve worked to weaken this island in her name. Now, your country, divided and hollowed by our hands, shall break like rotten fruit when her boats strike the shore.”

“That’s impossible,” Josef said, forcing himself to ignore the rapturous smile on her face and keep his eyes on her sword. “You weren’t even
born
when the Empress invaded.”

Adela lifted her chin with a haughty sneer. “Loyalty to the Immortal Empress is not constrained by time. Our duty is passed down from mother to child, for generations if need be. We who sleep are called the ever faithful, all of us waiting generation to generation for the day she calls our blade.”

“
Loyalty?
” Josef shouted. “
Faithfulness?
You betrayed your country
and your queen! You killed your own men, and for what? Loyalty to an Empress you’ve never met?”

“Yes,” Adela said, holding her short sword steady. “And I will be rewarded in ways you cannot comprehend.”

“Not if I can help it,” Josef growled. “Nico, go tell the admiral I have our traitor.”

Nico didn’t even get a chance to respond before Adela started to laugh.

“Go ahead, little girl, it doesn’t matter now. Your kingdom is broken, your queen dying and alone. Her duke, the only man who could have rallied Osera, is dead. Your army is terrified and without leadership, your clingfire, the only weapon against the palace ships, destroyed. And since both Relay points are gone, you can’t even use what little time remains to warn your allies. Now do you understand, prince? Send your girl, it will do no good. Osera has already fallen.”

Josef glowered. “I never picked you for a fool, Adela,” he said. “But I guess I was wrong about that too. Only a fool counts a battle won while the defenders are still standing.”

Adela smirked at him. “Not for long.”

Behind him, Josef felt Nico tense, ready to jump through the shadows and land on Adela’s back. He stopped her with one word.

“Go.”

Nico snarled at Adela one last time and vanished into the dark. If Adela was surprised by this, her face didn’t show it.

“Quite the little monster you’ve got there, Thereson,” she said. “Are you sure it was wise to send her away?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m the prince of Osera. It’s my duty to finish you myself.”

“Duty? You?” Adela laughed with delight. “The murderer prince who ran away?” She paused. “Actually, you were the only variable. When Theresa gambled the treasury to bring you home,
we never thought you’d actually come home. But I’m glad you did, husband. Having the marriage bed for an alibi gave me more freedom to move than I could have hoped for, and your presence made my mother’s job easier. The queen gets herself very excited when you’re around. Such exertion makes it so much easier to explain her worsening fits.”

Josef’s eyes widened. “My mother’s not sick at all, is she?” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “You’ve been poisoning her.”

Adela shrugged. “Hard to say, at this point. After close to ten years of drinking my mother’s tea, Theresa’s condition has become quite real. I doubt she’ll last out the week, especially once she hears that her son, her last, ridiculous hope, finally gave in to his violent nature and had to be put down like a mad dog.”

“If that’s how you see this playing out, you haven’t been paying attention,” Josef said, raising the Heart as he stepped into position. “I may not be much of a prince, but I am the best and, unless you surrender now, the last swordsman you will ever meet.”

“We’ll see about that,” Adela said, stepping into first position.

Josef looked her over. His instincts during the proving had been right. The stance Adela took now had none of the stiffness from before, and her fingers gripped her sword with a master’s assurance. But even so, even if she somehow was a master duelist, there was no way she could hope to beat the Heart of War with an infantry short sword.

He glanced down at the Heart. It was a pity to use it for a fight like this, but he didn’t have the luxury of a handicap. He needed to end this quickly and warn his mother. If he moved fast enough, he might even be able to save her. Josef gripped the Heart with both hands, sliding his feet forward across the stone. Finish it fast, he thought. Finish it now.

The Heart hummed in agreement, and they moved as one, bearing down on Adela like an iron wave. The princess’s eyes widened
at his speed, but she didn’t try to dodge or spin away as she had in the Proving. Instead, she lifted her short, stocky blade and braced for the Heart’s impact. The short sword looked so pathetic before the Heart’s monstrous weight, Josef almost laughed. But Adela didn’t break her guard, even as the Heart struck her sword with the force of a mountain.

The two blades met with a scream of metal, and Josef watched in satisfaction as the short sword crumpled. He could feel the impact moving through her blade like the Heart was an extension of his own arm, but as he stepped in for the follow-through that would shatter Adela’s ribs, he realized something was wrong.

The short sword was still breaking. The metal was still folding in on itself, still crumpling like ash as it absorbed the Heart’s strike. Josef’s eyes widened. He could feel the blow spoiling even as he carried it, feel himself slowing as Adela slid backward, letting her sword break and break and break, drinking in the blow. Before the force could fade completely, Josef abandoned the strike. He swung the Heart back and turned midstep, using the last of his spoiled momentum to step out of her range, coming to a stop a few feet away with the Heart between him and Adela as he tried to figure out what had just happened.

Adela straightened with a smile and raised her sword, holding up the crumpled blade for Josef to see. Josef didn’t see how there had been enough metal in the sword to crumple as much as it had, let alone enough to absorb the enormous power of the Heart. He was still trying to make sense of it when Adela’s sword began to change. The etched words on the blade flashed with blinding light, and the crumpled blade began to straighten. The metal moved like a living thing as it pushed out of the stocky, confined shape of the short sword, growing longer, sharper, and slightly curved. The whole process took no more than a handful of seconds, and then Adela was holding a sword that looked nothing like the one she’d
held a moment ago. The new blade glowed with a light of its own. It was delicate and straight now, without a single mark from the crumpled mess it had been moments before. Even the handle had changed, pushing out of the squat single hilt to a two-handed hold with a thick guard chased all around with stylized waves that seemed to dance across the glowing steel.

Josef kept his face neutral, refusing to let her see his surprise. “An awakened blade,” he said. “Are you a wizard as well as a traitor and a spy?”

“I could scarcely be a sleeper if I was a wizard,” Adela answered, swinging her newly changed sword in a whistling arc. “Wizards attract attention. To serve the Empress, we must be invisible. But this blade is not the crude, half-alert spirit you people call ‘awakened.’ Like me, it is a servant of the Empress.” She held the sword out for him. “What you see before you is one of the Hundred Conquerors, a treasure of the Empire given only to those who serve behind enemy lines.”

“Really?” Josef played along. “What’s it made of that it crumples like trash when struck? Tin?”

“Steel,” Adela said. “A mile of steel compressed into a blade by the Empress’s own hand.”

This time, Josef couldn’t hide his surprise. “A
mile
of steel?” he cried. “How can a mile of steel become a blade?”

“All things bow before the Empress,” Adela said. “Metal is no different. It followed her command as everything does, becoming her soldier, just as I am. The Hundred Conquerors have served thousands of soldiers in countless battles, passing from sleeper to sleeper as the Empress conquers the world. Each sword has been trained over hundreds of years to follow pressure commands so that even the spirit deaf can use it to its full potential. This blade cannot be defeated, it cannot be escaped, and, as you just saw, it cannot be
broken.” Her eyes flashed with a cruel light. “Not even by the Heart of War.”

Josef’s mouth twitched. After all her revelations, he shouldn’t be surprised she knew his sword. But… “If you think a mile of steel will be enough to save you from the Heart, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Adela sneered, but whatever she meant to say, she never got the chance. Josef was already flying toward her. This time, he kept both hands on the Heart’s hilt, letting the blade guide him. He could feel the Heart’s spirit moving through him, filling him until he could see the mountain behind his eyes, the great peak cutting the clouds, the deep roots holding up the world. An awakened blade was nothing. A mile of steel was nothing. The Heart of War moved with a mountain’s rage, and Josef gave himself to it, letting its strength take him over with a furious cry.

Again, Adela raised her blade to parry, but her smug look faded as the blades collided. As before, her glowing sword crumpled, the metal folding over on itself so fast it sparked, but this time, it wasn’t enough. Josef’s cry became a roar as the Heart’s power thundered through him, forcing Adela and her collapsing sword backward. They crashed together into the wall of the watchtower with an explosion that carried them through the stone and out into the air. As the blow finally left him, so did the overwhelming will of the Heart, and Josef realized he was falling. In front of him, almost lost in the enormous cloud of dust and broken stone, Adela was falling as well, her face a mask of shock and horror as the last of the Heart’s force ran through her crumpled blade to finally hit her body. As he felt the strike connect at last, Josef got one final glimpse of her face screwing up in pain before the blow sent her flying out of the dust cloud like an arrow.