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Could he save himself? Doubtful. He’d designed massive, troop-bearing aircraft for Aiz, created Loha weapons unlike anything the Kegari had used before, and streamlined the building of the Sails. He helped draw up an attack plan based on everything Aiz had learned from Quil. He hadn’t dropped the bombs, but he might as well have.
He was as responsible as Aiz for every dead Martial. He was guilty. They all were, everyone who’d been too shocked or scared or cowardly to tell Aiz that her campaign of terror had to end.
“Triarch Ghaz’s troops have the Empress’s compound surrounded and a prison cell ready,” Aiz said as she approached. He shelved anythoughts of telling her about Quil—she’d be in a better mood after the Empress’s capture.
“Better be a lot of guards,” Cero muttered. Helene Aquilla held off an army of Karkauns almost entirely alone. She wasn’t Empress of the Martials for nothing.
“We don’t need guards.” Aiz straightened, and Cero wished to the Spires that her confidence had come to her because of anything other than the demon she’d linked herself to. “Mother Div is with us, and our cause is righteous. Remember why we are here, Cero. Not to cause suffering, but to save our people. To take them home. If the Empress had cooperated, none of this would have been necessary.”
Surely someone who loves her people with such passion is redeemable.Almost the moment he thought it, Cero scoffed. “For the people” was a blood-soaked shield brandished by tyrants everywhere.
Aiz was no different.
Cero felt a chill. Mother Div must be near. She never showed herself around Cero, but the creature’s fascination with him felt like the probing flicker of a serpent’s tongue. He suppressed a shudder.
“Right,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Triarch Ghaz—who Cero trusted about as much as a broken compass—awaited them at the pilots’ barracks. Within an hour, the three of them watched as the Triarch’s troops surged into the Empress’s compound.
Cero almost hoped the woman wouldn’t be there. The more he’d learned about her, the more he’d come to respect someone who had lost everything and survived anyway.
Alas, Triarch Ghaz confirmed that the Empress was within. Aiz tore the roof off her compound, shredded the outer walls with her wind, and still, the Empress fought Triarch Ghaz’s soldiers. Would have won, too, for she was cunning and preternaturally skilled at predicting her opponent’s next move.
But she wasn’t Aiz. The Tel Ilessi eventually pinned the woman to the floor with her wind, and the Triarch’s soldiers clapped heavy iron manacles on her hands and feet, relieving her of her weapons.
Aiz gave a speech to the assembled soldiers—something stirring, no doubt. Cero didn’t listen.
Instead, he watched the Empress—sagging between two guards, seemingly defeated. He almost missed the way her mouth quirked behind the mass of silver-blond hair in her face. Not quite a smile. It was too quick. But not far off.
Cero considered informing Aiz that this woman was far more dangerous than any of them were prepared for.
Perhaps if she stillhadbeen Aiz, he’d have told her. But as he watched her yank the Empress’s head back and hiss something into her ear, Cero realized the girl he’d grown up with, the one he’d loved—she was gone. Not dead, perhaps. But in a deep, dark well, asleep. Cero did not know how to wake her.
But he knew of one person who might.
41
Aiz
Stone walls rose around Aiz, and she was reminded of the Tohr. Of all the places in the Empire, she hated the feel of this place the most.Blackcliff, it was called, built of stygian granite, along cliffs that dropped straight down into an unending stretch of desert.
Aiz hoped to find Loha here. To transfer thousands of Kegari over the seas, they needed a great deal of it. And this was, after all, where the Masks were trained.
But Blackcliff was stripped before it was abandoned. The Kegari didn’t find so much as an arrowhead, let alone a cache of Loha.
Still, the place was useful—primarily because its dungeons were the most secure in the city.
“Holy Tel Ilessi.” Aiz turned to find Triarch Ghaz making his way across the courtyard, flanked by soldiers from his clan. The moon painted his skin a wan, milky blue.
Ghaz knelt and thumped his heart thrice. He and the other Triarchs still chafed against her authority. She’d noticed small defiances, recently. Oona calling her Aiz instead of Tel Ilessi. Hiwa setting his clan up in a large villa without permission. Ghaz torturing captured Martials for information.
Though she let the last one go. It had, after all, netted her the Empress.
After Ghaz knelt long enough to know he’d displeased Aiz, she gestured him up.
“The Empress is ready for your interrogation,” Ghaz said. “We have two guards stationed in the room, and four outside. And she’s been…prepared. I believe she will talk.”
Aiz’s fingers twitched, and she considered calling Div to her. But the cleric was far away, seeking sustenance after assisting with an attack on a Tribal city this morning.
