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Synopsis
The final book in the Crimson Empire trilogy, a game-changing fantasy epic featuring an unforgettable warrior.
Former warrior queen and now pariah, Cold Zosia wakes in the ashes of a burning city. Her vengeance has brought her to this – her heroic reputation in tatters, her allies scattered far and wide, and her world on the cusp of ruin.
General Ji-Hyeon has vanished into the legendary First Dark, leaving her lover Sullen alone to carry out the grim commands of a dead goddess. The barbarian Maroto is held captive by a demonic army hell-bent on the extermination of the Crimson Empire, and only his protégé Purna believes he can be saved.
Zosia must rally her comrades and old enemies one last time, for what will prove the greatest battle of her many legends...if anyone lives to tell it.
FIVE HEROES. NO HOPE. A WAR AGAINST DEVILS.
The Crimson Empire Trilogy:
A Crown for Cold Silver
A Blade of Black Steel
A War in Crimson Embers
By the same author, writing as Jesse Bullington:
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart
The Enterprise of Death
The Folly of the World
Release date: December 5, 2017
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 592
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A War in Crimson Embers
Alex Marshall
A final trial arose to thwart the Chainite pilgrims on the cusp of salvation, but Y’Homa paid the Immaculate blockade no more respect than she did the sharks that followed in the shifting shadows of her galleon. Just as a pod of sea wolves would race up from the deep to feast upon the scavenging sharks, so, too, would the Imperial fleet prey upon the Immaculate navy if they chose to force the issue. A headwind ensured that the semaphore exchange between Y’Homa’s vessel and the nearest Immaculate turtleship was brief, the Chainites calling their bluff and swiftly sweeping past the foreign boats without a shot being fired.
“They were not prepared for the strength of our ranks,” said Cardinal Audhumbla as they left the blockade in their wake.
“Nor for the strength of our faith,” Cardinal Messalina replied.
“They were not prepared for us at all,” said Cardinal Diamond. “Thin as they are spread, I suspect their orders are to watch for any activity leaving Jex Toth, not protect against a fleet approaching it.”
“Their motives are as inconsequential as the scuttling patterns of lice upon a dying ape,” said Y’Homa. “Whatever the cause of their cowardice, it has bought them but a brief reprieve—soon the waves of blood shall be lapping at the shores of Othean, and every other iniquitous corner of the Star.”
Cardinal Diamond cleared his throat. “With all due respect for Your Grace’s certitude, in light of their naval presence so close to the coast we must consider the possibility that the Immaculates have already made landfall and—”
“They have not,” said Y’Homa, ending the conversation.
While the Holy See had fretted and frowned over the possibility of the Immaculates invading the Risen Kingdom long before the Crimson ships could reach it, their Shepherdess had known the foreign heretics would be unable to set foot on those hallowed shores. The Fallen Mother had ordained Y’Homa to be the first to enter the Garden of the Star, and no mortal nor devil could prevent her from realizing her destiny. She would loose the Angelic Brood of the Allmother to cleanse the world, defeating the Deceiver once and for all, and in doing so transcend her mortal flesh to rule eternal as the Fallen Mother’s avatar. From her flaming throne Y’Homa would sit in state for perpetuity, her proud virtue a beacon that would outshine and outlast both sun and moon, calling home the souls of the faithful who had been left behind upon the Star.
Oh, how ecstatically Y’Homa shivered upon first spying the holy land through the captain’s hawkglass. It was just as Diadem Gate had foretold on the Day of Becoming, a luxuriously green realm set like an emerald in the shiny blue silk of the sea. She bit her lip as she scanned the mountains of the interior, beyond which lay the antediluvian cities of Jex Toth that would soon house the refugees of a diseased world. Here dwelt angels in need of a mortal mistress, an army in need of a commander.
Excited as the thought made her, when next the captain passed her his instrument with shaking hands she saw something more glorious still: the ancient harbor of Alunah coming into sight, and what a sight it was! The Burnished Chain’s charts of Jex Toth were the only ones that remained from the Age of Wonders, and while the relics had steered them true to their destination no mark on a map could hint at the majesty of the place itself. Here the verdant foliage only poked out intermittently through the frozen fall of white stone that poured down from the headlands to fill the entire bowl of the cove, spreading out and across the water in a fan of ivory jetties. The buildings were in disrepair when they were not outright ruined, and Y’Homa nodded in understanding at the Fallen Mother’s wisdom. The Garden of the Star was not a static realm where the idle could reap the same harvest as the industrious, but a paradise reserved for those worthy souls eager to work toward its restoration.
The black-armored angels perched on the rooftops and quays stood out against the pale stones of the city they had held fast for five hundred years awaiting the arrival of the Black Pope, and Y’Homa returned the hawkglass to the quaking captain. Well might the frail quaver before the divine, she thought, sitting up straighter in her teak throne at the prow of the ship. Pay true power the respect it deserves.
Yet even here, with the world of mortals at her back and immortal glory glinting in the sunlight ahead, the ache that had lodged in Y’Homa’s heart ever since the Day of Becoming throbbed and throbbed. It was her last temptation, this sorrow in her uncle’s sudden decline, and the impure hopes that hatched like maggots from that sorrow. He was demented, plain and simple, and much as she wanted him healed and sane again, that desire ran counter to everything she held most dear—her faith that the Fallen Mother would help only those who helped themselves. Shanatu was too far gone for that.
“Please, please, please,” he said from where he cowered behind her on the deck, but Y’Homa did not turn away from the approaching harbor. She didn’t want the papal guards who minded the madman to see the tears in her eyes as her once-brilliant mentor broke her heart anew with his deranged rambling. “I was wrong, we all were, don’t go, turn back, back, another trick of the Deceiver, another plot … those are not angels, they are naked devils, and they will devour the Star, Jirella, please, you must stop, you must—”
“Put his gag back in,” Y’Homa barked over her shoulder, Shanatu’s use of her mortal name instead of her papal one a blasphemy too far, even for a condemned apostate’s last words. How far he had fallen …
All through her reign he had been there for her, advising and encouraging. While the terms of the Burnished Chain’s truce with Queen Indsorith had prevented Shanatu from sitting on the Holy See, his counsel meant more to Y’Homa than the rest of the church combined. Who else could understand the burdens of the papacy but her only living predecessor? He had been the voice of the Fallen Mother for longer than Y’Homa had been alive, and his abdication of the post had been entirely strategic—their savior continued to speak directly to her uncle, whereas Y’Homa only caught whispers here and there, in the midst of her most intense rites, and relied on Shanatu to interpret their meaning.
Then came the Day of Becoming, when the obedient servants of the Fallen Mother gazed through the window that had opened in Diadem Gate and beheld the Garden of the Star and its angelic guardians. All those with eyes clouded by the Deceiver fell back, demented and delirious from the vision of absolute grace. It was then that Y’Homa’s true test presented itself, and Allmother protect her, she had been found wanting.
Pity was a cardinal sin, and mercy a graver one, yet when the time came she had been unable to have Shanatu crucified along with the rest of the false clerics. Surely one who had sat at the foot of the Fallen Mother could still be saved, she had told herself, surely the mere sight of Jex Toth would restore sanity to the servant who had dedicated his life to bringing about its return.
The mortal heart is capable of such hubris. Looking out over the baroquely carved bowsprit as her armada fast approached the magnificent white harbor of Jex Toth and its jet-black throngs of angels who heralded her arrival, Pope Y’Homa III gave the most difficult order of her papacy.
“Cut out my uncle’s tongue and crucify him on the mast; our saviors will not find a single apostate among our number.”
As soon as the words escaped her salt-cracked lips Y’Homa felt her soul lighten, and letting go of this final attachment to the deceitful world of the flesh provoked an immediate reaction from Jex Toth. Colossal ivory entities glided up through the pale blue waters of the bay to greet her navy, the leviathans trailing fronds as long as the Chainite ships, and far smaller envoys of similar cast winged down from the headland that cradled the harbor. Y’Homa wept at the sight of the Fallen Mother’s children, grown monstrous by the Deceiver’s seed but destined to play a role as saintly as that of the Black Pope herself. At long last the Shepherdess of the Lost had come home; she would deliver the Key to the Star to this heavenly host and they would go forth to cleanse the world of sin.
Behind Y’Homa came the sound of pounding hammers and muffled screams, but nothing could ruin the moment.
Over the years Zosia had dreamed countless nightmares, and fought her way through nearly as many waking ones. Never before had she experienced this particular combination, however, of stirring from a bad dream to find herself exactly where the nightmare had left off: hunched over in this devildamned throne.
She shifted about in the all too familiar seat, pulling her dew-chilled furs up around her cold neck and scrunching her eyes tighter in defense against the evil sunshine that was trying to jimmy its way inside her bleary skull. This was Zosia’s luck all over. The one bloody time she would have welcomed the dark clouds that usually hung like a leaden halo over the Black Cascades they went and burned off.
Choplicker gave his customary whining yawn to signal the start of the morning, but she clung to her exhaustion, desperate to pull herself back under. As her devil got up and padded around, Zosia pretended his nails were clicking on the pine boards of her old kitchen instead of the obsidian floor of the Crimson Throne Room. She was only ever truly happy in dreams and the spaces between them, now, and in this familiar drowsy fantasy if she could just fall back asleep for a little longer when she awoke it would be to Leib stroking her heavy head, whispering in her ear that she had promised him apple scones if he let her sleep in, and here the sun was already halfway up the aspens …
The dream soured. They always did. She had made him his favorite treat but he couldn’t appreciate them; the monstrous young knight had placed Leib’s severed head just out of reach of the plate of pastries, and try as her dead husband might to stretch out his tongue across the checked tablecloth he couldn’t lick up more than a few crumbs …
No. Zosia shut that shit down, trying to replace the hot horror of her vision with cool black nothingness. Dawn had been creeping over Diadem’s rim before she’d drifted off, and if she could just get comfortable on this cruelly designed hellchair before her conscience woke up enough to start needling at her she could get some much-needed rest and … and …
And it was too late to fall back asleep. The memory of finding Indsorith in the dungeons prodded at her more insistently than the sun or any nightmare. Even half-asleep Zosia now realized what a stupid, hopeless venture it had been, carrying the dying queen all the way up here to the top of the castle and then spending the night forcing juice down her throat and cleaning her wounds when she was already too far gone to ever come back. Bad as the Burnished Chain had worked over their rival for control of the Crimson Empire, it was Zosia who had inflicted the final tortures … not that Indsorith had even seemed aware of what was happening to her by that point, her moans and gasps simple animal response to the worst kinds of provocation.
And for what? To make Zosia feel a little better, to tell herself she’d done all she could, when the more humane course would have been to put Indsorith out of her misery down in her cell as soon as she’d found her. But no, Zosia had done exactly what she always did and got so hung up on hoping she could make a difference that she didn’t even notice she was making matters worse until it was too late. Indsorith was just the latest victim of Zosia’s sanguine streak, but by all the devils in the First Dark she would be the last—from this day forward Cold Cobalt would be as hopeless as she was, well, hopeless.
“You’re sitting in my chair.”
Insistent as the sun had been to get all up in Zosia’s face you’d think it would cut her some slack when her eyes snapped open, but no. By the time she’d rubbed her face and properly taken in the impossible sight of Indsorith standing before her, naked save for bandages, the younger woman had begun to sway in place. Zosia barely got out of the throne in time to catch her as she fell. Her skin didn’t feel as hot as it had the night before, and some of the color had come back to her ashen flesh, but it was a wonder she could even sit up in bed, let alone wander all the way out here. She shivered in Zosia’s arms, slipping under again, and as Choplicker merrily trotted beside them Zosia lugged the Crimson Queen back to the royal bedchambers, marveling at the girl’s tenacity. Who would even want to come back from that kind of a hurt?
Except Zosia knew the answer to that question already, having been there herself, or close to it. If you want vengeance badly enough you can bounce back from almost anything.
“Zosia.” It was more of a sigh than a word as she tucked Indsorith back into her damask blankets. Her jade eyes were half-lidded but weren’t rolling around in their orbits anymore. “You … you really came.”
“Of course I did,” said Zosia, and Choplicker knew better than to contradict her with one of his little chuffs. That, or he was too busy enjoying the lump in Zosia’s throat as she patted Indsorith’s shoulder. “Think you can stay awake a little longer? I’m going to whip you up another of my Star-famous juicy ghee drams.”
Indsorith winced, and Zosia forced a smile. “If you’re well enough to worry me half to death getting out of bed, you’re damn sure well enough to take your medicine.”
Right after that Zosia would go exploring and see if she could get some answers as to just what in the happy hells had happened to Diadem; hard to decide which was more unsettling, the riots in the streets or the shuttered, deserted castle. Hoartrap had insisted that the return of the Jex Toth signaled a mortal threat to the entire Star but hadn’t been specific about how exactly that would come to pass—was whatever had happened here in the Imperial capital the beginning of the end? Then there was the question of what was taking Ji-hyeon and the rest of the Cobalt Company so long to arrive. According to the plan they should have already come through the Gate and stormed this very castle. Zosia rather doubted they’d simply overslept, too …
But all that could wait. Zosia wasn’t very well going to save the Star all by herself, but she could take care of the wounded woman in front of her. First, though, she had to look after herself—a sit on the royal chamber pot, a hunt for kaldi beans in the servants’ kitchen, a hurried breakfast of hazelnuts, dates, and whatever else she scared up, and retrieving that comfy seawolf mantle she’d forgotten back on the Crimson Throne. That order.
Hurrying through her chores and picking up the forgotten fur from where it lay draped over the arm of the fire glass throne, her nose wrinkled as she noticed Choplicker had carried out his own foul business on the nearby onyx cathedra. What a ridiculous monster he was. No wonder they got along.
By the time she had come back in, built the fire in the hearth back up, and made another concoction, Indsorith was dozing again. She stirred when Zosia sat on the bed beside her. Obediently lifting her head to sip the warm drink, she stared up over the chalice at her savior, and Zosia returned her gaze, the two women really looking each other in the eye for the first time in over twenty years. Indsorith had been little more than a child the last time they had met, and while she couldn’t yet be forty, the crown had aged her prematurely. That, and being locked in a dungeon for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time. Down all the years Indsorith had remained the same in Zosia’s mind, a spotty teenage queen with a big chip on her bony shoulders, and now she was a full-grown woman—and a stout one at that. But then Indsorith had surely thought of Zosia as she’d been in the prime of her life, not as a worn-out, sad-eyed old widow.
“What happened?” Indsorith asked as she settled back into her pillow, her cracked, buttery lips shining in the firelight.
“Was planning on asking you the same thing,” said Zosia as she set the chalice back on the table and gave Choplicker a threatening point of the finger—he was looking ready to jump up on the bed beside them. “How long did they have you locked up down there? And where’d everybody go?”
Indsorith shook her head, the movement so faint her long, coppery hair didn’t rustle the bedding. Her eyes settled on the battered crown Zosia had left on a neighboring pillow. “I don’t … they drugged me. There was a ritual … but …” Indsorith closed her eyes, and Zosia was about to stealthily remove herself from the room when the queen looked back up at her. “The Witchfinder Plains. Were you there? With the Cobalts?”
“Until last night,” said Zosia, and in her state Indsorith didn’t seem to notice the strangeness of that fact, given the distances involved.
“The Fifteenth Regiment caught you. That was when Y’Homa took me … and the rituals, and the Gate … the things beyond the Gate … they’re coming … they’re coming …”
“What’s coming?” Zosia didn’t scare easy, no she did not, but her hackles were good and raised now.
“The end … the end is here …” and Indsorith was fading again, eyelids fluttering, and hungry as she was to hear more, Zosia knew the woman needed rest more urgently than her liberator needed answers. She started to rise when Indsorith whimpered, as though the words hurt to say, “Don’t go.”
“I won’t be gone long, and Chop will be here the whole time to keep you safe, so—”
“Please.” Indsorith’s sunken eyes were still closed, and they scrunched tighter in a vain effort to dam back the wetness beginning to seep out around the edges. The utter ruin of the Star seemed to be off to a roaring start right here in her capital and the Crimson Queen expected Zosia to sit around playing nursemaid?
“Of course … Your Majesty,” murmured Zosia, settling back onto the bed as Indsorith shuddered beside her, the relief on the woman’s bruised and scabbing face so sincere Zosia found her own eyes stinging. It had been so long since somebody had relied on her to take care of them that she didn’t even know what to do, her hand hovering uncertainly over the invalid. Zosia always had such steady hands, no matter how dangerous or frightening the encounter, but now her whole arm was trembling … and she only found her steel again when she gave in to her impulse and tenderly stroked the woman’s brow. The grimace melted from Indsorith’s face and her breathing grew steady, and Zosia caught herself humming one of the Kvelertakan folk songs she would softly croon for Leib when he was sick—it was the only time he could guilt her into it, since she had never cared for the sound of her own singing.
The tune stuttered on her lips at the memory, but instead of letting the grief silence her, Zosia seized up the words to the ancient song, and in the tomblike quiet of Castle Diadem she sang to the sleeping queen of a crumbling empire, the devil at her feet keeping time with his tail as they waited for the world to end or Ji-hyeon to arrive with the Cobalt Company, whichever came first.
It might have just been the most beautiful morning Domingo Hjortt had ever experienced. The sudden transition from ball-biting cold to blessedly balmy as they emerged from the Othean Gate got things off to a grand start, and the incandescent bouquet of dawnlit clouds resting atop the golden roofs of the Immaculate palace set a scene so precisely picturesque it resembled the watercolor backdrops of his sister-in-law’s plays. It was not the combination of agreeable weather, impressive architecture, and tapestry-worthy sunrise that took Domingo’s breath away, however, but what stood arrayed in the vastness between the Temple of Pentacles from whence he had appeared and the distant walls of the castle-city: an army the likes of which he had never seen outside his most exhilarating fantasies.
The legions were standing at attention on either side of the terra-cotta road that ran straight from the temple steps all the way to the palace, and by his dead mother’s saber it was a sight to behold. He had always dismissed the patina of the Immaculate soldiers’ armor as another herald of their degeneracy, the troops too lazy to take care of their equipment and their commanders too weak to enforce proper upkeep, but now he saw the green-tinted shoulder pads and breastplates for what they were—a glorious emerald uniform that would never fade in summer nor flake in winter.
And their ranks! Domingo prided himself on maintaining the most orderly regiment in the Crimson Empire, but he was honorable enough to admit when he was outmatched. From his vantage point on the back of a wagon bouncing down the stairs of the temple he could see far enough out into the malachite rows to have no doubt that every single line was as straight as the first. Fifteen thousand soldiers on each side of the road, at a minimum, and each one might as well have been a model cast from a single mold, that was how perfectly rigid they stood. It was beautiful.
There was also a terraced platform smack in the middle of the road with a biddy perched atop it, presumably the Empress of the Immaculate Isles, but Domingo barely spared her a glance before returning his attention to her army. Now that he was right in front of the woman he was beginning to feel a tingle of injudicious but undeniable guilt over having murdered her son at the beginning of his campaign against the new Cobalt Company … But every war has its casualties, damn it, and framing the Cobalts for the assassination of Prince Byeong-gu had been a masterstroke, even if it ended up proving redundant. Sons died, often for no good reason, and if Domingo could accept that then so could Empress Ryuki—and indeed, she must have already come to terms with the matter, to initiate a truce with General Ji-hyeon.
That was another difference between noble Azgarothians like Domingo and the ever-scheming Immaculates; even if his homeland was under threat from whatever monsters haunted Jex Toth he’d sooner fillet his own scrotum than strike a deal with the woman who had killed his son. True, he had made noises to just that effect to Zosia, but only to lull her into a false sense of security, and as soon as he saw his opportunity he would pay her back a hundredfold, yes he dearly would.
The carts were among the last units through the Lark’s Tongue Gate and so Domingo was brought to a halt at the rear of the Cobalt troops, the company lined up on either side of the road in front of the surrounding Immaculates. The Cobalt brass had also been posted here, just off to one side of the big dais erected in front of the temple … which meant whenever General Ji-hyeon and her deadbeat father arrived they would see their officers standing not between them and the empress, but behind her. These Immaculates loved their formal little pissing contests, didn’t they?
Ah, there was a familiar face, and not a pretty one. Fennec, close enough that Domingo could have spit on the Usban Villain’s ponytail if only his mouth hadn’t gone so dry just before they crossed over. Standing beside him was the horned anathema who had helped Maroto lead the giant wolves into the Imperial camp back in the Kutumbans—in other words, one of those directly responsible for Domingo being so brutalized by a beast that he was confined to the wagon bed. Indeed, it was that very assault on his person that had compromised his thinking and led to his allowing Brother Wan to carry out the ritual at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue. Forget Fennec the nothing-master, as soon as Domingo could muster the phlegm that white-haired witchborn was the one getting spat on.
Now that he was sitting up, something that had been vaguely niggling at him ever since his cart had lurched down the temple steps finally made itself clear: it no longer hurt to turn his head … or, he found, to raise his battered back, or to stretch his sliced cheek in a widening smile. He slowly flexed his splinted hand. That wrist had been as broken as his heart not five minutes ago, and while it didn’t quite seem to have its old range of motion it definitely didn’t hurt. Was this something Hoartrap had done to him? Domingo didn’t believe in miracles, but whatever the source he was willing to make an exception for this!
Alas, his elation was short-lived: trying to move his left leg no longer blinded him with pain, but that damn hip of his still wasn’t obeying any commands. It felt all stiff and lumpy, and Domingo simmered with disappointment. Being liberated from constant agony was all right, but what good did it do him if he still couldn’t get up and kick some teeth in?
Ji-hyeon must have arrived while Domingo was taking stock of his sudden recovery, but while he heard the general’s voice he couldn’t see her. Peering around from the back of his wagon he could still spy the doors of the temple that opened into the nothingness of the Othean Gate, but the side of the tiered, brocaded stage was blocking his view of the front of the road. Ji-hyeon must be standing there at the base of the tower, and sure enough the empress atop the dais scowled downward as she replied to the unseen Cobalt General. Domingo took it as a point of personal pride that he did not speak High Immaculate, so the conversation meant nothing to him … until it took the sort of ugly tenor that is a universal cognate.
Not being able to see or properly overhear the exchange, Domingo was left to his imagination as to what had provoked the empress’s snotty tone. Perhaps General Ji-hyeon hadn’t bowed low enough or something? That would be just bloody typical of Immaculates, wouldn’t it, to employ arcane deviltry to come together for a joint operation against an invading horde of demons from the Sunken Kingdom only to get into a row over etiquette. Domingo called over to Fennec to ask if he needed to drag himself up the empress’s tower to spank some manners into her when he was cut off by a scream from the front of the dais, followed by the reverberating twang of dozens of arrows unleashed as one.
The scream abruptly stopped, as screams usually do once the arrows start flying.
“No … no!” Fennec reeled, steadying himself against Domingo’s wagon. He must have had a slightly better vantage of what had just happened, and what the man did next washed away Domingo’s surprise at the unexpected turn the negotiations had taken, replacing it with stomach-dropping dread: the Villain bolted toward the side of the empress’s dais, drawing his sword. Anything that came after such a move could be nothing short of an unmitigated catastrophe. “No!”
The horned witchborn joined Fennec’s mad charge at the empress’s platform but moved so much swifter that her sword was in hand before the Villain’s cleared leather … and then returned to its sheath so fast Domingo would have had to second-guess whether it had ever been out at all, if not for the obvious blow she’d struck to the back of Fennec’s head.
Queen Indsorith’s decree that Imperial regiments would have to begin incorporating Chainwitches had been a deciding factor in Domingo’s retirement. He had preferred to quit the war game altogether rather than work with the anathemas. Yet seeing how efficiently this one took out as seasoned a veteran as Fennec, he had to admit these creatures must have their uses. The Usban Villain toppled without another peep, and that was yet another mark in his assailant’s favor—knocking people out with your pommel is harder than it looks, and rarely takes a single pop. The witchborn caught him before he hit the red gravel and swung him around on her shoulder despite her smaller stature, and—
There was a commotion at the temple entrance, and Domingo glanced over just in time to see General Ji-hyeon jump through it, straight back into the Gate. Well. That was unexpected, and more than a little—
He started as a body crashed into the hay of the wagon bed beside him. Fennec, with the white-haired witchborn looming over them. She came down at Domingo fast as a shark in shallow water, and with the sha
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