34.1 Imperator

Day 516

Eventually Dedrafel and Kaide do return to the third level having given us far more time than I expected. Apparently they had gotten lost reviewing the contents of the record room and Kaide quite likes his absentminded scholarly nature. We share a small laugh about what Magdalena might think of him, dragging him around as a scribe for centuries. He seems interested, which we immediately quash.   My heart is in my throat as Cycadaes and Kaide introduce themselves - Kaide bowing to the archivist and Cycadaes waving it off much like I do. It is a special sort of happiness and hope to hear Cycadaes ask Kaide if they can be friends in this time.   But it is time for deeper things now, so Dedrafel gets sent home to bathe, sleep, change his clothes, and spend some time in fresh air. He is strictly not to return for three days and I'm already thinking of setting him the task of creating a magical reminder system for himself.   Alone at last I ask Cycadaes about possibly taking an exam so I am able to move a bit more freely around the library without the need for borrowing tokens and she stares at me blankly. In her time there were commanders' tokens for those who needed access to knowledge to perform military duties. They are stored on the sixth level and so Kaide remains on the third to clear debris while I descend to where the Empress' chamber is.   It is much the same as it was so many months ago but Cycadaes leads me to a door I hadn't detected. Inside is a small box that probes at my magic and then clicks open to reveal rows of neatly organized tokens, the left ones outranking the right. Hovering a hand over the box lets me take the leftmost token and even Cycadaes is a bit surprised. It grants the holder command of the entire library, its wards, and its archivists. In the past only a Hand could hold it and only ever one at a time, whoever was in command of the city at the time. There have been Hands, though, that were unable to make use of it if their magical abilities were not suitable.   Being on this level of the library, feeling the strong tug of shadows towards the Empress' door...it leaves me distracted and uncertain. Cycadaes is gracious enough to give me some privacy as she returns to brag to her fellow archivists about her descendants. I wander aimlessly for a bit, taking notes on the magic under the pretense that we will need my notes to make sense of things or be able to use any of the systems here. After a while the pretense becomes so weak that I find myself standing in front of the door I've been avoiding, steadying my fluttering heart.   On the other side is a conversation that will surely leave me changed   As soon as I pass through the door I am transported to the gardens of the Empress and I kneel even though I'm sure she will call me to rise. And she does, coming into focus before me under her impermeable cloak of darkness. She asks if I'm afraid, though I don't know exactly what she means by that.   I'm not afraid of her - how could I be? I'm afraid for the fate of my Empire, for the people I'm meeting, for the fragile mission I am on. And for the awareness that our conversation today might have me go onwards without her unfailing support and counsel. In response she asks why her counsel is still so important to me. Then asks for my hand so that she can work a new piece of magic, which I offer without hesitation.   I don't realize what she is doing until it floods me with full force, driving out my oaths, my shadows, the ever-present awareness of the greater thing I belong to. My binding condenses into a droplet of blood hovering between us as my consciousness threatens to give up against the waves of pain and loss.   She sheds her cloak, revealing her natural face: Scarred and ancient, gnarled hands and missing fingers. For the first time I look at her as a person and in this moment, someone who has taken something from me.  

For this, you need to see me clearly. I cannot have this conversation while you are clouded by the magic of your binding and oaths. I hope that you will choose to swear new oaths after we have been able to talk.

  Now more than ever I am sharply aware that there is no way to disentangle the Empress from her Empire. That no matter how this conversation goes I could not leave her unbound and return to my people bereft of my oaths and her shade. I resent her in this moment for the suggestion that I could ever see her unclouded by my feelings for the Empire. I resent her for taking this blood from me without articulating why until it had already happened. Like the Shard that became Kaide I see the actions of someone who is unaccustomed to asking first, someone who needs to learn that skill very badly.   She wants to speak freely with me, informally and honestly. So I sit down, cross-legged. She joins me and I ask my question.  

Who are you?   That is a cruel question.   It is not meant to be easy. It is the hardest question anyone will ever answer.

And she begins her story, speaking simply at first but wrapping the words in illusions as the story grows.  

I like to think of myself as a servant. Certainly a sinner. You have seen who I was - you have seen me in darkness and you have seen me before I wrapped myself in shadow. You have known me as an Empress. Would you know the piece of me you’re missing - between the piece you found and who I am now? Has teacher told you?   I was a warning. You have met and fought the Ancient Enemy of Osyr. You have seen Ingans for what they are - you have touched on truth. In the places you now walk they attempted to take the peoples there and mold them into what the Collective is. And the only barrier to doing that were Osyr. So a warning had to be sent.

      I see a bustling Osyr coastal town in a cove. Then the cliffs start to crumble and collapse; a nightmarishly large Ingan emerges from the cliff and rains down destruction. It is Kaide’s hometown where she was visiting with Magdalena was traveling. She fights the Ingan, throwing the sea itself at it but eventually it takes hold of her, speaking through the reverberations in my mind itself:   “Submit and thrive. Obstruct and die,” and it leaves her a blackened nearly-corpse.   Then I see her dragging herself to the Crystal Spires, ragged. She argues with the leaders there and brings the warning to them. The Osyr talk about withdrawing - neither submitting nor obstructing. This is their usual third path of neutrality.  

You can imagine how angry I was. But more, blind I thought we were. I am no fate spinner but what I saw happening next, what I feared would come to pass…were Osyr in sheltered enclaves, turtled up from the world as the rest embraced the seduction of the Ingans. And then I saw Ingans throwing lesser species at us in wave after wave after wave until we were trapped between the sea that would no longer house us and the land that would not welcome us.   You have known the Collective now. Was I right?

  I nod silently. I knew that the Ingans had gone to the Covenant and proposed their way of life. If this is what it took to prevent that, I don't disagree at all. I don't know that I would have done it the same way but I certainly would choose this over doing nothing.   "Do you know how the elvish binding works?" she asks me. Having studied blood magic, the runes in Afan, the structure of elvish oaths I want to say yes, I understand. But like my first days in the Academy the question itself throws harsh light over my confidence. I tell her as much.  

You know that elves were once fae, that some elves bound themselves to dragons. The reason that works is the same reason that elves could be bound to me. In that binding I took the place of your trees. Those that wandered unbound from both me and from the dragons would always be hollow, not possessing a connection to a greater thing that was missing. They were like amputees - wounded and incomplete with entire wings nor songs but the magical space for both to connect to. They needed a core, an anchor to take the place of their trees. They needed a power to take the place of their songs. And I needed a weapon.

  She looks so calm - thousands of years of thought on whether she made the right choice has smoothed the anxiety from her face but I still hear it in her voice. And I, the Dagger That Strikes at Heartsblood, know that to be her weapon is not a bad or heartless thing anymore even if it once was.

You have met my godson. You know Onyx. I know many of his siblings and cousins - I helped many of them to hatch. I count myself a friend of Darkness and I asked a favour. I thought nothing could move the Osyr more than fear. They were too afraid of the Ancient Enemy to stand against them, too afraid of losing what they had to risk defying them. They needed to fear something else more. And so I made an army of the most terrifying elves the world had ever seen. Teacher was furious. Uncle Red wasn’t. He said it might be better for them. He asked me to help keep them safe. I told him weapons aren’t safe, but that they wouldn’t be burned down again.

The thought of these unbound elves makes me ache. Magdalena cares for the trees and their songs; Uncle cares for the people. It is no wonder that on this they disagree.

You asked who I am. I was a merchant’s daughter, a jeweller, a wizard, a wraith. I was a wraith for a very long time. You have met the wraith that I was - angry, merciless. I fought with Teacher. In the end she told me she would forgive me if I could give her a grove - such an unfair thing to ask. I lost my war. The Ingans didn’t win it either. No one won that war. Teacher didn’t get her grove, our cities were abandoned, trolls lost their home, the fae were decimated, we fled. I was saved. You’ve heard the legends. Whatever you’ve heard, it wasn’t like that. It was better.

I smile and tears sting my eyes, unbidden. The dull ache of my missing oath fades at the ancient memory I saw through my family's heartsblood: The hopeless trek across the barrier mountains and the grim elven woman who kept the Empress alive. The love stories are always, always better than the legends people tell. When I hear Alrudian say that she wants to be like the Hand and the Dread Lady I want to tell her: You can be better than what you've heard. It will always be better than what you've heard.

It is a heavy thing to take the place of an entire grove of trees, to be that for elves. She helped me feel it. How could I spend your lives foolishly after that? How could I pay back what I had done? I offer no apologies for the magic. My elves are stronger, better, and thrive in ways that the remnants of leaf and vine never could. They are whole people even if they have become someone else’s. That I don’t regret. What I regret is spending them foolishly as though they were disposable. What I regret is taking them away from their homes, costing them their rightful place. And now we fight again - the same enemy over and over again. This time I will not spend them, I will protect them. This time it will be different. That is who I am today. Incomplete, still changing. But this time I have hope. After all, I have her. And I have you. Does that suffice as answer?

She sits so still and unmoving that she might be her own wilted tree, four boughs bending and weeping to think that there was a time she sent her people to die without a second thought. My anxiety, fear, and apprehension have dissipated and I feel as calm and secure as I always have in this space with her. I was thrown hopelessly off-balance by being unbound but I have caught myself on her victimhood, grabbed hold of her love story, and pulled myself back up with her feelings for the elvish people. The rest of my questions have dissolved - she has told me what she knows of the history of fae, of the breaking of the Covenant, why she chose elves. What remains feels so unnecessary - whatever happened at Dreamfall, whatever she knows of the Adjudicators, whatever details of the places of power here that she left behind. Instead: "Does teacher still visit?"  

She does, every few centuries. I think she is starting to forgive me. After all, I gave her you. I spent so long following her about and it never seemed that she cared for me much, but I think she was hurt by what I'd chosen to do. I think I didn’t realize I meant so much to her - it didn’t seem like I was that important to her.

  It seems like the dread of this conversation has abated from both of us as she speaks more freely about other things of note on this side of the Barrier, chiding me for asking for a 'cheat sheet' to things I might discover. When I mention being nearly consumed by a tree she sighs. The trees of Mec Ales were enraged by her actions (rightfully so) and thinks there is no way we might reconcile with them. As is my habit, I keep the seed of an infinitely long-spanning idea to myself. There is clearly room in an elf for both trees and oaths, though many would not want more than one. The trees grown by Cycadaes' great uncle, though, ares ones that Kaide has seen before and thinks would be safe to discover. Magdalena had sent her there long ago to see them and this was the reason for Kaide's sponsorship of Cycadaes' ascension to being an archivist. She does warn me, however, to be cautious of other powerful things slumbering nearby leftover from the war, and other things I should beware of.  

Dwarves you should care for. The binding on them is much different than on elves - artificial. If you can free them it would be a good thing. However, my binding made them bindable and dwarves like their depths. There are things other than Ingans who dwell in the dark depths. To liberate dwarves from my binding be mindful that something else may have picked it up.

And at last it is her turn for questions.   She asks if she might teach Hella, asking permission from me as her teacher. She wants Hella to stand toe-to-toe with the other Hands and show the Empire that humans are people who can be trusted, relied upon, and who will protect us. She is a budding hero who could become a legend, she just needs some tempering. And as soon as she is ready she will be needed on the front lines. I sent Hella to be taught and so of course she has my blessing. But there is an inherent dread to picturing her on the front lines of what I've thought of as my war.

I will protect her as I have protected you.
I was recently nearly eaten by a tree that was angry at you.
You were hardly in real danger from a tree.
No, but my son was quite disturbed to have to fight the tree for me.
I would like to meet your son.

I think of Cyacadaes question about mischief and nod. She should meet Liliales; it would be good for her. Even if it brings much complication and potential chaos into my life, it would be good. And Kaide...I have to ask if she will meet Kaide and if Kaide will be safe meeting her. The ancient woman seems a little sad, perhaps regretful, to think that her younger self fears that she will be consumed and I point out that perhaps she is concerned that it would be involuntary, not that the Empress herself would choose to destroy her. She reassures me that Kaide will be safe in her presence as long as she is anchored to me. And though I didn't ask for it, she also advises me to find ways to strengthen Kaide's presence so that she doesn't need to be anchored to me forever. I have a small pang of guilt that this magic has not been top of mind for me lately but of course, it is part of the ever-growing to-do list. The droplet of my bound blood hangs between us as she asks her last two questions.  

When the Barrier comes down I will try to bring the remaining Osyr back to the shore, to places not so toxic as the inland sea on the other side. Over time our Empire needs an inheritor, an Imperator. You have shown your love for the Empire and deserve the independence to shape it with me. It is a place that matches your love of our people. It is time for the Empire to have something it has long needed. Will you be not a Hand, but our Heartbeat?

I am nodding before she has even finished, and I accept instantly. It is what I feared she might want me to be but hearing it described makes it gentler, more comprehensible. To be the unfailing protector and guide of our people and to temper the Empress sole leadership when necessary is exactly what I have become.   I have become part of her inner family, and the four arms that encircle me fit neatly around my wings as I embrace her back. While I had considered the concepts that define my work and who I am now, they melt away as she asks if I've thought about my face name. I chose a name centuries ago that suited me then and suits me now. I chose a name that evokes the breath and almost-laughter as two people collide for the first time in too long. I like my name. I don't need a long, apostrophed name to separate the people who are and aren't worthy to speak my heart. If anything, I need an additional syllable to give a name weight and rhythm when spoken aloud in an official setting - something I'm sure the elderly 'Kaide' can sympathize with. She agrees, and leaves it in my mind to think on. Tomorrow I will come back with Kaide and perhaps Liliales  

How I have dreaded this conversation. How I dreaded losing you.

And then my blood has returned to me and the space is as I remembered it - cloaked in shadow and magic, just like the shrouded Empress before me.