Emrhys Coldriver sat before the arbiters in the Imperium High Court and tried to calm herself. She drew in a shaky breath, the cold stone of the bench on which she sat anchoring her briefly. Panic fluttered in her chest, chased swiftly by defiance.
She would not break here. Not today, not when her life was on the line.
Emrhys inwardly repeated the words of Saint Eskala’s petition for peace. Saint Eskala, patron of the Priory where her sister Lenore now lived by decree of the court. Would she be able to visit Lenore one more time before the end and apologize for all the grief she’d caused? Because this was surely the end.
Those lab assistants were dead because of her and her accursed aethermagic. Three innocent people who had met the embrace of the beyond because of her idiot mistake, because she somehow mixed some of her own Bottled Night formula into an otherwise harmless experiment. One small potion bottle sitting innocuously on the materials counter served as her accuser, evidence that this was all her fault. It was a rare reagent that only the Coldriver family employed as a catalyst for the aethermagic used in strength and health potions. A most particular formula they had developed and provided at the behest of one of the Dominion’s foremost military leaders.
Nobody should have known about it but General Acton, a man beyond reproach, and Madame Felsin. Felsin had a history with Emrhys’s family, claiming to have been her father’s biggest supporter at the Academy, apprenticed once upon a time to his mentor. But if that was so, why had he never mentioned her?
None of this should have happened. How had the Bottled Night gotten mixed in with everything else? How was it even removed from its locked and magically secured hiding place to begin with? It was a dangerous substance, but one Emrhys had never mishandled before.
I know my memory is not trustworthy. I know sometimes I forget what I’m doing and why, Emrhys thought, frowning. But this seems wrong somehow.
A flurry of activity from the Choir of Arbiters drew her attention back to the moment. Arbiter Prime stood, her hands raised.
“After deliberation, we stand ready to deliver judgment in compliance with Dominion law. I ask, what is the decree of the court?” Arbiter Prime’s voice seemed bigger than life, awful in its regal coldness.
Emrhys curled her fingers into her palms as one red-robed figure handed a message scroll sealed in glowing crimson leymagic to Arbiter Prime, a nice, fiddly bit of recognition spell work. Prime touched the seal, and the scroll’s clockworks clicked so that a length of parchment unfurled.
It shocked Emrhys to feel tears trailing down her cheeks. She cried only when she was terrified or angry. At that moment, all she felt was numb.
“In the matter of Emrhys of House Coldriver, accused with use of forbidden aether leymagic and of possessing prohibited reagents that resulted in the fatal Experimental Leymagic Laboratory incident, the judgment rendered is imprisonment for life in Stonechasm Keep.” Arbiter Prime wound the scroll back into its cylinder.
Emrhys coughed, suddenly unable to breathe properly.
Imprisonment. Not death. Damned, but not condemned. How in Ahra was it possible?
Arbiter Prime continued the judgment. “In this 19th year of Dominar’s reign, the sentence will be implemented. The court agrees. In the name of the Dominion, it is done.”
The Choir of Arbiters bowed in unison. Emrhys couldn’t believe what she had heard and seen.
“Why?” Emrhys blurted out, her voice echoing through the chamber. She shrank into herself and clamped her mouth shut.
Arbiter Prime turned her masked face toward Emrhys and responded with chilling calm.
“The Court recognizes your family’s years of service to the Dominion. Let this judgment lead you to gain wisdom for yourself in your imprisonment.”
Arbiter Prime walked away without another word, the red silk of her cloak shimmering in the magelamps’ glow as she followed the other court attendees through curtained exits. Silence engulfed the empty chambers. A sharp slap to Emrhys’ arm broke the silence. She blinked at the two guards who held her in place with mage-treated hand and ankle cuffs, their sabers a warning against sudden movement.
“You’re a blasted lucky woman,” one of them said gruffly.
The other said nothing. Neither of them wore masks; just standard-issue coifs of leymagic-tempered steel. No masks meant Emrhys could see the disbelief on their faces, looks that mirrored the confusion she felt.
“So, any hints on the Dominar’s Gambit game-board colors tonight? If your luck carries, a traitor like you could make us all rich men,” the second guard jeered and jabbed Emrhys in her ribs with an armored elbow.
“Try green,” Emrhys muttered back, unable to sound properly enraged by the insult. She was too weary and baffled to be angry anymore. What everyone in the Dominion now believed she had done, what she believed herself, called for death and nothing less. Anyone would know this. She knew this.
“You’re off to Stonechasm tonight, you realize,” the first guard, the one who did not jostle and leer, said.
Emrhys could only nod.
“For what it’s worth, you don’t seem a bad sort,” the man offered with a slight shrug.
“Watch yourself, Rallo,” the other guard warned. “Don’t want to be seen talking to a filthy little traitor. Let’s go, you.” He shoved Emrhys so hard that she staggered forward, straining not to fall while bound.
Emrhys kept her balance as they made their way down the dim corridor, her chains rattling with each step. Locks of her pale hair, once brown, blanched grayish-white by years of exposure to wild aethermagic, fell into her face, but she could not brush them away.
Someone waited ahead of them, barring their way forward. The guard named Rallo crossed his arms over his chest in salute to the figure blocking their path.
“You are Highguard Corvus Sevens, sir?” he asked, his tone hushed and respectful.
“Yes.” The tall soldier approached, his footfalls muted, his magelamp flickering blots of flame-gold onto his skin.
Emrhys gaped. Dressed from hat to boot in black, lithe and silent, the man was a living shadow. When he spoke again, a shiver skittered up and down her spine.
“Will you remit to me the prisoner’s orders, guardsman?” Highguard Sevens asked in a low, velveteen voice.
“O-of course, sir,” Rallo sunk a hand into his uniform coat-pocket and retrieved a sealed scroll, which he offered to Sevens.
Emrhys realized the other guard, the cruel one, had not spoken since the black-clad soldier had arrived. The man cowered, watching Highguard Sevens with wariness verging on fear.
The soldier in black peered at the contents of the scroll. When he looked up again, his eyes met hers. Unblinking, assessing, his pale gold irises were nearly swallowed by darkness. It was a predator’s gaze.
Shivers danced over Emrhys’ entire body this time, a cold thrill shocking through her veins like ice and lightning. There was something about him. Something different, something almost familiar.
“Leave this at the guard tower. I’ll take the prisoner.” Highguard Seven’s voice was soft but commanding.
Rallo exchanged the scroll for the chains to Emrhys’ restraints before urging the second guard back in the direction they’d come from.
Emrhys stood in the narrow cave of light that spilled from the Highguard’s lamp, shadows gobbling up the ceiling and floors around them. The silent soldier watched her with those eerie eyes. His expression gave none of his thoughts away. Wordlessly, Sevens wrapped his fingers over the lead chains.
Emrhys waited for him to taunt her, to say anything at all. When Sevens did not speak, anger flooded through her. Days and days of fear, confusion, and hopelessness bubbled to the surface. Her face heated as she stared down at her bonds, bright against the dark gray of her robes.
“Don’t stand there like a ghoul. Inform me I’m a betrayer of honor to the Dominion,” Emrhys hissed. “Just call me a filthy traitor like the other one did.”
Highguard Sevens’ only reply was to lower his head in the slightest bow. One lock of sleek black hair fell over his face.
“What, only mock ceremony? No demonstrations of power to put me back in my proper place?”
“I must ask you to save your energy, Miss Coldriver.” He bowed again, then gently pulled on the lead-chain of her shackles to encourage her to follow him.
Emrhys slumped. Words left her. She had nothing more to say. She was tired, barely able to hold herself upright.
I won’t give him or any other person the satisfaction of hauling me off the floor like discarded linens, she thought bitterly.
So Emrhys walked. Left foot, right foot. She watched the soldier Sevens’ black-coated shoulders blur into an abstraction, a strangely intriguing shadow in a world full of dark and terrible things.
Lizzie Sinclaire 