Mortal

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CITADEL. Heart of Byzantium. Throne room of the Sovereign. Seat of world power.

Place of whispers. Place of secrets.

A day had passed since Saric’s world had changed once more. Now he strode into the outer foyer of the senate chamber, footsteps on the marble floor echoing through the hall’s vaulted ceiling. He was only vaguely aware of the two Citadel guards flanking him on either side, cowering in his wake.

He breathed deep.

It all rushed back in an instant: the Chaos of these ancient chambers. It seeped from her very stones like sweat from her subterranean walls. It flitted through her hallways like the ghosts of a former age, whispering songs of passion. Anger. Love.

Power.

Did those sitting within the Senate Hall have any idea how very wrong they were? How weak and flawed was the foundation on which they’d built their staid and stoic laws?

No.

Today they would learn. Today he would teach them.

He smoothed the dark sleeve of his robe and angled toward the great doors leading into the senate chamber. He had owned many fine robes in his life before, but none of them could equal the one he wore now, glittering with faceted onyx and garnet at neck and cuff, snug across shoulders that had emerged from the years of his metamorphosis more broad and muscled than before. Corban himself had drawn back his hair, wrapping it in a length of the finest silk he owned. An adoring tribute to his maker, one Saric had accepted with full love in the face of such worship.

Two guards stood at the twin doors as he approached. One of them paled, the color in his face replaced by recognition. As it should be-Saric was a veritable ghost come back from the dead. A reaper come to take what was his.

“My Lord,” the one whispered, drifting aside.

The other one glanced sharply at his partner, but stood his ground, the ceremonial pike at his side not wavering once.

“Senate is in session,” he said. “Entrance is not permitted.”

Saric slowly closed the distance between them until, an arm’s reach away, he towered a full head over him. The man’s eyes darted to the two guards behind Saric and then back to Saric and down his neck, where the inky line of his veins disappeared beneath his neckline.

“Do you know who I am?” Saric said.

“No.” His hand trembled once on the pike.

“Then it’s time you do.”

Saric leaned in, as though to whisper between them.

The guard’s eyes darted up and after a moment’s hesitation, he tilted his head toward him. Saric lifted his long, pale fingers to the man’s head and drew him close, so that his lips touched the man’s ear.

“You may call me death,” he whispered.

He twisted the guard’s head. A sick pop, half of a gasp… and then silence.

The young man slumped to the marble floor as his spike clattered beside him.

The guard on the other side of the door took one more step back and then stood frozen, ghostly white.

Without a word, Saric stepped past him, black hem of his robe sliding over the dead man’s boot. And then he laid his hands against the heavy double doors, pushed them slowly wide, and stepped into the great senate chamber.

The hall had not changed in nine years. Very little did among the dead. The great torch burned above the dais, constantly fed by a supply of gas-the flame of Order, gathered from all corners of the world, never to be extinguished. Its smoke had all but obscured the ancient painting on the ceiling, blacking it out.

A debate was in progress-about what, Saric did not care. None of their paltry concerns now mattered. Only he did.

The cacophony of voices began to die as those sitting nearest the door of the chamber theater reacted to the sight of him standing in the open maw of the great doorway. Swiveling necks. Gasps, sibilant as prayer to his ears. One or two of the senators half-rose from their seats, papers falling from their laps.

Saric released the doors and walked down the great center aisle, through the middle of the tiered seats, not seeing so much as sensing the hundred gaping faces on either side of him. He took in the astonished silence as one does the sun, or the power of a coming storm. In the back of the chamber, the heavy doors fell closed with a dull and hollow thud.

There, on the rounded platform protruding into the chamber, was Rowan, the Sovereign Regent. For the first time in his life, Saric regarded the man he had known so long ago with new curiosity.

The dark-skinned man who had once served Saric’s father as senate leader was as seemingly unchanged as Order itself. He wore the same dark robes as before, his hair bound back in the same manner Saric so vividly remembered. Only the slightest streak of gray in his hair and scant lines beneath his eyes betrayed his aging. Otherwise, he was exactly as he had been. Saric found this disappointing.

The Regent stood near a marble table, the Sovereign’s seat neatly tucked behind it, signifying the symbolic presence of the rightful Sovereign, not yet of age. On the other side of the table sat another man with gray hair, his nose hawklike, hands grasping the arms of his chair, eyes fastened on Saric. This then, must be Dominic, the new senate leader.

“Order!” Rowan said, reaching for the gavel, pounding it twice on the thick travertine. The old fool hadn’t yet recognized him. “What is the meaning of this interrupt-”

And then Saric saw the recognition in his eyes, the collision of the impossible and inexplicable at once. The way his eyes coursed over him, lingering at his changed frame, returning to his too-pale face.

The gavel slipped from his fingers and came to rest on the table. Rowan staggered back a step.

Saric slowly mounted the steps to the platform. Crossed to the table, not once removing his gaze from the man.

“Saric… We thought you dead…”

Behind Saric, the theater was utterly still.

“Please sit.”

The Regent glanced at Dominic then toward the greater senate chamber. He dipped his head slightly and returned to his seat. He sat as one not sure of his own movement.

Saric lifted the gavel, tapped it once against his palm, and turned to face the senate theater. One hundred senators stared at him with varied expressions of confusion. Little did they know just how appropriate that sentiment would soon be.

“Esteemed senators. I have returned to you. I, Saric, who was once your Sovereign.”

Murmurs from those in the chamber.

“I have been gone from you for many years. Perhaps you, like your Regent, thought me… dead.” He paused, allowing himself the barest smile. “As you can see, I am very much alive.”

He faced the senate leader, seated to the left. “Dominic, I assume?”

The leader held his stare, steady. “That is correct.”

The man was strong. Unwavering. Good.

“You serve Order. You serve it faithfully as a way of sustaining life, given as the gift of Sirin after the Age of Chaos. Tell me if this is true.”

“We have pledged our lives to it.”

“Indeed. Your lives.” He turned back to the assembly and spoke the words with clear, perfect authority.

“It was Sirin who first preached the denial of emotions in a new philosophy designed to prevent the great passions that led to the wars five centuries ago. And so humanity learned to control its passion and baser sentiments. Old things passed away and we became new, evolving beyond those baser instincts that once guided us only to death and destruction.”

He twisted his head and addressed the senate leader. “This, too, is true, is it not?”

“Yes,” Dominic agreed. A murmur of assent from the chamber.

Saric nodded and smiled. “Yes.” He paced to his right, scanning the auditorium, holding them in silence for an extended moment.

“Unfortunately, it’s not true.”

Glances between the senators. In his periphery, Rowan sat forward. Saric stayed him with a glance.

“You have been fed a lie. You are the products not of philosophy, but of treason… and Alchemy.”

A confused ripple of voices throughout the chamber.

“The truth is, you are not evolved. You have, rather, been stripped of those emotions not required for control. Namely, every emotion but fear. All through a virus called Legion.”

“Madness!” Dominic said, leaping up from his chair, face white.

“The truth is, Megas assassinated Sirin when he refused to infect the world with Legion, knowing it would strip mankind of its humanity. The truth is that after killing Sirin, Megas released Legion on the world, killing it to all but the fear required to create puppets of Order. The truth is, you have not evolved-you have, in fact, devolved.”

“Preposterous! Absolute heresy!”

“Is it? Ask yourself: is it loyalty that compels you to your feet in this instant? Love, for Order?”

“Yes,” Dominic said, straightening.

“Are you so certain? Or is it only that you fear losing Bliss in the next life if you do not leap to your feet and defend the way of Order? Just as you function from day to day caring only that you’re not caught in transgression and that your offenses do not multiply so that on the day when life arbitrarily cuts you off from the world, you do not end up in fear eternal?”

The senate leader stood absolutely still-not angry, as Corpses were incapable of such emotion-but terrified. Rowan had risen to his feet as well.

“Fear guides us as it should,” Dominic said.

“Should? The truth is, you are incapable of anything but fear because you’ve been genetically stripped of those sentiments. Of that which makes you human. The truth is, my dear Dominic, Rowan… esteemed members of the senate… all of you are in fact, quite dead.”

They stared at him as if he were a madman. By these words he’d just killed all credibility in their eyes, naturally. But this was expected. Who, being told they were dead, could possibly believe the bearer of such news sane?

Saric waited for a moment, briefly considering the gavel in his hands, before laying it aside on the marble tabletop, just so, and moving again to the edge of the dais, where he faced Rowan.

“Am I not your former Sovereign? The last acting Sovereign to stand in this chamber?”

“Yes,” the Regent said, “but-”

“Have I not had access to every archive in the chambers beneath this very one?” He glanced toward the door beyond the dais. It was quite obviously sealed around the edges, without doorknob or handle. But anyone who knew the Citadel had at least heard rumors of its subterranean maze of secrets.

“Yes.”

“Do I not come from the royal line of alchemists?”

“Yes,” Rowan said, his mouth a flat line.

“And am I dead, as you and everyone else here, once presumed?”

He hesitated. “Clearly not.”

“Tell me,” Saric said, pacing along the dais, pulling wide the top of his robe where it fastened at the neck. He turned to face the assembled senate.

They stared at the black treelike skeleton of veins beneath his pale skin, far darker than the coveted blue of royal Brahmin veins-so praised that royals had for years highlighted their color with blue powder. His body was chorded with muscle, stronger than any other body they could have possibly seen.

“This is life! I know so because I was once dead.” He released his robe. “Tell me, when is the last time you wept at the sight of the sky? At the devotion of your constituents? That you looked forward to a meal with anything more than duty to your body… when you did not crave every experience if only for the sake of taking each ounce of life into yourself?”

They stared, unfathoming. That, too, was expected.

“But you cannot possibly do any of these things. Do you know why? Because you lack the capacity for any of it!”

This time there was the beginning of an outcry, but he threw up his hand for silence.

“Nine years ago, the Master Alchemist Pravus injected me with a serum that fired my veins with emotion the likes of which you have never even imagined. Anger. Lust! Jealousy. I was a thing turned feral. Chaos ruled my heart. Yes, I know it is blasphemy against Order. But I tell you today, your Order is a blasphemy against life itself!”

Off to the side, Rowan was staring at him strangely, as though with a new revelation of his own.

“Those days…,” Rowan said quietly. “Before the inauguration… when you wanted to become senate leader…”

“Yes. And so now you know. I could not contain such virulent emotion, and Pravus reclaimed me. Eight years I spent in stasis. Until the day that he drew me out as one reemerging from the womb. This time, perfected. He spent months with me, teaching me. Schooling me in this new, reclaimed humanity.” His voice broke. “I was his child. He was my father.”

“This is… this is abomination,” Rowan whispered.

For that, the man would die.

Saric ignored him and spread his arms as if he were their father. “Today there is only one living man in this chamber. See now and know that I am he!”

For an extended moment, no one spoke. The dead could not stoop to challenge such an absurd claim. So it had been, and so it would be…

At least for a few minutes more. And then their entire world would change before their very eyes.

“My Lord,” Dominic said, in a practiced, conciliatory tone. “We will most certainly investigate the veracity of all that you claim. This is quite a… revelation.”

It was not the word he wanted to use. It was blasphemy to him, Saric knew. As Order was blasphemy to him.

“We revere you for your service to the world-in such a time as your father’s abrupt passing, no less. And while Order is given by the Maker, law is not the Maker. It is not perfect. But we must follow the dictates of the law until it is changed. These are serious claims, and to make them known would throw the world into nothing short of raw panic. We cannot afford such uproar, and if such claims are proven true, we must proceed with utmost care.”

Rage rose up within Saric like bile. Did the man really believe he would be placated by such patronizing foolishness?

Dominic continued: “Until such a day that your claims are proven and the senate dictates otherwise, Order must be upheld. Our Book of Orders is infallible, created not by Sirin or by Megas who wrote that holy book, but by the Maker who inspired its writing. And until such a day it may be proven wrong, we serve Order and the Maker both by obedience to its statutes.”

Murmurs of assent.

Saric inclined his head. So very predictable. Somehow he had hoped for more from this one.

Overhead, the senate flame burned straight and even, throwing her faint smoke onto the black of the ceiling. Dominic would look quite handsome, he thought, in a glass sarcophagus.

“Yes. Forgive me,” he said, tilting his head. “Your memory is infallible. These items, you have said, will be investigated by the senate. The veracity of them will be checked, and the senate will act accordingly-even if it means altering the history of Order itself, which is the history of the world, and of the Maker.”

Dominic hesitated, obviously uncertain about this last bit. “Yes. If such a revelation may be proven true.”

“Until then, I bow to your wisdom.”

“Thank you, my Lord. Now, if we may-”

“As you bow to the authority of the senate. As only the senate may decide these matters under the Sovereign.”

“Yes. Such is the way.” Dominic inclined his head.

“And to the authority of the Sovereign, who holds all sway over the senate.”

“Yes, of the Sovereign. That is true.”

“But the Sovereign is not here…?” Saric turned, looked around him.

“He will soon come of age. Until then, there is Rowan-”

“And if your Sovereign were here… the one chosen by the cycle, as dictated by Order… born on the seventh day of the seventh month, closest to the seventh hour, would you bow?”

“My Lord?”

Rowan was sitting forward, frowning. Out in the senate chamber, the senators had returned to their seats, most of them, the alarm of earlier having smoothed into a strange calm-except for those few, still white-faced, obviously undone by Saric’s claims.

“You would serve your Sovereign first, before the senate,” Saric said, brows raised.

“Of course. I serve the Sovereign first in all things. As do we all.”

Saric glanced at him sidelong. “And you would have it no other way.”

“Of course not.”

“Good. I, too, bow to the full authority of the Sovereign.”

Saric looked at the cloaked man who’d slipped in the back after him to wait his orders. Corban. Saric lazily lifted a hand to motion to his chief alchemist.

Corban turned, grasped the large doors by the handles, and pulled them wide, stepping to one side.

Two Dark Bloods walked through the double doors with the unmistakable shape of a body draped in white silk on a pall between them. The sight of his Dark Bloods towering so majestically over the frail bodies of those assembled flooded Saric with a father’s pride. Now they would see.

Soon they would bow.

But first, the senators closest to the door bolted to their feet and backed away, skittering like crabs. When was the last time any one of them had seen a lifeless body?

The caustic reminders of death weren’t allowed, even at funerals.

Near him on the dais, Rowan stood. “What is the meaning of this?”

The Dark Bloods carried the pall down the aisle, up the dais steps, and laid the draped body on the top of the stone table.

Not a soul moved. Breath had fled the room. A dead body in the senate chamber-by that alone, Order had been shattered today.

On either end of the altar, the Dark Bloods faced him, sunk to one knee, and bowed their heads.

Saric moved to the side of the body, hip brushing against the Sovereign chair. He traced one finger along the edge of the still form, his touch trailing toward the head. He grasped the silk cloth with the tips of four fingers, and, with a quick yank, flicked off the cloth, revealing the naked body of a woman, staring with dead eyes at the ceiling.

Rowan stood frozen, eyes wide with recognition, face as white as the silk on the floor. The room was utterly still.

And then that one name, whispered by Rowan for all to hear in the perfect silence.

“Feyn!”