The Rise of the Fallen (The Rotting Empire Book 1) Read online

  Once she was a Sword Demon.

  She opened her eyes. The flies were relentless, crawling across his lips, drinking at the edges of his eyes, massed on his gaping wounds. She remembered the shameful procession of the Fallen on the day that they had been cast out and how Adi had stood among those lines of Sword Demons, as still as statues, not raising their swords to protect their companions, knowing the cruel fate that awaited them.

  Her lips trembled. She clenched her fists. She could feel the heat rising to her head, the invisible needles searing into her skull. Adi had done nothing for the Fallen. He had done nothing for her when she needed him the most. Let the flies have him, she thought. Let him know what it is like to be abandoned.

  A stick cracked behind her.

  She jumped up and spun around, swords clutched in front of her.

  Hanu stood at the edge of the clearing, bent over, panting, his hand resting on his knee, his sword quivering where he had plunged it into the muddy ground. “That was steep.” He gathered the edge of his sarong and wiped the sweat from his brow. He glanced past her at the body. “You made quick work. Any idea who it was?”

  She slipped her swords back into their sheaths. “The Captain? Did you bring him back to the ship.”

  “He’s fine. Garu is watching over him now. Big oaf finally has a purpose other than standing there slack-jawed and drooling.”

  “And the boat? The soldiers?”

  Hanu arched his back. He seemed to be having a hard time catching his breath. “That’s why I wanted to reach you before you came back down.”

  “What?”

  “The Duke’s men. I think Khirtan is with them.”

  Maja’s stomach dropped. Her chest shook with the sudden racing of her heart. “He comes for us?”

  He laughed, but it was not a fully formed laugh. He forced it with his breath. “Did he not finish their business with us already?” He lifted his good hand. “Suppose he could cut off this one too? But we paid the price five years ago. He has no right now.”

  Maja’s hands drifted to her belly, the scars. What she lost was not so apparent. Hanu’s gaze followed her hands and she immediately pulled them away. She fought against the tears forming in her eyes, and she turned away from Hanu. She clenched her fists so hard that they shook.

  Hanu came up alongside her. “So who is this supposed Sword Demon? Pirates always thinking anyone who can slide a blade is a legend.” He looked down and jolted to a stop, his jaw wide open. He turned to stare at her, and even though his mouth moved, no words came out. Then he fell on his knees before the corpse. “Adi?” He made as if to embrace the body but only waved his arms in the air. “You killed Adi?”

  “He was beyond hope,” said Maja. “Bled out from his wounds.”

  Hanu crawled forward until he could lay his palm on the old man’s brow. He let it rest there. “I dreamt of seeing you again. How I missed you. Oh, Adi, I know you would have embraced us.” He sobbed suddenly. “But not like this.” He choked back his tears. “What’s happened? Why is he here? He should be at the palace. The First Spear is always within a heart beat of the God-Emperor’s family.”

  “Something’s wrong,” said Maja. “The Duke’s men, the First Spear. This is a shitty little island. Nothing to fight over. Fishermen and farmers. Even the mushrooms are weak.”

  Hanu wiped his tears. “You don’t know how many times I dreamt that we would receive a pardon. That our sin would be forgiven. That once again we could walk up the pearl steps. The God-Emperor would lift his mace and all would be forgiven. And Adi would be there, to welcome us back.” Hanu sniveled. “He was good to me. He pulled me out of despair. My father when I lost mine. His word brought me into the Sword Demons. I would have been nothing without him. I believed in him. He was our one hope to return. I know it.”

  Maja shrugged. “You’re rewriting the past, Hanu. I remember it differently. When they seized us, falsely accused us, he did nothing. He was supposed to protect us. He was our First Spear. He knew our hearts. He should have argued on our behalf. He should have stood with his sword between us and the lies.”

  “Against the order of the God-Emperor? The Duke was blind with rage. His son was assassinated under our watch. What could Adi have done?”

  “Something more than nothing. He betrayed us!”

  Hanu scoffed. “What? He was supposed to put his neck on the line for us? For the Sword Demons who failed in our holy duty? He was supposed to step up for us?”

  “Yes!” barked Maja. “He abandoned us, and now he’s worm food. My only regret? That I didn’t drive the fatal blow through his chest.”

  “You are wickedly cold,” muttered Hanu. “Adi had no choice. I believe it was his word that allowed us to live. He must have spoken to the God-Emperor. He must have pleaded for our lives to be spared. He loved us.”

  “He abandoned us.”

  “Without him, we would have been sunk with stones in the sea long ago. It would not only have been hands lopped off. We would not have gotten off so easily.”

  “They ruined me,” said Maja.

  “It would have been our heads and we would have been fed to the birds. Death not sorrow. He saved us from that.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I believe that. We owe Adi a proper burial. Maybe if the God-Emperor hears about it he will look upon us with grace.”

  “Too late for Adi now,” said Maja. She nodded back towards the village. “We need to be more worried about why Khirtan is here, and how we’re going to get back to the Sea Eagle.”

  “A boy,” said Hanu standing up from the corpse of Adi. “I heard them say they’re looking for a boy.”

  “What do you mean a boy?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to talk to them. I overheard their blabbering. The Duke’s men are looking for a boy. They said they didn’t care about us or the mushrooms. But I don’t believe them. They may not care about the pirates, but when Khirtan sees you and me …”

  “Adi’s last words,” said Maja. “He told me to save the boy.”

  Hanu fell to his knees. “Then we need to do as he asks. We need to save the boy. It’s our chance for salvation. I can feel it. There’s something special about this boy.”

  “Why does everyone want this boy?”

  “If Adi wants him, then the boy is important to the Empire,” said Hanu. “We get the boy and we win back favor. Our chance to return.”

  “Adi must have known the Duke’s men were coming,” said Maja. “He wants us to save him from the Duke’s men.”

  “The boy is the key to our return, Maja. We can wipe the past clean.”

  Maja pulled Hanu up from his knees. “I don’t know about that. Let’s get to the boy first. Before the Duke’s men. Then we can find out what’s going on. Maybe figure out a way to ruin the Duke’s plans.”

  She turned from the body and began to descend the trail back towards the temple, the deep blue ocean glimpsed through the trees.

  As Maja descended the slope with the view of the ocean before her, her mind drifted back to a day, early in her time in Yavasa, when she also looked out over the sea and when the rawness of her abandonment by her father still filled her night with tears and choked-back whimpering. She remembered standing on the beach burning the soles of her bare feet, the warm sea breeze fluttering, a day when hope was dashed.

  The Queen had traveled to Duke Buranchiti’s keep, the Eye of the East, a white-stoned fortress perched at the edge of the sea and had brought Maja with her. It was the first time that Maja had been allowed to leave the capital.

  While the Queen had slipped off the boat and climbed the path to the Buranchiti’s stronghold, Maja had been left on the painted vessel with Bima and the oar slaves.

  “Can I go down to the water?” Maja asked. It had been almost half a year since she had last been at the sea, that day when her father’s ship had sailed up that river towards the capital.

  Bima grunted. “The Queen told me to wat
ch you.” His voice sounded like stones grinding.

  “You can watch me down by the beach.”

  The muscles of his jaw rippled as he glanced up towards the keep.

  “”I’m going,” Maja said. “If you don’t like it, you can just choke me into unconsciousness and drag me below the boat. You’re good at that kind of thing, aren’t you?”

  Maja almost expected Bima to lash out at her with an open hand. He had done so before at the Queen’s command. But he stood still, his tattooed hand hanging by his side.

  Maja had learned enough in her time with the Queen that Bima, despite his strength and cruelty, acted only for the Queen. As much as he may have wanted to strike Maja or slip that choke cord around her neck, he would not do anything without the direct order of the Queen. Maja knew that he had only been charged in those last moments with watching over “the white demon girl” and that he had no instructions about keeping her confined to the ship.

  But Maja wondered. She wondered where his duty ended and his own feelings emerged.

  She was about to find out.

  She padded down the plank to the dock. Before her the white walls of the castle loomed, and despite the day’s heat a cold breath of air surged towards her from the Eye of the East, almost beckoning, but she ignored it, not wanting to end up wherever the Queen was, and instead followed the river mouth to where it gave way to soft, burning sand beneath her feet. She quickly crossed until she reached where the water washed up, hissing, white edged.

  Bima stood behind her, feet firmly planted in the burning sand.

  The sea smelled good, salty and full of seaweed. The sun glittered on the surface, and she allowed her eyes to track the innumerable blues that layered the water before her. Here the water was brighter than the dark, foreboding seas of her home. She bit her lower lip. She tried not to think of home very often.

  Her reflections were broken by a shout. She turned to the figure on the wall of the keep. Yellow-armored, he jutted his hand out to the sea, and Maja followed where he pointed.

  There on the horizon sat three ships. But not just any three ships. She recognized the shapes, dragon boats, broad square flags with a red bird sewn on them. Ships from the North. Ships from her homeland.

  She spun around in the waves and laughed. “See, there, Bima. Dragon ships. They come back for me. The shield brothers come back for me. My father.”

  Bima shielded his eyes with his hand, shaking his head ever so slightly.

  “You all pay for what you’ve done,” she said.

  More shouts erupted from the walls of the fortress. The sound of a drum pounded from inside, and Maja imagined soldiers spilling out of long houses, spears and shields in their hands.

  “My father comes back.”

  Bima let out a sharp sigh. “He does not. Little one, he does not.”

  Something in the torturer’s words made Maja’s stomach knot as if he spoke some truth that she was not aware of but that she knew to be true. She dashed from him more deeply into the waters, so that the water touched her thighs and the swells lifted across her hips. She wanted the sea to pick her up, carry her far away from this land.

  She laughed out loud. “They are coming. They are coming for me.”

  She stared at those boats, squinting against the brightness, waiting for them to grow in her sight. But they did not. They hung there on the horizon, almost as if they foundered in the seas, and then they turned, the wind filling their sails, and faster than she could imagine, they glided along the dark blue, shrinking before her eyes as they sailed away from the island.

  The drum changed its rhythm, losing its urgency.

  The water lapped and slapped Maja’s body. Instead of lifting her, the sea swirled and pulled. She felt the sand swimming over her feet, as if to pull her under.

  Maja stared until the boats shrunk so small that she was not sure whether she saw them or white caps in the distance. A sharp cry came from the shore.

  “Time to go, little one,” said Bima. “Time for us to return home now.”

  She turned to follow him, and walked across the burning sands, only now her feet were so numb with the cold of the sea that she felt no heat. She felt nothing at all.

  5

  “HOW ARE WE going to find Adi’s boy?” asked Hanu as they slid down the slope towards the temple.

  The ground was muddy and Maja’s feet slipped from beneath her, each step forcing her to skate down the hillside in a slight squat. She grabbed at vines and the branches of trees to prevent herself from falling. She should have slowed down but she knew the boy was in the village somewhere and the Duke’s men were also searching for him. She wanted to find him before they did.

  “Head shaved, saffron robes,” she said.

  “A monk?” asked Hanu. “Why all this fuss for a little monk?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If the Duke wants the boy, I’ll take him away. Pay back. Not going to let the Duke and his torturer get their hands on a child.”

  As Maja descended, she glimpsed the bright blue sea through breaks in the trees. The islands of the archipelago stretched into the distance. Yavasa Island rose above the others, a hazy smudge on the horizon. This was the closest she had come since she had fled the others at Land’s End. A day away depending on the wind and the currents. She could have returned if she had wanted.

  The others had never left Land’s End or Yavasa. The Fallen. The disgraced Sword Demons. Wayan among them. Her dear Wayan. She swallowed against the sudden constriction in her throat.

  Crippled, scarred, and broken after leaving the torture chamber of the Duke, the Fallen had retreated to Land’s End on the remote western side of Yavasa giving up their swords for a life of solitude, far from the courts but close enough to be watched. A prison without bars. At first Maja and Hanu had stayed with the other Fallen at Land’s End, but after a few months the two of them chose a more permanent exile. What she thought of as freedom.

  The pirate life had been free of the machinations of court and the political fighting but, during her years with the pirates, she never truly felt accepted. She was always the outsider even among these men and women who showed no allegiance to anyone but coin and, on good days, their captain.

  Maja stopped for a moment on the slope, the ground sliding away beneath her feet, one hand shading her eyes, and stared at Yavasa.

  She was so close.

  “If Adi was protecting this boy that means he was worth something to the God-Emperor. He would take us back,” said Hanu. “We could find our way to forgiveness and grace again.”

  “We’re the ones who are supposed to be forgiven? After what they let the Duke do to us?”

  “But this boy …”

  “Who we know nothing about,” said Maja. “Except that the Duke wants him.”

  “And the only reason you want him is because the Duke wants him?”

  “You’d be okay with letting the Duke get his claws on a child? You’d trust him with a child?”

  Hanu mumbled. He looked down at his hand that ended in a stump, and then the other with the raised white scar where Khirtan had begun his cut. Maja pressed her palm against her belly to feel the scars beneath the armor. Even after all these years they burned when she touched them.

  A child. She could not let them take the life of another child.

  She removed her hand and squinted at the distant island. Was it even home anymore? The brightness burned pain in the backs of her eye sockets. She needed a smoke. Or better yet a drink. But all that, soon enough, as soon as she figured out what the Duke’s men wanted with the boy and how to thwart it.

  She winced against the pain as she loped down the hill towards the temple.

  Maja reached the bottom of the hill and ducked back through the rear of the building. Someone moved in the shadows. She began to grab at her swords and then saw that it was Garu. His hulking shape blotted out the light from the front door. He slithered among the bodies of his fellow pirates, gathering swords, plucking coin purses,
untying leather armor. Clouds of dust lifted with his every movement. His club, tied to his belt, bumped against his thigh with each step. He had not cleaned the gore from the metal studs and the blood painted his calf.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” he said glancing up briefly before returning to his task.

  “Thought you went back to the boat,” said Hanu.

  “Changed my mind.”

  Maja filled him in on the death of Adi and the boy.

  Garu looked up as he pulled pounded copper bracelets from the bloody wrist of the pirate on the table. “A little monk. Yeah, I saw him. Trying to pry open a yam house and hide inside. Didn’t think nothing of him. You think we can make some coin off him?”

  “And the Duke’s soldiers?” asked Maja.

  “Searching the village.”

  “Damn!” said Maja.

  She needed to get to the boy before the Duke’s men did. She charged out of the temple into blinding light but immediately skidded to a stop. A dozen of the Duke’s men stood in the courtyard.

  “What do we have here?” asked the squattest of them. Like his companions, he held a spear in one fist and a rattan shield in the other. A broadsword was tucked in the bright red-checkered sarong wrapped around their waists of their black pants. Each of them also had a fungal breastplate growing on their chests, bright yellow, a living symbiotic armor.

  Maja stared past the soldiers to the skeletal man lingering behind the pack, a head taller than the others. Fragments of bone pierced the dark skin of his face. Maja staggered a step, her knees nearly buckling.

  She had not thought to see Khirtan again. Ever.

  He laid his long fingers on the shoulders of his companions and parted them as he stepped forward. “Ah, Maja, my sweet little flower, how you have blossomed.”

  Maja stumbled another step. Her vision swarmed with memories of the dungeon. The screams of the Fallen. Khirtan’s elegant fingers teasing the edges of the knives, the saws, the needles. She bumped up against Hanu and came to a sudden stop. He pressed his hand against her back and retreated even further.