Page 3 of Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame

CHAPTER THREE

AND NOW WE jump ahead, to a time when the Sun Empire is in its heyday. Picture Mithrandon: City of knights and emperors, city of lofty dreams, city of heroes and fantastical deeds. City that does not wake and does not sleep, city that turns like a millhouse wheel and spins all of the world in its gyre. City to which all eyes of the glorious, sprawling Thrandic Empire turn. City to which all bow their grateful heads. In the heart of this city lives the white-walled guildknight’s fortress, its cheek nestled against the mighty bulwark of the Imperial castle.

And in the heart of this fortress lives the famed masked guildknight, going about her morning ablutions as she has for the last dozen years. A thousand mornings Kunlin Yeva has woken in the same round stone room, and a thousand mornings she conducts the same precise ritual. By Yeva’s own choice she employs no staff. Once, she asked if her little sister could come to Mithrandon to serve as her lady-in-waiting, but her mother forbade it so vehemently she never asked again. In place of help, Yeva has learned self-reliance, so that tasks which require a coterie of maids and attendants can be done alone with one maimed hand that can hold little but a sword.

The garb of a guildknight comprises layer upon layer, which she puts on in front of the bronze mirror and washbasin aided by a series of connected hooks and pulleys designed for the very purpose of holding the pieces still. First, the leggings of worsted wool and a shirt of stiff linen. A halter to hold her chest in place. Then the plain white doublet, lined with silk, impermeable to arrows. Over it, she fastens a gusset of mail so fine it feels like cotton. On top of that, the surcoat of bright red with the heraldry of the guild, held around her waist by a thin belt of leather. Now the gloves of supple calfskin, stitched with emblems in gold thread. Leather shoes. And finally, over her head, obscuring her features, the padded silver helm with its plume of red, without which her bones feel unnaturally light, as if she might be swept off by a breeze. Only then does she look complete in the bronze mirror, all silk and metal, neither trace of hair nor hide showing. Only then does she feel comfortable in leaving the room.

Even amongst the ranks of the exalted guildknights Yeva carries an aura of mystery, an almost mythic air. Few know her name and even fewer have seen her face. To the others, Yeva’s age, background, and gender are open to speculation, which fresh recruits take to like swans upon water. But once the days and months gather about them, once they’ve been sent out for a hunt or two, their curiosity fades and the masked guildknight becomes yet another installation in their regimented lives, their unknowability reliable as the pillars that make up their fort. A revered elder whose capabilities set them apart, whose existence is undeniable, but whose humanity is unobserved and unknown. Yeva does not mind. She does not care.

At the tail end of winter, as the days are slowly beginning to brighten again, the guildmaster sends for Yeva. He bears important instructions, although at that time neither of them realize how much weight these edicts carry, and how their presence will tilt the balance of their world. Yeva, suspecting nothing at all, makes her way to the office at the top of the fortress’s command tower with neither hesitation nor trepidation.

The master of the guildknights is a peculiar man even when accounting for the eccentricities of the rich and powerful. Emory Deerland has grown into a kinder, softer man than his father before him, and the guildknights have flourished under his guidance. But this does not stop the dukes and captains of the Emperor’s regular armies from indulging in gossip about this thin, strange man who can barely draw a bow and would rather spend his hours with his nose in a dusty tome, or bent over a desk fiddling with little gears and prongs. If this bothers Emory, he does not show it. Yeva admires this about him. If only she could be so adamantine, with thick skin and a hard heart without the need to resort to hiding in metal. While the other guildknights are arranged in companies that report to a captain, and those captains report to the guildmaster, Yeva takes no orders except from Emory, answers to no one except for him.

Emory’s receiving boy, Telken, lets her up the stairs to his office, warning that his master is busy with a project. This is nothing new; Emory is the sort who cannot keep his hands still. The troubles of running the Emperor’s elite hunting forces often fail to keep his mind sufficiently occupied, so he makes up his own amusement. Each time Yeva ascends the circular stairs and steps into his office, she is never sure what she will find. Once he filled the receiving space with huge boards upon which he’d tacked sheaves of parchment as he tried to translate an ancient text from Elkandar. Another time he’d built an elaborate clockwork opera that played tinny music and had twirling dancers in enameled dresses, a gift for a young nobleman he fancied. But today, instead of dead languages or romantic gestures, there’s an elaborate metal cylinder laid on the work desk like a fresh specimen, long as a human arm, bristling with copper filaments and wirework. Emory is bent over it, a mask with crystal eyeglasses fixed to his face, utterly absorbed with his pins and tweezers. Beside him is a sealed glass box containing a blue crystal the size of an acorn. Yeva recognizes it as the sacred everstone that makes the blue flame of her weapon.

Emory doesn’t look up as Yeva arrives with her metallic footsteps. She doesn’t interrupt him as he fusses over the metalwork. A companionable silence curls up in the room as Yeva waits, patient.

Something audibly clicks into place and Emory grunts in satisfaction. As he picks up a different grade of tweezers he murmurs, “I read your report on Callenden. Very interesting. We really don’t know much about how dragons breed. All my research seems to indicate that laying eggs is extremely rare. We hardly ever hear about dragon nests, but there are plenty of stories of dragons being born through spiritual means. Some even say that dragons might take on human form to give birth to live young. Of course it’s hard to sort out which part is fact and which is fiction when dealing with mythology, but at the same time so much of these creatures’ lives are mythical. Even to us, who make a living off culling them. And there are so many different kinds of dragon too.”

While he rambles, Emory puts down his tools and hinges open a chamber on the side of the cylinder. Carefully, he unseals the glass box containing the everstone and picks it up with a pair of tongs.

“I brought egg fragments back,” Yeva says.

“Yes, and Doctor Haskyn has positively exploded in excitement. I expect he’ll be busy with his new specimens for several months.” He places the crystal into the chamber and closes the lid. Nothing happens, and he frowns.

“You haven’t summoned me just to talk about what happened at Callenden.”

“No. No, I haven’t.” Emory sighs, putting his tools aside and pushing up his mask. The leather and glass have left marks on his pale face. “Yeva, I’m sending you to Quentona.”

“Quentona?” She frowns under her helm as the wheels turn slowly in her mind. She knows that place by a different name, Quanbao. A kingdom to the south, close to where she was born and grew up. “Into a foreign land? Have they requested aid?”

“That, I cannot say.” Another deep sigh as Emory gets up and goes to his writing desk. He retrieves a golden scroll from a stand on his desk and smooths it over a clean expanse with careful fingers. “Our esteemed Sun Emperor, profound in his wisdom and bountiful in friendship,” he recites, “is commissioning a garrison of special agents to be sent to protect the neighboring land of Quentona in a gesture of brotherhood. His Radiance has been troubled by recent reports by patrols in the south of a great and terrible storm dragon that batters the mountains of Quentona, unopposed and unabated. In his generous heart he has decreed that we shall lend aid to our neighbors, who have no guildknights like we do, and are thus unable to defend against a threat so dire.”

“But this is ridiculous.” The broad wings of the Thrandic Empire have great span, from the highlands of Gudbyar in the north to the wet plains of Chushang in the south, where she hails from. Quanbao—or Quentona, as the Emperor names it—is beyond those borders, a place where knights of the Empire have no jurisdiction. “Have they in Quanbao—in Quentona—have they asked His Radiance for such a favor?”

Emory rolls the Emperor’s edict into a tight curl and drops it into its stand with an audible clatter. “That is beyond my ken, Yeva. All I know is what the Emperor has asked.”

But of course Emory understands the Emperor’s desires. Even Yeva does, and she is a brute who knows little beyond the ways of the sword. Emory, with his smarts, with all the books and knowledge he has swallowed, surely sees that the Emperor is looking for a toehold into the next region over. It’s been a while since they’ve had a war. His armies are idle and His Radiance is bored.

Emory says, “There was a hunt on the border of Quanbao a number of years ago. Before you came to us. Not too long before, in fact. The dragon gave us the slip and fled toward Quanbao, crossing the border. The Emperor believes that same dragon lives in Quanbao still and will one day return to exact his revenge. Or so he says. He was a child when this happened.”

Unease grows within Yeva like a toothache. During her childhood her mother often left for weeks at a time to visit Quanbao’s capital. Wasn’t it during one such trip that Yeva’s tragedy occurred and she was taken away to Mithrandon? Over the passage of years Yeva has put aside all thoughts of her home village and its reclusive neighbor. Now, the thought of the Sun Emperor turning his hungry gaze upon that peaceful, remote land fills her with soaring alarm.

Slowly and flatly she says, “They worship dragons in Quanbao. I cannot imagine they would seek His Radiance’s aid in such matters.”

“Nor can I,” Emory says.

Yeva’s breaths collect in her helm, dense and humid. In her mind she puts pieces of information together. “The King of Quanbao died last year, and her daughter has yet to ascend the throne.”

“Yes. The kingdom seems to be in a position of some vulnerability, doesn’t it?”

“So what will you do? Will you refuse His Radiance’s order?”

“Of course not.” He frowns at this ludicrous idea. “Not unless I want to be exiled. I’ve already said—Yeva, I’m sending you instead. He wants a company of men stationed in Quentona. I don’t want that. His Radiance wants to manufacture an incident, a shallow pretext to send in the armies he so happily built up over the last recruiting season. I won’t let him use us as his blunt tool. Sending a single elite guildknight is a good compromise.”

Ice sags in her belly. “You mean to send me there—to live? For how long?”

“For as long as His Radiance wants. But his attention will waver eventually.”

“So you mean months. Years.”

Her cousin shakes his head. “Yeva, it’s a lot to ask. I know. But, beyond your unparalleled skill with the sword, there is more to you which suits this mission. Who else within the guild has connections to that land like you do? Sending the others, sending some pack of brutes would be like loosing a raging bull into a garden.”

“I know nothing of that land. I have not returned home in a dozen years. I might as well be a stranger to it, no different from the other knights.”

“But you are different.”

This line, said so simply and plaintively by her cousin, slugs her below the chest. Perhaps he meant it a different way than Yeva understood it, but it wounds her all the same.

Still, the hurt is invisible beneath her armor, and Emory clatters onward, oblivious. “I have no confidence that the other guildknights will behave themselves, or treat the girl-king of Quentona with the respect she deserves. I fear that sending any of them will be the cause of so much offense that, over time, conflict between our nations will become inevitable. Yeva, I ask you to do this because I trust you like no other. You are my dearest cousin, and I know you have a gentle hand. I will feel better if you are there, instead of anyone else.

“After all,” he adds, “it’ll almost be like a homecoming for you, won’t it?”

Yeva shudders. Despite everything, over the years she has managed to carve out a place where she belonged within the guild, in Mithrandon. A hard-won belonging she is now expected to abandon for a strange land, under strange circumstances. To be alone and nobody again. And Emory can’t see how much his request is asking of her. He even thinks this will be better for her.

But in the end, she—Kunlin Yeva—is a blade that falls at the convenience of the guild; the desires of captain and empire must outweigh what desires she has. “If that is what you wish,” she simply says, and Emory brightens, glad for her cooperation. She stays silent as he immediately begins making plans aloud, laying down the minutiae of sending her abroad, all while she is trying to imagine waking up in a foreign space, in a room that is not hers, in a distant land where she has never been, and feeling small and invisible. Emory hasn’t noticed. He’s still talking about sending messengers ahead.

Once upon a time, her father fled Mithrandon for the south, bursting from a life of comforts and plenty into an uncertain fate. Yeva has always wanted to know what that journey felt like, but she has never wondered about it as hard as she does now.

Enough is enough. Yeva crushes her sorrow into a seed smaller than the palm and buries it deep within herself. Perhaps later, when this is all over, she will allow it to sprout. But for now, she knows her duty. She is, after all, a magnificent, faceless blade of the guild. Like clockwork she, too, moves when her springs are wound. She will go to Quentona.