Page 65

“Death? What right do you have to sentence me to death? There is blood on your hands. Your crown is made of it. I refuse to obey you, a man whose father should still be living if not for your greed.” Bemishu looked around, and I could see the crowd beginning to turn, beginning to whisper.

All those rumors that Rute Sotonam and General Kacha had spread caught fire like embers on dried leaves.

I tensed. This wasn’t how we had wanted this to go. Then, Tallu squeezed my hand, and when I looked at him, I could see that under his tense, unhappy expression, there was a feeling of relief.

A civil war was about to consume the Imperium like a conflagration destroying a forest. Bemishu had merely been the spark we needed.

“You question my legitimacy?” Tallu dropped my hand and pointed to the dragon in front of us. “An ancient dragon has returned from the dead to show that I am crowned by the Right of the Dragon. Do you still accuse me of being false?”

“All of the dragons are dead. I am not sure what monster your foreign-born consort has created, but there is not a single dragon that lives in our continent.” Bemishu sounded confident, his voice rising.

“Yes! This is no more than northern trickery. Your consort must have helped you in the act of regicide. And now, you will let him so close to the throne that he may as well sit on it.”

The crowd murmured, shifting like a living thing. It would not take much for them to turn into a mob.

Slowly, I walked down the steps, moving between the press of yellow-orange guards.

They had given the dragon a wide berth, and now it sat curled around itself, wings spread like a shell over its body.

I walked up to it, pressing a hand to its forehead, and its eyes opened wide, revealing gleaming fractals of ice.

“This is no monster. This is a dragon. The last in the known world. And it has come to pay homage to the Emperor of the Southern Imperium. Emperor Tallu, head of House Atobe.” Turning, I pointed at General Bemishu.

“Who is the one who brought strange monsters from the Ariphadeus desert? Here is one.” Gesturing at Eldest, I hoped she didn’t understand what I was saying.

“Look at it. He would have the Imperium use these monsters in our warfare as though we are the desert goblin tribes in the south! He is the one who created a warship so dangerous it killed our own soldiers. He would build an armada of them so that we might pack every living imperial soldier into them and watch them explode!”

Waking now, the dragon raised its head, looking over the crowd. This close, I knew it could eat me; it could consume me with one bite. And yet, there was something still magical about it. Even in the Imperium, where they had nearly wiped them out, that wonder echoed through the crowd.

Dragons were legends from old, the head of the fabled Animalia Court. Their extinction had only made them more mythical.

“He lies! The airships are perfectly safe, and they will allow us to fulfill the promise made to Emperor Wollu! It is he who does not want us to fulfill our promise of conquering the continent.” Bemishu strode forward, moving through the crowd of his own soldiers, away from the safety of their blades and spears.

He turned to the onlookers. Gesturing at the dragon with his sword, he said, “The promise has driven our empire from one shore to the other. It will be fulfilled!”

“But not by you ,” Tallu interrupted. “The promise was not made to House Bemishu. It is House Atobe that will unite the continent. Or do you propose to go back to the old ways and prove which of us deserves the title ‘emperor’ through combat?”

Bemishu looked like he was considering it, and I couldn’t let Tallu get hurt like that. We needed to capture Bemishu, take his head, and make him a martyr, make him a name that a rebellion from one side of the Imperium to the other could fight for.

“Show them what you are capable of,” I said quietly, running my hand across the scales of the dragon’s neck. It looked down at me, tilting its head before shaking it, a crest rising from behind its horns.

Then, it spread its wings, flapping them and creating an enormous gust of air that pushed back Bemishu and the rest of the crowd. It breathed heavily, blowing a stream of white into the air that I thought was white flame before I realized it was snow.

A cloud of it covered the crowd, leaving behind frost and ice.

“See? He turns it against his own people! To me, men!” Bemishu shouted.

In the chaos, Tallu’s guards started forward, slipping on the ice, and Bemishu took his men and fled through the crowd. There was chaos and shouting, a stampede as everyone tried to flee.

The dragon roared again, then tilted its head straight back, turning the cloud of ice into the air. There was a frozen moment as everybody stared, and then it began to snow.

In the north, this would have been no more than an early winter day, snowflakes fluttering down and melting almost as soon as they hit the ground.

But in the south, where it only snowed in their mountains, I could hear the wonder, the shriek of delight as children danced underneath the falling snow.

“The One Dragon has come to honor the emperor!” Like a wave, every adult formed triangles with their fingers and fell to their knees. They bowed for the dragon and the emperor he had chosen.

“Tallu, the Dragon Chosen Emperor!” The cry took up in the back of the crowd, flowing forward until even his own guards were shouting it.

The dragon turned his head to me, and I could see the smirk in the corner of its lips. “ They do know that I am not the One Dragon, do they not? ”

But it didn’t matter. Bemishu had gotten away, defeated, having lost his elephants and his airship. Kacha and Maki were both imprisoned, and the crowd would spread the tale of Tallu, first of the Dragon Chosen Emperors.

I mounted the stairs again as Tallu took his throne. I took the seat next to his and accepted a small band of gold for my own brow from Nohe. She blinked at me, wetting her lips, but didn’t voice any question, instead stepping back and disappearing into the crowd of yellow-garbed servants.

“That didn’t quite go as planned,” I said.

“Would you say it went better?” Tallu asked.

I turned to look at him directly, raising both eyebrows.

“You know I have a habit of overstating the positive, but even I would not claim that this mess is better . The only way it could be better is if someone made that delicious pastry dish I prefer. The one filled with meats and the brown sauce.”

“It is our one-month celebration. We have acquired a dragon, shamed Bemishu, and made him flee. We have two of the other generals in prison. This ended well for us. Do not tell me you are becoming a pessimist.” Tallu wasn’t smiling, his expression back to the placid blankness so common when he was on his throne.

“I’m not saying it went badly. I’m saying that today is going to have far-reaching consequences we didn’t expect and didn’t plan for.

” A stream of yellow-clad servants approached, bearing trays of food, and I saw the very pastries I had just been requesting on the first platter.

“On the other hand, that’s a problem for tomorrow. Wouldn’t you say?”

Tallu turned to me, gemstones gleaming on his cheeks, his crown shining like his skin. “Prince Airón of the Northern Kingdom, I look forward to facing those challenges with you. Now, I believe you requested food.”