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  “No, you fool,” Captain Powluk hissed. “I mean he has my loyalty.”

  A long silence settled its way onto the gathering once again like a chilling mist. The men had been drinking for some time but this was soon becoming the sort of discussion that could sober up any man with common sense.

  “The Emperor is said to be ill,” the captain said, his words full of barely veiled meaning and his breath no doubt reeking of the ship’s rum stores. “As well as old. It’s unlikely that he will be around by the time we return.” There was a long silence in response to this. “And he has no living sons,” Powluk added, as if it wasn’t obvious. Powluk had never struck Vermilies as being the most subtle of men.

  “It’s best not to talk this way,” one soldier ventured. “You never know who might be listening.”

  Captain Powluk snorted. “You mean the Knights of Serraca? Well, they aren’t on my ship. And I know you’re all my men.”

  “What was that?” another voice called out sharply, as Vermilies bumped into the railing that lined the side of the ship. Shit. They mean me. He paused a moment, then turned towards the nearby gathering, curious faces turning toward him lit by lantern light, and walked over to join them as if they were all good friends.

  “Just having myself a piss,” Vermilies said with a friendly wave. Not that it’s any of your damned business.

  “It’s the native guide,” one of the men said. Vermilies suppressed a scowl. Native guide?

  “I’m from the Jade Sea Islands,” Vermilies explained patiently. You know, the islands you Syriots took over two decades ago? The last place you stopped for provisions? Salt pork, fresh water, and a certain handsome translator who’s now standing before you?

  Vermilies was beginning to regret joining the expedition in the first place, but in truth, as a graduate of the Jade Sea Academy he had little reason to expect otherwise. Our islands were conquered by the Syriots, and here I am serving them.

  Vermilies had long ago given up on the simmering rage that some of his fellow countrymen still bore. Though this bunch doesn’t help. Still, he stood there at the edge of the lamplight and smiled in as mild and nonthreatening a manner as he could muster. What a band of idiots.

  “See, a native!” the same soldier slurred, and laughed as if what he said was funny. One or two others joined him in comradely chortles. Captain Powluk is quite generous with his alcohol stores.

  “Were you listening in on us?” another soldier said, leaning forward in exaggerated belligerence. Vermilies recognized the man from his few trips abovedecks as the ship’s quartermaster. In his position as translator, Vermilies had little enough reason to get to know these Syriots. Though it seems even keeping to my cramped quarters and taking the air at midnight was still not enough. Vermilies shrugged, his expression one of radiant innocence.

  It’s hardly my fault if you’re plotting treason in the open, Vermilies thought in silent indignation, though a smile remained plastered on his face. It isn’t as though I have the Syriot Emperor’s ear, anyway. I haven’t even been over to the mainland before. As if reading his thoughts, Captain Powluk shushed the crew dismissively.

  “Never mind him, he’s just our translator.” He eyed Vermilies, framed by the light of the burning lamp. “Be ready in the morning. I will need you around to negotiate their surrender. For now, make yourself useful and see if that survivor we fished out of the wreckage is conscious. I want to know what to expect.”

  “Yes sir!” Vermilies answered agreeably. I’ll probably be the only one without a hangover, after all. He stepped lightly down the staircase that led into the bowels of the Syriot warship as the discussion resumed once more.

  “Have you ever heard of elephants?” someone asked, as Vermilies opened the door to the lower decks. “They’re supposed to be a sort of local monster...” the man trailed off as the men scoffed at him, made brave by a heady stew of alcohol and ignorance.

  The rest of the crew were crammed into their own tight quarters and their snoring echoed all around Vermilies as he made his way to a small cabin that temporarily doubled as a prison cell. A Syriot guard was leaning against the cabin’s wooden door, eyelids almost closed, but they slid open as Vermilies approached.

  He studied Vermilies for a long moment. Syriots were broad-shouldered and curly-haired and Vermilies, with his slender frame and elegant emerald green tunic, was clearly not one of them. Like the rest of the Syriots stationed on this warship the guard wore a blue coat with brass buttons.

  “Who are you?”

  “Enbo Vermilies, translator for the Syriot Empire. Captain Powluk sent me to interrogate the prisoner.”

  “Never seen you before,” the guard muttered. “Where are you berthed?”

  “Crammed in with the supplies.” And my back hurts just thinking about it. War will be some relief. “I just joined up in the Jade Sea Islands.”

  “Oh.” The guard blinked. “Lucky you. Been most of a month since we left Syriot shores. Alright, get on in there, and let me know if he tries anything.”

  The door squeaked open and Vermilies took a hesitant step inside. He squinted into the gloom and heard rustling as the captured sailor came to his feet.

  “Do you have water?” the man asked in his Hangyul dialect. So very similar to Vermilies’s native tongue.

  “I have questions and water,” Vermilies said in the same dialect. “Answer the first and you’ll get the second.”

  Behind him the Syriot guard peeked in. “That’s a strange croaking language and no mistake,” he muttered as he closed the door behind Vermilies. The translator and the prisoner were left alone in the dim gloom of a sputtering lantern that rocked back and forth with every wave.

  The sailor grimaced, his face still bruised from the beating he had taken from the shattered timbers as his ship had sunk. Vermilies had watched from a distance as the enormous Syriot ships-of-the-line had hammered away at the Three Clans convoy and left them splintered and broken within minutes. The leaders of the great families would have no warning of the imminent invasion.

  “Ask away,” the sailor rasped. “But I have one question for you. Why are you helping these Syriots?”

  The sailor was a Hangyul man who must have lived on the coast his whole life. Their dialects were almost identical. Vermilies wondered for a moment if he had seen the sailor before, loading or unloading crates at a harbor in the Jade Sea Islands, back before this invasion had begun. Then he put it out of his mind.

  “I see you Jade Sea Islanders all the time,” the sailor continued after a moment. “You’re practically cousins to us. So why help these foreign bastards?”

  “I’ll be asking the questions. What resistance can we expect at the Tamani docks?”

  “Huh, you think these massive ships can dock in Tamani’s port? There’s no way they can fit. They’ll have to anchor off the nearby island.”

  Vermilies scratched the side of his face. A bit of stubble was coming in after the three days it had been since leaving the Jade Sea Islands. He’d have to borrow a razor.

  “And what resistance can we expect?”

  The man was silent for a long time. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Chapter Three

  Dreams

  Banisu stirred in his sheets, haunted by some half-forgotten nightmare. He sat up in the predawn gloom, blinking as he came to wakefulness, and stifled a yawn. The teenage emperor moved his legs over the side of the bed and stayed seated there for some time. Banisu closed his eyes and concentrated, his monk training taking over as he relaxed, his heartbeat slowing. Of course, he wasn’t really a monk. Not even an initiate, although he could pass for one in his drab tunic, as he moved daily from tutor to tutor. Yet today was to be different, he remembered, a vague sensation tugging at his thoughts. What was happening today?

  As Banisu felt himself drifting back to sleep, a sudden knocking at the door drew his attention. After a moment’s pause, the bald head of Abbot Cibu peeked in, the sturdy old monk looking as insuf
ferably alert as ever.

  “Good, you’re up,” the abbot said without preamble. “So you remembered today is to be the day of the inspection.”

  “I dreamed…” Banisu’s voice caught with hesitation. “Of ships?”

  It had seemed so clear earlier, but already the vision seemed to be fading away. He searched for the dream but it was like snatching at smoke.

  Abbot Cibu didn’t even feign interest, his lined face unmoving beneath his bushy white eyebrows. He was an honest man in that sense even though he participated in the greatest lie in all the Three Clans. The absurd farce that the boy Emperor had any real power.

  “We are to see one ship, anyway. Get ready, we’ll be leaving soon. Don’t forget to wear your traveling clothes.” Traveling clothes. That’s what he called the royal garments.

  Banisu sat there, pondering for some time. Even on the rare occasion when he could wear the royal garments that marked him out as the Emperor it wasn’t his choice. He was powerless and didn’t even have control over his own room. Banisu sighed in petulance and remained sitting on his bed, looking with gloom at the small but ornate cell he had been quartered in.

  A teak dresser with gilt edgings. Several copies of bound tomes that he was studying. A small ink pot with a writing brush beside it. He might as well have been an imprisoned scholar. Banisu rocked his legs back and forth, thinking of the life he could have had, if he hadn’t been appointed heir after his father had self-immolated all those years ago. Then he thought back to his dream. Those were big ships, far bigger than any he had seen before…

  After a few minutes, the abbot stuck his head back in and frowned. “Come on now boy, let’s go!”

  Banisu grimaced and slid out of bed, donning his clothing in haste. A true Emperor would have a servant to fasten the garment from behind, weaving the intricate embroidered design together and setting his peaked cap on just so. Of course, Banisu was no true Emperor, and so he did the best he could with awkward and hurried motions.

  His clothing in place, Banisu splashed cold water over his face and scrubbed his teeth with powder. He made his way out of his modest quarters, pulling his ornate clothing up so it didn’t trail on the ground. Banisu paused midway, turning back to pick up his worn copy of the Saga of the Lotus Prince. In the dim light he made his way through his secluded quarters. The thin paper wall that led to the outside slid open with a soundless motion, and even in the gloom Banisu could see the outlines of the guards through the translucent material.

  Bodyguards as well as jailers.

  Banisu brushed past the guards, who stood motionless in respectful silence, and walked down the path that led through the walled garden and out toward the open gate. Standing in the open were four muscular men who flanked a palanquin decorated with ornate golden whirls that represented the cycle of life. Farther down the road were gathered about a dozen guardsmen in Kintari armor brandishing a mix of halberds and swords. By their upright bearing and the sheen of their lamellar armor it was clear they were elite soldiers.

  The abbot stood motionless next to the cart, giving a benign smile as he gestured inside. Though his robes were the simple one of an ordinary monk, the abbot’s bearing was as straight as could be, and Banisu felt himself unconsciously emulating the old man.

  “Shall we depart, Respected Emperor?” the abbot asked with clear courtesy. For the benefit of the audience, of course.

  “Yes,” Banisu squeaked, and then coughed. His voice had been doing that a lot lately. “Yes, Abbot Cibu,” he replied in a somewhat deeper voice.

  He squeezed his way in, pushing the cloth curtain aside, and made himself comfortable on the hard wooden surface. The silence of early morning was broken only by the soft creaking of armor from the movement of the guards, and the chirruping noise from a pair of birds in the nearby jungle. Banisu knew it would be a long ride to wherever they were going, and it would grow much warmer as the morning dragged on. Cloth rustled aside as Abbot Cibu stuck his head in, and for a terrible moment Banisu feared that they would be riding along together. Instead, the old monk gave Banisu an appraising look, as if he was staring into the boy’s very soul and was both unimpressed and unsurprised.

  “Did you bring your book?”

  Banisu produced the Saga of the Lotus Prince from amongst the folds of his robes. He had found that one benefit of the absurd clothing an Emperor was expected to wear was that it allowed him to conceal a great deal. As Banisu’s hand brushed against the bundle of lychees he had stuffed in another pocket, he felt one of them fall to the floor of the palanquin. His heart stopped, anticipating the furious lecture he would receive about staining his clothing with contraband fruits from the gardens, though the abbot seemed distracted and hadn’t noticed. Banisu casually covered the fallen lychee with one foot and kept his expression innocent.

  “Good,” the abbot grunted. “I’ll expect you to make some progress with that,” he said, moving his head out of the palanquin and sliding the partition of cloth and bamboo shut. Banisu scowled once he was sure the abbot had left, retrieving his fallen lychee and feeling a small burst of triumph at this most trivial act of defiance.

  No rest from studying, even on a trip. The Saga of the Lotus Prince was an exceptionally dull and dry tome, liked only by monks for the numerous parables it contained and for the powerful sleep-inducing effects it had on those unfortunate initiate monks tasked with studying it. And this Lotus Prince is nothing at all like the Prince of the Wastes, Banisu thought, reflecting on the stories he had heard about the legendary mercenary general who roamed the Veldt on his famous war elephant. I bet he wouldn’t let monks boss him around all day...

  Chapter Four

  The Prince of the Wastes

  Prince Sharnipur jerked himself awake, blinking in momentary confusion. There was little to see but darkness, the view shifting up and down, and the cool smell of the grasslands at night filled the air. From the lumbering gait he knew he was on his personal elephant, Ranvir. After years of hard living the gray skin of Ranvir's neck felt as comfortable as silk bedding. It hadn't been the first time the Prince of the Wastes had fallen asleep while the Elephant Company was on the march and he knew it wouldn't be the last.

  "We could head east," a voice said behind him. My lancer, Sanjay. "Back to the Veldt."

  "Do you really want to risk it?" came the reply from the howdah farther back. My gunner, Anander. "After all..." the gunner trailed off.

  "Shh, you're disturbing the prince," came another voice in front of him, the dark shape turning to whisper back at the other mercenaries. My mahout, Dhamdalek. If I hadn't been disturbed before, having you hiss in my ear would do the job. Is this your way of waking me up?

  Prince Sharnipur straightened up and looked around in the pre-dawn gloom. Though it was still dark, it was clear that they had passed through the mountain range and into the open grasslands that led toward the Veldt. And to my brother's kingdom, he thought with the old familiar irritation. Which was mine by rights.

  Prince Sharnipur stopped himself from yawning. It's best not to show weakness in front of the men. Even men such as these, close companions who had stuck with him for the better part of a decade. Men who clearly knew that he had been sleeping. Dark shapes rustled around the elephant. The Ranvir Guard, marching all through the night and steadfast as ever.

  Prince Sharnipur squinted into the distance, the sloping plain visible only with the aid of the full moon. At least he could count on his personal guard to stay alert. He realized now that they had let him sleep for hours, and his waking up now was not an accident.

  "We should call a halt," Prince Sharnipur said to the mahout in front of him. Dhamdalek knew his business, and he had repeatedly earned his place as Ranvir's personal rider. The tireless beast was at the vanguard of their procession, and for hours the old mahout must have been squinting into the darkness. All while I was asleep, the prince thought with embarrassment.

  "A wise decision, my lord. This is fertile land for our elephants to f
eed. Beyond the next few rises lies the mountain pass that leads into the Three Clans."

  "Into Kintari territory, anyway," Prince Sharnipur replied. "Shinzen and Hangyul territory are still some ways distant."

  "As you say, my lord."

  It was common knowledge that the Three Clans were only nominally unified; a loose confederation ruled by several influential families that maintained a tenuous peace between themselves. Oh, they had a boy Emperor of course, the son of that crazed pyromaniac that had burned his own palace down all those years ago. It didn't seem the most stable of bloodlines but magic affinity flowed through their veins and that still commanded respect. Even so, the agreement between the clan leaders couldn't last forever, though year after year dragged on with a few political assassinations being the only exception to the unparalleled period of peace and prosperity in the Three Clans.

  A peace that a mercenary leader like the Prince of the Wastes found increasingly frustrating. A private army of war elephants is not the ideal tool for political maneuvering and assassinations. I need a war, damn it, before our funds run dry. Prince Sharnipur turned back to look at the howdah atop Ranvir.

  Unlike most nobles who rode elephants, Prince Sharnipur did not recline in a howdah, instead riding in the manner of a common mahout or lancer. Even on a massive war elephant like Ranvir it meant the prince was squeezed in between Dhamdalek and Sanjay. Bundles of food and supplies were packed in the teak platform along with their gunner Anander.

  Prince Sharnipur had spent years crafting a howdah of his own design that could fit a swiveling ballista. The prince raised a hand in a gesture to his gunner Anander, squeezing his fist tight. Alert as ever, the gunner pulled out his conch shell and blew the low, almost mournful note to halt. The dark line of elephants behind them slowed and came to a gradual halt, sleep-addled men making way for the giant animals, their handlers and camp followers sluggishly taking off the many straps and howdahs so that the great beasts could feed.