Chapter Forty

The emperor’s illness casts a shadow over the palace. At the training fields and in the barracks, everybody’s talking. Everyone’s wondering what will happen.

“A rosemarked emperor, can you imagine?” says Kosru over dinner one night.

“He’d have to step down,” says Walgash, emphasizing his words with a swig of watered wine. “How would he see dignitaries? Would he have to move into the rosemarked compound?”

Masista chuckles at that, though he catches himself and looks around nervously.

I stir the chickpeas around in my stew. “They have good healers looking after him, don’t they? He could yet live.”

“True that,” says Walgash. “If a scrawny thing like Dineas can pull through, who’s to say the emperor won’t?”

Kosru frowns at his bowl. “Let’s hope he comes out with more of his wits than Dineas did.”

“Ha!” Walgash punches me in the shoulder, and I wince. “In all seriousness though. It’s strange, isn’t it, that the emperor would just fall ill like this? Him and no one else?”

“You think someone got to him?” asks Masista. “A minister? An assassin?”

“If you’re wise, you’ll stay out of the talk,” says Kosru. “Dangerous, to be feeding rumors at a time like this.”

We fall silent, each lost in our thoughts.

Two days later, we’re out in the training fields when things inexplicably go still. I lower my practice sword to see a palace herald at the entrance. Instead of his usual gold robes, he wears a rough garment of pale brown cloth—mourning clothes. Little by little, a wave of silence overtakes the field. Only then does he speak.

“I announce this news with the deepest grief. Emperor Kurosh, seventh emperor of the House of Katana, has passed this morning into Zenagua’s arms.”

At least three fights break out in the barracks over the next few days. Had they kept the training fields open, things might have been different, but we’re forbidden from training during the mourning period. So instead, we sit in the barracks or wander the city, wondering what the emperor’s death means for us. Rumors abound. One day we hear that Kiran will disband five battalions. The next day, that he’s launching an expedition across the Great Sea.

After the week of mourning is over, there’s a call for all Sehmar’s troops to assemble on the training field. It’s the first time I’ve seen all the units lined up, over fifteen thousand of us shoulder to shoulder, from elite units up front to new recruits at the sidelines.

Though not a particularly warm day, it’s sunny, and there’s not much of a breeze with so many men around. The air smells of armor oil, and an ache starts to build in the center of my forehead.