- TMK -

Autumn midnight had a magic to it. Here, in the palace, the cool air created contrasts that made every luxury that much more exquisite. Despite the cold, Tasiana shied away from the thick Yrak loungewear the arcane surgeons provided. A slim silk nightgown was what her body desired. Of course, she kept a sable blanket draped over her shoulders. But over her exposed, smooth arms, she felt a goosebump chill that made every ounce of warmth feel like a thousand suns. That contradiction of chill and warmth was like salt over chocolate or the moon against night.

           

Contradictions made her feel alive.

           

She gazed out the brilliantly gilded windows of her bedroom. The glow of a million homes outshone the stars in the blued dark. Ships flickered oil signal lights as they chugged over Taulrenius’ artificial bay. In the sky, the port authority flew skyskiffs over the waters, both to guide arrivals and to ward off any smugglers courageous enough to test them. Sea dew slid over the glass, gleaming with the twinkle of the Taulrenius nightlife.

           

Tasiana grew up imagining what life was like outside the palace. As a teen, she daydreamed about sneaking beyond the garden culverts while her preceptors droned on. She wondered how her subjects spent the freedoms the Empire provided. Were they as coarse as the eugenicists and nobles led her to believe? Were they really all lowborn drunks simply bred to prevent any congenital deformities? Or was there an ambition behind the tens of millions who called her Empress? Did they share her own spark of ambition? Did they too aspire to impossible heights?

           

Such childish thoughts were exactly that, however. For children. The eugenicists, and her mother made that lesson abundantly clear. Like Tasiana herself, the father of her first child would not be by her spouse. An Empress of Saironia could never marry. That was not their role in life.

           

Her gaze passed from the window to an ornate ruby mirror. Gazing into the silver, her emerald eyes stared back. Her glossy, nut-brown hair fell to the small of her back while the green highlights of her Pejan ancestors wove around the brown like vines over bark. She moved to her forehead, examining her skin for nonexistent wrinkles before reaching her slender, tapered nose. She moved to her symmetrical lips and rounded chin, next studying the angular cheekbones she shared with most Saironian Humans. Tasiana lifted sable blanket sightly, revealing the honey-bronze skin of her belly. There, oil light traced shadows over contours of taught muscle. Tasiana ran her hands over her toned belly, finally stopping at her womb. What the eugenicists valued most about her–and her mother before her.

           

They bred Tasiana to rule the Lorylyn line and to ensure its continuation via a never-ending supply healthy heirs. Female heirs. After all, paternity might be forged as easily as a signature. Motherhood could not. For even if Tasiana did fake the father of her child, that child would still carry the blood of Marhia and Taul. Any taint Tasiana’s affections could introduce into the line could be bred out, given in time. But the pedigree of the Lorylyn line, built over nearly a millennium of careful breeding by the eugenicists, could be permanently broken by a single cuckhold Emperor.

           

So instead, there were no Emperors.

         

Her sons would inherit offices and titles. She would love them just the same as her daughters. But like Tasiana’s brothers, they would never sit upon the crimson throne.

           

Such a burden would lie with women like her until the end of all things.

           

Or that’s how Tasiana would have kept it.

           

A knock at the door took her from such thoughts.

           

“Empress?” Aarturian’s muffled voice carried under the door crack. “I’ve come with your evening tea, as you requested.”

           

“Come in, my dear,” Tasiana replied, dropping the sable blanket over her stomach.

           

The ornately carved door opened, Aarturian holding a white porcelain tray. Though normally a servant’s job to fetch evening tea, she preferred Aarturian for a multitude of reasons.

           

Aarturian was the embodiment of Saironian hypocrisy. No magic could ever become part of the Lorylyn line. Not when the Empress was the crimson star. The entire premise of the Empire was that mortals were greater than the Gods. Magic was meant to serve mortals, not to rule them. Thus, came the Homunculi like Aarturian. Children from the noble houses of Saironia implanted with the very Gods that the people of this continent once worshiped. Weapons born of noble lines yet cursed by the magic that flowed in his veins. And each Homunculus, each walking God shackled to a mortal soul, was hers. Her grandmothers made Aarturian and those like him a walking contradiction. Living contrasts Tasiana felt drawn to. Because they were proof that Empresses were greater than deities.

           

“Come, pour yourself a cup,” Tasiana said, pointing to a small table emblazoned with gold leaf.

           

“Hibiscus, as you requested,” Aarturian said with a nod. He poured the ruby liquid from the teapot into two petal-shaped cups.

           

As Tasiana took her seat, she slowly grasped her teacup, savoring the sting of her icy fingers against hot porcelain.

           

“So,” Aarturian began, brushing his jet-black hair back.

           

“So?”

           

“Do you think Lysander will accept?”

           

“Lysander accepted my offer the moment he left Vandeirus,” Tasiana said without hesitation. “I’ve been around cretins like Lysander the whole of my life. All it takes to bend them is the promise of power they were previously denied.”

           

“Truly? Beg your pardon, Tasiana, while I trust your judgement, I do not trust Lysander’s. He will betray us, one way or another.”

           

“Of course. Just as Kane Van Therr of Cathlod will do once my war pulls Arrcus into the abyss.”

           

“You’ve been speaking with the Cath?”

           

“Naturally,” Tasiana spoke before sipping hibiscus tea, closing her eyes as the warmth filled her belly. “There are many lands I seek to claim with this venture. Not solely Harralheim.”

           

“I see…”

           

When her eyes opened, Aarturian’s confused face greeted her. Being privy to so many of her plans as her premier bodyguard and soldier, Aarturian was often confused by Tasiana’s machinations, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. With so much time spent between them, Tasiana could read Aarturian’s emotions before he even registered his own feelings.

           

“Forgive me, but I fail to see how an invasion of the north will cement a conquest of Cathlod.”

           

“Ah my dear. The north is a prize only by the most abstract of definitions. In truth, I have no real interest in tundra, furs, and slaves. Our invasion of the north, facilitated by Lysander’s colonization, is a cog within the machine of conquest. A domino if you will.”

           

“How?”

           

“Why did we lose in the steppe? Certainly, it wasn’t through lack of arms or numbers. No, my mother lost for two reasons. First, attrition. When the Arrcosi retreated, they burned every farm and village to deprive our legionaries of the food needed to feed an army. They made it an impossibility to survive off the land. Second, our legionaries saw no reason why they should fight. My mother’s dream of one world under the crimson star was simply that. Her dream. Why should the common folk die for that? So, the Lorylyn line can rule the world? They deserted in the thousands. By the time my mother realized her failure, an army hundreds of thousands strong was bled to a mere few dozen. That was how the Arrcosi defeated us without firing a shot.”

           

“And sending Lysander to colonize Harralheim is your vengeance?” Aarturian said, scratching his head.

           

“Think, my dear. The Arrcosi own the whole of Harralheim through their trading posts at Carkan, Port Lyth, and others. From these posts, they trade weapons, powder, and alchemicals to the Skald tribes in exchange for slaves. Slaves that fetch prices five times over in the slave markets of the Conglomerate. Harralheim and the Confederation are simply puppets to the Electorate of Arrcolan.”

           

“And you mean to challenge their dominion over the slave trade?”

           

“Challenge? No. I mean to tear it down,” Tasiana said, her heartbeat quickening as the outline of her plan unfolded in her psyche. “Lysander’s colonists, his forlorn, serve two purposes. First, with my alchemists nurturing what arable land exists in that untamed hellscape, Lysander’s colonists will generate the infrastructure required to sustain my legions. They will nullify the scorched earth stratagem that hobbled my mother.”

           

“If you get there first,” Aarturian quipped.

           

“We will. That I can guarantee.”

           

“How?”

           

“Do you really believe the Arrcosi will send their own troops north? They will ignore Lysander’s colonists, expecting them to die off not knowing my alchemists are with them. When they realize their miscalculation, they will order the Skald tribes to annihilate the colonists. And annihilate them they will. The tribes will set aside their petty conflicts for the chance at loot and Arrcosi favor. They will burn every village and kill every colonist too weak to send to the slave market. Lysander, of course, will do nothing to save them, per my instructions. Only then, when the colonists have no one to turn to, will I send my legions north.”

           

“I see,” Aarturian said quietly. “You want to be seen as a liberator.”

           

“I want to give my legionaries something to fight for,” Tasiana answered quickly.

 

“Why do the Crusaders of the Holy Land fight so viciously? How is it they are able to triumph over and over again over insurmountable odds? Because for every Crusader who picks up a rifle, they are fighting for a purpose greater than themselves. They are fighting for God. What they lack in numbers, they make up for with conviction. Were I to colonize the north instead of Lysander, how would I be a liberator? I would simply be another power hoping to chomp at the bit for the slave markets of the Confederation. No. This way I show the world the purpose of our Empire. This invasion will be the means by which I launch my own crusade. A crusade by which I will fulfill the dream of my foremothers and bring the world to heel under the crimson star. Only when my legions crush the Skald warbands, will Arrcus marshal its forces.”

           

“And then you will crush the Arrcosi army, just as they did to your mother,” realization dawned over Aarturian’s face.

           

Tasiana laughed softly, rising from the table.

           

She let her sable blanket fall to the lacquered hardwood, exposing her smooth shoulders to the night air. She crept over the floor, stretching her supple, sinewy frame over her bed’s tawny manethread sheets.

           

“Yes, I will,” she said, a hit of a smirk falling over her lips as she caught a glimpse of Aarturian staring at her reflection in the mirror. “And when I bury their grand host in those frozen wastes, Kane Van Therr will use his private army and secede from Arrcus. Under my ‘protection’ of course. Cathlod, with all its wealth, its control of the Dadac and all the trade east to west, will bow before me. You think Lysander was difficult to turn? Kane turned traitor for the promise of being my puppet. Cathlod and Harralheim will be the road to the gates of Empire. A real Empire, paved by the greed of lesser men.”

           

“And the Kingdom? What of Lysander? Do you think he will sit idly by?” Aarturian followed his Empress to the bed, sitting at the end of the frame. He kept his gaze on the floor, though Tasiana knew he savored the glimpses of her legs from the corners of his sight.

           

“Lysander will be too busy fighting Menander by the time realizes he’s the pawn. Him, the Electorate, Kane Van Therr, I can see their every action and reaction, every desperate attempt at halting the inevitable. That is what my mother lacked. Vision. Vision to guess every domino that she could coerce our enemies to tumble.” Tasiana moved closer to Aarturian, her arms extended over his shoulders as she brought her dark lips against his cheek. “There is but one thing needed to complete this vision of mine.”

           

Aarturian closed his eyes, warming her forearm with his pale hand. “That would be?”

           

“You, my dear. Who else will lead my armies across the north?” She stood, taking her chin in his hands, locking her gaze with his.

           

Aarturian lips pressed into her palm. “Anything and everything you ask of me will be done, my queen.”

           

“In that case.” Tasiana spoke, gently stroking Aarturian’s face. “I do believe we are ready to begin.”

​

THE END