Empire
of Jackals
Chrysathamere
Trilogy Book 2
by
Morgan Cole
Genre: Fantasy
The
war with Tyrace is over.
It
was supposed to be a time of celebration. Of triumph. But for Marilia
Sandara, hero of Chrysathamere Pass, the cost was too high. After
watching he childhood friends slaughtered before her eyes, all she
wants to do is sail back to Svartennos and try to forget the price
she had to pay for her victory.
But
the peace isn’t long to last. After Emperor Vergana makes a
shocking announcement—that he means to disinherit his true-born
son, Rufyllys, in favor of his adopted child, Prince Ilruyn—the
seeds are sown that will plunge Navessea back into war. This time,
Marilia and her twin brother, Annuweth, find themselves on opposite
sides of a conflict that threatens to undo all they fought for. By
the time the dust settles and the killing stops, only one of the
children of Karthtag-Kal may be left standing.
Marilia,
The Warlord
Chrysathamere
Trilogy Book 1
Born
the bastard daughter of a painted lady, Marilia was told she would
live out her days within the walls of her mother’s brothel, a
companion for the rich men of Tyrace. But after a terrible betrayal,
Marilia’s world turns upside down. With the help of her twin
brother, Annuweth, she flees the only home she’s ever known in
search of the one man who can offer her a chance at a better life:
one of her deceased father’s friends, the Emperor of Navessea’s
greatest general.
What
follows is a journey spanning years, from the streets of the desert
city of Tyracium to the splendor of the emperor’s keep and the
wind-swept, wild island of Svartennos. Along the way, Marilia
discovers, for the first time, the gift she has for strategy and
warfare—a world that is forbidden to girls like her.
When
the empire is threatened by a foreign invasion, the defense of
Navessea is left in the hands of a cruel and arrogant general no
match for the empire's foes. With the fate of her new home and her
family hanging in the balance, Marilia swears to use all her courage
and cunning to help repel the enemy...if she can convince anyone to
follow her.
The
struggle that follows will test her to her core and lead her back to
the past she thought she had escaped. Facing treachery within her own
ranks as well as a devious enemy commander, Marilia will need all the
help she can get, even if it means doing something her brother may
never forgive—making a pact with the man who murdered her
father.
Inspired
by The Song of Achilles and Ender’s Game, Marilia, the Warlord is a
blend of the epic and the personal, a story of war, romance, envy,
the rivalry between brother and sister, and a young woman’s fight
to find her place in the world.
The Story so Far
Marilia, bastard daughter of a prostitute and a deceased war hero, fled her mother’s brothel in the kingdom of Tyrace, along with her twin brother, Annuweth, in order to escape a life of slavery. She made her way to Karthtag-Kal Sandaros, Prefect of the Order of Jade, the elite knights who serve the Emperor of Navessea, Moroweth Vergana. Due to his friendship with Marilia’s father, Karthtag-Kal adopted the twin children as his own and brought them to his home, where he raised them and trained them; under his care, Marilia studied his books of history and warfare and impressed her father with her skill at Sharavayn, a strategy game that young Navessea noblemen play. Karthtag-Kal’s growing affection for Marilia created a rift between her and Annuweth, as her brother became jealous of her abilities.
While living in the capitol, Marilia became friends with the emperor’s daughter, Petrea Vergana, and learned of her animosity towards the emperor’s adopted son, Prince Ilruyn Ikaryn-Vergana.
After she turned sixteen, Marilia was married to Kanediel Paetos, a lord of an island province of Navessea named Svartennos. Annuweth, meanwhile, joined the Order of Jade and eventually became Captain of the Dragonknights, the Emperor’s personal guards.
Marilia lived with him and his sister, Camilline (for whom she began to develop strong feelings) until the island was invaded by the army of Tyrace. Svartennos’ leader, Ben Espeleos, was taken prisoner in a surprise attack, leaving the island’s army under Kanediel’s command. After Kanediel was killed in a duel, Marilia convinced Svartennos’ Elders that she was the answer to an ancient prophecy that stated that the spirit of a long-deceased warrior queen would return in the form of another young woman when the island stood in danger. The Elders put Marilia in command of the defense of Svartennos, and she achieved an incredible victory against overwhelming odds, crushing the Tyracian army.
Marilia and the army of Svartennos joined with the rest of the Navessean army (including her brother, Annuweth) and sailed south to attack the capitol city of Tyrace, hoping to end the war. Though the attack was a success, many soldiers in Marilia’s army—encouraged by the Graver, commander of the legion of a nearby imperial province and the man who killed Marilia’s father, long ago—pillaged the city and slaughtered many civilians before Marilia could restrain them, including most of Marilia’s childhood friends from her mother’s brothel. In order to save one of those friends from murder at the Graver’s hands, Marilia and Annuweth engaged the Graver in a duel. Marilia was victorious, leaving the Graver badly wounded, but Annuweth was also sorely wounded in the exchange.
With its capitol city conquered, Tyrace surrendered. Impressed by Marilia’s victories and her role in ending the war, Karthtag-Kal offered to ask the Emperor of Navessea to name her the new Prefect of the Order of Jade upon his retirement. However, Marilia declined, sick of war and the empire’s habit of venerating conquerors and warriors. Plagued with guilt for her brother’s suffering, she also lied to Karthtag-Kal and to the Chronicler who had come to write the story of the war, telling them that Annuweth had helped her create the strategy that led to Tyrace’s defeat…
Part I: Annuweth
Chapter One
Annuweth lay on a bed in a Tyracian villa. The sheets smelled of dried sweat and the coppery stench of his own blood. It was a smell that not even the garden breeze through the window could hide.
Inside, his body raged, at war with itself. His lips were chapped, and he felt a dry heat racing through him like the fury of the desert winds. His mouth was thick and gritty as if choked with sand.
He felt much like he had all those years ago, when he’d lain weak and shivering after Tyrennis Castaval had tried to beat him to death. The fear crept in on him along with the darkness that always seemed to be gathering at the corners of his eyes, a darkness that might have been the beginning of sleep or the beginning of death. He was afraid that the darkness would claim him for good. He was afraid that even if it did not, he would not get better; afraid that his body was broken.
He needed his body; he wasn’t like his sister, whose greatest gift was her mind. His greatest gift was his sword hand. His speed, his strength. Without all of that...he wasn’t sure what he was.
Physicks came in and out. They pinched and poked and prodded and made the pain dance across his skin like a wicked child skipping across the cracks in a broken road. They peered at his chest, at his side, at his broken nose, at the gash across his face, and they forced water down his throat. They sewed him back together. That part made him weep with pain, though it shamed him. He wished he could gather the tears back into his eyes. He wished he could silence the sobs that racked his chest. Tears are the recourse of those who have no other weapon, Karthtag-Kal used to tell him. Women and children.
The physick crept away, leaving him alone in the dark. His only tether to the world of the living was the rippling, gaping pain that wrapped around him like a red scarf.
While he was awake, the pain held him and rocked him in its arms. When sleep finally came, his dreams were no relief.
He stood by the edge of a rushing river, the night around him darker than any he had ever seen. There were no stars in the sky, and a single sliver of pale moonlight made the ripples on the black water shine silver like the toothy grin of a razorfish.
Figures stood before him—the knights who had sailed with him and Livenneth in the Bay of Dane. The children of Oba’al’s pillow house who had been his friends. Where their eyes had been were smoking holes; grave beetles crawled from rotting gashes in their skulls. Annuweth tried to raise his sword to fend the monsters away, but then he realized that his sword was just a broken stick.
From out of their ranks stepped the Graver. He grew giant, tall enough to blot out the stars. He took Annuweth in his hands and crushed the life from him, squeezing until Annuweth’s bones came popping out through his skin.
Annuweth awoke with his mouth open, but his scream died soundlessly inside him.
The next day, Marilia came to him. Her blurred face hung over him like a half-finished silk tapestry distorted by the wind. She laid her hand on his brow and whispered to him that he would be all right, that she was sorry. So many things she whispered, on and on, until at last one of her men came to call her away.
He looked for sleep, but it would not come; it was stymied by the song that pounded through his head, over and over. A song he’d heard once as a child.
The tiger lord of westerland stood gazing out to sea
Golden clouds and golden sun, my lady’s gone from me
No, he thought. Make it stop. By the gods, by the spirits, just let me rest.
Her hair was black as midnight’s cloud, her eyes like living flame
Now I wake weeping in the night; with tears I call her name
A hundred men my spear laid low, I sent them to the pyres
I turned their broken halls to ash, the brave sons and their sires
He closed his eyes. He drew one breath; another. That was all he could do—keep breathing. One in, one out. On and on and until his broken body mended itself and he found the strength to stand again.
She lit candles for him. He wanted to tell her to stop, that the smell was too strong, that he was choking on them. But he could not find his voice.
The smoke tickled his face and curled in his hair like the fingers of his long-ago mother. It wove shapes in the air.
How bright his future had seemed, when he’d first ascended the steps to Karthtag-Kal’s villa. How long ago it felt now. How far away. It was this place, this city that had left him hollowed, that had placed its shadowy hand upon him. A curse that began the day Tyrennis Castaval laid him low.
Annuweth had imagined at the time that his father’s spirit had saved him, that the prefect’s blood that flowed in his veins had given him the strength he needed to recover from the wounds caused by Castaval’s wooden sword. Nelos Dartimaos had saved him for another day, some other destiny that was waiting for him.
What if that destiny was only to die here in this room?
Again came the song, and he realized for the first time that it wasn’t only in his head—someone was singing it, someone outside his room. The men of Svartennos, many voices raised as one.
The war was won, the battle done, the crown upon my hair
While in my gardens children laugh, and women’s voices fair
The western trees are tall and strong, the rivers bright and clear
Yet none of them so dear to me as my Chrysathamere
The Lady Chrysathamere. His sister. Once again, she had risen, and he had fallen. Now she had taken the dream of his childhood—to defeat the Graver, to make things right and avenge his father’s death.
A new feeling flooded him. As hot as the fever, as fierce as the pain. His eyes opened; beneath the thin linens that covered his embattled body, his lungs swelled with a new, full breath.
Fuck this city. Fuck curses. I’m going to live. I’m going to get better.
Let his sister have her moment in the sun. Let her enjoy it for all it was worth. He would lie here, and hurt, and weep, and piss himself if need be, if that was what it took.
But when it was all over, he would walk out of here, his sword at his side, to fight another day.
Because he was Annuweth Sandaros, son of Nelos Dartimaos.
And this was not the end of his story.
Chapter Two
Your sword is your gift, Annuweth’s mother told him once. It was a gift that would take him beyond the walls of the pillow house someday. With your sword, you can carve yourself a little piece of the world. She mimed slicing a piece out of the sky and eating it. They both giggled together at the little joke—then she patted him on the head and sent him on his way to sweep the pillow house’s hallways under Tyreesha’s watchful eye.
But Annuweth never forgot those words.
Even for the lowborn, even for the sons of painted ladies, there were possibilities, if you knew how to use a sword. You could join the city watch…or become a private blade and seek your fortune with one of the mining companies or on the deck of a trader’s ship. You could become a pit fighter, like Aptos, who won his fights in less than ten seconds, or like the Death’s Hand, who had once beaten two champion fighters at the same time.
But what Annuweth wanted above all was to be was a knight like his father. Prefect of the Order of Jade.
When he played with Marilia and the others in the grass by the edge of the River Tyr, he would imagine it—himself at the head of an army of the finest knights, galloping across the sand (for at that point of time, he couldn’t imagine a world without sand), a bright green aeder sword raised high above his head.
Then came Karthtag-Kal, and the ship that had borne Annuweth back to Navessea, and he knew he had been right to dream. Karthtag-Kal repeated the promise his mother had spoken to him in their room in Oba’al’s pillow house. Different words, but the same promise:
“You have the blood of a prefect in you, boy. You can be something great—a governor of a province, a commander of armies. A champion of tournaments, as your father was before you. Maybe even prefect of this Order.”
Karthtag-Kal explained to him how that would work. Whenever one prefect stepped down, he passed along to the emperor the name of the man he believed most worthy to stand as his successor. But ultimately, the Order of Jade belonged to Emperor Vergana; the final decision lay with him.
“Emperor Vergana is a wise ruler,” Karthtag-Kal told him. “He will never accept a weak or unworthy knight to be his prefect. And if I name you as my chosen, he will look at you especially closely.” Karthtag-Kal laid a hand on Annuweth’s shoulders, his dark eyes glittering like freshly mined aeder crystal as he brought his head close. “He will think that because I raised you, I may not be seeing clearly. He will think that perhaps I have named you for love alone, and not because you are worthy. It will be up to you to prove him wrong. You will have to stand before him and show him you are a true knight. One of the best. One of these.”
And he gave Annuweth his first gift—a small water-script painting showing a line of knights on horseback. The lines that made the knights’ bodies were words—the men’s names. Four of them in all, all Prefects of the Order of Jade. The last name he recognized, though he had only just begun to learn how to read.
Nelos Dartimaos.
Annuweth loved the gift. He hung the painting on the wall of his room, right above his bed, so that he might never forget.
One day, he thought, he would be a knight just like those. Champion of the tournament field, a glory to behold in his green-painted armor, with his fine aeder sword at his side. The Chronicler would write stories about him; men would remember his name.
“Glory is all well and good, if well-earned,” Karthtag-Kal said, “but you shouldn’t hunger for it. It isn’t the measure of a true knight.”
Annuweth frowned. “What is, then?”
“Duty. A true knight does what he can for the good of the empire. That is what makes him a knight.”
Though Annuweth wouldn’t have said so to Karthtag-Kal, if he was being honest with himself, glory sounded somewhat more exciting.
He trained hard, to become a true knight, and for another reason as well—to kill the Graver. That was another piece of the story, part of the proper ending such a tale as his, he felt, ought to have. In all the stories his mother had whispered to him back in the pillow house while he sheltered against her side, the lost prince came back to claim his father’s place and to avenge his death.
Those two goals formed the twin pillars of Annuweth’s destiny. It was a destiny that his mother would have smiled at, if she’d still been alive; one that made his heart feel as if a tiny ball of fire had settled inside his chest and was swelling brighter with each day, like a loaf of cloud bread rising in the sun. Maybe he had begun his life as a painted bastard child—but he would end it as something else.
When they trained together, Annuweth attacked Karthtag-Kal as if the prefect were just another of his friends—no doubts, nothing held back. He was a ten-year-old boy, and Karthtag-Kal a full-grown man; but he sometimes thought that were it not for the weight of years between them, for the smallness of his own body and the might of Karthtag-Kal’s, he might have won. He knew that was what Karthtag-Kal desired—for Annuweth to defeat him. The fulfillment of a cycle, father to son, one chapter in the story of Sandaros ending, another beginning.
There were other parts of his training that were far less welcome than swordplay. He grew to detest the long hours indoors, detest Teacher’s patient, wooden smile, the dusty smell of Teacher’s old vellum scrolls. Each day he itched for the moment before sundown when he could stand before Karthtag-Kal with his wooden sword in his hand; in the meantime, he forced himself to sit for hours on end, reciting the names of cities and emperors long gone. Karthtag-Kal said that Teacher’s lessons were a necessary, vital part of becoming a knight, so Annuweth bore them. He bore, too, the hours in the shrine, breathing in smoke, pretending to meditate at Karthtag-Kal’s command, distracting himself with imaginary battles.
What he could not bear was the letters.
Try as he might, he could not make them deliver their secrets—or if they did, they did so slowly, grudgingly. It was an act like drawing a flame from wet wood. Their many sounds and meanings rattled through his head like dice thrown across a table. All those tiny black marks—pages and pages of them—as many as the soldiers on every battlefield ever fought, terrifying in their endlessness. They were an enemy army, and he stood alone against them.
“His mind cannot grasp the markings,” he heard Teacher say one day to Karthtag-Kal. “Perhaps...all that time among the common folk...”
“I was illiterate once,” Karthtag-Kal growled in reply. “I was a barbarian from across the sea, with a different language, and I learned.”
“You were at least a leader among your people, my lord prefect,” Teacher said. “But...the child of a painted lady...”
“He is the child of Nelos Dartimaos,” Karthtag-Kal said. “Besides, his sister has learned.”
“Yes, well...truly, I do not know. Perhaps he has a sickness of some kind...”
“There is no sickness. The letters will come.”
Annuweth tried. He stared at the letters until his eyes felt ready to fall from his head. He came to dread the feeling of Teacher—or worse, Karthtag-Kal—bending over him, their breath brushing the back of his neck. It was as if there was a wall inside his head, through which understanding came only slowly, like water dripping through a crack in a roof.
“Try again,” Teacher said. His voice was gentle, patient.
Annuweth wanted nothing more than to spin around and ram his stylus into Teacher’s patient face.
By the time he had managed to correctly write full sentences that Teacher dictated to him, Marilia was already glancing through the books in Karthtag-Kal’s library. Annuweth guessed that she did not love the prefect’s books half as much as she pretended to; had he read as well as she, she would scarcely have bothered with the library. She did it because he could not; she did it because she knew it vexed him. He tried to pretend that he did not care.
In a way, her success brought at least a measure of comfort. His greatest fear had been that Teacher’s words had been true. That some part of the pillow house, of his low birth, had rubbed off on him, like a slick, oily grime that had soaked into his skin, too deep to be washed away.
But if that were so, how had Marilia learned?
There is nothing she has that I do not have, he told himself. If she can learn, I can learn.
He had no choice; he was Dartimaos’ heir. He had to master the letters.
So he did. Slowly and painfully.
The letters were the first warning sign of what was to come.
***
By all accounts, he became a fine young knight, a proper heir to Nelos Dartimaos. As he grew older, entering that twilight space between boyhood and manhood, his body grew stronger, quicker. He was fair of face and form—a young Ben Espeleos, the emperor’s brother-by-marriage called him once, making his chest swell with pride.
With a wooden sword in his hand, he was gifted. Of the boys that Karthtag-Kal brought to the villa to spar against him, he was not the strongest—his close friend Victaryn Livenneth had him beaten there—or the fastest—he could never match the speed of Serynisse, the son of Osurris’ arch-magistrate.
But he was arguably the best. He won most of his fights, because what he had that the others lacked was precision. Swordplay was, in the end, the simple art of making the tip and edge of your sword go where you wanted them to. And he had a knack for that.
He would never be a great scholar, but that was all right—everyone had a weakness. He made his way through the books of military strategy and history, and that was enough for his needs—leave philosophy and poetry to those with the taste for them.
He was adept at Sharavayn, above average, winning as much as he lost.
He was just good enough to comprehend the intricacies of the Noble Game, the infinite patterns contained within its carved wooden pieces, its potential for study—the way it served as a miniature simulacrum of the battlefield.
He was just good enough to recognize what it was that his sister had.
An unskilled player wouldn’t have seen it, would have merely acknowledged her as good. To the eyes of a small child, all men and women looked as tall as mountains, indistinguishable in their enormity. It was only as one grew older and taller that one could recognize the relative height of men like Karthtag-Kal or Dorokim, the Graver’s friend—giants among men.
So it was with Sharavayn. The more Annuweth learned of the game, the more he was able to comprehend the way his sister’s intellect towered above her peers. In the entirety of the empire, those who could match her at the Sharavayn table might be counted on the fingers of both hands.
There was a word for that: brilliance.
Like white-gold aeder, the sort of thing that might be found only a couple of times in a man’s life.
What bothered him was not her strange gift at the game, but what it meant to Karthtag-Kal. The prefect had always been the sort of man to be blinded by brilliance, dazzled and distracted like a Tyracian housewife confronted with a street-seller’s jewel. Annuweth knew that the games were more to the prefect than a pleasant past-time. To him, they were a reminder of something he had shared with his friend, Nelos Dartimaos, years before. By now, Annuweth knew his father well enough to recognize the misty look in his eye, and to read what it meant—a word he’d come across in Teacher’s lessons: nostalgia.
Although Annuweth, too, played with Karthtag-Kal, it wasn’t the same. When it came to Sharavayn, he would never be exceptional. Marilia could give the prefect something—a lost part of Dartimaos—that Annuweth never could.
He knew she enjoyed that. She enjoyed acting the part of the perfect stoic’s daughter. Whatever small imperfections she found in Annuweth, she took them, and, with the same calculated proficiency which a horse-trainer might use to break a wild stallion, she purged them from herself so that she might look better by comparison. He struggled to read—so she taught herself to adore Karthtag-Kal’s books and made a point of discussing them with Karthtag-Kal at every opportunity. He struggled with the stoics’ trance—so she delighted in the candles, spending hours at a time in Karthtag-Kal’s shrine.
Annuweth did his best to fashion himself into the model of Nelos Dartimaos, the model he knew Karthtag-Kal wanted, but there were imperfections in his attempt, cracks like those in a crudely baked clay statuette. It was Marilia’s pleasure to shove her fingers into the cracks, widening them so that Karthtag-Kal could see them, too.
And see them he did.
One day when Annuweth was fourteen years old, as he was wandering through the halls of the prefect’s villa, he heard the sound of voices out in the garden. He paused just inside the door. He had not meant to eavesdrop, but the sound of his sister’s name caught his attention.
Karthtag-Kal was sitting in the garden with Ilruyn, the emperor’s adopted son. They had their backs to him, watching the sunset as they shared a cup of chilled jala juice to ward off the late afternoon’s smothering heat.
“My daughter is a good girl, but she can get carried away at times,” Karthtag-Kal said. “I hope you will forgive her forwardness.”
“It’s all right, Karthtag-Kal,” Ilruyn said, laying a hand on the prefect’s shoulder. At times Annuweth envied the Prince’s easy familiarity with Karthtag-Kal, a familiarity born of long hours spent in each other’s company at the Jade Keep, talking of old battles, sparring in games of Sharavayn. A familiarity born of the fact that Ilruyn, unlike Annuweth, had nothing to prove. “I admit, I was...taken aback. But I suppose it’s what I get for spending too much time helping our game-master with his tournament-planning and not enough time before the board.”
Annuweth realized what they were talking about; three days before, in the royal gardens, Marilia had faced Ilruyn across a board of Sharavayn and defeated him.
“It’s an unlikely gift,” Ilruyn said, his voice sobering.
“Unlikely,” Karthtag-Kal agreed.
“She takes after you.”
“And after her true father.”
Ilruyn took a sip of juice and laid his empty cup down on the table beside him. “What a general she might have made,” he said lightly. “A play like that—does it ever make you wonder what it would have been like if the Fates had done things differently? If the threads were reversed?”
“You mean...?”
“If the boy had been born a girl, and the girl a boy.”
Annuweth felt his breath seize in his chest. This, he thought, was too far, even for the Prince of Navessea. It presumed too much. He waited for Karthtag-Kal to deny it. The silence in the garden seemed to fill the space of a lifetime.
“Perhaps. At times,” Karthtag-Kal said in a quiet voice.
Annuweth eased away from the open doorway. His mouth had gone dry. He felt something cold and slick sliding its way up his throat.
He returned to his room. A carved midnight-stone figurine in the shape of a horse-head was waiting for him atop his dresser—the commander piece from his Sharavayn set. The dark, glassy eyes seemed to watch him as he paced his way back and forth across the carpet. Struck by a sudden rage, he seized the figurine and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into dozens of pieces, some larger, the size of his fingernails, others as fine as grains of sand—a black, glittering powder that rained across the floor.
It’s just a game, he told himself as he sat, trembling, on the edge of his bed. There had been great warriors, knights, and conquerors the world over who had never played a match of Sharavayn in their lives. Take Kanadrak, the northern warlord who had brought Navessea to its knees. Take the Great Emperor, Aryn, born before the game had even been invented. Just a game. It doesn’t mean anything.
But it did. To him, it meant everything.
“Annuweth? Is everything all right?” She was standing in the doorway to his bedroom, a little frown on her lips.
“Why shouldn’t it be?”
“I thought I heard something break.”
He looked up at her, feeling the heat rise to his face, shifting a little to do his best to block the shattered remnants of the figurine from her view. He had a feeling that it was too late, that she’d already seen.
He thought of all the things he might say to her. He knew she thought the world had been cruel to her and kind to him and that she wanted to hurt him for it. It was true—he knew the hand she’d been dealt wasn’t a fair one—but things weren’t as simple as she thought they were. You don’t know what it’s like, he thought as he looked at her, the weight of two great fathers on your back, the weight of his eyes, always watching. To live every day, every moment, in Dartimaos’ shadow, needing to be better, to be as good as you, and not knowing how.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
For a moment he feared she would press the issue, but to his relief she did not. She slipped out, leaving him alone. I wish she would go, he thought, staring at the mirror-smooth fragments of midnight stone glittering on the floor like black tears. I wish she would go somewhere far away and not come back.
***
Though it took a couple more years, Annuweth got his wish.
A couple of months after Marilia’s sixteenth birthday, she was betrothed to Kanediel Paetos of Svartennos. Shortly before her seventeenth, she, Annuweth, and Karthtag-Kal sailed together to the island that would be her new home. Annuweth watched her walk down the aisle, watched as Kanediel took the ribbon that bound her hair and cast it into the fire. Watched as it crumbled to ash.
He and Karthtag-Kal sat side by side at the high table, Marilia at the end beside her new husband—their last meal together. There was a tender look in Karthtag-Kal’s eyes as he looked upon Marilia’s face.
As the evening drew on Annuweth reached out and took the prefect’s hand beneath the table. A gesture of comfort. Of support. And a reminder.
I’m right here, father. Right here beside you. Nelos Dartimaos’ son.
The following day, Annuweth and Karthtag-Kal began their journey back to Ulvannis—alone.
The first night after his return to the capitol, Annuweth had trouble sleeping. It felt strange to lie in his bed in the prefect’s villa and to know that the room next to his was empty. It was the first time in his life, he realized, that he and Marilia had ever truly been apart. It felt as if a dremmakin’s blade had come in the night and parted him from the familiar cloak of his own shadow.
As he stared up at the shadowed canopy of his ceiling, he felt a stab of regret.
This, he realized, was always how it was going to turn out. Marilia would leave, would sail away to Svartennos and become another man’s wife. The Sandaros name would fall from her like a childhood garment that had been outgrown. Meanwhile, he would stay with Karthtag-Kal and the Order into whose ranks he had recently been admitted.
He thought back on his and Marilia’s last few years together, marred by bitterness and rivalry. A waste. All she’d wanted, in the end, was the same thing he’d spent his childhood searching for: Karthtag-Kal’s respect. Could he really blame her for that?
He felt an ache deep within in his chest. When sleep finally did come, it was uneasy, filed with dark dreams.
At last he rose, throwing back his covers and padding out into the hallway. His father’s armor called to him. He was struck by the urge to sit in Karthtag-Kal’s armory by the light of a candle and look upon the smooth yoba-shell helmet, upon the prefect’s blade in its scabbard hanging on the wall. Maybe, he thought, the sight of his father’s armor, the promise it represented, could help to turn his mind from the past and towards the promise of a better future.
He paused in the hallway of the villa, feeling a chill crawl up his back. Ahead of him was the door to the armory. It was closed, and the room was dark, but Annuweth thought he heard a noise from within—a quiet, furtive rustling.
He set his candle aside, placing it carefully on the floor. He wished he had a weapon in hand, even one of Karthtag-Kal’s practice swords. If it was a robber…but surely not here, in the prefect’s villa? Right next to the Barracks of the Order of Jade? That would be completely mad.
It had to be his father. But why would he be up in the middle of the night…and in the armory of all places?
And why did it sound like whoever it was wasn’t alone?
Mist from the garden beyond the windows had filled the villa. It hung in the air before him like candle-smoke. The moonlight crept between the gaps in the tree branches outside, turning the hall of the prefect’s villa into a shimmering blend of black and silver like the walls of an undersea grotto. Half-forgotten stories Annuweth’s mother had told him came back to him—tales of dremmakin crawling out of the night. At that moment, he might almost have believed them.
“I am not afraid,” he whispered.
He tiptoed to the door of the armory, and, ever so slowly, slid it open a crack. He peered into the darkness. He was overcome with a sense of sick fascination, a fascination that made him want to tear his eyes away and, at the same time, keep staring.
Two hunched fingers stood in the corner of the room. He knew them by the shape of their bodies, even in the darkness. Karthtag-Kal and Livenneth, the emperor’s brother-by-marriage.
Something in Annuweth screamed at him to go back, not to look. But another part of him, that eager, grasping part that had drawn him to what lay behind the swaying silk curtain of his mother’s room—despite the fear of her blows, Oba’al’s anger, or the buyers’ wrath—kept him right where he was.
Karthtag-Kal stood with his hands against the wall. Livenneth’s arm was wrapped around him from behind, Livenneth’s mouth near Karthtag-Kal’s neck. Livenneth slowly worked his hips and Karthtag-Kal’s body moved in kind. The only sound was the rough, quickened pace of their breathing.
Annuweth stumbled back down the hallway to his room. He blew out his candle. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands and tried to forget what he’d seen. The play of the silver-white moonlight on Karthtag-Kal’s rough skin. The dappled shadows on the floor. The sound of the prefect’s breath like a gust of wind. It was so lurid, so surreal, that he might almost have convinced himself that he’d dreamed it.
Almost.
For the past seven years, he’d been staring at the world through a gold-tinted aeder window. Now the window had been pulled back, and he saw the truth behind it; he saw the world for what it really was.
A few rooms away was Prefect Karthtag-Kal, a man so dedicated to the stoic virtues that he had never married or fathered children; instead, out of admiration for his predecessor and a sense of noble duty, he had taken in Dartimaos’ children and raised them as if they were his own. The perfect knight—or so he had let the world think. So he had let Annuweth think, all these years.
But of course, that was too clean, too perfect to be true. All the stoic banners on the wall, all that talk of discipline and self-mastery, all those hours of meditation...
All of it a half-truth, built up like a castle wall to hide Karthtag-Kal’s deepest secret: he was fucking the brother-by-marriage of the emperor he was sworn to serve.
Annuweth’s immediate and overwhelming urge was to reveal the secret. To whom, he wasn’t sure. Victaryn? Thoryn? Another one of his friends? “Someone,” he breathed. It was the kind of burning, painful secret that demanded to be told.
Are you mad? A voice inside asked. That would ruin him. He saved you from a life of slaving away in Tyrace as a painted lady’s son. Before him you were nothing. He took you in as his own.
“Because he wished I was his,” Annuweth whispered. At last he understood. “Because he was in love with Nelos Dartimaos.”
He knew it was true. Karthtag-Kal had not taken Annuweth and Marilia in out of generosity, or duty, or honor, or any of the other words he loved to toss about so freely. He had done it because he was in love. Not the kind of love a brother bears for a brother or a friend for a friend, but the kind a woman has for a man.
He clenched his hands into fists.
All those long days spent trying to fashion himself into something that Karthtag-Kal would respect. He’d been reaching for something that had never existed. Trying to become something even Karthtag-Kal himself had never managed to be. And all that time, Karthtag-Kal had let him go on trying, even knowing how much it cost him, even seeing how the doubt ate at him—doubt that he was worthy enough to be the son of such a perfect father.
What a lie.
There are no perfect knights.
There was much that was uncertain, but there was one thing he knew, with a surety that came upon him like thunder after lightning.
He would make himself prefect because it was what he’d promised himself and what he wanted. He would continue to train, to fight, to reach for the life Karthtag-Kal had promised might someday be his. But he was not Karthtag-Kal’s little boy anymore. He was a man, and no one’s man but his own.
When he looked up, he saw the old water-script painting that Karthtag-Kal had given him, still hanging on the wall where he’d set it all those years ago. Four prefects, side by side, proud and noble as figures out of a children’s song.
He took it down and burned it.
What inspired you to write this book?
This may sound petty, but in all honesty, a lingering sense of disappointment over some of my favorite movies and TV series. I used to love the Star Wars prequels as a kid (to a somewhat unhealthy degree—I once had a Jedi braid halfway down my back), but as I grew older, I started to see that the tremendous potential of the story—former friends tragically turned against each other! The epic fall of a once-great nation due to treachery and political intrigue! Civil war with heroes on both sides! A secret, twisted romance!—wasn’t exactly done justice by a script that contained some pretty questionable dialogue choices (pro writing tip: never have a character respond to “you’re so beautiful” with “it’s because I’m so in love.” And definitely don’t follow that with “no, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”).
And then there was Game of Thrones, which I loved even before it was a hit TV show…but one aspect I didn’t love as much was how in the end everything came down to dragons burning CGI armies and cities in orgies of fire while the character development and grounded, gritty complexity kind of got sidelined. The Chrysathamere Trilogy was sort of my loose “remake” of those well-known series.
I also really love historical and “literary” fiction, just as much as fantasy, and I wanted to do a book that blended the genres. One of my aims was to some of the structural conventions of historical and literary fiction—which, often much more than fantasy, are able to explore the impact childhood has on adult characters by exploring those characters over a longer period of time—and combining them with the grand scope, the thrilling sword fights, the blood feuds and intrigue that drew me to the fantasy genre in the first place!
Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?
No. Or maybe, yes, but none I would ever show to anyone, because they’re trash. I did write a prequel-esque story in high-school about a duel between Marilia’s adoptive father and an evil warlord named Kanadrak, but being written in high-school, it’s not exactly my finest work. I feel like all the story that demands to be told is contained within the trilogy itself. Maybe someday, years down the line, I’d do a sequel (I got a few glimmers of inspiration from the history of the Borgias family!). But who knows…I like how the story ends, and if Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that unnecessary 20-years-later type sequels can be a really bad idea if they’re not done right…
I’d rather work on my other novel (still deciding if it should be a series-starter or a standalone), which is about a disgraced queen’s bodyguard dealing with grief, a wayward young priestess with serious parent issues, and their journey together through a very weird heart of darkness. It’s sort of like The Last of Us meets the Princess Bride.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in the series?
I once read a brilliant article about the two types of strong female characters: the tough girl, and the tough girl “plus.” The tough girl is strong and independent and badass. She kicks ass, takes names, is always ready with a quip and a lethal combat move. She never really or cries, or has a breakdown, or needs to be saved, because I guess the fear is that would send some kind of sexist message that women can’t be strong.
The tough girl plus is strong, but in a different, more subtle way. She does have weaknesses, and flaws…often serious ones. As a character on Game of Thrones once said, the only time someone can be brave is when they are afraid. A strong character, to my mind, is one who overcomes a flaw or fear, not one who’s strong all the time. All my favorite heroes, male or female, fail, and weep, and have crises of faith, and sometimes need to get rescued by their friends From the get-go, it was very important to me not to have my protagonist be that first, under-developed kind of tough girl. She’s clever, and brave, but she’s not a badass, at least not as that term is traditionally understood, and she’s rarely ready with a wry quip. She’s first and foremost a struggling teenage girl doing the best she can in a new world.
In the book, Marilia challenges a lot of traditions and gender roles, and constantly strives for recognition, but it was very important that the reason for that fight weren’t that she believes in social justice and hates the patriarchy—it irks me deeply when characters in a story set centuries ago just happen to have moral values totally in line with those of a modern, liberal society (don’t get my started on all those historical Hollywood movies where all the feudal/ancient heroes are all about spreading that good old ‘Murican-style democracy!). I wanted to make sure the reasons Marilia became a warrior and challenged the society she was born in were deeply personal, and that her struggle was relatable to a modern reader while still feeling like her thoughts and feelings were appropriate for the time period (yes, I know it’s fantasy, but it’s definitely pseudo-Roman).
Besides Marilia, there’s a whole host of love-able and hate-able side characters. Since the first book is so Marilia-centric, a lot of them don’t fully come into their own until books 2 and 3. Karthtag-Kal, the stoic, honorable, samurai-like knight, with a closely hidden secret that informs every action he takes. Petrea, a femme fatale with a host of secrets of her own. The Graver, the ultimate social climber, constantly trying (and failing) to outrun his insecurities by becoming the best he can be at everything—top sword-fighter, brilliant general, second richest man in the empire! And Marilia’s twin brother, Annuweth, who, like Marilia herself, is deeply ambitious and filled with envy. In a way, he’s the mirror image of Marilia, showcasing a different side of toxic sexism. She suffers for being dismissed and overlooked because of her gender; he suffers under the weight of expectation that comes with being the sole surviving male heir of a mighty warrior.
How did you come up with the concept and characters for the book?
Quite a few places.
When I was a kid, I loved to play fantasy-esque games with my brother. I’d always wanted to recapture that childhood sense of adventure by writing some kind of epic fantasy novel, but I had a few rocky starts. Finally, after a few months of brainstorming, an idea began to take shape…
They say writers put a lot of themselves into their work, and I won’t lie…I certainly did so. There are aspects of myself in both Marilia and Annuweth, and in a couple of the side characters as well…and in the characters in my other books. Sometimes the best way to deal with a negative emotion—whether it be guilt, or anxiety, or alienation, or a feeling of powerlessness or inadequacy—can be to write about it.
Where did you come up with the names in the story?
That’s a whole story. A lot of the names used to be quite different. For a while, a lot of the side characters’ names were more Greco-Roman…that’s because some of the political intrigue in the series (especially in book 2!) was inspired by a Roman History class I took in college. I must have had the best professor ever, because, as a homework assignment, she had all the class play this mafia-style social media game where a bunch of undercover conspirators tried to assassinate the empire (by posting an assassination gif on his wall all at the same time) while a bunch of others, playing as the Praetorian Prefect and his guards, tried to figure out who the would-be assassins were and stop them. I’m proud to say that my character, Rufyllys, pulled off a smashingly successful coup.
My ex-literary agent pointed out that the names in my book were a little all over the place…some were Roman, some were Egyptian inspired, and a lot were inspired by a video game called Morrowind. To her mind, I ought to strive for consistency. It was a sensible suggestion, so I slowly went back and de-Romanized a lot of the names. Verginius “Rufyllys” Rufus became Rufyllys Vergana, Seneca became Senecal Ikaryn, Petreyus became Ilruyn…and so on and so forth. They’re now all a sort of Morrowind-Roman hybrid.
The only names that never changed at any point were those of Marilia, Annuweth, and Karthtag-Kal, who were not named after Roman characters in a role-playing game, but after childhood/teenage creations of mine (Karthtag-Kal was once an orc warrior in a role playing game!) Coming up with cool names is hard, and if I have one I like, I try to find a way to squeeze it into a book somewhere.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
When it was over and I could finally move on to books 2 and 3! Mostly because, at that point, I’d been writing and re-writing this book for so long that I thought I’d never have a draft I’d be satisfied with. The second and third books, while challenging at times, weren’t nearly the ordeal book 1 was (knock on wood, since I’m not 100% done with book 3 yet). I think, of the original 600-page draft of Marilia, the Warlord, maybe only about 300 words in the final novel are left…which is kind of insane. I basically re-wrote the book largely from scratch not once, but twice. While I think it was for the best, and I learned a lot from the process, I hope never to have to do anything like that again!
I also really liked the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it was one of the parts of the book I struggled with the most. Maybe because it was initially so problematic, it got a lot of extra attention devoted to it, and now it’s one of my favorite parts of the story. That feeling when all the thematic elements finally clicked into place was truly wonderful.
How did you come up with the title of your first novel?
I hate coming up with titles. I struggled so long to come up with something catchy. The literary agent I was working with, often so wise, kind of dropped the ball on this one. Her suggestion was The Painted Girl Who Won Her Freedom…which just wasn’t doing it for me. Too long, and too suggestive of a happy ending. Plus, for some reason, it makes me think of painted hyenas. Is it just me?
Finally, I settled on a title I was really happy with: Marilia, the Bastard. A bit gritty, a bit risqué, a bit mysterious. Is she a literal bastard, or also a metaphorical one, too? But of course, that wasn’t to be. Amazon considers the word “bastard” profanity, you see, and wouldn’t let me run any ads under that title! So, with mere hours to spare, and no photoshop skills to my name, I was left with a cover that said Marilia, the Bastard and the task of changing it to something inoffensive. In order to not have to do any font re-sizing, I couldn’t pick a word with more or fewer letters than Bastard…so I settled on Warlord. It was all I could think of, and involved only changing five letters.
If that isn’t the most banal, anticlimactic way to name a book, I don’t know what is.
If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead and why?
A brand new actress! I mean, Marilia is pretty young, so I figure it would have to be someone new, right?
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I first knew I wanted to be a writer in high school. Back then, I hoped it would be my full-time job. Things didn’t exactly work out that way. For a while, since I had another career to pay the bills, I didn’t know whether I had earned the title of “writer.” But then I learned just how many writers have other jobs, and I felt less guilty about it. Now that I have two books out there and another two in good shape, I feel like I can comfortably call myself a writer without bringing down bad voodoo on my head or something.
After
being bombarded with one too many school motivational posters, I
decided to “shoot for the moon” by pursuing a risky double-major
in creative writing and history on the assumption that the worst-case
scenario would be landing among the stars. I instead landed in
long-term unemployment—and unpaid internships, let’s not forget
the unpaid internships—in small-town Ohio. Eventually, after
several re-writes and two unhappy years, my first novel (not counting
a couple of incredibly pretentious high fantasy books from my high
school and college years that have all hopefully been hunted down and
burned) was picked up by a literary agent—and then put back down
when it was determined it was not marketable to a young adult
audience.
Eventually,
I began making more financially sound life choices and now work as an
attorney in the public sector while continuing to write on the side.
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