The Merchant Emperor by Elizabeth Haydon Read Free Book Online

and Lady Cymrian, were secretly putting into place. Talquist had shown him documents that detailed the royal pair’s nefarious schemes from other merchants in their employ around the world; Fhremus had seen them as credible and did not question the information.
    He had also been introduced to another of the abominations that Constantin, the recently deposed Patriarch of Sepulvarta, the former holy city over which he was currently commandant, had been responsible for. Talquist had shown him a titan, an immense statue of a primitive warrior that had been animated, the emperor said, by the unholy practices employed in the holy city. The titan, now bent to Talquist’s will and loyal, in its limited capacity, had been instrumental in breaking down the infamous gate of the holy city and bringing it into immediate occupation. The Patriarch’s captured plans he had seen had made Fhremus glad that his army had been so successful, in concert with the iacxsis riders and the titan, in subverting and occupying the holy city as quickly as they did, before even more blood was shed.
    “Uncle?”
    Fhremus looked up.
    A young soldier in the regalia of the army of Sorbold was smiling tentatively at him. He was handsome, possessed of the swarthy skin and dark brown eyes common in the residents of the desert nation, and a pleasant disposition; his sister’s son, Kymel, the fifth generation of the family to have begun service to the empress three years ago, and now was in that of the emperor.
    Fhremus stood straight and saluted, to Kymel’s immediate response.
    “At ease,” he said, clapping the lad on the upper arm. “Are you off duty?”
    “Yes,” said Kymel. “On leave in honor of the Weighing and coronation. Titactyk has called us to muster at dawn tomorrow in preparation for the emperor’s arrival six days hence. We have been assigned to guard him while in Sepulvarta and then accompany his return to Jierna’sid at his will.”
    “Congratulations.” Fhremus had to struggle to keep his lip from curling at Titactyk’s name. Titactyk was one of his own regimental commanders, and while he could not precisely put a reason to his dislike of the man, it was there nonetheless, though of course that information was unknown to the rank and file like Kymel. While Titactyk had never committed any offense or break of protocol egregious enough to merit discipline, there was an air of cruelty and insolence about him that Fhremus had seen before in other overly ambitious soldiers.
    And others.
    In his experience, it was always a bad sign.
    It was very much the same feeling as he was having on this morning of celebration in Jierna’sid.
    “Enjoy your leave,” he said to his nephew. “Happy Weighing, and guard the emperor well.”
    Kymel grinned, then stood and snapped a salute. Fhremus returned it, smiling to himself as Kymel left, and then took one last look over the lands he knew he would soon be invading, putting to the sword and the flame, before making his way off the wall and down into the broken streets of Sepulvarta once more.

    THE FORTRESS OF HIGHMEADOW, NAVARNE
    To the north two hundred leagues and half a world away, Gwydion of Manosse, the Lord Cymrian, leader and high lord of the Alliance of the Middle Continent, was climbing a narrow set of curving stairs high into the tower in the center of his woodland fortress, known as Highmeadow, as he did each morning.
    At the top of that curving staircase, he stepped out onto the cold, sheltered platform high in the tallest treetops of the forest canopy that held the aviary. The cultivation of a squadron of messenger birds had been one of his first priorities when Highmeadow was finally done with construction and being made inhabitable. His late father, Llauron the Invoker, the leader of the nature priests known as the Filids, had always made use of messenger birds for as long as Ashe could remember, as did another of the kings in the Alliance, Achmed the Snake, when he began retaking