The Teacher's Final Lesson
The rebellion had begun. In a mere two days, the rebel forces led by the war hero Duke Selver Cardenas had seized control of the capital and overrun the imperial palace.
Screams of servants and the shattering of glass echoed down the corridor. Maeve Evofil closed her eyes against the crimson sunset beyond the window; it looked as though the entire empire were burning.
So it has finally come. She tightened her grip on the trembling hand of the Crown Prince.
“⋯⋯Teacher.”
“Your Highness. You must steel your heart.”
The rebels would reach them any moment now, hunting for Caindel, the Emperor’s sole heir.
The palace was already surrounded; escape by any ordinary route was impossible. Their best chance of survival lay in hiding within the palace itself, buying time until the rebels broke their own cordon and flooded the grounds with knights—then seizing that chaos to flee.
That bastard of an Emperor. Everything he touches turns to shit.
Maeve bit down hard on her lip, swallowing the curse. Had the Crown Prince not been beside her, she would have spat it aloud.
She had never held any fondness for the Emperor. The present Emperor—or rather, if the servants’ blood-choked screams were true, the former Emperor whose head now lay somewhere on the floor—had started a war that stripped her of everything.
The Evofil Viscounty, crushed beneath the endlessly rising war taxes, had been forced to surrender the very lands that were the family’s roots. They had even sent a child who had not yet finished the Academy to the front.
A daughter returned as a cold corpse, a son whose body was never recovered—both buried in the frozen earth. Maeve had been left to scrape out a wretched existence atop the blood her younger siblings had shed in her place.
So she felt no particular hatred for Selver Cardenas, the man who had raised the banner of rebellion. If forced to choose between approving or condemning the Emperor’s death, she would have chosen approval without a second’s hesitation.
But the student whose trembling hand she now held—her own pupil—had done nothing wrong.
She wanted, somehow, to keep him alive. Though she had taught him for only four years, to Maeve he was hope itself: the hope that every war might end and the empire reclaim its peace.
That much, at least, she had to save.
Maeve looked once at the deathly pale Crown Prince and held out the robe she had been wearing. Caindel Rodenya stared at it, then closed his eyes tightly before opening them again.
“I am fine.”
“I am not fine. It is cold outside.”
Caindel let out a deflated breath at his teacher’s words. Cold outside. As if they might actually leave.
Did she truly believe they could walk out of a palace already fallen to the rebels? He could only manage a weak, incredulous laugh at her absurd optimism.
“You wear it, Teacher. I intend to remain here. If I must die, better to die with honor—”
“There is no honorable death here.”
Maeve cut him off cleanly. In ordinary times she would never have interrupted the Crown Prince so disrespectfully, but there was no time left.
“Even if it is filthy and undignified, you must survive by any means and plan for the days to come.”
She shook out the robe and settled it over his shoulders. Tailored to her own slight frame, it was a little small on him. Well, nothing to be done about that.
Caindel looked once at his own shoulder, once at his teacher’s hand, then lifted his gaze. The teacher who had always been full of mischief now met his eyes with steely resolve.
“Your Highness, this is my final lesson—listen carefully. Do you remember what I taught you? That the empire is now precarious because of the conflict between the ancient great houses and the newly risen nobles who have grown powerful through immense wealth?”
“Yes⋯⋯ I remember. But right now that is hardly—”
A woman’s high scream tore through the air. Heavy footsteps flooded the corridor. Maeve’s hand tightened on the Crown Prince’s shoulder. She bit her lip once more and pressed on.
“The moment you escape, go west. The western territories are thick with new nobles who grew rich supplying the war. Their history is short, so they starve for legitimacy.”
“Teacher⋯⋯”
“You are the sole legitimate heir of the imperial bloodline. They will want to help restore you so they may hitch themselves to that legitimacy.”
Maeve shoved aside the bookcase on the Crown Prince’s right. A long vertical crack appeared in the wall. She lifted a floorboard, turned the handle beneath, and a rush of musty mold and cold subterranean air poured out through the opening seam.
With a creak of long-settled dust, the wall slid aside. A hidden staircase slowly revealed itself, thick with the pale dust of years of disuse.
“Follow this passage. It connects to the eastern side gate. Go.”
“You must come with me!”
Caindel’s eyes wavered. He could not bring himself to move, clutching Maeve’s sleeve like a child standing at the edge of a cliff.
The screams were drawing nearer. Knights calling for the Crown Prince could be heard through the walls. There was no more time to delay.
“I must buy you time.”
Maeve looked down at the desperate grip on her sleeve. She fastened the robe’s ties securely around him and gave his shoulder one last light pat. The journey ahead of him would be long.
“Your Highness. On the days when everything feels so wretched and disgusting that you want to give up, rest for a while. Rest today, gather your heart, and tomorrow you will be able to live again.”
She pushed the reluctant Crown Prince into the stairwell and released the lever. The wall closed. She slid the bookcase back into place, erasing every trace of the passage.
Please become a wise and just emperor.
The thunder of boots had already reached the third floor.
Maeve picked up the cold teacup and peered into it. The surface of the tea trembled and rippled. She carefully composed her expression, sat down, and waited for the death that would soon arrive, savoring one last moment of quiet.
Maeve was forced to her knees on the cold marble floor. She had taken several blows while being dragged here; the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. At least no part of her body was missing—she rationalized that as fortunate.
How far has His Highness managed to run? He should have left the palace by now.
“Who is she?”
“The Crown Prince’s tutor was found hiding in the study.”
Maeve kept her head bowed and made no move. She stared only at the floor of the audience chamber—more precisely, at the blood spattered across it. The servants’ screams that the Emperor was dead had been true.
She kept her head desperately lowered so she would not meet the Emperor’s corpse with her eyes. A man dressed entirely in black walked slowly toward her and stopped. His voice was calm.
“Where is the Crown Prince?”
“I do not know.”
There was no hesitation in the answer. Maeve felt a quiet relief at how steady her own voice sounded.
The man was silent for a moment, then bent one knee and lifted her chin. Eyes the color of blood were right in front of her.
Black hair, red eyes. She did not need to ask. This was Selver Cardenas. It was the first time she had ever seen him in the flesh.
“Do not test my patience. Where is the Crown Prince?”
“He walked out the main gate with his head held high.”
“⋯⋯What?”
“Or perhaps he left westward through the Emperor’s palace. I am not certain.”
“You insolent bitch!”
When the woman smirked and changed her answer, the man standing one step behind Duke Cardenas trembled with rage and shouted.
“Your Grace! She clearly has no intention of speaking. We should kill her as an example!”
“Ghk⋯⋯!”
Maeve took a kick to the stomach and collapsed. With her arms bound, she could not even push herself up alone.
Ah, if this keeps up I really might be beaten to death. She had steeled herself to die from the moment she heard the rebellion had begun, yet with death so close her heart still pounded. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
“Enough, Count Grandiel.”
“But—!”
“She is the only one who knows the Crown Prince’s whereabouts. We cannot let her die yet.”
Count Grandiel clamped his mouth shut and stepped back.
“Drag her to the underground dungeon. I will interrogate her myself.”
Maeve could not decide whether this was fortune or misfortune. She had been certain she would be killed on the spot.
She had bought herself a little more life, yet the thought of being tortured for the Crown Prince’s location made death seem almost preferable.
Propping herself up on her elbows, she managed to sit upright. In the windowless darkness of the dungeon, only a single candle on the jailer’s table flickered. It would not normally have been this dark, but with a rebellion underway no one had time to spare for the prison.
In the pitch black, Maeve exhaled and steeled herself once more.
She had no intention of dying just yet. If it came to it she could always bite her tongue, but for now she needed to buy even a little more time for the Crown Prince to reach the west without pursuit.
“Surely⋯⋯ Teacher Maeve? Is that you?”
At the familiar voice, the woman’s head turned. Was there someone else in here? She could hear the voice but could not make out a shape. Yet that voice was unmistakable.