Abuja

  The silence of Abuja was not like the silence of the desert. The desert silence was empty; the silence of the Red Throne was heavy. It was the silence of a stone dropped into a deep well, waiting to hit the bottom.

  Sade walked the perimeter of the inner sanctum. His boots made no sound on the polished red stone. He was Captain of the Household Guard, a man woven from duty and discipline, but today his skin crawled as if covered in ants.

  Beneath his breastplate, the Griffin bond etched into his torso pulsed with a low, frantic heat. The spirit was agitated. It scraped its talons against the inside of his ribs, its eagle eyes seeing threats in the shifting shadows of the Titan Halls.

  Sade stopped at the entrance to the throne room. Two guards stood like statues, their faces hidden behind the ceremonial masks of the Imperial Service. They did not move as he approached. They did not breathe.

  "Report," Sade said.

  "The Emperor remains within," the left guard said. His voice was hollow, echoing inside the bronze mask. "He has requested no food. He has requested no water. He has granted no audiences."

  "For three days?" Sade asked.

  "For three days."

  Sade nodded, though his throat felt tight. It was not unusual for the Emperor to sequester himself for rituals. The maintenance of the Binding required spiritual focus that could drain a Stage Seven walker to the marrow. But usually, there were sounds. The chanting of priests. The smell of incense. The tremor of the earth responding to the Emperor’s will.

  For three days, there had been nothing. Only this heavy, suffocating silence.

  "Open the doors," Sade ordered.

  The guards hesitated. A fraction of a second. A breach of protocol so slight only a captain would notice.

  "Open the doors," Sade repeated, his hand drifting to the hilt of his sword.

  The heavy stone doors ground open.

  The throne room of Abuja was a cavern carved from the living rock of the plateau. Ancestor monoliths, twenty feet tall, lined the walls, their stone eyes fixed on the dais at the far end. And there, upon the Red Throne, sat the Emperor.

  He did not look ill. He sat with perfect posture, his hands resting on the armrests, his gaze fixed on the middle distance. The imperial robes, heavy with gold thread and protective runes, hung motionless around him.

  Sade walked forward. He stopped ten paces from the dais and dropped to one knee, lowering his head.

  "Your Majesty," Sade said.

  The Emperor did not answer.

  Sade held the pose. His heart hammered against his ribs. His bond screamed a warning—Predator. Wrong. Fly.—but he forced his muscles to remain still.

  "Your Majesty," he said again. "The Council awaits your signature on the trade decrees for the northern routes. Lord Ade of House Olúf?? has arrived from ìbàdàn with news of the west."

  Slowly, the Emperor’s head turned. The movement was smooth, hydraulic, lacking the micro-adjustments of human muscle.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "Sade," the Emperor said.

  The voice was his. The timbre, the pitch, the slight rasp of a man in his fifties—it was perfect. Too perfect. It sounded like a recording played back through a bronze throat.

  "I am here, Your Majesty."

  "Rise."

  Sade stood. He forced himself to meet the Emperor’s eyes.

  They were dark, familiar, intelligent. But in the dim light of the glow-stones, they reflected nothing. No light. No soul. Just an endless, devouring matte black.

  "You are troubled, Captain," the Emperor said. The lips moved a fraction of a second after the words began.

  "The silence, my lord," Sade said. He chose his words with the care of a man walking on a blade. "The palace grows anxious. Rumors spread like rot."

  "Let them spread," the Emperor said. "Fear is a form of worship."

  Sade frowned. It was a phrase the Emperor might have used, but the context was wrong. The Emperor he had served for fifteen years believed in order, not fear. He believed in the Binding as a shield, not a weapon.

  Sade decided to test the ice.

  "It reminds me of the Week of Ash," Sade said, improvising a memory. "Five years ago. When you fasted for the rains in the north. You forbade the guards from entering then, too."

  There was no Week of Ash. Five years ago, the Emperor had been feasting the Swahili ambassadors.

  The Emperor stared at him. The silence stretched, elastic and thin.

  "Yes," the Emperor said softly. "The rains were heavy that year. The sacrifice was necessary."

  Sade felt his blood turn to slush.

  The thing on the throne did not know. It had access to the Emperor’s voice, perhaps his power, but not his memory. Or perhaps it simply did not care enough to distinguish between truth and a lie.

  "Come closer, Sade," the Emperor said.

  Sade took a step forward. Every instinct screamed at him to run. To draw his sword and strike the thing wearing his master’s skin. But he knew, with the certainty of a soldier, that he would be dead before the steel cleared the scabbard.

  "You have been loyal," the Emperor said. "Fifteen years. A foundling with a Griffin bond. A miracle."

  "I serve the throne."

  "You serve the structure," the Emperor corrected. "You serve the idea of order. That is why the Griffin chose you. Because you fear chaos more than death."

  The Emperor smiled.

  It was not a human smile. It was too wide. It stretched the skin of his face until it grew translucent. It was a smile that understood anatomy but not emotion.

  "But order changes, Sade. The Binding... chafes. It is an old bandage on a wound that has already healed."

  "My lord?"

  "I have a task for you." The Emperor leaned forward. The movement was a lurch, like a puppet whose strings had been jerked. "You are observant. You see what others do not. You see the cracks."

  Sade said nothing. He could not breathe.

  "Go to ?do," the Emperor commanded. "House ?ba grows bold. They seek to bind the Iron Hills. Go to them. Watch them. Report their intentions."

  "To ?do, Your Majesty? But my place is here—"

  "Your place is where I put you," the voice snapped. The stone walls seemed to vibrate. "Leave Abuja. Ride south. Do not return until you know the heart of the Leopard."

  The Emperor leaned back. The terrible smile vanished as if a switch had been flipped, leaving the face blank and smooth.

  "Go, Sade. Before I decide you are no longer useful."

  Sade bowed. He backed away, step by agonizing step, never turning his back on the dais. When he reached the doors, he turned and pushed them open.

  He walked out into the corridor. The guards were still there, still motionless.

  Sade kept walking. He passed the Gallery of Heroes. He passed the barracks. He did not run, though his legs trembled. He walked with the precise, clipped gait of a captain on a mission.

  He reached the stables. His hands shook as he saddled his horse, a grey stallion bred for the mountains. He packed only what was in his saddlebags: a map, a water skin, a few strips of dried meat.

  He was fleeing. He knew it. The mission to ?do was a pretext. The thing on the throne knew that Sade had seen the truth. It was sending him away to die, or perhaps it simply wanted him gone while it finished whatever it had begun.

  As he rode through the massive stone archway of the main gate, Sade looked back at the palace.

  The sun was high, beating down on the red stone. But in the high window of the Emperor’s sanctum, there was a shadow. It stood against the light, watching him go.

  Sade squinted. The Griffin bond sharpened his vision, magnifying the image a hundred times.

  He saw the Emperor’s silhouette. But the shadow it cast on the wall behind it was wrong. It was not the shadow of a man. It was a mass of writhing limbs, of pincers and fluid shapes that defied geometry. It was a shadow from the spaces between the stars.

  Sade dug his spurs into the stallion’s flanks.

  He rode south, toward the jungle, toward ?do. The capital was lost. The Emperor was dead. And something vast and hungry was wearing the empire like a suit of clothes.

  He needed allies. He needed someone who would believe the impossible.

  He rode for the city of the Leopard, praying that the monsters there were at least human.