Good man, Bren.
Kayle left them be, padding quietly for the roof himself. He didn’t need to kill all of the invaders.
Just the ones threatening his family.
“Everyone back up! This is between us,” Corian ordered, stepping back from Edvard as he swept the attacking blade aside with an almost casual motion, deflecting the emperor’s Armati blade.
Edvard tilted his head, shifting the blade up to a guard position. “Just like old times, then?”
“One last old time.” Corian nodded once, shifting his footing. “Your last.”
“You’ve got one leg, one eye, and you look like you just picked a fight with a freight hauler.” Edvard snorted, eyeing the armed men shifting around them. “And you wonder why we all considered you an arrogant son of a—”
Corian snapped his blade up, slashing at the emperor’s head with lightning speed. Edvard ducked back a half step, letting the blade pass, then countered with a lunge to Corian’s torso.
Corian pivoted, letting the blade pass by him as he turned, using the momentum of his initial strike to speed his turn as he tucked in his blade and stepped past the emperor’s lunging form. He flipped the Armati around in his hand easily and completed the move he started with the initial feint as his blade slid smoothly into Edvard’s back.
Edvard’s hand went limp, his blade dropping to the metal floor with a clatter.
Corian stepped in behind him, propping him up with the blade as he clamped his free hand onto the emperor’s shoulder and spoke softly into his ear.
“I’m not arrogant, Edvard,” he said simply. “I am just that damn good.”
Corian jerked the blade out, letting go of the emperor’s robes, and Edvard dropped to his knees as blood flowed freely and his clothing ran dark and wet with his life’s fluid.
As Edvard Scourwind slumped forward onto his face, Corian looked around the room.
“The emperor is dead. Long live the emperor.”
CHAPTER 6
“There they are! Get them!”
Brennan shoved Lydia ahead of him as they broke out onto the roof, pausing only to slam the door shut behind him and seal it with the palace codes. He hoped that their pursuers didn’t have those same codes, but he knew that he couldn’t count on that.
He pushed off the door and bolted in the direction of the skimmer, hearing pounding on the door behind him as he did so.
“Get strapped in!” he ordered, grabbing the tie lines that secured the skimmer against wind gusts.
Brennan got the ties undone and tossed the lines aside, then grabbed the nose and pulled the light craft about, checking the first cloud layer carefully as he did. He didn’t have time to get proper bearings, so he’d have to get the launch right by dead reckoning everything.
Lydia was struggling with the harness in the backseat of the skimmer, fumbling with the unfamiliar clasp as he twisted the craft around.
“Left over right,” he called, “then flip the catch shut and pull the harness tight.”
The snub-nosed skimmer settled into position as he quickly checked the primer on the launchers and then pulled off the safety catches. With the craft ready to fly, Brennan ran back around to the front and rotated the flyer’s seat in front of his sister, locking it into place.
“Almost ready,” he promised. “I just need to …”
The door behind him burst open, and he looked back with wide eyes as men started running out across the roof.
“I’ve got to clear the end of the strip or we’ll hook up and crash before we get clear!” he said. “As soon as it’s clear … launch the sails!”
“What? Bren, I can’t fly this thing!”
“Yes, you can, and you know it!” he snapped over his shoulder as he ran. “Don’t worry about me—just do it!”
She nodded shakily, not that he could see her as he bolted across the rooftop to the far end where the catch nets were deployed. The nets were intended to keep someone from overshooting the roof, as he’d come close to doing, and crashing down into the courtyard below.
Of course they did require that you approached your landing on the expected trajectory, which Brennan rarely did. He hit the switch to drop the nets just as the first of the men grabbed him. Brennan hit him with an elbow, then kicked out his knee just like in training. As the man went down, Brennan turned and waved wildly to Lydia.
“Go! Go now!”
Lydia had her hands on the secondary controls, and he could see her face as she stared wide-eyed back at him. He knew she’d been scared of flying ever since he’d pulled that idiot stunt when they were younger, but he was still taken back by the stark terror in her face right then.
The distraction cost Brennan as he was tackled to the ground from behind, still yelling at his sister to take off.
He struggled underneath the weight of the man who’d tackled him, but there was no getting loose, and Brennan’s stomach sank into a deep pit as he saw three more men run up to the flyer.
Damn it, Lyd …
With men holding the flyer down and locking the safeties back, there was no way for it to take off. Brennan flinched as he was hauled to his feet, struggling a little, but it was mostly for form since he was outmassed more than twice over and had his arms pinned behind his back.
“Hold still, brat,” the man holding him ordered. “You’re not going anywhere. The new emperor has requested your presence.”
Brennan twisted around. “New emperor? What new emperor? What happened to my father?”
The man just laughed, shoving him forward.
“Move it, kid. Cry about your daddy later.”
The men pulled Lydia from the skimmer kicking and screaming, and roughly pushed her toward Brennan and the rest. The two young teens were shoved together as the men regrouped and checked the rest of the roof.
“Clear, sir.”
“Good,” said the man who seemed to be in charge. “Looks like we got them both. The general will be satisfied.”
“You said something about our father,” Brennan growled. “What happened to him?”
The men glanced at one another and smirked, leaving Brennan with a sick feeling in his stomach.
“Worry about yourself, kid,” the leader said, turning to another of his men. “OK, call for a larger escort. Tell them we have the kids and are coming down from the roof.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brennan kicked out at the man holding him, but didn’t accomplish much other than annoying him. The armsman shook him roughly, growling as he did.
“That’s enough out of you! Come on—get moving.”
The two teens were shoved across the rooftop toward the broken open door they’d come through. Neither of them had any ideas about what they should do next, and fighting didn’t seem like a reasonable option, so they went along without further protest. Brennan’s mind was still caught up trying to work out what they meant when they said that there was a new emperor.
That means father is …
He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, only opening them when he was again shoved forward.
Neither of them, nor even their older brother, had been particularly close to their father, but not even Brennan had ever wished the man dead. He was a distant figure in their lives, who spent more time as the emperor than as their father, but they all had memories of his presence.
Brennan had come to resent the man’s absence. He suspected that both his siblings had as well, though they masked their emotions better. The idea that he could be even more absent had never really occurred to Brennan, and now that it had, the prince felt a coldness inside that he’d never experienced before.