Blood Runner: Book Three of the Empress Saga

SECOND INTERLUDE

     It has been the experience of Your Executor that the warriors of Our Most Revered Defenders possess hitherto unsurpassed proficiency in navigating the deep sands. To Your Executor's deepest reservations, it has been found in the intervening days since previous correspondence with Our Glorious Emperor that individuals in possession of unknown advances in arcane spellcraft have quested further into the deep sands than has been seen of our eastern antagonists. It has been spoken of amongst the Amak'talan leadership that apotheoses have been sensed in distance and direction in accordance with the vicinity of what was once the Imperial City of Shan Alee. In light of these grave findings, Your Executor requests clarification upon the three-thousand and seventy-fourth Canticle of Glory. It is the understanding of Your Executor that treading within the epicenter of Shan Alee's destruction results in immediate and inescapable death, as stated by Our Glorious Emperor in lives past. Upon this point, the Canticles of Glory are absolute, yet it disturbs Your Executor to find empirical evidence that stands in refutation of...

    The brush fell from Ku Ji Min's fingers. They shook and were unable to maintain her delicate grip. She sat motionless in her tent as the brush strands left spatters of ink across the page.

    Refutation. The word itself was blasphemy when directed towards the emperor. Just thinking it placed an aching nausea in her stomach, and she had dared to write it.

    Ji Min snatched at the page and tore it from the book. She crumpled the paper, heedless of the ink stains it left on the sleeves of her white robe. She whispered a holy word of Fire, and the essence obeyed her inner Glory to set the offending page alight. All trace of her blasphemy blackened and turned to ash before even that smoldered into nothing. All, save for what yet lurked in her mind.

    Ji Min had doubt, unthinkable for an executor. This needed to be corrected, because it must have been she who was mistaken. There had to have been an explanation, because the alternative was impossible. The emperor could not be incorrect, because only an imperfect being could be incorrect.

    The spots of black on her sleeves seemed to wail, announcing her impurity of purpose to the world. They stained her robe as her doubt stained her soul. Ji Min rose from her writing desk and scurried to find a clean garment. Not until she was dressed again in pure white and the soiled robe burned did Ji Min emerge from her tent. She'd also burned her book of correspondence, but at least it had been a new one. She wouldn't need to transcribe untarnished passages to another book.

    Sending a book with a missing page to the emperor would be seen as a horrific lapse in her duty. At the least, every Glory she'd earned in her life would be revoked by imperial word. The same would go for missing a day's entry. This, too, would need to be corrected.

    The sun outside her tent was rising to its zenith, dazzling Ji Min's eyes through her veil. It was of paramount importance to never step out of privacy unveiled. Her face bore the likeness of the emperor and the emperors of lives past. Divine by association. None but those who shared in that divine blood had ever looked upon her face.

    She raised an arm to shield herself from the brightness and wished she could similarly protect herself from the anxiety trying to choke the life out of her. A new passage to replace the destroyed one would need to be written before the day's end, one in which she guarded her words more diligently.

    It would be best if she could set down a report that didn't suggest her imperial father was a fraud.

    Ji Min's knees ached as she walked among the Espallan tents within the holdfast. Each slight throb served to remind her that her youth was coming to its end. Pleasant, in its own way. At the end of youth came greater Glory.