I’m three feet away and utterly powerless when Gal emp-Umber becomes a hero in my hero’s eyes.
* * *
—
A half hour later, I’m sitting in front of the door to Iral’s office with the sensation of a Viper nose-dive tugging at my stomach. When the meeting was adjourned, Gal got caught up in a tide of praise from the senior staff, and I ducked out of his periphery. With all of them focused on shaking his hand, it was easy to slip away unnoticed.
The guilt struck not long after. I should have told Gal I was coming here. Should have made sure he was okay with me leaving him alone in a room full of seasoned Archon leadership. But in the moment, it seemed too important to flag Iral down, and the general disappeared before I could get to him. So I headed to his office and slumped against the wall, trying to tamp down the frantic pounding of my heartbeat that hasn’t stopped since the moment I spotted Gal’s little smirk.
A door opens down the hall, and I’m on my feet in a blink.
“Ettian?” Iral asks.
“Sir,” I say, the word coming out cracked and sudden. “I wanted to talk.”
He nods. There might be a smile in the edges of his lips, but he’s carved of stone and nigh impossible to read. “And I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”
My heart lurches against my ribs. He’s your con’s mark, I remind myself. He’s not the Shield of Archon. He’s not the man you idolized back when you still had hope for the empire. He’s the man who will kill Gal if you slip up, so don’t you dare slip.
“I was wondering if—” I start. But before I can get the rest of my question out, General Iral swipes his badge and opens his office door, and the words collapse in my mouth.
Iral crosses the room and settles behind his massive, stately desk. He pulls up its interface and begins tugging information from his datapad onto the display. The desk’s surface is clear, but the walls behind it make up for the neatness tenfold. I take a hesitant step forward as my eyes sweep back and forth over the chaos, recognizing things here and there. Platinum medals and pins, some framed, others hanging on hooks. Ceremonial chains and garb, the formal uniform Iral would have worn at public functions. Printed photos. A battered pilot helmet with mission stickers papering it that pre-date the Umber War of Expansion. A twenty-year-old flight suit, the emerald on its patches faded and the left sleeve torn and burned.
Iral catches me staring at it and wordlessly pulls up his uniform cuff to bare matching scars on his forearm. “I was fresh out of flight school, flying supply carriers on a borderworld campaign. Got shot down by rebel raiders, had to land the ship while half of the cockpit was on fire.”
“Oh, I know,” I blurt, drawing up the courage to step all the way into the room. Only then I see it. Standing straight-backed in the corner, polished to perfection. I freeze, nearly choking on my next breath. “That’s…But that’s…”
“A knight’s powersuit,” Iral confirms, and for the first time I hear his bold voice waver.
I move toward it with heavy limbs, feeling like I’m in a trance. It stands a good head higher than me, human-shaped—but promising so much more than that. It’s crafted from the most advanced alloys the Archon Empire ever produced at its peak and wired with tech Umber could only dream of, all put together in a sleek carapace that shows both the nicks and dents of something worn and the proud shine of something loved. “I thought they were all destroyed at Knightfall.”
“So does the empress.” Iral lets out a low chuckle.
“This wasn’t supposed to survive,” I croak, turning my burning eyes toward Iral. “None of this was supposed to survive.” You weren’t supposed to survive. We weren’t supposed to survive. Too many things are coming dangerously close to the surface. My resolve is crumbling out from beneath my feet. I reach for the suit cautiously, half-expecting my fingers to go through it.
But instead I lay my palm against sturdy, hard-packed tactical weave. Strong enough to catch a bolt with no damage. Light enough that it wouldn’t keep a knight pinned to the ground when they fired their boot and palm thrusters and took to the skies. A beautiful, twisting design, the knight’s personal sigil, is etched at the sternum.
I think I recognize it. “This was Torrance con-Rafe’s, right?” I don’t remember many details about her—only that she was a second child of a continental governor from one of the Archon borderworlds. Rather than challenge her sibling for the right to serve as heir, she chose to train as a knight and eventually earned both her powersuit and the right to protect not just the continent that her bloodright could claim but the Archon Empire as a whole. “Wasn’t she the knight who held up that building?”
“That she was. It was structurally unsound, it started to collapse as Tor—as Rafe was patrolling nearby, and she planted herself like a cornerstone and kept the damn thing upright until everyone inside made it out.”
“Did you see it?” A bitter wash of shame flushes through me as I realize how boyish I sound—like some kid at his parents’ knees, begging for one more knight story before bed.
Iral doesn’t reply right away. I glance back over my shoulder to find his face stricken, his eyes dark and damp, his lips pressed around a grief I’m only just now comprehending the shape of. “I wasn’t on that world at the time. Seemed like I…was never there for her when I needed to be. But I saw the footage from that day.”
“I’m so sorry—” I start, but Iral clears his throat, cutting me off.
“Tor was remarkable not just in her strength and skill with a powersuit, but in her selflessness. Acting for the good of others was so instinctual to her that she never hesitated to jump in where she was needed.”
No wonder Iva emp-Umber decided she had to go. I run my fingers carefully along the support struts and motorized joints that would have turned her into a living weapon. On the battlefield, a suited knight was a devil unleashed. The tech to make these suits was all but destroyed at Knightfall. Nowadays, with Umber dreadnoughts to wage wars, there’s not much point in consolidating this kind of power in a single person.
“I was there at Knightfall,” Iral says, before I can beg him not to. He squares his shoulders and pinches his eyes. “I heard the bombers. The blast. I ran into the wreckage of her headquarters, even as the buildings around us were still crumbling. We only ever found…parts of her. Not enough to bury. But she’d shown me where her vault was, and I was able to recover her powersuit.”
He takes a deep breath, and in the space of it I see him rebuild himself from a shattered lover back into the leader the Archon people needed.
“When I found it, I knew I had a choice to make. To declare the find would paint a fresh target on anyone in proximity. The Umber empress didn’t want to kill just the suited knights—she wanted to kill the idea of them. So instead, I swore my troops to secrecy and put a call up the chain of command. Days later, the Archon imperials themselves reached out.”