“Etherium Plantation?” she asked, glancing at the professor.
“A huge industrial complex where they acquire and process etherea from the Preserve. Er, Blackveil.”
Karigan shuddered, thinking about what effect tainted etherea from Blackveil had on those exposed to it, filtered or not. She did not believe it could be purified.
“Mornhavon must revel in it,” she muttered.
The professor gave her a sideways look. “Eh? Who?”
“Mornhavon—the emperor.”
The professor gazed at her aghast. “My dear girl, Mornhavon the Black is long gone. He is not our emperor.”
It was Karigan’s turn to be taken aback. “He’s . . . I’ve believed . . . If he is not the emperor, then who is?”
The professor flipped the pages of the atlas to the very front of the book where the portrait of a man, framed by the sigil of the dragon with its tail wrapped around its neck, occupied a full page. It looked as if a child had scribbled on the picture, adding a large curling mustache to the man’s upper lip and giving him a pointy beard and very shaggy eyebrows.
“Arhys,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You can see why I can’t have this copy in the house’s library. If the wrong person saw this image of the emperor defaced, if even by an innocent child, there could be unspeakable consequences.”
A sick feeling bubbled in Karigan’s belly as she gazed at the picture, for even with the childish scribbles partially obscuring the man’s image, he looked familiar, his well-chiseled cheeks and chin, his dark hair swept away from his face, and the gray eyes staring out from the page. When she realized who the picture depicted, she gasped.
THE SEA KING REBORN
“It was not the Arcosians who conquered all the lands,” the professor said, “but the return of the sea kings. I apologize if I misled you.”
This had to be some dream, or even a joke, but to Karigan, the professor looked all too serious as he regarded her with a twitch of his mustache.
She glanced back at the portrait, and there it was in fine script beneath his picture, his name: His Excellency Xandis I, Supreme Emperor.
Unable to contain herself, she blurted, “What in five hells is he doing here?”
Her voice echoed across the expanse of the mill floor, and the professor glanced around fearfully as if expecting someone or something to leap out of the shadows.
“You . . . you know the emperor?”
“I know him not as an emperor, but as a minor aristocrat distantly related to the king. A very irritating man.”
“I—I beg your pardon?” Clearly the professor had never heard anyone speak about his all-powerful emperor in such a way before.
“Xandis Pierce Amberhill,” she muttered.
“Yes, that is his name in full,” the professor replied with a puzzled expression.
“But is it really him?” Karigan mused. “He’d have died by now.” And then a mad laugh burbled out—she shouldn’t be here either, so why not him, too? But how? He had been nowhere near the looking mask when it broke, nowhere near Blackveil for all she knew.
“He is, er, undying,” the professor said.
“Undying?”
“The etherea. One would assume that the rumors about him learning how to prolong his life are correct.”
“Could it be a descendent?” Karigan murmured.
The professor shook his head. “Any offspring he’s begotten has been slain to prevent competition for his throne.”
It had to be the same Amberhill. She would know his face anywhere. She’d also seen stranger things during her time as a Green Rider, so why not an eternally lived Amberhill who was emperor of all the lands? She took one last look at the portrait, at Amberhill’s expression of smug self-confidence, even with the childish scribbles on his face, and she stumbled back to her chair, falling heavily into it and pressing her hand against her forehead. And she laughed some more. She could not help laughing. The professor watched her aghast.
Lord Amberhill, the annoying, arrogant aristocrat . . . But really, how much had she known about him? She knew he’d attempted to rescue Lady Estora when she was abducted by Mirwellian thugs working on behalf of Second Empire. He’d ended up helping Karigan, allowing her to escape from those very same thugs. He had seemed to know something about her special ability and had always taunted her about being the “vanishing lady.” Before she had left on the Blackveil expedition, she’d heard something about him leaving Sacor City, but not why or where he was going. She didn’t really care at the time. The last she’d seen of him was at the king’s masquerade ball, and he’d been full of his usual swagger.
How had he come to dominate Sacoridia and build an empire? Why had he chosen to oppress his own people and revive slavery? If he were the conqueror, that meant he was responsible for the death of King Zachary and probably most of her friends, as well. Her laughter ended abruptly and was replaced by a burning anger.
“How?” she demanded. “How did he become emperor?”
The professor, who had been gazing at her in incredulity, clasped his hands once more behind his back.
“He is the Sea King Reborn. He commanded the weapons that destroyed the Old City and caused the fall of all these nations.”
“Sea King Reborn? Amberhill? The sea kings are old history, gone a long time. Why would he think himself one?”
The professor shrugged. “I dedicated the first decade of my archeological research to the sea kings, trying to discover the answers to this and many other mysteries, and found almost nothing. Very few artifacts remain. Why the emperor should fancy himself the Sea King Reborn, I never discovered, but he had the power behind him. I was hoping by redirecting my research to more recent times in the ruins of the Old City that I could learn more, especially about these weapons he commanded and how they might be counteracted. With that power in our hands, we might be able to reclaim our sovereignty, our heritage.”