Empire of the Sun

Chapter 1

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Maleen was three when the first dragon riders flew over the mountain pass, their scales glittering in the bright morning sun rising over Kechua and all its people.

She was gathering small pebbles buried in the dark soil of the potato fields, practicing her words by giving each white stone a name: sun, moon, milk, bread, mama, papa. To her they shone like jewels, full of meaning and connection. Decades later she would remember those pebbles, and the power that comes from giving names to the world, as she sought out the strength to carry out terrible deeds. But she was only a child then, and jagged words heavy with darkness would not enter her collection for a while longer.

“Zuma said they’d be here in five days’ time.” Her father Tenoch, short and square, long black hair braided down his neck, was squinting at the new stars in the daytime sky.

“Well Zuma was wrong,” answered Cintli, her mother, as she gathered the loose potatoes into her woven basket. “Let’s go home.” She placed her hand on Tenoch’s wide shoulders longer than necessary, knowing what was to come, hoping to memorize the grooves of his muscles, thick as vines. “Maleen, come on xocoy, we need to hurry.”

Her earliest memory is of the empty space left by her father, gone to fight the strange invaders - and gone for good like so many other Kechuan fathers and husbands and sons. Maleen and her mother moved into a small room in her aunt’s wooden house when Tenoch didn’t return. It was an anonymous structure, squeezed between other wooden homes, with short windows and a slight tilt, as if cowering from the ever present dragons cutting circular paths in the Kechuan skies.

During the day they avoided going outside and helped in the shop downstairs, moving boxes of dried plants, seeds, and creams between the basement and the storefront. At night, they slept together on a mat filled with dry hay, which poked here and there through the holes in the worn fabric. It was their own world, small but safe and consistent, protected against the cascading changes taking place beyond the front door.

Maleen’s memories from that time are a blur, bathed in the smell of hay and her mother’s scent - earthy and floral from the plants she handled all day, with a hint of the bitter chocolate she used to crack into small pieces, each a reward for a new Ispanii word Maleen learned correctly. Kechua had been her entire world - the valley, the lush forest at the foot of the tall mountains, the fields of green grass and rows of planted legumes, and the city in the middle of it all. But for two years Maleen never strayed more than a few feet from her aunt’s house.

When she turned five, Maleen and her mother prepared to walk through the threshold into a changed world. Cintli took out her only remaining dress, a long green tunic with white fabric along the hemline and sleeves, carefully stored away years earlier, and Maleen put on a borrowed white shirt and brown trousers from her cousin. Her long black hair was tied back in the new style brought by those that came across the sea, and her dark eyes pleaded for answers as her mother fussed over her outfit. Her mother's dress was made for an earlier Cintli, and now hung on her sharp shoulders like the old shirts draped over the scarecrows standing guard in Kechua's endless verdant fields.

Maleen’s mother clasped her hand tightly as they walked along the narrow streets, hurting her but not enough to cry out. She understood this trip was different, kept her dry mouth closed, focused on calming down her fluttering stomach. They were going to see the governor, Cintli had explained, and ask him to include Maleen in the list of students for the next school cycle. Maleen had heard there was a governor now, knew the word but not its meaning or why it so unbalanced her mother. She was determined to understand its power, and through knowledge control its impact.

Earlier that year the first Ispanii school had been built in Kechua, on the site of the old Temple that smelled of incense and animal blood. They passed in front of it now, and Maleen slowed down to take in the newness of it, a foreign object lodged inside Kechua’s heart. Kechuan schools were open, friendly things, circling a play area - this was built to train, not teach. Every straight line, every square stone spoke of long hours reciting dry laws birthed in faraway Madiir. The wooden walls ended in pointed ends, as if warning the dragons to keep their sharp talons away. Maleen thought it was a determined building. She smiled slightly, pleased to have found a use for the newest word in her collection.

Maleen’s mother tugged at her hand with a force that startled her, urging her to keep up, nervous energy rising through her throat. The streets started getting wider now, with small cobblestones replacing the pounded dirt of their neighborhood. They turned a corner and suddenly the city opened, as if they had just stepped out of one of the many narrow caves dotting the mountains around the valley. They were in a large square plaza surrounded by stone buildings etched with ornate designs, beautiful doors and colorful balconies from which flags and streaming fabric flapped in the light breeze. There were people everywhere, walking across the plaza and along the sides, which Maleen saw were full of shops selling wares she barely recognized out of carefully arranged tables set out in front of their open doors. It was loud, and Kechuans in their brown and gray and green mixed with the bright yellows, reds, oranges, and blues worn by the Ispanii, creating a churning riot of color and movement that dizzied Maleen.

At the head of the plaza stood the governor’s house. It had been the home of the tlaxcalan, Kechua’s ruler, before it was carefully torn down stone by stone, to be rebuilt in the Ispanii fashion. The frieze was still there, its pieces scattered along the new walls as if they were plain stones, the architect either not caring or purposefully ignoring the story of glory and conquest they depicted. They were good at this, the Ispanii, leaving enough of your culture behind to maintain muscle memory while explicitly inserting themselves in its place. We are your tlaxcalan now, the stones seemed to say, so act like nothing’s changed even though everything has. Easier to co-opt than replace. More civilized.

Maleen and her mother, still holding her hand tightly as if afraid she’d be yanked away, entered through the wide open doors into a small dark antechamber. For a moment everything was black, but as her eyes adjusted she saw a thin man, bent over an oversized desk strewn with sheets of yellowing paper. Three separate quills sat inside three separate inkwells on the right side of the desk. On the left, a neat row of stamps created a low wall along the border, containing the sea of yellow paper sheets before they cascaded onto the stone floor. He was an administrii, a word Maleen had learned a few days ago as they were getting ready for the visit.

“Name?” the man asked Maleen’s mother, not bothering to look up from his desk and the hundreds of paper sheets jostling for his attention.

“Cintli Sigwatr,” Cintli said, at first wavering but gathering herself halfway through and ending with a proud declaration of their family name.

“Your husband was Tenoch Sigwatr." It was a question, but spoken as a statement edged with the sharpness of a butchering knife.

“Yes.”

“He was part of the rebel gangs. Attacked our liberating force. Killed a number of our best soldiers, if the records are right. And they are always right.” The Ispanii were known by many names across the peoples and tongues that spanned their dominion - Aux Ispanus, the Empire of the Sun, Dragon Riders, Invaders, White Devils - but all agreed on one thing: they were fastidious bureaucrats. Records, processes, procedures and proper methods formed its particular religion, and the administrii were its unwavering priests.

“I…I know sir, but that was his decision, not mine! I am a loyal servant of Ispanus… I came here to make sure my only daughter entered the new school so she can learn your ways, and be a true citizen of the empire and a loyal subject to the crown.”

At that point Maleen, who had become distracted by the elaborate designs on a guard’s polished metal shield, looked up at her mother. She had heard Cintli muttering to herself back at home, preparing her argument carefully, organizing the words just like she lined up the glass cream jars in neat rows behind the counter every morning. Instead it had all come out at once, words tripping over each other burdened with desperation and angst, her mother left breathless by the end of it.

The administrii paused and looked up. Maleen stared at his black sunken eyes set behind thick glass spectacles rimmed in a dull bronze. She wasn’t sure she understood everything her mother said, but she could feel it was important that this man let them through. She held her breath, trying to guess which way his calculations would land. But she was five, and had no experience with political considerations, personal career decisions, dedication to the fastidiously detailed procedure manuals, annoyance at being behind schedule with a long line out the door, and the increasingly noticeable grumblings from an empty stomach that had skipped lunch.

“If that is so, it is only right and proper that you may prove it. The Empire is merciful and wise, after all,” he said through thin lips and an upturned nose.

They were ushered to the left of the desk by a guard and walked down a small corridor that led them to a long, narrow room. Columns lined the sides and a guard stood in front of each. The air was still and hot, and Maleen had to push through it as they made their way towards the line of fellow Kechuan solicitors in the middle of the room.

The minutes melted slowly and Maleen was starting to fight heavy eyelids when the man in front stepped away and they were at the end of the line, standing in front of the governor. He was leaning back in a tall wooden chair upholstered with red velvet fabric, and a small army of administrii stood around him or sat nearby at desks covered in paper. Even here, at the edge of the eastern reaches of a vast empire, the single-minded desire to count, therefore to organize, and so tame the world was alive in every page and every scratch of black ink.

The governor was a round man with a bored expression etched at birth. He glimmered as the sunlight caught on the threads of gold along the seams of his trousers. His black riding boots absorbed all light, but for a sharp silver point at the toe. His mustard vest strained to close over a pure white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Unruly brown hair, turning gray at the temples, generated small rivers of sweat that made uncertain paths down to his thick neck.

“Cintli Sigwatr, sire, and daughter Maleen,” one of the ashen-faced administrii standing to the governor's side said tiredly as the governor tilted his head towards the sound.

“What does she want?” The governor’s voice was deep and rough around the edges like the skin of Arestia, the green-blue dragon he rode into battle.

“To enroll her daughter in the school.” The administrii cut off Maleen’s mother before she could reply with his efficient delivery of precise information.

“That’s great, great. The more the merrier. So what’s the problem?”

“Her husband, sire, was part of the rebels that greeted your, hmm, liberating forces two years ago.”

“Ah.” He paused and turned to look at Maleen’s mother for the first time.

“Ceentli Sigweter, tell me why I should reward you for treason?” His voice had not changed, as if the threat in his words was clear enough without requiring actual menace to join it.

“Sire,” Maleen’s mother said, as she bowed her head and lowered one knee. “I am here pleading for your mercy and the unending wisdom of the Empire of the Sun, may its light shine brightly across every crevice of the world. What my husband did was foolish, and wrong. Please do not let the sins of a misguided man keep an innocent child from seeing the light and learning how to be a loyal and productive subject in your realm.”

The governor paused again, looked to his right at the thin gray administrii that had introduced them, and shrugged.

“Good enough. Nikol, put her name down for the next class,” he said, as he waved his hand dismissively, making sure Maleen and her mother knew how little he cared either way.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! May the light of the sun shine brightly on all your days!” Maleen’s mother was getting up, tears of joy streaking down as she hugged Maleen and turned to leave.

“Oh, and Nikol? Lock the mother away will you? Wouldn’t want to let little Malin get any ideas. Next!”

Maleen and her mother froze. By the time the impact of his words hit them like a horse kick to the chest, Maleen was already stumbling down the side hallway as a guard pulled her by the hand, and her mother was hanging over a guard’s shoulder as he walked down a set of dark stairs. The last thing Maleen heard her mother say, “Remember who you are! Remember who you are!” echoed up the stone stairs, over the clanging of metal boots on stone floors, through the narrow hallway, and into the nightmares that would be her closest companion for decades to come.

***

The Aptitudes was in two weeks, and Maleen had not slept in days. Not because of the test itself - she had been placed at the top of her class in the first month, a position she had not relinquished in the intervening ten years - but because of its location. They were to prove their worth and gain a coveted assignment in Ispanus’ civil administration, and they were to do so in the main hall of the governor’s house.

Maleen had not left the sturdy walls of the school other than to visit her mother twice a year, under oppressive supervision by two tutors and a guard, for her birthday and the new year. She was being held in a worker’s camp, fed and clothed and kept efficiently alive while she whittled away her fingers weaving shirts and pants for the Ispanii export trade.

On her eighth birthday Maleen realized that without these visits her mother would have died by now, an empty husk left with no reason to be anything or anyone. Every time they had been careful to avoid mentioning the governor or what they lived through in his long, stultifying hall as if they were walking along the edge of a bottomless void, determined to look straight ahead. But in two weeks she’d be standing there and the memories were rushing back in a jumbled mess, spiked with surges that threatened to overwhelm Maleen’s underdeveloped defenses.

The next morning she took care to fold her sheets so the dark oval stain of sweat would not be visible before it dried. As she had done the previous morning, and the one before that. In assembly they were told that they’d be spending the next two weeks at the Academy, where Ispanii citizens sent their children, to study and prepare alongside them. Maleen had never met an Ispanii her age, but she imagined them to be impossibly polite and well spoken, comfortable conversing in multiple languages and knowledgeable about the wider world and all its secrets.

She had read every text available in her school’s meager library, and all had been consistent on one thing: Ispanus was the most civilized, expertly managed, determined and stable empire the world had ever known. Its capital Madiir was legendary for the museums that lined its tree-lined boulevards, filled with the finest art from the four corners of the known world, where the cafes at every corner overflowed with erudite debate over the most advanced philosophies. Maleen craved to drink from that deep river of knowledge, and dreamt of getting a position as an academic researcher in one of the regional universities, studying and cataloging the richness of the world.

On moonless nights when the nightmares were more insistent Maleen would lay awake and pick gingerly at the dissonance of how such a bright, wealthy, civilized empire acted with the darkness she had experienced. It gave her an uncomfortable heaviness in her stomach - a dark fog at the edge of her perception that slipped through her fingers whenever she tried to pin it down. She needed to learn more, to read more, and through that understand more to dissipate the fog, just as she had done so many times before.

She also felt deeply self conscious with her plain brown clothes, her unstyled black hair and dark olive skin. Her brown eyes were just a little too wide, her nose a little too round, and her height a little too tall to fit the Ispanus ideal. Her Ispanii was flawless, she knew, and yet couldn’t help imagining a slight accent that would make it obvious she was but a pauper from a remote province unfit to enter a temple of learning, much less work there.

After packing her few possessions into a knapsack, she joined the others in a single file and walked out the front door, flanked by guards at each side and led by a tutor at the front and the rear. They crossed the street and headed down a side avenue, towards the merchant’s district and the large stone residences of the city’s wealthier residents. After a short walk they were joined by another column, identical to hers, which she assumed had left a school just like the one she had lived in for over a decade. Once they reached their destination - a large marble structure, elegant and set apart from nearby buildings, with Ispanii children playing by the front door - they were led down a side street and entered through a small wooden door, down a short hallway and into a compact room where an administrii was waiting behind his desk.

Each child had their names inscribed in a record book and then handed a small bundle with clean sheets, a white shirt and black pants. Then they were ushered down a long corridor, up a flight of stairs, and shown into their new rooms in pairs. Maleen’s new roommate was to be Julya. They were not friends, but neither were they enemies and they both accepted this new arrangement with the contented resignation that comes from shared knowledge of worse fates avoided.

The next day Maleen and Julya walked down to the main hall, where they ate a light breakfast of buttered bread and juice before being led into a large classroom. The Ispanii children were already there, and turned around as one when the Kechuan students walked in. Maleen, who had not been in a room with more than a handful of people since leaving the governor’s house all those years ago, felt a sudden urge to vomit, but the knot in her stomach was too tight for anything other than a little taste of bile to reach the back of her throat.

“Welcome students. For the next two weeks we will be one class, preparing for the Aptitudes which so well reflect the meritocratic ideal of our beloved civilization. There is no Ispanii or Kechuan in front of the Aptitudes, just knowledge, capability, and skill. Please find an empty seat, we have a lot to get through.” With that, the tutor turned around and started writing on the board at the head of the room.

Maleen turned to Julya for support, but found empty space as her roommate, and every other Kechuan student, quickly stepped forward to find empty desks where no Ispanii student sat. She watched from afar as her feet walked her through the thin rows between the two-person desks, stumbling as she course-corrected when finding a body where there had been empty space moments ago. Finally she found an available seat and sat down, relieved to no longer be standing, exposed and alone.

“Uhh, I don’t think so.” Maleen looked up to see a young man with short blond hair, pale skin, fiery green eyes and the slight stubble of a thin beard haphazardly shaven. His chin was long and pointed and his thin lips were turned down in a haughty disdain that reminded Maleen of her school’s head tutor when he joined them for dinner on new years’ day.

“I…I’m sorry I…it was the only seat…” Maleen stumbled, unable to process his reaction, still unsteady from the wash of adrenaline and the aborted reflex to throw up moments ago.

“I don’t care, find somewhere else to sit. Or stand. Not my concern.”

“Mr. Silanis, is there a problem?” The tutor had turned around and was looking directly at them.

“No problem sir. No problem at all,” he said, with the warm smile of a mountain snake. “I was just introducing myself to my new deskmate.”

“Well, do so quietly next time. Now, who can tell me who the third emperor was, and which provinces he liberated?” The tutor got back on track, scanning the room for any raised hands.

“Listen carefully. I am not your friend, do not cheat off me. I know how you people are experts at that. Do not look at me, do not talk to me, do not sit close to me. Understood?” He whispered through his gritted teeth and Maleen nodded quickly before turning to face the front, concentrating her entire being on the white words the tutor was scratching to life on the black board.

A week passed without incident. Maleen kept to herself and her deskmate behaved as if he was still sitting alone but just chose to line up on the right side out of personal preference. She had heard whispers in the meantime, snatches of conversation plucked out of the jumbled word clouds that formed over the long tables at mealtime. Her deskmate was important, by dint of having an important father. That much she had guessed, if only based on context and the quality of his clothes. More intriguingly, there was an undercurrent of friction whenever he was mentioned, and Maleen got the distinct feeling that she had blindly sat next to someone that was not particularly well liked, although certainly tolerated given his provenance.

One day, as they were waiting for the tutor to arrive, Maleen turned and asked for his name. Her brain caught up with her mouth a few moments later, but by then it was too late and whatever internal debate she would have had about the wisdom of this rash decision would have to wait until bedtime.

He paused for a moment, surprised to see a person where there had only been, to him, empty air a moment ago.

“Uh, Felix. Felix Silanis. The third. Felix Silanis the Third.” By the end he had regained his air of mild annoyance and was ready to go back to ignoring her existence.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Maleen. Maleen Sigwatr.” At that moment, the tutor entered and they both looked forward quickly, her second question dying quietly behind her pressed lips.

Another day passed. The Aptitudes were in five days, and Maleen realized that Felix was convinced he’d get whatever posting he wanted. It could not be due to his performance - it was passable at best in all quantitative subjects, dreadful in spoken and written arts, and only worth mentioning when it came to the physical capabilities set. Which Maleen hated but nevertheless was perfectly adequate at. She assumed the important father was the type of important which allowed dull sons to be awarded bright positions, along with the carefully weaved stories that explained how this advanced the empire’s meritocratic cornerstones.

Proximity had bred complacency, and Maleen asked her second question. “What do you hope for out of the Aptitudes?” She had spoken clearly, so he couldn’t ignore her, but added a softened edge of naivete which she had learned played to the Ispanii predisposition to patronize her, and sometimes meant she could get a response where otherwise silence would have been expected.

“I’m going to be a dragon rider,” Felix said, with a finality that left no room for consideration of the incredible challenge and low probability involved in achieving such a position.

“Oh. I want to be a university researcher. History preferably, or geography.” He hadn’t asked, but she felt it was important to share her own hopes, perhaps as a way to make them just as real as his own.

“That’s boring and useless and weak. All day inside a room with books. What we need is strength. That’s what Father always says, ‘strength is why there’s peace’. I bet your precious university would be burned down in a day if it wasn’t for the dragon riders.” He seemed to have forgotten she didn’t exist, or at least had found himself warming up to the opportunity to educate a mildly annoying barbarian as a charitable act for the week.

“I thought the books that hold the rules that guide the processes that form the approaches that ensure the right actions are taken is why there was peace.” Maleen hadn’t intended to argue, but the memorized phrase slipped out like a fully formed loaf where only flour and water had been before.

“You sound like the governor,” Felix said with a smirk that poorly concealed disgust. “Sure, old Augure maybe wasn’t the most effective administrator - hard to argue with the records - but at least he was strong and knew how to lead. Now we’ve got this keshu lover that spends more time worrying about the sewage under shacks than our wide open frontiers, where who-knows-what is walking in every day unimpeded. Of course my family supports him, in public at least.’ He paused, then remembered to add, “because we are civilized. That’s why we have built an empire and you haven’t.” Felix, now satisfied and getting bored, was not interested in what Maleen may have had to say in response. How could she even have an opinion - this was Ispanus business, and she’d do well to stay out of it.

The Aptitudes came and went with Maleen in a haze. She doesn’t remember her body walking into the governor’s hall, her mouth moving as she answered questions, or her mind wondering if the administrii proctoring the test was sitting in the same red velvet covered chair that had stood in this room ten years ago, or if this was a different, more recent version. All she heard was remember who you are…

Remember who you are

Remember who you are

…bouncing around her head, echoing off the tall columns of the long narrow room.

After the test, they took Maleen and the other Keshua children back to their own school. The familiar stone walls, the smell of the main hall and the sight of her old bedroom brought her back together slowly. She quietly ate dinner with the other students, all talking over each other, still amped up from the day’s events and not yet ready to crash. As soon as she could, she got up, took her plate and utensils to the kitchen, and made her way to her bedroom, where she slept a dreamless sleep for the first time in ten years, seven months, and fourteen days.

The results were posted on the left wall of the main hall the following morning. Maleen made her way through the crush of bodies, haltingly at first and then with her head down pushing forward, resolved to just know, aware of the always-watching tutors posted around the corners of the room.

She was to be an interpreter, assigned to the Third Administrator, Second Class, Sub Agrarian. His job was to walk the fields and tally the crops (the fieldworkers don’t speak Ispanii, and the administrii would rather be caught dead than learn the barbarian tongue). The sheet directed her to report to the Agrarian administrative depot, in the warehouse district a short walk south of the school, at noon.

Feeling an emptiness inside that gave her vertigo, and knowing she would never see her mother again, Maleen went up to her room one last time, filled her knapsack with her two dictionaries, a toothbrush, a change of clothes, and her dog-eared Histories of the Empire of the Sun, and walked out the front door.