Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 7

at the dead girl’s face as he had for so many days.
Before the captain shut the door, he looked back once
more, just in time to see the emperor reach for a cold
and unresponsive hand.

Mikkel saluted. Alliot looked up, eyes blank,
face spangled by the peculiar light of the crypt. He
was young, the beard light and thin against his cheeks.
He looked away from his captain without speaking.

The wizard Harriman stood in the hallway,
head bowed low as if in prayer or meditation. As Mikkel crested the stairs that would take him down and
home, the wizard called, “Did you deliver the leper his
stack of velvet, then?”

“It is done, my emperor,” Mikkel said. “Even
Ivor the leper has been bathed and given a new suit of
clothes.”
“Well done, Captain,” breathed the emperor,
voice empty as a wind. “Everything in the whole land
is perfect now.”

Mikkel paused, foot hovering an inch above
the top step. He didn’t ask how Harriman knew Ivor’s
new suit had been of velvet. “Aye.”

“Yes,” Mikkel agreed. He shifted from one
foot to the other as he wondered what else to say.

“Tell me this,” the wizard called. “If the emperor ordered you to take your sword to that beggar,
would you?”

He thought of the day, so long ago, when his
ruler had tripped over shoelaces he was too small to
tie and bloodied his nose against the floor. All of the
courtiers had looked at the little prince with horror
while the child screamed. What was a nobleman to do
when a child of the Sun started to bleed? Would the
heat of his skin be enough to burn? Mikkel had wondered the same thing in the seconds before he acted.

The captain closed his eyes against his grief. “I
cannot make him want to live, Wizard.”
“No. But you could refuse to help him die.”
Appalled, Mikkel spun to face the slight man
in the voluminous robes. “What would you have me
do? Spurn the orders of the emperor? Can you expect
more defiance of me than you possess yourself?”

The young guard had scooped the prince up
and cleaned the little face with a sleeve, thinking of
his own children as he did so. The heaviness of the
courtier’s eyes on him, the weight of their silence,
made him realize what a grievous error he had committed by daring to touch this child. He set the prince
back down on his feet. One of his fellow guards shifted, then another. They traded uncomfortable looks as
they waited for someone to order him dead. Then the
child turned back to Mikkel, lifting his chubby arms
and grunting to be picked up again. Alliot’s laughter
was taken as a pardon. A month later, Mikkel was
promoted to sergeant.

Harriman did not reply. Instead, he looked at
the wall and swallowed whatever bitter words had
formed in his mouth. Mikkel ambled down a few steps
to put distance between them.
“Do not forget to wear your new clothes.” The
wizard called. “Come dawn, we must all be perfect.
‘Tis the will of the emperor, who is the Son of the
Sun.”
Mikkel fled down the stairs and home. He
lived at the edge of the city, where houses were sparse
and surrounded by untamed woodland. He let his mare
amble along the familiar road at her own pace, hands
slack on the reins. When she stopped to pull at a patch
of clover, Mikkel allowed it. You could refuse to help
him die, Harriman whispered into his thoughts. His
father’s voice argued, He is the Son of the Sun.

Perhaps he should have guessed then that
Alliot was capable of breaking. Perhaps this emperor
was too far removed from the Sun to remember what
it felt like to be a god.
Mikkel bowed to his monarch with his heart
aching and turned to go. Alliot did not react. He stared

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