Here is where you can take a sneak
peek at things you won’t find in the novel The Empire’s Edge. Cut
scenes, maps, information on the founding of the Houselands structure--whatever
I dig up from background not included in the book.
Deleted scenes: Former prologue
Cochet
Empire, early autumn
Saato
shrugged lower in his fur robe. Winter came earlier every year, and his old
bones hurt. Heat no longer reached the imperial throne, no matter how close the
brazier sat.
He
drew a shallow breath off his pipe. The Nyahm powder burned his throat but
soothed the ache in his joints, and loosed his spirit from his frail body. The
emperor floated separate from himself, observing the carved and lacquered room
screen across from him in minute detail; the way the wood smith had formed
glorious flying serpents, the mountain wyrms. The black polished wood glittered
in the brazier’s light, the shadows flickering, so that he believed each wyrm
in the pattern moved, danced, flew.
Voices
in the hallway brought Saato back to his shell. The heavy wooden door swung
inward on leather hinges that made no sound. War Leader Temsik stood in the
doorway, solid rock in a tide of Saato’s scurrying advisors. After a pause, he
entered and approached the dais.
Saato
waved away his advisors with a simple gesture. They bowed a retreat out the
door. The war leader advanced across the room in sure, even strides. He stopped
at the base of the dais below the throne and dropped an exact bow, low enough
to show respect but without his glittering black eyes leaving Saato’s. His
black silk surcoat swallowed the light so that the embroidered wyrm seemed to
float on his chest, gleaming wings carrying the serpent upward to the heavens.
Temsik’s
deep rumbling voice menaced the air between them, and as always he spoke before
gaining permission.
“My
Emperor, we must move ahead. The southlanders are weak on the border. Now is
the time to take back the mountains.”
“War
Leader, I am still uncertain.” The emperor watched Temsik lower himself into
proper seated position on the scarlet silk floor cushion. “The Rilliands—”
“Have
no regard for our most sacred ways. It has taken fifty years to re-build our
own population, re-build our armies. In that time, the wyrms have all but
disappeared from our empire. The southlanders burrow in the only sure deposits
of guano left. They mine for ore in the home of Sylphanon’s children. Every
year, fewer wyrms return north.”
Saato
coughed; a dry hack familiar to his sore chest muscles. “My advisors tell me
the breeding program goes well.”
“Captive
wyrms. Caged beauties in chains! Domesticated, they are weak. The guano is
weak, the Nyahm will be weak.”
“The
mushrooms would not grow upon bad soil.”
The
graying warrior looked Saato in the eye as no other advisor dared. “Sylphanon
demands his children fill the sky. Nyahm needs the wild wyrms’ fertilizer to be
holy and pure.”
Insolent
pup. Of late, Saato had thought to pass the reins of the empire to one of his
advisors; he had no living children. Temsik stood out, presented himself to
one’s notice better than the others did. Yet Saato held niggling doubt he would
be the proper choice. He fought to drag reason up between his aching ribs and
out of his dry old skull, to refute Temsik’s argument. He could not. “You are
too young to remember the bloody battles fought. The Rilliands are too strong.”
“I
was six, my emperor, I remember the defeat.”
Temsik’s
bitter look reminded Saato the man before him held deep-seated passions for the
empire; passions he himself had given up with the retreat five decades before.
“I
am too tired to pick up the battle again, War Leader. I will be with Sylphanon
soon. I wish to leave our borders at peace.”
His
often-fervent war leader pounced on the words, his tone reasonable. “Then, as
you love Sylphanon, we must make your final act protection of his children in
this world. Allow me to take your warriors straight to the Iron Mountains to
collect the guano that is ours by divine right. The southlanders have no use
for it. The guano is in the way of their ore.”
Saato
coughed again and took another puff on his pipe. Temsik seemed to speak sense.
Yes, they should save the wyrms from dying out. Of course, the caves were
theirs. The Nyahm reached his bloodstream again, and Saato imagined wings in
place of his arms. In his mind, he leapt into the air and rode the wind that
swept the steppes outside, the way the mountain wyrms did so long ago.
Temsik’s
voice cut in. “Send your warriors, Emperor.”
“Yes,”
Saato blinked at the interruption. “You may be right. We should send word to
the Rilliand Crown to let us in to the mines—”
“No!
Your Highness, that would be an invitation to destroy our culture completely!”
Temsik made a chopping gesture in the air. “Fifty years ago you withdrew our
warriors from the border to save our people. We had too few men left.” Temsik
leaned forward. “Now is the time to send our warriors back, across the river
and into the mountains, to save the children of Sylphanon.”
Saato
wasn’t sure Temsik’s way would retain their culture; still, he remembered when
he was a boy the children of Sylphanon flew overhead all summer long. The
slender legless dragons were a sign of abundance, fertility, and their god’s
favor to the Cochet people. Now, to see one at all meant luck. In the past, the
northern portion of Rilliand had been barren wilderness beyond the patrolled
border. Perhaps any conflict would be minimal.
“If
you think that would be best.” Saato coughed again, and took another puff off
his pipe. “Yes, then. For Sylphanon’s children. Take the Iron Mountain caves,
War Leader. Save the breeding grounds.”
Deleted
scenes: Temsik recruites his nephew, Chuan
Chuan
stopped packing and crept to the crack alongside the sleeping-alcove door-hide,
ever wary of his uncle, and listened. Temsik loomed over Chuan’s grandmother,
the low ceiling of the hut emphasizing the bulk of the man’s armor. “Every
able-bodied soldier, Nurimi.”
Nurimi
held her wooden spoon as a weapon, ready to strike her elder brother, her face
set in worried lines. “He is a child.”
“You
were a babe at suck when Father died. You didn’t see what the southlanders
did—”
From
her corner, elderly auntie Tatami clucked. “Your father hanged himself, boy,
and it’s cut the blood to your brain ever since.”
“Quiet,
hag! The emperor named me Wing of Sylphanon. Defy me and you defy our god.”
Tatami
raised a finger, plucking the air at the war Leader. “Your charge is to save
the dragons, not take as many southlanders from this life as you can.”
Temsik
turned back to Nurimi. “Chuan will be sub leader. I offer him safety with
command status. You cannot deny him his duty to Sylphanon.”
“I
have watched you in your duty, brother.” Slapping the wooden spoon back on its
holder by the fire, she re-tied her silver hair with furious, jerky motions.
“Very well. I send Chuan with you to be the good influence you need.”
Temsik
stepped back. “We leave directly. Send him out.” A blast of cold followed in
his wake as he left the sod-sided lodge. Chuan emerged from the sleeping room.
Nurimi
looked at him. Her face softened from frown to worried crinkles. “Would that
your father was here as well. I trust your instincts, as much as I don’t trust
your uncle’s.”
Chuan
stole a taste of the stew cooking over the fire. “I can hold my own,
grandmother.”
“Even
so.” She fussed over him, making sure his satchel was tied properly, tugging
his long, black braid from under the shoulder strap. “He has a vendetta. The
southlanders have left us in peace for two generations. Your uncle trusts you.
He may listen to you. Keep him on the true path.”
Chuan
searched her kind brown eyes. “And if I cannot?”
Nurimi’s
mouth hardened in a line. “The children of Sylphanon must survive. In that, he
is right. But our culture’s survival will take the cooperation of the
southlanders, not their slaughter. You’re a man now. Walk with courage and
thought for others.”
Briefly, he clasped her in a hug.
Waving a farewell to Auntie Tatami, he left the lodge of his boyhood.