Free Phoenix Rising by Jason K. Lewis

think he is a threat.”
    Conlan shook his head and smiled ruefully. “I am telling you, you didn’t see it. The man is a killer.”
    Villius shrugged. “I will take your word for it, sir.” He turned to Metrotis. “The general also wants Father Conlan to meet our other guest while he is here, if you please, Master Metrotis.”  
    Metrotis wondered if his subjects were going to become exhibits to be shown to all and sundry. “Oh, very well. Optuss, stay.” He led the men out of the room, leaving Optuss lying on the cot. The housemen closed and bolted the door behind them.  
    Some ten paces down the hall he stopped outside the room occupied by Wulf. “You will find this one not half as pleasant, I am afraid.” He opened the door and ushered the men in. “Don’t step over the line on the floor. We are not quite sure if he is house trained yet.”  
    Conlan stopped dead as they entered the room, well short of the safety line, his face a sudden mask of rage.
    “Oh, no. Don’t tell me…” Metrotis gave a small smirk. “You know Wulf as well?”
    Wulf looked up, a feral grin on his face. “Hallo Metrotis,” he said in a thick, guttural accent. He looked curiously at the newcomers.
    A long silence followed. Villius broke the quiet.
    “Father Conlan? How do you know this man?”
    Conlan seemed to force the words from unwilling lungs. “That’s the whore-son that killed Father Yovas.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
Ellasand

    FELIX ELLASAND RAN A brush slowly through her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. It was a routine that she had followed since she was a child and she found it, in many ways, the most relaxing part of any day.  
    Her reflection revealed the years had been kind. At fifty, she could still pass for much younger. Only the occasional grey hair marred the illusion. Martius had always maintained that she was the most beautiful woman in the Empire. Ellasand wondered if that was ever the case.
    She tutted at her own vanity and turned away from the mirror in disgust. In truth, her moon bleed had started to stutter, just as her mother had told her it would. Ellasand found her temper frayed more as she got older. Only the other day, Elissa had almost driven her to despair with her incessant talk of a young noble she had met at court.  
    “What has happened to me?” she muttered to herself, a habit she was becoming acquainted with as the years passed and one that Martius found particularly amusing.  
    She stood, moved to her bed and perched on its edge. The book she had been reading lay on the sheets. She picked it up now and absently thumbed through to the page she had marked by folding the corner. Books and learning had increasingly become her escape over the years. To a certain extent, it had always been so. Now, even as her ageing eyes began to betray her, she found she was rarely without one.  
    It was a good book, Ellasand judged. A short treatise on the role of ballistic weapons in the modern legionary army by Martius’s brilliant young nephew, Metrotis. He made a good argument for the mechanical monstrosities being the future of modern warfare and showed, through the use of diagrams and pictures in his own clear and artistic hand, how these could be built to be more effective.  
    She read for some time, fascinated by the young scientist’s understanding of engineering. Metrotis seemed such a gentle soul and she wondered if he really comprehended the destructive horror of the machines he had developed. Finally, as the candles in the room began to burn low, Ellasand sighed, put the tome down and returned her gaze to the mirror.  
    The sound of song drifted up from below. Glacis, the cook, was singing as she often did in the evening. Tonight she chose an ancient hymn, ‘the choice of Terran’. Her rich, melodic tones penetrated the creeping dusk, keeping the night at bay, it seemed, for a moment longer.
    Martius loved her, of that Ellasand was sure, but she wondered how long that love would