by Matthew Ward
Tesni bowed, her armour rustling. “Thank you, my Empress.”
“Wait, please. They need only a signature.” Returning to the desk, she armed herself with quill and blotter. Most days, a poor substitute for sword and shield, but not today. “Magister Savra seeks profit by the law. Now he’ll see it from the other side.”
A scritch of the pen, and it was done. Disappointing that a man she’d personally appointed had misused his office, but he was one among dozens. And now, a magistrate no more.
Tesni frowned. “Forgiveness, Empress, but is this so important?”
“You think I’m wasting my time?”
“No, Empress.”
Melanna shook her head at the unconvincing reply. “I know this is a small thing. But even in unhappy times, small things count. They make the world better, even if only by an inch.” She stared off across the room. “It’s a notion alien to my royal cousins. They see only how the Empire may serve them. Do you think me mad?”
“No, Empress.”
Tesni’s second reply convinced no more than the first. Melanna silently forgave her and busied herself with sealing wax. For generations, Immortals had enjoyed the privilege of reflected authority, elevated by royal service. That too was fading as the nature of Imperial power grew more diffuse. Tesni, denied the right to an Immortal’s scales for so long by the misfortune of being born a woman, perhaps felt as one might when arriving at a banquet only to discover the choicest offerings already devoured.
A press of the signet ring – her father’s owl, it would always be his, even though it was now hers – and the task was done. “See that this is delivered to Vindicator Javeri before noon.”
Tesni took the letter and withdrew, and Melanna was again left alone with her papers. Score upon score of small things to be attended, and the course of Empire improved, inch by inch. Better for her sanity that it was so, for larger events were spiralling into civil war. Worse, she was alone. Ashana forbidden to her. Aeldran gone. Haldrane and Apara had both deceived her, if by differing degrees, and would likely do so again. Oh, servants and courtiers and Immortals all remained and would serve until their dying breath, but it wasn’t the same.
Despite the hour, she found herself nodding, the black squiggles of ink dancing in and out of focus. Too many nights broken by worry. Too many days drowning beneath it.
Melanna touched her eyes closed. Just for a moment, but that moment stretched out into indulgence. So much simpler in the darkness. So much quieter.
As she dozed in and out, a new scent graced her nostrils. The sweet, musky fragrance of springtime and fresh blooms, undercut by a heady, indescribable yearning. Bright blossoms in the dark.
The scent of Fellhallow.
She started awake into a room overrun with briar and black roses. The door was lost beneath a curtain of vines; the garden window at full hinge, the drapes rippling in the breeze. Melanna sprang to her feet, scattering papers onto a floor drowning in autumn leaves.
“Guards!”
What she’d meant as shout emerged as wheeze, her lungs overcome by Fellhallow’s heady perfume. The same perfume that saw young gallants lured beneath the forest’s treacherous eaves by Jack’s beguiling, thorn-wreathed daughters.
{{Hush.}} Jack’s voice crackled at her shoulder. Air turned damp and musky with his presence. His angular, jagged shadow bled across the floor, raising gooseflesh where it touched her skin. A gnarled, woody finger brushed her cheek. {{Beset on all sides. Abandoned by your allies. No one else loves you. Only I.}}
Heart racing, Melanna spun around. “How are you here? I burned the wood!”
Jack’s rustling laughter filled every corner of the room. {{The forest always returns.}}
He reached to embrace her, green eyes blazing in the scarred mask, ragged cloak outspread.
Melanna’s trembling fingers snatched a poker from the fire. “Guards!”
Darkness swallowed her up.
She struck the floor with enough force to jar every bone in her body, a gasping cry spilling free. Disoriented and sore, Melanna dragged herself to a sitting position, eyes darting. No vines. No briars. The papers she’d thought disturbed sitting in a stack upon the desk. The windows closed.
A dream. It had all been a dream.
The door burst inward. The room filled with golden scales.
“Empress!” Tavar Rasha stooped, his grey beard scarcely concealing a frown. “Are you hurt?”
“My pride alone,” she replied, thick with chagrin. How foolish she must have seemed.
And yet…
The scent lingered, or something like to it. Soft. Tantalising. Intoxicating.
With Rasha’s help, she stood. Something crunched beneath her foot. A dry, golden leaf, long out of season.
Ignoring the jasaldar’s restraining hand, she strode to the window and stared out across the gardens. In the middle distance, beyond topiarised hedges and lawns bereft of snow, the soot-blackened timbers of the old wood were thick with green shoots.
Astridas, 9th Day of Dawntithe
The covetous embrace treachery for a handful of coins, the generous for the greater good, the righteous out of principle, and the wicked because they know no other way.
Suspect everyone, and you will not be disappointed.
attributed to Rashat Tirane, prior to his brother’s untimely death
Thirty-Nine
Akamha stared out in the grey noon, resentful at a fate that had assigned him to Triumphal Gate on the coldest day of the newborn year. The snow had melted but hissing rain bestowed its chill through oft-patched furs and faded silks. The barbican guard house lay close enough to scent tantalising woodsmoke. But duty was duty, especially on Triumphal Gate.
Beneath the rampart, the flagstones of the Golden Way rippled south, broad and arrow-straight through the sodden fields beyond Tregard’s dizzying walls. The road upon which Alfric Saran had first entered the city and claimed it for Empire.
Little of the original wall still stood, replaced stone by stone by a man determined to erase the city’s Tressian heritage. Triumphal Gate was the road by which emperors returned in victory or defeat. Those same emperors and many more watched over it in death, from gilded statues thrice Akamha’s own height. Attire reflected the afterlife to which they were held to have departed: jewelled robes for the quietude of Evermoon, bird-helmed equerries’ hunting garb for sombre Eventide. To stand sentinel atop the parapet was to stand with the emperors of old. A rare and honourable duty when the sun shone and the whorling silver let into sandstone gleamed like a thing alive.
Not so much in the rain.
He halted beside the unlit ghostfire brazier and envied its sloping roof, far more effective at fending off the rain than his own sodden cloak. It and the many thousands of others scattered through Tregard’s streets looked out of place, dark and functional where so much else in the city was pale and beautiful. But Akamha understood. He’d been in the Emperor’s vanguard at the Rappadan, when revenants had come wailing out of the mists. If ugliness held back the Raven’s servants and the dead when dusk fell, he welcomed it.
“A quiet day.” Cadaman, havildar of the watch, nodded greeting as he reached Akamha’s side. “Nothing good comes of quiet days.”
Akamha stared down at the sparsely occupied roadway. A handful of wagons. Two dozen riders. A single shuffling column of villagers, wrapped tight and heads lowered against the rain. The distance, stolen by murk, offered little beyond the broad-shouldered statue of Kai Saran – the latest and loneliest of the road’s guardians, for he’d no mirror on the western side to keep him company.
It had been worse at dawn and would be again at dusk, the broad archway queued solid for a half-mile. But with market well underway, it was hardly unusual for things to be so lifeless.
He shook his head. “The Goddess owes us some quiet.”
“Ashana owes us nothing.” Disapproval shone through Cadaman’s careful speech. A gloved palm pressed against his leather breastplate, and the moon pendant wo
rn beneath. “We earned this.”
No mistaking the rebuke. There was status to guarding Triumphal Gate, if not as much as wearing an Immortal’s scales. Marked them out as more than tithed men, whose spears paid a chieftain’s debt of service.
Akamha set his back to the parapet and stared across the smoke-wreathed, jumbled streets to the golden smudge of the Imperial Palace. “How did the Empress earn that? She’s lost every war she’s ever fought.”
Cadaman scowled. “Hush. Never know when an icularis might be listening.”
Akamha swallowed. The glance left and right along the parapet came as hurried instinct. No one in sight but his fellow sentinels, for all that proved. “All I mean is it’d do her good to stand a watch in the rain.”
The older man shook his head. “She did.”
“Very amusing.”
“Then it’s Jasaldar Tarbarit’s joke. Says she held watch right where you’re standing, two winters back – all the way through the close of the year. All very secret. Tarbarit found out by accident.” Cadaman grinned. “Took a liking to her smile and, on the last day of her stint, followed her halfway across the city, looking for the courage to make something of it. The sight of her falling into the company of Immortals near carried him off to the Raven. Spent days fretting about everything he’d said and done in her presence.”
Akamha grunted, unable to picture her staid Imperial majesty offering a smile, and adopted a gruff imitation of the jasaldar’s voice. “Wasn’t a spear-maid rejected me, but the Empress herself.” He spoke normally once more. “Makes a good story.”
“I believe it. My Arina says she saw her in the marketplace just yesterday. No finery, few guards, and the princessa trailing along behind.” He shrugged. “Others have claimed similar.”
“Why would the Empress do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” he conceded. “Her father never did, nor his father.”
“Perhaps she’s mad. Perhaps—”
A warning cry rang out further along the wall. Grey shapes gathered in the distance where sparse light yielded to rain’s shroud. A rank of horsemen, advancing knee to knee along the Golden Way. The rank became a column. A hundred. Two hundred. Thousands, with spears close behind.
Now the cold came from within, not without. “Prince Aeldran’s army?”
“They’d ride with banners unfurled, even in this,” Cadaman bit out.
And there’d have been warning. Consort or no, tradition had to be obeyed, and no army set foot in Tregard without the throne’s blessing. But even if the riders came with malice there’d have been warning from the sentinel posts along the road. That there hadn’t been…
Trumpets blared. The leading riders quickened to a gallop. Those caught before them on the road broke apart and scrambled clear. The first shields came close enough for recognition. The Redsigor stag on its rust-covered field. One man, too slow, vanished beneath hooves.
Along the wall, another sentinel hauled on a watch-bell’s cord. Chimes tolled warning high above the barbican. The rampart shuddered with the first rumbling groan of the gate mechanism; running feet on treacherous stairs as archers exchanged the warmth of the barracks for the outer air.
“This is madness,” breathed Akamha.
Cadaman stared at the approaching horsemen. “Better theirs than ours. The gate will be sealed long before they get here. Foolish way to die.” He jerked a thumb back towards the barbican. “Find the jasaldar. You know how he is about surprises.”
“Yes, savir.”
Akamha ran for the barbican.
The clock, as dilapidated as everything in the squalid house, chimed noon. Cardivan raised his glass to the south in silent toast and took a mouthful of tarakeet. Early in the day to indulge one’s vices, but bravery should always be recognised. And there’d be courage at Triumphal Gate soon enough… even if not all of it was harnessed to a fit and proper cause.
Brackar entered without knocking, a habit forgiven for faithful service. Arrayed in a champion’s golden finery for the first time since they’d arrived in Tregard weeks before, he offered a low bow. “Haldrane just passed the front gate. He’s not alone. Should we hold him?”
Most men would have hesitated to suggest violence against the spymaster, much less offer to initiate it. But then, Brackar wasn’t most men. A benefit of recruiting from places others did not. In Brackar’s case, the jails of Tamrakash, and with the oft-broken nose to prove it. What he lacked in refinement he compensated for with unflagging loyalty. And, of course, a talent for focused violence. Naturally, Thirava disliked him. Considered him a brute unfit for a monarch’s favour.
But Thirava had lessons to learn in the coming days – his proper place, among them.
Cardivan shook his head. “Let him come. Let them all come. Enjoy the moment.”
Innate caution overwhelmed a frisson of delight as Brackar withdrew. No matter how carefully laid, plans could still go awry.
But where to receive his guest? From the chair in the raised bay window? Yes. That would do nicely. It would force all to look up, and render Cardivan himself in pleasing silhouette. For all that Ashana had her uses, what happened in the shadows was ever more powerful than the light.
But even as Cardivan took his place before the lace curtains, doubt assailed his heart. Even though all that could have been done had been done, there was always the possibility he’d fallen prey to arrogance. That the pieces he’d set into motion across the board would move in a manner other than the one he’d decreed. That was always the danger. Especially when opposed by a man like Haldrane, in whom ignorance – or the mere appearance of the same – shared uncanny likeness.
He took another gulp of tarakeet. The hot, sweet rush of liquor settled his nerves.
Too late for doubts. Enjoy the moment.
Haldrane burst into the room, a half-dozen city wardens and two robed and hooded icularis at his back. All were armed. Brackar hadn’t mentioned that, but it wasn’t unexpected. Brackar’s own presence was inevitable – as was him taking up position, at his master’s side – but no other of Cardivan’s men entered the room. That spoke of more wardens outside and prisoners taken. Haldrane was little given to half measures.
“Cardivan Tirane.” There was no friendliness in Haldrane’s voice, but even now the words held a hint of sour glee. He, too, was enjoying the moment. One of them was deceived. But which? “In the name of the Empress, you’ll accompany me to the palace for what I’m sure will be a brief imprisonment and overdue execution.”
“On what grounds?”
“Your son leads an army against the city,” said Haldrane. “Your doing, I believe.”
Even now he distanced himself from conspiracy. After so many years a deceiver, did the man even know whose cause he served?
“I’m sure what I claim will be of no account.” Bitterness came easily. Cardivan had supped of it long enough to savour the taste. “Do I take it that you’ve reneged on your promise to ensure Triumphal Gate stands open in greeting?”
Haldrane drew back his hood and offered a sly smile. “I recall no such promise. The men you sent to open the gate met with unfortunate accidents before dawn. And here you stand, trapped within the city while your son lays siege? Unfortunate.”
Cardivan hung his head, hiding the emotion of the moment. “Why, Haldrane? You and I could have made this Empire great once more. The Empress is weak.”
Haldrane stepped closer, palm resting on the sword at his waist. “The Empress wearies of bloodshed. It’s the only reason you’re still alive. You had to be tempted to audacity. Arrogance is more dangerous than a sword, my king. But it kills far slower. I’ll see to it.”
“Arrogance. Where would we be without it? Nothing else drives men so readily to ruin and rule.”
Haldrane spread his hands. “The Gwyraya Hadar will tolerate much from their own, but to move openly against the throne, without issuing challenge? None will stand with you now.”
Cardivan sighed. “You’re a cl
ever man, Haldrane. Perhaps the cleverest.” Raising his head, he met the other’s dark gaze, and at last set free the grin that had been building since the first chime of bells. “But I don’t think you’re clever enough.”
The gate mechanism, loud even over the clamour of bells and shouts, went silent in the same moment Akamha wrenched open the barbican trapdoor, the distinctive rumble of pulleys and gears fading away.
He shinned down the ladder, landing awkwardly in the outer guard post.
Empty. No sign of life between the simple hearth and the rows of bunks. Not even Melindri, who could always be relied upon to answer any summons behind everyone else.
“Jasaldar?”
Strike of hooves challenged chiming bells. Akamha glanced through an arrowslit. The riders were almost at the walls. Arrows whistled and holes appeared in the column, motes among a dust storm come to sweep into the city. But the gate would hold them.
As Akamha turned, a dark trail caught his eye. He sifted a scent from the air he should have noticed from the first. Blood. Leading towards the winding room door. The manner of trail heels might make when a body was dragged.
As he crossed to the winding room door, the gate’s silence took on new meaning. A full half-minute for the mechanism to do its work. How long since he’d left the parapet?
Akamha drew his sword and wrenched open the door.
The winding room occupied the remainder of that floor, a broad high-ceiling space easily four times the size of Akamha’s tiny house in Tregard’s Old Quarter. The gate’s mechanisms filled much of that scaffolded space, a web of pulleys, counterweights and gears that came and went through floor and ceiling like the threads of some vast, intricate loom. What little space remained was full of the living and the dead.
The dead, with the pallor of fresh corpses. Melindri. Kovir. Others. All with gaping red ruin at the throat. The living, an even dozen in a mix of sentinel’s garb and travellers’ cloth, with naked blades in hand and hooded, unfriendly eyes. A slash of a sword, and a counterweight plunged into the darkness below. An unnecessary flourish to gears jammed tight with spar and steel.