The Immortal Throne (2016)

by Stella Gemmell

  ‘Farrow,’ she said to the chief of her bodyguard, ‘we are leaving ahead of time.’

  ‘Tonight?’ he asked her, glancing out of a window. She knew he was thinking that the moon was waxing and would offer them good light for night travel.

  She shook her head, for the fear was growing. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘We have no time to waste. We ride immediately.’

  So Valla and Rubin were still fast asleep in the anteroom, dreaming of hot food and soft beds, when Saroyan and her escort rode from the palace and headed for the Araby Gate and their last journey east.

  Leona did not leave the Black Room through the same door as the lord lieutenant, so did not pass through the anteroom, and thus she missed seeing Valla. She would hear of her friend’s return to the City, but she would not see her again until they battled side by side amid the carnage of the Day of Summoning.

  In the following days there was a pregnant atmosphere in the Red Palace, of secrets whispered in dark corners, of plans made and remade in dusty chambers. The mutiny in the Little Opera House had unsettled them all. The Leopard century had existed since time out of mind. It had been named for a feral beast which once stalked the southern mountains, but the animals had been hunted into extinction and now the Leopards were to be expunged from the pages of the City’s history. The swords of the Thousand dripped with the blood of the Thousand and the mood in the barracks and inns where elite warriors gathered was dark.

  What had made Mallet and his comrades rebel against the Vincerii? It would remain a mystery to most. The Leopards were a tight-knit group and Mallet had few friends outside the century. And those who had been his friends were reluctant to admit it. Leona hardly knew the man, but his reputation was of impenetrable loyalty. For a while, until greater events rocked the City, the whispers among the elite were of little else.

  The promotion of a troop of horse soldiers to the Thousand in the Leopards’ place had been met with growls of disapproval. Leona knew Captain Riis, now suddenly promoted to commander of the new Nighthawk century, for they had served together briefly in the Eighteenth Serpentine, which had both cavalry and infantry wings. He was a doughty fighter, but they were all doughty fighters, and Riis had the reputation of a womanizer and a tainted background involving some long-forgotten scandal. Leona did not like the man but she respected Marcellus’ judgement and was willing to work with the horseman if that was the First Lord’s will.

  When dawn rose five days before the Day of Summoning Leona lay in her bed for a while longer than usual looking up at the ice crystals framing the windows. Unlike some of the commanders, she chose a life of comparative austerity. Her chambers were small and spare, her aides few. But she ensured she had a feather mattress and clean sheets on the narrow bed, and this morning she felt a reluctance to leave it.

  An early, heavy snowfall had left the City icebound. The crust of ice on the palace roofs was melting slowly and water dripped from tiles and beams, trickled through cracks in window frames and down walls. A thick miasma of dampness throughout the palace dulled the spirits and made strong soldiers gloomy. Far below, the waters were rising inexorably in the lower levels and had even reached the Hall of Emperors, the entrance to the Immortal’s apartments.

  Leona abandoned the warm bed at last and began to dress for a dull day of administration leading up to the funeral of Petalina, the First Lord’s mistress, which she predicted would be an event of unparalleled hypocrisy. But they were there to do the bidding of Marcellus – and of course the emperor. She slid into thin linen shift and drawers, stout cotton trousers and shirt, then her light armour of leather kilt and jerkin. She plaited her unruly ginger hair into a single fat braid, stepped into her best boots and laced them tightly. She hesitated when it came to her sword-belt. Unlike some of the senior warriors, she saw no point in having a heavy sword clanking at her side all day, catching on table and chair legs, if she was merely to sit and talk. In a gesture towards military preparedness she slipped her old flensing knife, honed to razor sharpness and thin as a quill, into the leather sheath on the outside of her thigh. She glanced at the sword-belt again, then sighed and snatched it up and walked out of her chamber.

  She was very nearly late. The Black Room was loud with the voices of senior soldiers when she got there: other commanders of the Thousand presently in the City and the Vincerii’s various military counsellors including, of course, Boaz. General Boaz, taller than a tree, was formally in charge of the Thousand, though the needs of the brothers and the emperor frequently superseded those duties. Boaz was a legendary warrior, second only to Marcellus himself, but a cruel whim of the gods had now crippled his hands with a painful affliction which rendered him useless as a swordsman.

  Leona nodded to the general, whom she rather liked, and caught Marcellus’ eye as he spoke to his brother Rafe. She thought the First Lord looked tired. A moment of anxiety surprised her. Could even the legendary Marcellus be growing old? Rafael looked as he always did, ‘bright-eyed and bushy-tailed’, as Marcellus would say. It was appropriate, for many of the warriors referred to him, behind their hands, as ‘Marcellus’ hound’. Leona acknowledged other colleagues and seated herself.

  The meeting had already begun when the upstart commander came in and the chamber fell silent for a heartbeat. Riis had brought an aide with him, which was considered gauche by the other chiefs who liked to think of themselves as common soldiers, unaided by other than their trusty swords. Marcellus courteously accepted the younger man but greeted Riis as a friend. It was his way and it clearly charmed the horseman.

  The subject was Petalina’s funeral and its security problems. This scarcely affected Leona and she glanced at Riis, wondering about him. He was tall for a seasoned warrior, for the history of warfare had proved it was the shorter men and women who were most likely to survive years of fighting, other factors being equal. They were lower to the ground, better balanced, and simply less of a target for the enemy. Leona remembered Riis was not a City man; he had been born in some foreign outpost and brought to the City as a boy as hostage for his father’s good behaviour. This was a tradition that had died out in recent decades, and just as well, she thought. Taking an unknown wolf cub into the house was asking for trouble when it grew strong.

  ‘Are you suggesting we not attend the lady’s funeral rites?’ Marcellus was asking Fortance, now leader of the Silver Bears.

  The bearded veteran replied, ‘I would suggest it if I thought that would do any good, lord. No, I’m saying you should be more conscious about presenting an easy target.’

  ‘We are soldiers. We can take care of ourselves,’ said Rafael.

  It was a perennial subject, yet Leona could not help but say, ‘No one doubts that, lord, but Fortance is right. We are only suggesting the two of you attend scheduled events separately.’

  ‘All our lives are scheduled, Leona,’ Marcellus replied. ‘But we will think on what you say.’ He waved a hand to dismiss the warriors and they began to file out. Leona looked at Fortance, who shrugged. They both knew the Vincerii would take no advice on their own safety.

  As they were all leaving the room Marcellus called Riis back. The new commander glanced at Leona as he turned, smiling at her with practised charm. She managed a nod in return. I don’t like you, she thought. And I don’t trust you.

  The little girl held on fearfully to the wooden ladder and peered down into the pit. She couldn’t remember how she got there, or how long she had been there, but her small hands hurt from climbing, and her bare feet were stuck with splinters. The ladder’s rungs were very far apart and each one was a scramble for her, a battle which had to be won over and over. At times she got mixed up, and thought the ladder was horizontal and she was clinging to it like a bluebottle on a ceiling. She would hold on and close her eyes tight and try not to cry.

  Then she was no longer on the ladder but in a dark, smelly place where the water swished around her feet and threatened to climb up her legs. She was afraid of getting her nightdress dirty, s
o she held it up to her knees. But her feet were filthy too and she could no longer feel them. She could see nothing around her except blackness and she called out, very quietly, ‘Mummy!’

  And her mummy was there, at the end of the corridor, calling back to her. The girl ran towards her, trying not to splash her nightie, but her mummy kept drifting away, backing into the darkness, one arm held out towards her. She was wearing a long, white dress too, but the girl could see the dark water was soaking the fine lace and creeping upwards, ever upwards, staining the whiteness to a dirty grey.

  But then a big, white hand came out of the darkness, a white hand with a jewelled ring which glinted in the dreary light, and it snatched her mummy away, quick as a flash, like she was falling down a well.

  Saroyan awoke with a start, her heart thudding in her ribcage, her mouth dry, her body slick with sweat. It was not a dream, but a memory. She had not climbed a wooden ladder, but down a steep stone staircase with high slippery steps, each of which was a challenge to a little girl. And her mother had not been snatched away but had gone of her own accord, and her fate was worse than any child could imagine.

  She rolled over and sat up on the hard earth. The fire had burned low and the full moon lit the camp with its unforgiving light. She saw the soldier on watch nod to her then retreat into the moon shadows. She stretched her back, which ached from days of hard riding. They would arrive back in the City by midday tomorrow and the plans she had been harbouring for years were about to come to fruition.

  At the meeting at Old Mountain they had agreed, finally and at her suggestion, on the Day of Summoning for the long-awaited coup. The Feast of Summoning was an important time in the calendar of the people who had lived in these parts for millennia, and the day itself was a significant date in the old rites and customs of the first Serafim. Religion had ceased to have meaning for them an aeon ago, but traditions were harder to slough off.

  Saroyan lay back down on the cold ground. The Day of Summoning would mark a new beginning for the City, an end to the war and a new imperium. Serenity flooded her mind. She closed her eyes and slept without conscience.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE MASKED FIGURE stepped forward, his sword directed at Fiorentina’s breast. She fought the urge to back away and tried to remember what she had been taught. Attack, parry, riposte. Attack, parry, redouble. She lifted her chin and answered his attack and their blades gleamed in the dawn light as they fought back and forth across the fencing mat.

  They had been practising since it was still dark outside and Fiorentina was bathed in sweat; she could feel the beads of moisture trickling, tickling, down her back. She felt like a wrung-out dishrag while her husband Rafe remained, as always, cool and poised. Trying to keep her focus – on her balance, the set of her sword arm, her feet, the intricate moves and counter-moves she had committed to memory, which were now turning into a tangle in her brain – she felt her spirits start to flag. She and her sister had both been taught to fence as girls, but she had forgotten everything she once knew and was starting to regret asking her husband to teach her again.

  As if he heard her thoughts, Rafe suddenly said, ‘Enough!’, tearing off his mask and throwing it down. ‘You are improving,’ he commented.

  She scowled. ‘Don’t patronize me,’ she said, more fiercely than she had intended.

  He watched her for a heartbeat, and she wondered if she had gone too far. But then he smiled. ‘When we began this practice you were terrible. Now, after half a year, you are merely poor. But you have natural grace and balance and speed, and now you have added some technical skill.’

  He wiped his hands and neck on a towel and she was glad to see that, despite appearances, he had worked up a sweat too.

  ‘You must remember,’ he went on, wiping the blades on a cloth, ‘that the average soldier – in both our army and the Blues’ – has none of those things. He has learned only to stab and slash until his enemy stops moving. A finely placed sword-tip would kill him in a heartbeat. I think tomorrow we will progress to killing blows.’

  Mollified, she commented, ‘We have finished early today.’

  He looked out at the pewter sky. ‘It is the Day of Summoning, a busy time for us all, and I have to see your friend Dol Salida before my day begins.’

  ‘Dol Salida? Why?’ She wondered if it was something to do with Petalina’s death. The old man, a distant cousin of Fiorentina and her sister, specialized in intelligence and gossip and might have uncovered the reasons behind the Leopards’ mutiny.

  ‘I don’t know. He sought the audience. Now, to my bath.’

  She smiled. Since she had known him Rafe had bathed every day, sometimes twice a day, in a palace where bathing was generally seen as a tiresome yearly ritual. It was one of the things she loved about him.

  He saluted her, then placed the swords in the rack and raced up the stairs, agile as a man half his age, heading for the Calderium. Fiorentina closed the tall windows, noting that the rain seemed heavier than ever, then walked slowly back to their apartments. It was one of the pleasures of living in the Red Palace that she could walk about freely without bodyguards. This most northerly part, called the Redoubt, had once been a small fort, built centuries before the palace, and though the palace had gradually grown and spread and enveloped the old sandstone fortress, it retained its own character, and its impregnable walls.

  Her apartments were on the highest floor of the Redoubt, looking towards the Salient and the distant sea to the west. They were furnished with colourful tapestries and carved panelling and comfortable chairs, their walls glittering with gold and silver picture frames and glass sconces. Her small army of maids had been in there since the moment she left, cleaning, polishing, brushing fabrics and rugs, and placing fresh flowers in the vases, for Rafe had decreed she have fresh flowers every day, though she could not imagine where they came from in this City under siege.

  When she entered, her maid Miri helped her out of her fencing gear – black shirt and wide cotton skirt – clucking, as she always did, at the ugly, graceless garments. Fiorentina was bathed and clothed in a white chemise and she sat patiently while Miri combed out her long black hair then plaited it into ropes which she curled round her head and pinned. Then the maid dressed her in one of Rafe’s favourite gowns, of midnight blue silk which complemented her eyes and disguised the slight swell in her belly.

  ‘Have you told the lord yet?’ the woman asked briskly.

  Fiorentina shook her head. The moment never seemed quite right; the lord was always busy or distracted or was on his way somewhere. Time was when they would spend whole evenings together talking in front of an open fire, or lying lazily in bed on a warm afternoon.

  ‘Will you wait until you are as big as a cow?’ Miri scolded her. She had been with Fiorentina for ten years and allowed herself such liberties. Fiorentina didn’t mind. Only someone who has never known a mother, she thought, enjoys being mothered.

  ‘I plan to tell him tonight.’ Truth to tell, she was not sure what her husband’s reaction would be.

  After dressing she wandered down to the kitchens to speak with the cook. Today was an important day for the Families, and there were special meals to be prepared throughout the palace. Fiorentina’s cook, Alcestis, thin and harassed, looked up from gutting fish, her red hands streaked with blood and slime.

  ‘You won’t credit,’ she said as if seamlessly picking up a previous conversation, ‘how hard it is to get fruit. We’ve only these pears,’ she pointed her chin at a big bowl of pink-hued pears, shiny against the rough earthenware, ‘and some dried figs and a few wrinkled apples.’

  The fruit sellers and other food merchants would have been at the north gate of the Redoubt long before dawn vying with each other to offer the best produce. Alcestis knew Fiorentina liked to cut up pears to soak in red wine during the day for her husband to enjoy in the evening.

  ‘And the fish,’ the cook went on. ‘I wanted to get river bream but there was none to be had. Just som
e old collop and this reedfish.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s small and fiddly. When I was a girl we used to feed reedfish to the cats – now we serve it in the emperor’s palace. And on the Day of Summoning too.’ She shook her head at the terrible fate of the nobility in times of war.

  Smiling to herself Fiorentina picked up one of the pears and left the kitchen, the woman’s complaints lingering in her ears, and walked to the atrium where she hoped to see her husband again before his day began. He was there, dressed formally for the events of importance, and armed, she noticed. His black jacket was being brushed down by one of his servants. His dark eyes lit up to see her in the dress he loved and he took her hand, turning it and kissing the palm.

  ‘Lady, you are my heart’s delight.’

  She smiled, but his words sparked only a pang of fear. Since Petalina’s death she seemed full of fears, afraid that something would happen to him or to their baby. She said, ‘Be careful,’ but wagged her finger teasingly, making a joke of it, for she did not want to oppress him with her thoughts, still less for her fears to manifest as the truth.

  At that moment the old spymaster Dol Salida was ushered through the door, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane. Fiorentina had known the old man for most of her life and was fond of him, but she smiled and made her exit for she knew Dol would not be able to say what he was there for if she were present.

  So she blew a kiss to her husband and, resolving to tell him that evening that she was carrying their child, turned away from him for the last time.

  When Leona had gone to her rest just before dawn on the Day of Summoning it was without fear or premonition. And she had slept, as ever, without dreams.

  She could not remember dreaming when she was a child, a maid in her father’s house, or when, not much older, she was wooed and wed by the young blacksmith, yellow-haired and handsome, who was always cheerful, who laughed and sang as he worked, and wept with joy when she gave birth to their three children, two fair-headed boys and a girl, her precious girl, with fiery hair like her own.