At last a servant opened the great doors and Rubin was led into the empress’s receiving room, a circular chamber filled with grey light. Tall windows faced east where the sun still hid behind rain clouds. The high walls were painted with strange scenes of tall buildings, elegant as palm-fronds, and people in winged carriages floating in cloud-laden skies. There were thick rugs on the floor and what seemed like a thousand lighted candles on tables and wall sconces. Black and silver warriors were stationed round the curved walls, and Darius Hex and another soldier flanked Archange at the end of a gold carpet.
The empress was seated on a carved, cushioned chair. She looked ancient, her long white hair loosely bound at her neck, white robes clothing a gaunt body. But as he walked towards her she rose gracefully and Rubin realized she was not as old as he had first thought. She was taller than most of her soldiers and her face, he saw, was beautiful and serene.
‘You are Rubin Kerr Guillaume?’ she asked. Her voice was deep, for a woman, and warm. Rubin’s fears drifted away. He realized why Archange should be empress of the City – her beauty and wisdom were overpowering. He wondered why he had feared meeting her. Someone had warned him against her but he could not remember who.
With a start he realized he was expected to answer. ‘Yes, empress.’
‘Darius tells me you have a message for me?’ She smiled, and it was like cool water on a parched tongue. He could not help but smile back, although it seemed impertinent and he lowered his eyes. Briefly he told her of the ten men infiltrating the tunnels. As he spoke, staring at the floor, the thrall in which she held him dissipated and he saw it for what it was. He had often seen Marcellus use his dark gaze to bend others to his will. Only when he had finished his tale did he look up.
The empress frowned at Darius, who strode from the room.
‘And why were you skulking in the depths of my mountain, Rubin?’ Archange asked the question mildly but he reminded himself of Marcellus’ warning: ‘Do not trust her, do not trust her words or her actions.’
He told her a partial truth. ‘I was seeking my father.’
‘Reeve?’ For a heartbeat she looked startled, then her eyes narrowed. ‘Why would Reeve be here?’
‘He left the Salient, at night and alone, last winter. No one knows where he went. He has not been seen since.’
‘So why,’ she asked, coldness flooding her voice, ‘did you not simply come to the gates of the Shield and seek audience? I could have told you he would never come here. I have not seen Reeve for—’ she sighed, ‘a very long time.’
He bowed his head in a show of humility, but in truth to avoid her eyes. ‘I was told the Guillaumes were not welcome here, lady.’
‘You thought,’ she replied, her voice icing over, ‘that your father would be locked away in my dungeons for his daughter’s crime?’
‘Indaro did not do what they say!’ he cried. ‘There has been a mistake—’
She caught his gaze and he forgot what he was saying.
‘You came to the Shield alone?’ she asked.
‘Yes, empress.’
‘Or with your friend Valla?’
The name filled him with dismay. What did the empress know of Valla? Had she been captured, killed? He struggled to stay calm. ‘No, lady. I came alone.’
‘Your friend Valla,’ she repeated. ‘Here.’
For a moment Rubin didn’t understand what she was saying, as she turned to the tall soldier standing still and silent beside her. Then his heart leaped in his chest. Clad in the livery of the Thousand again, her face blank, Valla looked like any of the warriors on the Shield. She stared into the distance as if oblivious to their exchange. Rubin’s eyes moved to her left arm. It was no longer in a sling but was encased in leather. The fingers of that hand, though still corpse-white, were drumming nervously against her thigh, or perhaps signalling to him her restoration.
The air hardened and crackled and Rubin felt his gaze being dragged, unwilling, to the empress again. She seemed to have grown taller and her black eyes blazed with anger. She did not look beautiful now.
‘You think,’ she said in a voice which echoed off the walls to vibrate through flesh and blood and bone, ‘to come here and lie to me, to follow your sister and creep through the tunnels like a rat on the scent of spoiled meat? Bad blood always flows true and the Guillaumes will ever be a contagion on this City. We should have had you both smothered at birth, you and your wretched sister!’
Rubin staggered under the force of her anger, like a blast of heat from a furnace-mouth. It was all he could do to stay upright. He felt his body was being wrenched apart by unseen claws. He cried out then sank to his knees. All the candles in the chamber blew out.
The empress loomed over him. ‘Saroyan,’ she said, her voice like thunder and lightning. ‘What part did you play in my granddaughter’s death, boy?’
His tongue was a dry stick in his mouth as fire raged about him. Each word was a torment but each had to be the truth. ‘Saroyan conspired with the enemy,’ he croaked. ‘I saw her in the Odrysian camp. Two winters ago. In the stand-off at Needlewoman’s Notch. I saw her with Odrysians and Petrassi. I believed they were talking—’ he paused to suck in hot air and felt his throat burn and blister, ‘—talking treason,’ he choked. ‘I told my lord Marcellus.’
‘When?’ she asked him, her voice borne to him on waves of heat.
‘Just before the Day of Summoning,’ he gasped.
The heat about him intensified and he began to suffocate. He sank to the floor and rolled on to his back, trying to suck in breath. Archange stood over him. Shadowy wings seemed to rise from her shoulders and beat the hot air. He put out one hand to ward her off and, unbidden, he felt power rise in him from deep beneath the stone, up through his body and out from his reaching hand. The sudden surge of energy rocked Archange on her feet. The whole palace seemed to shake and he heard soldiers shout out. Through half-closed eyes he saw Valla step slowly, agonizingly, in front of her empress.
Then suddenly all was calm. Archange sank back into her seat. Rubin lowered his hand. Valla was standing, trembling, in front of him, her sword halfway from its sheath. The chamber was filled with smoke and an eerie greenish light. Rubin struggled to his feet coughing and stepped away from Valla, his arms raised, surrendering. He was seized by soldiers, his head pulled back, his throat exposed for the killing blade. Valla turned to the empress for orders.
Archange’s voice was thin and tired. ‘It seems you have a little power, boy. It will avail you nothing. You will be punished for your deeds. Saroyan, my daughter’s daughter, died far from home and far from aid. Her body was found at the Araby Breaks after the spring thaw. She had been felled with a lance-thrust in the back and died in the snow. You are responsible for that. Your words to Marcellus signed her death warrant.’
She turned to Valla. ‘Kill him,’ she ordered.
Valla looked into his eyes. In hers he saw anguish and remorse. She sheathed her sword and took out a long sharp knife. She stepped towards him and raised the blade. She pulled her eyes from his and focused on the point on his throat where the knife would enter, to slash across from one side to the other, slicing through flesh and muscle and blood vessels.
Then there were running bootsteps outside and Darius burst back in through the doors, bringing a gust of cold, fresh air. His gaze took in the scene and his sword leaped to his hand.
Archange barked, ‘Wait.’ Valla paused and her eyes returned to Rubin’s. They stood frozen, gazing at each other, as the empress asked her commander, ‘Have you dealt with them?’
Darius replied, ‘They have vanished, empress, but we will find them.’ He looked at Rubin and Valla, still as statues.
‘Send me Dol Salida and Dashoul.’
Darius hesitated. ‘Dol Salida has gone down the mountain, lady,’ he reminded her.
She clucked her tongue and shook her head, just an old woman with a failing memory. ‘I had forgotten. Dashoul then.’
‘Dashoul is missing.’
‘He did not arrive at his office this morning. His people thought it was due to the storm, yet he cannot be found. But there is graver news, empress.’
‘Well?’ she rapped out.
‘The last riders we sent out have returned. They report there is an army on the other side of the Narrows waiting to cross.’
‘Marcus?’ she breathed.
‘No, empress, a foreign army. One our riders have never seen before. And they are coming this way.’
The rain had stopped long since but stormwater was still rolling off the mountain, sluicing in great sheets off the cliffs, roiling and bubbling down forested slopes, moving through the decades-thick blankets of pine needles. Steep tracts of soil held in place only by myriad roots of brambles and ivies wrenched themselves free and the landslips moved down the Shield, tearing down trees and shifting crumbling rocks. In two places the Shell Path was washed away. In the White Palace guttering snapped and a torrent of rainwater flooded the armoury and kitchens and invaded the soldiers’ quarters, leaving its inhabitants drenched and sleepless.
In the Khan Palace, further down the Shield, the old sandstone walls had been built into the side of the mountain and the stormwater found fewer places for entry. When its people awoke that morning they gazed out on to a fresh landscape, its colours clarified by the cleansing rain.
Fiorentina Vincerus stood on the stone terrace looking out at the bright morning and sighed.
‘Bring me my perfume bottle.’ She turned her head, it being an effort to turn her whole body. ‘No, not that one. The green one. This is a green morning.’
Alafair brought her the perfume and lifted her lady’s long dark tresses to spray her neck, already damp with sweat.
Fiorentina sighed again. ‘Everything hurts,’ she complained.
‘I know, lady. But the baby will come soon.’
Fiorentina bit her lip, looking down at her belly. She was torn between wanting the baby to arrive quickly and fearing the birth. In the meantime she had no idea what to do with herself. She was uncomfortable sitting or lying and she could only stand for a short while without her legs hurting too. And she felt trapped in the Khan Palace. The Khans had made her welcome, in their way, but it was a comfortless place, its chambers cold and bleak, its stone walls undecorated, its furnishings old and shabby. Quite unlike her old home at the top of the Redoubt, light and airy, filled with fresh flowers on her lord’s orders. She yearned for that life again and feared what the future held for her and her baby.
‘I must go out,’ she said to Alafair. ‘I’m dying here.’
The girl combed her hair and said quietly, ‘Once the baby is born you can go anywhere you like. You must be patient.’
But Fiorentina knew she was wrong. Her baby was a Vincerus, a son, something not seen in many years, for Rafe and his brother had been the last in their line. This half-life, this benevolent imprisonment, was probably as free as any she would have in the future. If, she thought, gazing at her swollen belly, she even survived the birth.
Alafair cried out.
Fiorentina looked up to see two men clad in black clambering up on to the terrace. The first grabbed Alafair, closing a hand over her mouth to silence her. Fiorentina turned to the other and drew herself up to her full height. ‘I am the lady—’
He punched her on the jaw and caught her as she fell, unconscious.
Valla would have executed Rubin, for her empress had commanded it, but she could not have lived afterwards. Silently thanking Aduara for the goddess’s intercession, she looked down at her trembling sword hand, and stilled it. And in a flash of insight, she realized that killing her friend Rubin would have been her punishment for her part in Saroyan’s death.
When interrogated by the empress after her capture Valla had told Archange all she knew about Rubin. The old woman seemed already aware of most of it, and much was trivial, the day-to-day doings of a young man who had led a full life and spoken of it at length. Valla had sworn to Rubin’s loyalty to the City and his love for Marcellus. She had given a complete account of their meeting with the First Lord at the Red Palace. She had not known then that Saroyan was Archange’s granddaughter, but it would have made no difference if she had. And under the empress’s questioning, when she could no longer avoid it, she had spoken of her and Rubin’s underground journey to the mountain.
‘Why here?’ Archange had asked her.
Valla confessed, ‘I don’t know. He said he was seeking his father—’ Archange had sniffed at that, ‘—but I don’t really know – he said he needed answers.’
Everything she told Archange was true, if inadequate, and Valla had wondered then – and wondered now – why Rubin was of such interest to the empress. Archange was as good as her word, though no doubt frustrated that the information gleaned had been of such little value. When ordered, Valla had unwrapped her grimy bandages, ashamed of the withered, pale stick that was her arm, and the old woman had peered at it with a moue of distaste. Then she held her hand out and Valla felt a golden warmth, killing the pain instantly and suffusing the arm with lightness. Then she had been taken to a prison cell, where she lay and worried about Rubin, and watched her arm with trepidation. At first the limb had still been useless, a piece of meat hanging from her shoulder, but over the course of a day it had filled out and she began to detect sensation in it. By dawn of the next day it had gained strength and she had laughed with delight and amazement as the fingers became nimble again.
Valla’s attention was jolted back to Archange’s receiving room when Eufara, general of the Emperor’s Rangers, stomped into the chamber loudly cursing the storm. In a few curt words the empress informed him about the threatening army.
‘Send the Tenth Adamantine to the Great North Gate,’ she ordered Darius. ‘And your Rangers can go with them,’ she told Eufara.
The Emperor’s Rangers, badly named, had not left the Shield in generations. Valla believed most of them had never even been in a fight beyond a bar-room scuffle, and she wondered disdainfully how they would fare when faced with an armed enemy.
The general bowed his head. ‘Yes, lady.’
‘But send your second. I want you here,’ she added and the old man nodded again, perhaps relieved.
Archange turned back to Darius. ‘I want Vares here with all haste. Where is he?’
‘The Twenty-second is in the south, manning the broken walls,’ the commander told her. ‘General Vares is with them.’
There was a moment of silence which Rubin, still held in the grip of two guards, broke. ‘Send me north with the Rangers,’ he asked the empress, and Valla’s breath caught in her throat. Why could he never keep his mouth shut?
Archange turned slowly towards him and narrowed her eyes. Anger gathered again like black blood welling into a wound. ‘You are presuming this grave news has released you from the death sentence. It has not. And I am told you are no warrior.’
‘No,’ Rubin persisted, heedless of her threatening tone. ‘But my skill is to infiltrate foreign and enemy forces.’
‘Do you know where this new army has come from?’
‘No, empress, but I can find out,’ he replied with calm certainty. ‘And if you still suspect my motives here on the mountain, sending me north would be a sure way to get rid of me.’
‘Or I could be sending information of the security on the Shield into enemy hands.’
Rubin retorted, ‘It seems the security of the Shield is fatally compromised already, empress.’
She scowled at him. ‘You walk on thin ice, Rubin Guillaume, when already under the weight of a death sentence. When did you last see your friend Marcellus?’
Rubin frowned at the sudden change of tack, but answered, ‘On the Day of Summoning last.’
Then he gasped, as if realizing the implication of her question. ‘You don’t think Marcellus is behind this foreign army?’ he asked, eyes wide.
Valla trembled for him. He spoke to the empress with a familiarity w
hich bordered on insolence. But Eufara intervened.
‘What nonsense is this, boy?’ the old general growled. ‘The First Lord was murdered. It is an undisputable fact. The Immortal spoke to the assassin herself.’ He turned to her. ‘Marcellus is dead, empress.’ But it sounded more like a question than a statement of certainty.
‘When on the Day of Summoning?’ she asked Rubin as if the general had not spoken.
‘Late in the afternoon.’ He closed his eyes, as if thinking back. ‘The shadows were long. We were in the far east wing of the Red Palace.’
‘What passed between you?’
‘He told me the City and the Red Palace had been invaded and the emperor was dead.’
‘And?’
‘He planned to leave.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘No, he would not tell me. Only that he would ride across the East Lake.’
‘Are you certain it was Marcellus?’
It seemed a strange question and Rubin clearly thought so too, for he frowned. ‘Yes, lady. I spoke to him for some time. I know him well.’
‘And if I told you he was beheaded at around noon that day?’
Rubin’s mouth curled. ‘Then I would say you are misinformed, lady. I saw him much later and he was certainly alive and well then.’
‘What were his last words to you?’
Rubin hesitated, then said, ‘He warned me against you, empress.’ Valla heard gasps from around the room. Such insolence to Araeon would have brought inevitable, agonizing death. But Archange merely stared at the floor, her brow furrowed.
‘No,’ she said at last, looking up. ‘You cannot go north. You will stay here and suffer punishment for your crime. We will find out soon enough where this army has come from and what its leaders want.’
‘It is an army, empress,’ Darius offered calmly. ‘They want to kill us all.’
‘But I will defer your death sentence,’ Archange told Rubin. ‘You are of the Families and deserve better than summary execution. As Saroyan did. You will die in twenty days’ time.’ She turned to Darius. ‘The execution will be held in the Circle of Combat at the Amphitheatre and will be announced daily at the Great Gates, in the old way.’
The Immortal Throne (2016) Page 43