Marcellus’ face was serious now, all amiability vanished. ‘But you have ensured your own immunity, I’ll wager?’ he sneered.
‘Even you, Marcellus, must admit that after all this time you have only distorted this world’s history with your meddling.’ Hammarskjald’s voice darkened. ‘This plague is a cure for all that, though a harsh one. It will wipe out everyone who has ever been subject to our taint.’
‘Is it always fatal?’
‘No, but it will make this City a necropolis for generations to come.’ At this Rubin saw Thekla gaze up at her lord, eyes shining with adoration, and he wondered if either of them was sane.
Marcellus paced forward and his guard moved with him. ‘Then why do you need the child?’ he asked. ‘To dissect it, Doctor Hammarskjald? To find out how a despised reflection can sire a living child? Is that what has really brought you from your bolthole? To discover how you can breed a new race of Serafim, subject to your will, to replace the old ones who proved so obstinate?’
But Hammarskjald would not be drawn. He looked around at his audience. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘a decision. It is simple and I’ll wait no longer. Give me the child. If not I will walk away from here and the City will die in agony.’
‘You will not walk away, Hammarskjald!’ A new voice rang clearly in the sunlight. ‘You will die today in this place. That I promise you.’
Rubin swung to look as, with a crunch of boots on glass, a tall, rangy soldier leaped up on to the throne-room floor, sword in hand. He was fair, with cold pale eyes, and the burst of fresh energy he brought with him sliced like a shining blade through the Serafim’s twisted war of words.
‘Who is this?’ Rubin whispered to his lord.
Marcellus’ eyes narrowed. ‘His name is Evan Broglanh,’ he said.
Broglanh was a gregarious man. He enjoyed the company of soldiers, and of women, though not necessarily at the same time. He felt most alive in the uproar of battle, in the clamour of a crowded inn or at a riotous horse-race. He had spent little of his life alone and was unused to it. He was neither comfortable with his own thoughts nor wanted to be.
But on his sea journey back to the City from the Vorago he had had plenty of time to ponder, about Thekla and Selene and Archange, and the past choices he had made, and he was forced to face how wrong he had been. And he realized finally that he had been played for a fool.
He had been smitten by Thekla from the first, felled by blind lust as only a young infantryman can be when offered the solace of a beautiful woman who treats him like a lord. That she was granddaughter to Archange, who had taken a keen interest in him since his childhood, he thought only fortuitous. Just as he considered it merely a lucky accident that his long-held ambition to kill the emperor fitted neatly with Archange’s plans for the City.
And so whenever he could return to the safety of the City from the blood-drenched fields of battle, he would speed to Thekla’s home and she was always there, warm and inviting. That she was a surgeon who should have been tending the injuries of the fallen did not occur to him. Caught like a fish on the hook of his desire for her, he believed his soldierly charms were all that wedded her to him.
After Archange had become empress Thekla confided to him, for the first time, her growing anxiety for her grandmother. I fear Archange is fated to follow Araeon, she had told him as they lay in her bed. As she ages and weakens I’m afraid she will seek the succour of the veil, to strengthen her power and people the palace with undead reflections, as Araeon did. Power always corrupts and she already has more power than any one woman should. Those huge worried eyes, gazing into his, sucked him in and drank him down, convincing him it would be better for the City if the veil were to vanish for good. Broglanh was not aware of Archange’s knotty, ambiguous relationships with her daughters and granddaughters. And if he had been, he wouldn’t have cared.
So Thekla had concocted a plan and he had fallen in with it. They had agreed he would steal the veil and take it and Emly to the Petrassi port of Arocir. There Thekla would eventually join him, they would send Em to a place of safety and the pair would flee with the veil to somewhere it would never be found.
We should destroy it, Broglanh had argued, a worm of concern burrowing into his mind. She had agreed, but told him, It is hard to damage. It cannot be burned or torn. It must be taken apart piece by tiny piece. It is intricate work and I can only do it if we are far from danger.
Unlike Emly, Broglanh had a clear understanding of geography. He could visualize the map of the known world and knew the quickest way home from the Vorago was by sea. So after leaving Selene he had walked, for only a short time each day as he gained in strength, then for longer, out from the mouth of the valley and east along the coast to the nearest fishing village. There he had found a fisherman who agreed to take him south to the Seagate.
But his satisfaction at arriving at the City’s harbour had turned to dismay when he saw the multitudes trying to leave. The Seagate was a camp of desperate refugees, all frantic to escape the invading army and, he learned, the plague the enemy was carrying. Getting into the harbour, heaving with people, was almost impossible from land. Fares for transport by boat to the Wester Isles and beyond were sky-high. As Broglanh walked the Seagate, speaking to soldiers and traders and seamen, he learned that the City was under siege on three sides and that two of the Great Gates were expected to fall any day. He purchased a mount easily, for horses were two a pente when everyone was riding into the harbour and no one was riding out.
So when, early that morning, he heard the explosions on the Shield, and looked up towards the White Palace with alarm, he was almost there. As he rode through the broken gates, gazing round at the destruction, soldiers turned to look at him. He knew they recognized him, but they were too busy treating the wounded to care. In the courtyard he dismounted and tethered the horse then strode towards the ruins. He scarcely noticed the small woman, dark-skinned and wearing a black hat decorated with the gaudy ribbons of a prostitute.
‘Lord!’ she cried. ‘Lord!’ She grabbed his sleeve and he shook her off.
‘Be off with you!’ a soldier told her, hurrying over. ‘I’ve told you before! Be off!’
‘Lord!’ she persisted, scurrying alongside Broglanh as he crossed the courtyard. She dug in her canvas bag and pulled out a grimy rag and tried to show it to him.
‘I don’t—’ he began, thinking her a pedlar. Then he saw what she was holding and stopped, dumbstruck. The Gulon Veil! He took it from her reverently, feeling its familiar silken folds. But how had it returned here from the Vorago? For a moment he thought Emly must have brought it, but no, he’d lost it on the battlefield.
‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded.
‘Girl,’ the woman cried. ‘Girl dying.’
He grabbed her by the shoulder. ‘Where?’ he demanded. The whore was tiny, her head on a level with his chest, and she cried out in fear. ‘Where is she?’ he asked again, shaking her.
‘Dying! She say,’ she touched her mouth to make it clear, ‘say, give empress.’ She pointed at the veil and nodded, staring hard at him, willing him to understand.
‘Where is she, woman?’
The woman flung her arm towards the east. ‘Wall,’ she said.
Broglanh looked where she was pointing, racked with uncertainty. His heart screamed at him to ride to Emly and save her if he could. But it might take all day, if he found her at all, if the whore could be trusted. Meanwhile he had the Gulon Veil right there in his hands, delivered there by a turn of fate he did not understand. He knew he had to seek the empress first and, if she lived, return it to her.
‘Stay here! Understand? Stay here!’ he yelled at the woman and she flinched. ‘Understand?’
He grabbed her canvas bag, ignoring her wail of complaint, and stuffed the veil inside. Then he turned to the guard, who had been watching wide-eyed. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he barked. The man nodded vigorously. ‘Bring her food and water and make sure she stays here,’ Broglanh
ordered. ‘If you lose her the empress will roast your balls on a stick!’
Broglanh climbed up through the ruins. He clambered over the soldiers’ quarters and saw the handful of warriors, bloodied and covered with dust, labouring to dig their fellows out. He decided to make his way towards the west, where the empress’s apartments lay, but was soon thwarted by a high wall on the verge of collapse. He skirted round it, found a hole in the broken stonework beyond and scrambled through. Then he stopped and looked around, trying to work out where he was. He recognized the flight of marble steps leading towards the throne room and raced up them, but they were blocked halfway up by more ruin, more rubble. As he climbed around the blockage he saw with a shock that the throne room’s walls had collapsed, the great glass dome vanished.
Then he heard Thekla’s sweet voice above him and he halted, thrown into uncertainty. He had convinced himself on the voyage that she had planned his death and Emly’s and the downfall of the empress. How she, and her mother Selene, fitted in with Hammarskjald he was still unsure, but he was certain now her motives were base. Yet the smoky notes of her voice instantly evoked the touch of her skin, the scent of her body, the heat of her desire. He stood gripped with indecision. But as he listened longer and heard her words of bile and spite a chill coursed through him and he knew he had been right in his suspicions. Then he heard a familiar deep voice threaten the destruction of the City and he drew his sword.
He bounded up to the throne-room floor and was struck by the atmosphere of hatred and malice swirling there. His gaze took in Archange, hunched on the Immortal Throne, her bodyguard around her, her pale thin hands clutching a black shawl. On the other side of the floor the big man who looked so like Stalker but who he now knew was Hammarskjald had his arm around Thekla’s waist. She was clad in gold and pearls but he understood now that her heart was black with corruption.
He turned to the third group, eight armed men standing apart from the empress. What was their role in this? Then he recognized Marcellus and all breath left him. Marcellus? Alive? But, he told himself, Marcellus was executed by Fell Aron Lee on the Day of Summoning. They had discussed it, brothers in arms, after the fall of the Red Palace. Fell told him he’d severed Marcellus’ head from his neck and thrown it from the battlements. Marcellus was dead. Broglanh’s thoughts spun. What in the name of all the gods, he asked himself, has happened since I left?
All this took two beats of his heart, then with an effort of will he pushed the conundrum aside. He had only one job here. ‘You will not walk away, Hammarskjald,’ he told the man. ‘You will die today in this place. That I promise you.’
Thekla darted across the floor towards him, eyes wide. ‘Evan!’
Cold rage rose within him and he flicked up his sword and stopped her with the point to her breast. It was all he could do not to pierce her through. ‘One step further and I will stick your heart, woman,’ he snarled.
She looked into his face and saw the fury there. She fell to her knees. ‘Evan,’ she implored, ‘hear me. You are my one true love. This man—’
As if she were not there, Broglanh turned to Hammarskjald and raised his voice. ‘You told me that next time we met you would kill me.’
The big man nodded.
‘So,’ said Broglanh, ‘try.’
Hammarskjald laughed. ‘Lad, I am sorely tempted. I like a good scrap, as you know well. And it would be a rare battle.’ His hunger was transparent. ‘People who saw it would remember it all their lives.’ He sighed. ‘But I must decline.’
‘You made a vow,’ argued Broglanh. He knew he could appeal to the man’s pride.
‘But,’ said Hammarskjald, glancing across the floor, ‘above all I am a practical man and you have powerful allies who are even more eager than you are to see me dead.’
‘What,’ Broglanh asked scornfully, looking about him, ‘two old people and a handful of soldiers?’
Hammarskjald chuckled. ‘Those two old people are no older than me and they have some power, failing though it is.’
Marcellus stepped forward. Broglanh, with his practised soldier’s eye, noticed the slight hitch in his gait which spoke of an injury. ‘I enjoy a fair fight as well as the next man,’ Marcellus announced. ‘Fight away. I’ll not interfere. Nor will Archange.’ He cast a look at her and the empress nodded. He stepped back.
There was a moment’s silence and Broglanh quelled the urgency in his heart and allowed a bored, contemptuous smile to slide across his face.
‘Ay,’ said Hammarskjald, his decision made. He unsheathed his great sword. Broglanh had seen it many times before – or one very like it – bathed in blood, cutting and killing the enemy. Now it was clean and bright and sharp. But he felt no fear, only scorn. The big man was proud as a rooster and it would be his undoing.
He dropped the bag concealing the veil at the edge of the floor, his sword-belt with it. The two men moved to the centre of the throne room and stood lightly, watching one another. Broglanh felt the glass slide under his boots, a treacherous surface to fight on for both of them.
‘First I’ll disable you, then I’ll skin you alive,’ Hammarskjald told him, his voice no longer hiding the anger he felt.
Broglanh rolled his shoulders. ‘Don’t go to any trouble on my account.’
He’d been five years old when first given a sword and since then he had fought with every type of blade made by man. He had learned to slice and hack in the heat of battle, when all around was anguish and death, and he had been taught the subtle art of fencing with épée and sabre. He had killed many, many men and women. He had battled in helm and heavy armour, in the cold of winter and in the dry desert heat. Now he was dressed lightly, in clothes he had lived in for half a year, worn, dirty and blood-stained, but which fitted him like skin. And he was stronger than he had ever been, thanks partly to the big man facing him. The mountain air filled his heart and he knew with complete certainty that if any warrior in the world could kill Hammarskjald it was he. But it had to be quick, for he suspected the big man could fight all day, and the next, and never flag.
He darted forward, narrowing all his strength and focus into a lunge for the heart. The attack was parried with ease and he barely escaped the murderous riposte which sliced his worn shirt. Hammarskjald kept coming with terrifying speed, his blade like flickering lightning seeking a way past his defence. Broglanh parried and blocked, knowing he had never faced a faster opponent. He felt himself tense as he fought, his blade slowing fractionally.
A watcher might think they were evenly matched, for they circled and clashed and circled, neither giving a pace. But Broglanh was defending with all the skills he possessed. He was constantly within a hair’s-breadth of death.
Yet he held his focus and watched his opponent for the smallest advantage. Stalker, he knew, had an injured ankle, the left. Hammarskjald forced him back in a frenzy of blows, the last of which nicked his shoulder, drawing blood. Heart hammering, Broglanh took the chance to spring backwards a few steps, moving lightly on the shifting floor. Hammarskjald followed, quick as a cat, and Broglanh saw that he too favoured the left leg. It was as if the two men, Stalker and Hammarskjald, shared the injury in some way. Broglanh did not understand it, but he could take advantage of it.
He drew his long knife and Hammarskjald grinned. Say something, Broglanh willed him silently. Sneer at me, then you won’t feel able to draw your second blade.
‘You are a good enough fighter,’ Hammarskjald told him, ‘but you need all the blades you can carry against such as me.’
Broglanh smiled.
Hammarskjald attacked, but instead of backing away Broglanh sprang forward and to his right, then dived and rolled past his opponent’s flank. Hammarskjald pivoted on his left foot, moving his sword from right hand to left, ready to slam it into Broglanh’s back before he could recover. But as the big man spun on his heel the glass shifted under him a fraction and he twisted to recover his balance. His sword missed Broglanh, who spun and slammed his knife up to t
he hilt into the man’s side. He dragged it out and bounced back, watching.
It was as if nothing had happened. Hammarskjald regained his balance and, taking a lightning stride, lanced his sword at Broglanh’s heart at full stretch. Broglanh swayed but the blade sliced along his ribs. He spun away, ignoring the pain. Then he saw that the wound to Hammarskjald’s side, a wound that would have floored any other opponent, had slowed the big man a tad. A bloody stain was crawling through the cloth of his shirt. Broglanh sprang forward and stabbed like lightning at the man’s left arm, piercing deep into the bicep. Hammarskjald hesitated.
‘Finish him!’ he heard Marcellus growl.
Hammarskjald grinned and took the sword in his right hand. ‘I can fight as well with either, boy,’ he said.
Broglanh felt time slow. His blood was pounding in his ears. He took a deep breath of mountain air, feeling its virtue run through him. Then he darted forward and thrust at Hammarskjald’s heart. The big man’s sword flashed up, knocking Broglanh’s aside. He lunged at Broglanh, but again the soldier sidestepped and parried the blow, before whipping around and slamming his knife into Hammarskjald’s ribs for a second time. Hammarskjald bellowed like an ox and grabbed Broglanh by the shirt. They both fell to the floor, but it was Broglanh who scrambled up.
He wrenched his knife from Hammarskjald’s side and watched the crimson blood gush, then, standing above him, he plunged his sword through the man’s heart until the point ground into the marble floor beneath. Hammarskjald gasped, eyes rolling. Broglanh stood, watching the flow of blood from the two wounds. It slowed but didn’t stop. Wanting to be sure, he crouched and grabbed the ginger head and twisted it brutally, snapping the neck, feeling it crunch. Distantly he heard Thekla cry out. He stood up, chest heaving. He looked into the man’s face. Hammarskjald blinked.
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