The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  Instead of making Amenkor feel safer, the streets now felt closed, somehow restrictive. As if the hand resting at the back of your neck, meant to be reassuring, had suddenly grown more viselike.

  The first time Borund and I had seen them in the street, he’d watched them canter by with surprised approval. But when we’d passed the third patrol an hour later, he’d sent me a grim look, mouth pressed tight. “Heavy-handed,” he’d muttered.

  The rest of Amenkor agreed. I could see it in the people’s eyes, in the way they kept their heads down, shoulders lowered. Hooded capes had become common almost overnight.

  And it had made following Charls harder.

  I pulled back deeper into the alcove as I heard clipped hooves on stone. A moment later, two guardsmen appeared on horseback, moving sedately down the street. One of the horses snuffled and nodded its head as it passed, scenting me, but the guards didn’t pause.

  As soon as they vanished around the corner of the main thoroughfare, I slid from the alcove and into the lesser shadows of the street. I knew where I was headed: the outer circle of the old city, where most of the merchants had their own estates, including Charls.

  The streets of Amenkor were empty. Completely empty. It sent shivers down my back as I moved. On the Dredge and the wharf there were always movements, a sense of motion, even if the alley or street seemed clear. Things moved behind the walls, sometimes in the walls—dogs and rats and gutterscum.

  Here, there was no life. Nothing but stone.

  I moved swiftly, but slowed when I neared the gates to the outer circle.

  They were open. Occasional patrols passed through them, the guards saluting each other or pausing to talk in low, mumbled voices to the two sentries posted there. The sentries stood to one side of the open arch, but they were relaxed, occasionally speaking to each other. Laughter broke out across the street as I settled into shadow twenty paces away from their position.

  I glanced up to the night sky, toward the slice of the moon and the stars. There were no clouds tonight, nothing to obscure the light.

  I suppressed a sigh and crouched low, grew still.

  I submerged myself, deeper and deeper, until the balance felt right, until I could see into every shadow, see every guardsman’s face as they passed by and the lines of exhaustion and boredom on the sentries’ faces.

  Then I focused, felt the currents alter around me, bend and twist, tighten, so I could see what would happen—

  There.

  I relaxed, shifted where I crouched, and waited. Guards moved, chuckled quietly, slapped their horses’ necks, a steady flow. A few breaks occurred, where no one passed through the gate, but none long enough for me to move, and none where the two sentries were distracted.

  A hundred measured breaths later, a pair of guardsmen disappeared down the street. As the last hoofbeat faded into silence, one of the sentries turned to the other, motioned out toward the city below, away from my position.

  I moved.

  As I slipped into the shadows of the outer ward, the gates behind me, I heard one of the sentries grunt and chuckle, slapping the other on his back. I paused a moment to make certain they hadn’t seen me, then continued on.

  The streets of the outer circle were subtly different. Closer, near the main thoroughfare leading up through the old city’s walls, but then they widened out. As I moved, I found myself settling down into a familiar pattern, one I didn’t recognize at first. But, pausing at a corner, I realized that the tension in my shoulders, in my legs as I balanced on the balls of my feet, came from the Dredge, from Erick.

  I smiled slowly. I was hunting.

  Sliding from darkness to darkness, I came up on Charls’ manse, stared up at the top of the wall above my head. Reaching for familiar handholds, I hefted myself up to the top. I watched the building closely, my heart beating faster in my chest. As soon as I slid down into the garden I’d be in unfamiliar territory. I’d only come to the top of the wall in my previous excursions, watched the house from a distance to get an idea of where Charls’ rooms were, to get a feel for the movements of his servants.

  The manse should have been quiet, but candlelight glowed in a few of the lower windows.

  I hesitated, considered leaving.

  I saw William’s face, eyes closed in sleep, brows furrowed and sweaty.

  I dropped into the garden. The moment my feet hit the ground, the Fire awoke, spreading cold across my chest. I ran across the garden to the house, toward a side door used by the servants to get to the carriage house and stables. I sensed nothing, heard nothing.

  The door opened easily.

  Charls’ manse was similar in layout to Borund’s. I stood in a servants’ entranceway, a narrow door before me. Stairs to my left ascended to the servants’ rooms above. The kitchen stood on the other side of the manse, with another set of servants’ stairs there. The door before me should open onto a long hallway running the length of the house, intercepted only by the large open foyer with the main stairs leading up to the second floor. Rooms opened up on either side.

  I stepped to the inner door, past the stairs, listened, then stepped into the long inner hallway. Two doors down, candlelight spilled out into the hall. I stilled, heart halting, but the hallway remained empty.

  Silently, I edged up to the open doorway, heard voices as I approached.

  “Tarrence has seized all of the available resources in Marlett. It took him longer than expected though, even with Marcus gone. Some of what we expected to find in Marcus’ warehouses had already been purchased by others.”

  “By whom?”

  At the door, I settled down on my heels, one hand on the floor for support. I recognized the first voice as Charls, but didn’t recognize the second. Sliding deeper beneath the river, I stole a glance into the room.

  Four men, seated at a round table in a room like Borund’s office, but more sparse.

  “Regin, Yvan. And Borund.” Contempt filled Charls’ voice.

  “Borund,” the second man said flatly. He watched Charls carefully as he spoke. He had a long nose, mustache, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail, vaguely familiar.

  I frowned, then remembered: the merchant with the mustard-colored coat from the guild hall. The one Charls had spoken to at the edge of the room, before Borund had approached him.

  The other two merchants were familiar as well, people Borund spoke to in the hall on a regular basis. Both shared a glance and shifted in their seats, but said nothing.

  I pulled back, contemplated moving back to the servants’ entrance.

  “Yes, Borund,” Charls spat. “He’s become increasingly annoying. If he’d only died that night in the tavern. Or at least during the ambush in the middle ward.”

  “But he didn’t,” the other merchant continued. “In fact, since that night, the other merchants have begun hiring their own bodyguards. And Borund has increased his purchases of essentials like grain and salt and fish, storing them in the warehouses here in Amenkor rather than shipping them out to the other cities. This is why he was to be eliminated in the first place.”

  “He’s proving harder to get rid of than expected.”

  “Obviously.”

  I heard someone shift forward, his chair creaking.

  In a much softer voice, the unknown merchant said, “In order for this to work, in order for us to gain and keep control of the city, our little group must be the only ones in the city with vital goods to sell. If we cannot get our hands on what Borund has stored away . . .”

  He let the sentence trail off and I heard him shift again.

  After a long silence, Charls said, “I’ll take care of Borund . . . and his bodyguard.”

  A cold shiver of fear coursed through me, tinged with anger. Charls wasn’t going to let it go.

  Then, farther down the hallway, I heard footsteps.

 
; I spun and headed back to the servants’ entrance, closing the door softly behind me. But not before I saw a servant carrying a tray with a decanter of wine and four glasses into the room.

  I paused in the small entryway, wondering if I should return to warn Borund that there were more merchants involved than just Charls. But I’d come for Charls, and now that I’d actually heard him threaten Borund, I found I couldn’t leave.

  Warning Borund of the others could wait.

  I took the stairs two at a time, easing out into the hallway at the top. It was a servants’ corridor, narrower than the one below, running the full length of the manse. The main hallway on the second floor paralleled this one, the two separated only by a wall. A single door on the left opened onto the main corridor at this end of the servants’ hallway, other doors on the right leading to the servants’ rooms.

  Charls’ bedroom was the closest on this side of the house, off the main corridor.

  I pulled open the door into the main hallway and peered out.

  Nothing. But the tendrils of Fire inside my gut increased slightly.

  I slid out into the upper hall, stepped to Charls’ bedroom door, and entered.

  The room held a bed, a large chest at its foot, a desk, two chests of drawers, and a stone fireplace against the right wall. No candles were lit, but everything was clear. Papers and a small knife used to break wax seals sat out on the desk, everything organized and neat. Clothes were tossed onto the chest at the end of the bed. The curtains over the windows were drawn, letting in no moonlight.

  There were no places to hide, no real darknesses except the room itself.

  Frowning, I stepped to the side of the door and readied myself for the wait.

  * * *

  I’d shifted into a casual crouch by the time Charls finally retired for the night, my legs beginning to cramp from standing. I didn’t hear him approach. The door suddenly opened, swinging wide at my side, almost striking my knees.

  I stood in one fluid motion, feeling the door before me, concealing me. On the other side, Charls sighed with exhaustion, stepped into his bedroom, and brushed the door closed behind him. No one else entered, and I heard no one else in the hall.

  As the door swung away, revealing Charls, his back to me, I stepped forward, brought the dagger up, and sliced cleanly across his neck.

  Charls hunched forward, a sickening gurgling sound filling the room as blood fountained, spraying his upraised hand, the edge of the bed, the clothes on the chest, the rug over the hardwood flooring. He staggered a step forward, stumbled to one knee, then twisted as he fell, a hand reaching toward the chest for support.

  I stepped forward as he collapsed, his body turned toward me now, his eyes opened in shock, in terror, his face a cold white in the moonlight, the blood black in a sheet across his chest. I wanted him to see me, to recognize me. I wanted him to know.

  And he did see. He jerked, shoulders pressing back, eyebrows rising.

  Warmth spread through my chest, deep and satisfying.

  I knelt a pace from him, a hard frown tightening my mouth, the corners of my eyes. “You should have left Borund alone,” I said. But I wasn’t thinking of Borund at all.

  He sagged against the arm holding the chest, the other hand clutched against his throat. But the strength was leaving his body. He shuddered, lost his grip on the chest and fell to the rug. The blood began to pool, spreading.

  The hand at his throat reached for me, trembling, grasping. His eyes caught mine, held me, pleading, and in their shimmering depths I saw—

  I saw Charls. Not the businessman at the tavern, turning and nodding to the killer waiting for his instructions. Not the merchant on the guild hall floor, speaking quietly of threats and death. I saw none of these.

  Instead, I saw Charls as he saw himself. A man who had clawed his way up into the highest ranks of the merchant guild. A man who had allied himself with someone too powerful for him to control and had found himself lost. A man who was even now trying to find some way to survive.

  He’d let the face he presented to the world slip when he entered his own bedroom, had let it fall away when he knew he was a dead man but was unwilling to accept it.

  I saw it all there, in his eyes. His dreams, his hopes, his desperation. He wanted to live, fought hard even as the strength drained from his arms and he sagged back against the chest. I saw the man beneath the merchant. The man I’d just killed.

  The realization sent a shiver of shock through me, down to my core, and I jerked back. All of the satisfied warmth fled, gone in one gasp.

  I stood abruptly, and Charls’ outstretched hand dropped to the floor, all of the life, all of the straining tension leaving his body. I backed away from the corpse. Panic tingled through my arms, through my skin, prickled the hair on my arms, at the base of my neck.

  When my back hit the wall, I gasped and grew still.

  And then I ran, out into the hall, to the servants’ passage, down the stairs, and out into the garden. I met no one, saw no one, not even as I dropped down from the wall surrounding Charls’ manse. I fled through the streets of the outer ward, barely seeing where I ran, moving without thought, hearing nothing, smelling only the dark, viscous scent of blood. I saw only the bodies, all of the bodies, but mostly Charls, his eyes, the thick spatter of blood on his sheets, on his clothes, saw his mouth working to say something, to draw in breath when there was nothing left to do but choke.

  I rounded a corner, entered the main thoroughfare near the gates, and slammed into a guardsman. The shock of the collision sent both of us sprawling, my body hitting the ground hard, head cracking into the stone cobbles of the street. My teeth rattled, bit the edge of my tongue, and I tasted blood, like bitter copper. Back against the ground, I swallowed the blood, heaved in deep ragged breaths and stared up at the moon and stars, stunned.

  I heard the guardsman curse, heard shifting cloth as he climbed to his feet.

  Then he leaned over me, blocked out the night sky, and I froze with a sharp, drawn breath.

  He stared down at me in shock, one hand reaching tentatively for my face, reaching to brush away my hair. “Varis?”

  Erick.

  The panic returned, sharper than before, seizing my heart, my throat. I couldn’t speak, and the breath I held escaped in a harsh rush that tore at my throat.

  I had to get away. Guilt rose up, like acid, and I felt sick. I’d killed Bloodmark without Erick’s permission, without the Mistress’ blessing. Somehow, since meeting Borund, I’d managed to shove that fact deep down inside me, managed to forget it. I’d allowed myself to relax.

  But now Erick had found me.

  And I suddenly realized it was infinitely worse than just Bloodmark.

  I’d just killed again. Not to save myself, not to save Borund. I’d killed Charls because I’d wanted to, because he’d hurt William.

  I had to get away. The impulse was like a scream. I couldn’t face Erick now, not with blood on my hands, on my shirt and dagger.

  But I couldn’t move. Erick held me with his eyes, softening from shock and irritation to something else . . . concern and wonder.

  And then he touched my face, his fingers trailing down my forehead to my ear, and I broke, the tears coming harsh and hot and wet. My breath hitched in my chest.

  “Varis,” he said again, without question.

  “I killed him,” I sobbed, the words thick with phlegm, almost incoherent. “I killed him, I killed him, I killed him.”

  “Who?” He was cupping the back of my neck now, had lifted me to his shoulder, my eyes closed. I held him tight, feeling as if I were fourteen again.

  “Bloodmark,” I gasped into his shoulder. “Charls.” He grew still, but his hold didn’t lessen.

  On the street, someone gasped, and I drew back from Erick’s shoulder sharply, the tears choked back, abruptly realizing I no lon
ger held my dagger. It had clattered to the street when we collided, lay just out of reach.

  Vulnerability hit me, even as Erick rose.

  Twenty paces away, a man stood at the edge of a cross street, wearing a cloak with the hood pulled back. I could see his face clearly in the moonlight, recognized the arrogant stance, the shocked look on his face.

  The merchant’s son, Cristoph. The man I’d fought in the alley on the wharf after first coming down to the docks.

  I’d killed his friend.

  And he’d heard me tell Erick I’d killed Bloodmark and Charls. I knew it as clearly as if I’d been beneath the river, had smelled it there. And there was something else, something that took me a moment to recognize.

  Cristoph reminded me of the merchant with the mustard-colored coat, a younger version. That’s why the merchant had seemed familiar at the guild hall talking to Charls, why he’d seemed familiar tonight.

  Cristoph must be that merchant’s son.

  Erick took a single step forward and Cristoph turned and fled, his footsteps echoing off the outer walls before fading completely.

  Panic seized me. I lurched toward my knife, grabbed the bloody blade in one hand and turned to face Erick in one smooth move. The urge to cry was gone now, the tears dried. Only a raw hollow near my heart remained, and I could feel myself pushing that away, discarding it, hardening myself against the pain. The emotion was useless.

  I was no longer on the Dredge, no longer fourteen. I didn’t need Erick.

  We stared at each other a long moment, and then I said, “You can’t protect me anymore.”

  And I ran.

  I dodged into the street where Cristoph had vanished, eyes hard and intent, Erick shoved into the back of my mind. I’d deal with his reappearance later. For now, Cristoph was a threat. He’d seen me, had heard me say I’d killed Charls. I wasn’t supposed to be associated with Charls’ death at all.