I mounted the three steps of the dais without looking out into the faces of those gathered, my palms sweaty, and not from the heat of all of the candles that had been lit or the bodies in the room. I’d worn my whitest shirt, my cleanest pair of breeches, and my newest pair of soft leather shoes. My dagger was tucked into my belt at my waist and I’d allowed Marielle to cut and comb my shoulder-length hair. I could feel everyone’s eyes upon me, could sense their expectation, their curiosity, their fear. I’d never called them all into the throne room like this, never spoken to many of them directly at all. They didn’t know what to expect.
I hesitated a moment before the throne, stared down at it as it shifted from one shape into the next: narrow and thin, rectangular then round; a simple slab of stone, then a gaudy ornamented chair. The first time I’d seen it, the motion—the very feel of it, prowling around the room like a wild cat—had made me nauseous and sent shudders down my back. But not anymore.
I reached out and touched it, felt it recognize me, felt the stone tremble beneath my fingers . . . and then the throne twisted one last time and settled into the shape I knew so well now: a simple curved seat with no back, the armrests curled under.
I turned and sat, and the entire room seemed to sigh.
I stared down at those assembled, noted Avrell, Eryn, Baill, Catrell, Westen, Borund, and Regin at the forefront, near the base of the dais. Darryn was with them, shifting uncomfortably. I wondered who’d thought to summon him, then saw Westen’s casual nod. I caught each of their gazes, then scanned the rest of the men and women in the room, felt them fidget with nervousness, some glancing at their neighbors, others craning their necks to get a better view of me and the throne. The room was tense, as if everyone had held their breath.
I glanced down toward Avrell and Eryn and announced, “We have a new enemy. A people called the Chorl.”
A moment of confused silence, people drawing back, brows creasing in confusion—
But not everyone. I saw Avrell cast a horrified glance toward Eryn, saw her own shocked look before she controlled herself, her eyes devoid of any emotion. Avrell took his cue from her, but I saw him shudder.
Everyone else began speaking at once.
I let them talk, knew that it would not last long. Aside from Avrell and Eryn, no one here knew anything about the Chorl, about who they were or where they came from, except perhaps a few of the ship captains, who might recognize the Chorl as the sea-demons from the tales they were raised on as children. But the tales did not mention the Chorl by name. It had been too long, the tales too distorted. The sea-demons had been reduced to creatures of the deep, not a race of blue-skinned men and women who bled as we did, who fought with swords and ships and magic.
The sense of confusion that permeated the room escalated as the crowd quieted, and then Avrell stepped forward, in the space just before the throne.
“And who are the Chorl?” he asked. Only I heard the tremor in his voice.
I stared down at him, saw that he’d asked the question purposefully, even though he already knew the answer, and smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was twisted with the pain of Erick’s and Laurren’s deaths and the lives of all of the rest of the crew of The Maiden. It caused Avrell to take an uncertain step backward.
“Let me show you,” I said.
I reached out on the river, threw a net wide, so that it encompassed everyone in the room. A different net than the one that Eryn had shown me to keep the voices of the throne in check. This one I’d learned from Cerrin while secluded in my chambers. Even as I set it into place, I felt Cerrin’s nod of approval. It bound everyone in the room to me temporarily and as it did so, I felt all of the Servants in the room gasp, heard Eryn suck in a sharp breath at the base of the throne. No one else felt anything, turned in consternation to frown at the Servants, some taking a tentative step away.
Before anyone could react further, I sank myself down into memory, placed myself back on the ship, inside of Erick . . . and then I pushed the memory out along the strands of the net and forced everyone to relive Erick’s last moments on the ship.
Blood flew up into their faces and the entire room gasped, some hissing in shock, lurching back, hands raised. A few guardsmen started to draw their swords, but halted as Erick thrust aside the dead body of the guardsman, as he raised his sword to block the descending sword. The blade jarred into Erick’s upraised sword, pain shivering down into his shoulder, and the room gasped again, but the initial shock and babble of voices subsided.
Then Erick spun, and those in the room got their first sight of the Chorl.
Someone screamed. A few others fainted dead away, their bodies hitting the floor with slithering thuds since no one moved to catch them, all still caught in the grip of the memory. Guardsmen cursed, merchants and Servants cringed, and somewhere in the back of the room someone was violently sick.
“Enough!” someone shouted, the sound intervening on the memory. I frowned, recognized the panicked voice as Regin’s, but I didn’t relent. Concentrating harder, I focused the net, made the memory more real, more visceral, until everyone in the room could smell the blood, could taste the fear as Erick surged forward to save the crew, as he began the retreat to the prow.
And then I shifted the memory, slid into Laurren’s head. I heightened her fear, her desperation, her determination to inflict as much damage as possible on the Chorl Servants and their ships with her spears as I held the shield. I sent my horror through the net as my grasp of the shield failed, intensified the sensation of being burned alive, fire drawn down into my lungs, scorching my body, as Laurren writhed in agony.
And then I pulled back, returned to Erick as he dodged into the melee surrounding Mathew and retreated, horrified, from the fire as it snaked across the decking, engulfing man after man like human torches. The reactions in the room intensified, someone screaming continuously, unable to stop, more sounds of retching as guardsmen and Chorl died, bellies slit open, throats cut, and still I pushed harder. I wanted them to feel the pain of the crew, to live their sacrifice. I wanted them to understand what knowledge of the Chorl had cost.
Erick’s death would mean something. Laurren’s death would mean something. Not like the murder of the white-dusty man, killed by Bloodmark for no reason other than to hurt me.
Another horrified, awed gasp from those caught in the net as the mast groaned and cracked and shattered into the deck, seeming to shudder through the stone of the throne room beneath their feet. Utter silence—nothing but in-drawn, held breaths—as the fighting halted, as the man threatened Erick and the Ochean shifted through the blue-skinned warriors.
She ordered the deaths of The Maiden’s crew, turned back when I lashed out with the river . . . and then she killed Erick.
I held nothing back. I let everyone in the room feel his torment, forced everyone to shudder with his pain as the screams of the rest of the crew sounded all around him as they were butchered by the Chorl.
But I cut the memory short a moment before the pressure inside Erick—before the pain—knocked me unconscious.
When I let the net release and the memory faded, there were ten people in the room who had fainted, another twenty who had bent over or collapsed to the floor, moaning or vomiting in a corner. Everyone looked pale, eyes wide with shock, limbs weak and trembling. Avrell was holding Eryn by the arm to support her, her face utterly exposed, and I suddenly realized with regret that I’d forced her to witness—no, worse, I’d forced her to live—Laurren’s death.
Even Baill and the guardsmen were shaken. The purple bruise on Baill’s bald head from the rock thrown in the Dredge stood out, livid, against his pale skin.
I waited a moment to let everyone catch their breath, to let the scent of blood and smoke and ocean clear from their senses.
Then I said, “Those are the Chorl.”
“What . . .” Avrell began, but his voice cracke
d. He licked his lips and cleared his throat, his gaze wandering about the room as if uncertain where to look, where to focus. “What . . . do you intend to do?”
I leaned forward, caught his wandering gaze, held it. “I intend to fight them.”
A stunned silence, interrupted by a bark of laughter.
Everyone turned their eyes on Baill. “You expect to fight them?” His voice seethed with disdain. “How?”
“All work on the warehouse district will cease. Everyone will shift to fortifying the encircling juts of land that surround the harbor and rebuilding the two guard towers at their ends. There was once a wall there. We’ll rebuild it. That will be the first line of defense, because when they come, they will come from the sea.”
Baill seemed shocked that I had a ready answer.
Catrell stepped forward. “How do you know this? How do you know they will come here, to Amenkor?”
Because the Ochean recognized the Fire inside of Erick, I thought. Because she recognized the power there. She didn’t know what it was, but she’d seen it before, tasted it before.
And she wanted it for her own.
But that was not what those in the hall would believe.
“Because I’ve seen it,” I said instead. “The Skewed Throne has shown me.”
I didn’t want to show them the vision of the city burning, of the harbor filled with blood, didn’t want to show them the destruction. It would be too disheartening, too horrifying.
I didn’t have to. Eryn stepped forward, faced the throne room. “I saw it as well, before Varis replaced me as Mistress. They will come here. But we can prepare for them. We will prepare for them.”
Murmurs filled the room, laced with fear. One of the fears found a voice.
“What about those fires? How can we defend against those?”
I couldn’t see who’d spoken, but it didn’t matter. “The fires were produced by women like the Servants of the Throne, women who have power. Since I ascended the throne, Eryn and I have been training the Servants of the palace. They will defend the city from the Chorl Servants.”
“The Servant on the ship didn’t last long,” someone grumbled, loudly enough to be heard by everyone. Others nodded.
Eryn flinched, her eyes going tight with grief.
I felt a surge of anger. “Laurren was overwhelmed by three of those women! She sacrificed everything to protect that crew! It won’t be one against three when the Chorl arrive.”
No one responded. No one questioned how I knew this. Which was good because I had no idea how many of the Chorl had the Sight.
Westen stepped forward. “You said the watchtowers at the entrance to the harbor were the first line of defense. What else do you have planned?”
All eyes turned to me and I settled back into the throne. The despair I’d seen on the faces of those gathered after I’d shown them The Maiden’s death had faded, had begun to slip from shock into wary hope. All I had to do now was convince them that they had a chance. I had to convince them when I had not convinced myself yet.
“Here’s what I intend to do. . . .” I began.
And everyone in the room shifted forward to hear.
* * *
It took three hours to discuss and argue the rest of my plans with those gathered in the throne room, and by the end, most of their faces were tense but filled with determination and hope.
As they began to file out of the room, I stood up from the throne, stepped partway down the steps of the dais. Keven shifted forward to stand beside me, and at the bottom of the dais, Avrell, Eryn, and, surprisingly, Captain Catrell stepped forward. Baill gave Catrell a sharp frown, but after a moment turned to push his way through the crowd of people at the door, guardsmen falling in around him.
No one said anything until the majority of the Servants, guardsmen, and merchants had left. Then Avrell turned toward me, his face grim. “Do you think it will work?”
I shrugged, exhausted, drained by the arguing, by the tension that still gripped my shoulders. “It has to. It’s all that we’ve got.”
He nodded.
“You already knew about the Chorl. I saw it on your face.” I let anger touch my voice, directed it at both Avrell and Eryn, unconcerned that Catrell and Keven would overhear. “Why didn’t you tell me about them?”
Eryn answered. “Because they never crossed my mind as a possibility.”
“They haven’t been seen on the Frigean coast in almost fifteen hundred years,” Avrell said. “They’re . . . a history lesson, something I read about as part of my duties as the First of the Mistress, nothing more.”
Keven frowned. “They aren’t history anymore. How long do we have to prepare?”
“According to the throne, they won’t attack until the summer. That gives us a little less than four months.” Even as I said it, I felt a twinge of uneasiness in my gut. My hand drifted to the hilt of my dagger for reassurance.
Keven grunted with satisfaction, eyes widening. “That should be plenty of time.”
Eryn’s lips were pursed, her brow creased. She looked as uneasy as I felt. “We should still move quickly. The more training the regular citizens that will form the militias have, the better. The Servants will need more extensive training. They’ve made significant progress so far, but nothing like what they’ll need to defend against the Chorl. And the walls and towers won’t go up overnight. There will be unforeseen problems.”
Her words didn’t seem to lessen Keven’s optimism.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Captain Catrell shifting his weight as he waited, unwilling to interrupt. But before I could turn to him, Avrell said, “Then we should all get busy. There’s plenty for all of us to do.”
“No,” I said, my eyes narrowing. “There’s one more thing that needs to be handled before we direct our energies to the walls and preparing the citizens and Servants.” In answer to their perplexed looks, I added, “Yvan.”
Avrell straightened abruptly. “There’s something you need to know about Yvan and the raid on his manse.”
I didn’t like the sudden formal tone. “What?”
He grimaced. “Yvan was indeed hoarding food. Everything in the second cellar you found had not been reported to the guild or to you at your request. However . . .”
I felt a spike of irritation at Avrell’s hesitation. “However what?”
“Yvan isn’t the one who took the food from the warehouses.”
Dead silence. No one moved, all eyes on Avrell.
“What do you mean?” I asked finally, my voice sharper than intended. Avrell flinched.
“I compared the food we found in Yvan’s cellar with the report of what was missing . . . and it doesn’t match. There’s not enough food in his cellar to account for all that’s missing . . . not even after making allowances for what Yvan may have already eaten. And there are stores in his cellar that we aren’t missing at all.” He took a deep breath. “I think Yvan hid stores that he already owned when you demanded an inventory at the end of the fall. I don’t think he’s stolen anything from the warehouses at all. It’s someone else.”
“But who?” When Avrell shook his head, I turned to Keven. “What did you find out by questioning the guardsmen?”
Keven shrugged. “We stopped checking around once we caught Yvan, but before that, we had a few tentative leads. Some guardsmen had seen a group of other guardsmen leading some wagons near the stockyards, on the edge of the city, as if they were escorting cargo. Except it was late at night. They thought it was odd, but nothing in the city has been normal in the last few months. A few others have gotten sudden changes in orders at the last minute, mainly a change in what warehouse they were assigned to guard. Other than that, we hadn’t found out much.”
I frowned, irritation turning to anger. “So who is it? Who’s been stealing from the warehouses if it isn’t Yvan?�
��
At that, Captain Catrell stepped forward with a stiff, nervous bow. “It’s Captain Baill. I know. I’ve seen him.”
* * *
I was still fuming over what Captain Catrell had revealed when I met my escort at the palace gates. My anger was like lightning, white-hot and snapping out from me on the river in sharp jagged lines, making everyone around me jittery. But, for the moment, I was holding the anger in check. There was nothing that could be done about Catrell’s suspicions, not at the moment anyway.
But there was still Yvan to deal with.
I reached the last steps of the promenade and checked on the covey of guards Keven had assembled and the entourage of people that were lined up to follow us down to the main market square. Avrell was there, of course, along with Eryn and Nathem, the two administrators dressed in their finest dark blue robes, Eryn in a brilliant white dress. Behind them were Masters Borund and Regin, both in their merchant robes and both with appropriately somber faces. They were mounted, their horses dancing impatiently at the wait, tossing their heads. William and Regin’s apprentice rode behind them, backs stiff, mouths pressed tight.
Behind them was another group of guardsmen, leading a team of horses at the head of a cart. But this wasn’t a normal cart. This had been modified into a rough metal cage on wheels, the vertical bars only four feet high, so that the prisoner inside had to stand hunched over or sit with his legs drawn up to his chin or dangling through the bars outside the cart. Yvan was fat enough he was forced to sit, his legs dangling. He still wore his merchant’s coat, but the material was filthy, the usually immaculate cream-colored material now stained a dull brown-gray, the black embroidery almost impossible to see. As soon as he saw me his face twisted with hatred, and he seized the bars of the cage, screaming obscenities across the courtyard.
The Throne of Amenkor Page 61