The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  I grunted as animal and rider crashed into the shield, the mercenary screaming as his leg was crushed between his horse and the shield he couldn’t see. Heart thundering, I shunted man and horse aside, stepping to the left as they came shuddering to the ground beside me. The man screamed again as the horse rolled onto his chest, and then the scream cut abruptly into a gurgle and died.

  The scent of blood flooded the river.

  The horse flailed, eyes wild, kicked out sharply, head twisted back by the reins in the dead man’s hands. Its hooves connected with another horse, the rest of the mercenary’s charge grinding to a halt as they hit Keven’s guardsmen hard. The line gave, the horses parting around their fallen brother, then held, the entrance to the street collapsing into a melee of mercenaries, guardsmen, and horseflesh.

  Gripping my dagger in one fist, I dove deep into the river, settled into its flows—

  And then I slid into the melee.

  My dagger slicked across flesh, cut into legs and hands and arms, anything that became exposed. I growled as I fought, felt blood spatter against my face, but continued on. I plunged my dagger into a thigh, heard the mercenary shriek even as I reached up and jerked him from the saddle to be trampled underfoot. Swords flailed and I ducked, tasting the metal as it snicked by my head, then dodged as the horse on my left staggered, almost crushing me into the one on my right. I stepped on something soft, felt it roll beneath my foot, and lurched forward, grabbing onto a saddle for support. A mercenary glared down at me, eyes like flint, raised his sword for a thrust, but another blade punched hard into his armpit and back out again through his shoulder and he screamed, his arm half-severed from his shoulder. Blood poured down on me, blinding me for a moment and then the horse surged forward, out of my grip, the man’s scream fading.

  I wiped the blood from my eyes with the back of my arm and found myself surrounded by Keven’s guardsmen in a protective circle. He stepped back from the edge of the fighting, the last mercenary threatening us falling, and said, “The attack is faltering.”

  He pointed to the far side of the fountain, where Westen and Catrell’s men had seized the wagons of food. As we watched, the last of the mercenaries that had attacked Westen and Catrell’s men broke off, galloping toward the open street Westen had abandoned in order to protect the food.

  “Shit!” I swore, seeing the open street. “Where’s Baill?”

  “I never saw him,” Keven said.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” I shouted. I began checking the faces of the bodies that surrounded us, turning those facedown over. A few groaned, but I left those for Keven, searching frantically.

  I wanted Baill. I needed Baill. I could feel Ana’s mother’s eyes burning into me, could hear the awe and hope in her voice as she whispered, “Oh, it’s you,” before dying.

  Keven and his guardsmen began searching as well, stumbling among the dead horses and pools of blood in a widening circle.

  I’d almost reached the street where the attack had started when one of the guardsmen cried out.

  I spun, was halfway to the man before anyone else reacted. “Is it Baill? Is he alive?”

  The man shook his head. “He’s alive, but it’s not Baill.”

  He kicked the body over. I heard the mercenary moan, had begun to turn away in disgust, when something clicked.

  The man was familiar.

  I crouched down next to the man’s side, his breaths coming in short little gasps, stared intently into his face, looking beneath the black blood, the long, lanky hair, the mercenary’s clothing. I looked close . . . and then I sat back on my heels and scowled.

  “Hello, Alendor,” I said, my voice cold and deadly, twisted with sarcasm. “Welcome back to Amenkor.”

  Then I reached down, grabbed the neck of his shirt, and hauled him upright.

  He screamed.

  * * *

  Avrell and Eryn were waiting on the steps of the promenade with torches flapping in the breeze when Keven and I emerged from the gates of the inner wall, my escort dragging the bound, gagged, and fuming Alendor behind us. Captains Catrell and Westen came in last, their guardsmen hauling the remaining mercenaries that hadn’t died in the attack off to the cells.

  I wanted to deal with Alendor now.

  “Baill escaped,” I said as I approached Avrell and Eryn. Avrell’s face fell, Eryn’s grew grim.

  “But how?” Avrell asked. “He should never have had a chance in that plaza—”

  “He wasn’t just stealing food and storing it elsewhere in the city,” I said, cutting Avrell off, my voice tight. “He was smuggling it out of the city. The men sent to meet him to take the food were there—mercenaries on horseback. Once they attacked, it was chaos. He slipped away during the fighting.”

  They considered the implications of that in silence. Eryn nodded toward the man Keven and his guardsmen were holding. “Then who is that?”

  “That,” I said, drawing in a deep breath to steady myself, “is Alendor.”

  “What!” Avrell blurted, his shock evident, but he quickly regained control. “How did he get back into the city? Why is he here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, turning to move up the steps to the palace. “But it’s obvious he was working with Baill. I want to know why, and to what purpose.”

  “But how are you going to find out?” Avrell asked as he and Eryn fell into step behind me, Keven, Alendor, and the rest of the escort following.

  I didn’t answer, shot a glance toward Eryn. She’d already guessed how, and I saw her give an imperceptible nod of agreement. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her eyes, her stance, deadly serious.

  Because if Alendor was involved, then the missing food took on a much greater import than some of Amenkor’s citizens starving. It meant there was much more going on, something much bigger. Alendor didn’t work for trivial ends. When I’d been hired to kill him before, he’d been trying to take over all trade within Amenkor itself by forming a consortium of merchants, killing those merchants that refused to join or that were in the way. With Baill’s help, he would have had control over the palace guardsmen as well. He could have controlled all of Amenkor.

  The implications of Alendor and Baill working together . . .

  I felt an empty pit open in my stomach, making my mouth dry. Because something else was going on here, something I couldn’t quite see. Something that threatened the entire city of Amenkor.

  And I needed to know what, needed to know now.

  We entered the palace, Eryn sending servants hurrying ahead of us to light sconces and candles. It was the dead of night, but the palace came suddenly alive with activity.

  “Where are we going?” Avrell asked.

  “The throne room.”

  We passed down the long corridor leading to the doors to the inner sanctum, the phalanx of guardsmen stepping to the side as we moved through what once had been gates in an outer wall but were now at the heart of the palace. Then we were outside the double doors of the throne room.

  A couple of guardsmen moved forward and pulled the doors outward, and I entered, walking down the long aisle between the massive columns, my eyes on the throne as it twisted and warped from shape to shape. I felt its presence sifting through the entire room, draped that power around me as I mounted the dais, the others—Avrell, Eryn, Keven, the guardsmen—arraying themselves around the room. But I did not sit. At the top of the dais, standing to the left of the throne, I halted, turned around and stared down at Alendor. Keven had forced him to his knees at the bottom of the dais. The guardsman looked as if he wanted to slit Alendor’s throat now, his face hard and angry. But he only held the ex-merchant in place, hands on his shoulders.

  I could sense terror in Alendor, but his eyes smoldered with hatred. Not the petty hatred of Yvan. This went deeper, had burned longer. I studied his face. I remembered seeing him in Charls’ manse, plottin
g with the other merchants to kill Borund. He’d had a mustache, gray-streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail. His face had been shaven, the mustache trimmed neatly.

  Now, he had a bristly, gray-shot beard, and his mustache was ragged beneath his long nose. His skin was tanned and dry with the exposure to the elements, and still flecked with dried spots of blood from the attack in the circle. His mercenary armor and tattered, bloodstained clothing clashed with the mental image I held of his always pristine mustard-colored merchant’s coat.

  But the eyes were the same. Cold. Sharp. Calculating. Even here, bound and gagged before the Skewed Throne.

  “Remove the gag,” I said.

  Keven jerked the knot in the back free, Alendor wincing, and when it fell to the floor, Keven stepped back a pace, drawing his sword. Alendor coughed, then worked his mouth as if he’d tasted bitter ash and spat onto the throne room floor. He stayed on his knees, but drew himself upright, back straight and defiant, stance as poised as possible. His jaw clenched as he glowered at me.

  I’d hoped that the presence of the Skewed Throne stalking on the dais like a caged animal would cow him as it had me when I’d first entered the throne room, before I’d become the Mistress. But as a merchant of Amenkor, he’d been to the throne room before. He knew what the Skewed Throne felt like.

  “Avrell told me you’d left Amenkor, gone to the southern cities,” I said. “Why have you come back?”

  Alendor’s glower intensified, but he said nothing.

  “Where are you taking the food? Who are you giving it to?”

  “I’ll tell you nothing, bitch.”

  Keven growled, and, with a move so swift I barely saw it, he backhanded Alendor so hard the ex-merchant toppled to the floor with a cut-off cry followed by a stifled groan. Two guardsmen rushed forward and jerked him upright again, Keven circling around behind him as Alendor used his tongue to probe his split lip. Blood dripped from the cut, on his chin, but he only sneered.

  For a moment, I felt a stab of pity.

  But then I remembered him leading me into an ambush, remembered the gutterscum he’d hired as bodyguards as they kicked and punched and beat me into a bloody pulp in a back alley of the warehouse district. He’d meant for them to kill me, meant for his son to eliminate me because I was in the way, screwing up his plans for the consortium by protecting Borund, keeping him alive. The only reason I’d survived was because Erick had intervened, had distracted them long enough for me to regroup.

  The thought of Erick sent a spike through my anger. I’d come out of that with more than just a bloody lip. So had Erick.

  And I thought of Ana, of her mother, of all the other people I’d seen that morning as I wandered the slums. I saw their gaunt faces, their ribs standing out, their sallow skin. And as each face flickered before me, I felt my anger surge higher, felt it spill over into rage.

  “Where are you taking the food?” I shouted, voice echoing in the chamber, throbbing with the power of the throne behind it. I saw a few of the guardsmen flinch, saw both Avrell and Eryn stiffen in surprise.

  Alendor spat blood. Then he smiled, his eyes smug. “You’ll have to do better than roughing me up with your pet guardsmen,” he hissed.

  Keven stepped forward, hand raised again, and for all his bluster Alendor flinched back, but I halted Keven with a raised hand.

  “Very well,” I said.

  Then I reached out with the river, with the power of the throne, and as the Ochean had done with Erick, I seized Alendor about the throat with an invisible hand, squeezed it tight as I jerked him upright, lifted him completely off of the floor, and threw him down onto the dais steps before the throne.

  As soon as I let the hand of force go, Alendor heaved in a sucking breath, his legs kicking out as he tried to roll himself onto his back. His breath came in shortened, ragged gasps of terror as he managed to get himself onto his side, but before he could begin to roll off the dais steps, I punched him hard in the gut with the river.

  His eyes flew wide, grew round as he tried to breathe but couldn’t, and then something broke, and he coughed and contorted into a protective curl around his stomach, blood splattering onto the steps from his cut lip. He sucked in another breath, the sound torturous, as if his throat had been torn, and he coughed again.

  I moved down the few steps to where he lay in a fetal position.

  “Where are you taking the food?” I repeated, my voice calm once again.

  He gasped, shifted enough that he could look up at me, his body angled across the steps of the dais, the throne behind him. Blood and snot covered the lower half of his face, and a bruise was beginning to form on his temple where he’d struck stone after I threw him.

  But his eyes still blazed with hatred. “Fuck you.”

  I took a single step forward, and he kicked out, forced himself up another step, then another, trying to get away from me. He shoved himself up onto the top of the dais, the Skewed Throne directly behind him, the stone sliding smoothly from shape to shape.

  “Fuck you, Varis,” he repeated, my name twisted into a curse. He gasped with pain, but was still defiant enough to attempt a grin. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  Silence settled over the throne room. Behind me, I could feel Avrell and Eryn tensing. They knew what was coming, had seen it before, had suffered through it in Eryn’s case. But the guardsmen were only confused, most a little afraid, uncertain what was happening.

  “No,” I said, and I could hear the sadness in my voice, heard the voices inside the throne grow quiet. I reached out, grasped the front of his mercenary’s clothes with the river, and lifted him upright. “You’re going to tell me everything.”

  A look of confusion crossed Alendor’s face, and then I shoved him onto the throne.

  For a moment, nothing happened. The throne solidified, its constant motion shuddering to a halt halfway between transformations. A look of awe crossed Alendor’s face.

  Then, both he and I gasped, the sound sharp, reverberating through the room. I felt something stab deep down inside my gut, the sensation cold and visceral and twisting inside me. Alendor sucked in a hissing breath, teeth clenched tight against the sensation—

  And suddenly I was looking out over the throne room through Alendor’s eyes, could feel the ties binding his hands cutting into his flesh, could taste the sick slickness of blood on his lips. The knife in my gut—in Alendor’s gut—sank deeper, grew colder, and I hissed again at the pain, and a moment before I closed my eyes, the pain escalating sharply, I saw my own body collapse to the throne room floor, saw Avrell and Eryn step forward, both their faces grim.

  And then the frigid pain in Alendor’s gut exploded outward and he screamed, a bloodcurdling masculine shriek that rose and rose as the knifing cold stabbed into his chest, into his lungs, seared down his arms and legs and sliced through every vein and nerve in his body.

  When it reached his head, jabbing through his eyes, everything went mind-numbingly, blindingly white.

  And the screaming stopped.

  * * *

  We have him.

  I shuddered as Cerrin’s voice intruded on the whiteness, then felt the voices of the throne surrounding me, the same maelstrom I’d felt before, when Eryn had forced me onto the throne. Except this time the voices weren’t screaming at me, battering at my defenses in an attempt to seize control, shrieking with the winds of a hurricane and trying to tear me apart. This time the maelstrom was the roar of a thousand voices talking among themselves in a crowded marketplace. A few madmen were still shrieking at the edge of the plaza, but the other voices had surrounded them, were keeping them in check.

  Cerrin’s presence, smelling of the sharp scent of pine, shifted forward in the crowd, followed by Liviann, Atreus, and the rest of the Seven.

  “We have him,” Cerrin repeated.

  “Where?”

  Cerrin
drifted away and I followed. We worked our way through the crowded marketplace, Liviann and the rest of the Seven trailing behind us. As before, when I’d thought of the throne as a crowd on the Dredge, the women interspersed with a few men jostled into me, reached out and touched me. But this time they weren’t trying to overwhelm me, to crush me. This time, the touches were reverent, supportive, most giving me a small nod, a quick smile, before stepping aside to let me pass.

  Cerrin led me to the center of the marketplace. When we emerged from the bustling crowd, I halted.

  In the center of the marketplace sat a pillory, Alendor already on his knees and locked into place. He struggled, spitting curses, his neck and wrists bloody where he’d already scraped them raw. He ceased as soon as I stepped forward to where he could see me.

  “You fucking bitch,” he gasped, his face red with rage. “What have you done?”

  “I forced you to touch the throne.”

  He heaved, eyes squeezing shut as he strained to break free of the pillory, hands flapping in their restraints.

  Finally he stopped, breath heaving. “Release me!”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. You’re already dead. You’ve become part of the throne.”

  He stared at me in horror, refusing to understand even though deep down inside he knew it was true.

  I reached forward, felt him flinch as I touched his forehead and closed my eyes. “Now, tell me where you were taking the food.”

  He tried to resist, flailed as I concentrated, but it was futile. This is what the throne had been created for: storage of knowledge, of memory, so that the Mistress could access it, use it, learn from it. It had just done a little bit more than that as well, storing personalities, . . . and storing souls.

  I felt a rush of wind against my face, tilted my head up and drew in the deep scent of the ocean and sand, and then opened my eyes.