The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  “I already know about men. I grew up in the slums.”

  “Oh, there’s much more to it than that.”

  Someone knocked on the door leading to the antechamber, a guardsman leaning in a moment later. “The First of the Mistress is here to see you,” he reported.

  “Let him in,” I said, a little too quickly.

  Avrell stepped into the room, “Did you reach Westen? Where is he? What’s happening?”

  As he took a seat, Marielle reached for the used tray, casting me one last decidedly meaningful look before departing.

  Knowing that Marielle and the rest of the palace were talking about me and William was one thing. But learning that the whole city had noticed, that they were probably talking about me right now . . .

  I sighed. “I reached Westen. He’s set the Prize’s crew ashore north of Temall. It doesn’t look like the Chorl have attacked Temall yet. He’s going to begin moving south tomorrow.”

  “Good. Right now, Temall is our buffer zone to the south. The Chorl will have to take it before they can make an effective attack on Amenkor by land from that direction.” He paused. “It took Westen a few more days to get down there than expected.”

  “He was being careful not to run into any of the Chorl ships,” I said.

  “True. But we need to know where the Chorl are and where they’re headed. The sooner we know, the better.”

  I leaned back heavily into the settee and closed my eyes, feeling every ache and muscle in my body. “Was there something else, Avrell? It’s late, and I’m exhausted.”

  Avrell hesitated. “You asked me to do some research in the archives . . . about the thrones.”

  I sat forward suddenly. “Do you know where the second throne is? What did you find?”

  He grimaced. “Not much. Records were kept from far earlier than the introduction of the Skewed Throne to the city, but they aren’t complete. Some have been lost due to fire or flood. Some have just disintegrated with age, even though we attempt to transcribe older documents when they begin to decay.” He stood, began pacing before the settee, hands clasped behind his back. “The records that have survived from that time are, understandably, focused on the Skewed Throne itself, not its counterpart. But they do mention a second throne.”

  “Where?”

  He paused, glanced toward me, brow furrowed. “It seems that the two thrones were created in Venitte by the Council of Seven.”

  I nodded. “Yes, the Seven Adepts. I was there when they forged the two thrones, in a manner of speaking. I was there when they died.”

  “And that’s the problem,” Avrell said. “They all died when they created the thrones, and they didn’t leave very specific instructions on what to do with the thrones after they’d been created, or even how to use them.”

  “Because they didn’t expect to be killed while creating them,” I said sardonically.

  “In any case, that left the decision about what to do with the thrones to those that found the Seven dead on the Council chamber floors. The intent of the Seven was clear: they’d created the thrones as a means to protect the coast from possible attacks by the Chorl, who’d been repelled at this point and had vanished into the western ocean, but who were expected to return. Here, I brought the journal of Patris Armanic, the Lord of Amenkor at that time.”

  “Lord of Amenkor?” I asked, as Avrell drew a heavy scroll from his pocket. He pulled the small table Marielle had set the tray of tea on earlier over to the settee. “Amenkor had a Lord?”

  Avrell smiled. “This was before the Skewed Throne existed, remember. Amenkor had many Lords—and Ladies—before the throne arrived. In fact, we had a Council much like Venitte does now. But the arrival of the Skewed Throne changed all that. Not overnight, of course, but over the years the Mistress of the Skewed Throne came to be the single most revered power in Amenkor. The Lords and Ladies diminished, until there was only the First, and the leaders of the guilds, the most powerful being the merchants’ guild. And all of that happened because one of the Mistresses—Torlette, I believe—managed to get the guard to back her and Lord Rathe when the other Lords and Ladies were weakened, effectively severing the last links of the council system.”

  He spread the scroll out on the table, handling the dry, yellowed parchment with the utmost care. Even so, flakes fell from the edges, the scent of dust drifting up.

  Leaning over the sheet, Avrell squinted at the extremely fine print, then said, “Here.”

  I shifted forward. The scrawl of black lines on the page at first seemed illegible, nothing but curled scratches. But then I picked out a few letters, realized that they were elongated, as if they’d been stretched and thinned, and tilted to the right. Also a significant number of the words themselves had different spellings.

  Struggling with the strange script, but becoming more excited the further I got, I read, “Returned from Venitte. After forty-seven days of heated argument, the August Representatives of the Frigean coast—including Lord Wence of Venitte, Lord Barton of Sedine, Lady Corring of Merrell, and Lord Iain of Langdon, among others—have concluded that the Council of Seven intended the Two Thrones for Amenkor and Venitte, being central to the Coast and the Heart of the Chorl Attack. Per this Agreement, Mistress Susquill and the Granite Throne have accompanied me upon my Return, the Stone Throne remaining in Venitte under Master Tyrrone’s control. Mistress Susquill has been ensconced within the palace walls along with the Throne, and already her Presence, and the Throne’s, is felt.”

  Avrell cleared his throat, cutting me off. “It goes on to describe how the Council here in Amenkor reacted to Susquill’s arrival. They did not welcome her. From Patris’ account, she was a strong but bitter woman, with a tongue to match. In essence, Susquill was the first Mistress of Amenkor.”

  “What about Tyrrone and the Stone Throne?”

  “Apparently, a huge political war broke out in Venitte, the lords and ladies vying for power in the vacuum created by the loss of the Council of Seven, all fighting for position, for control of the Stone Throne. Tyrrone was not a political man—few of the Servants were at the time, because the Council of Seven, the Adepts, effectively ruled the coast—and he was overwhelmed. In the midst of the upheaval, he and the Stone Throne . . . vanished.”

  “Vanished?” I said, incredulous. I thought about the Skewed Throne sitting in the throne room even now. “How could it possibly vanish?” I asked darkly. “It’s made of stone, it would require ten men to lift it. And not everyone can touch it, only those with the Sight. How could it have been moved?”

  Avrell began gingerly rolling the parchment back up. “I don’t know, but they managed to get the Skewed Throne onto a ship and all the way to Amenkor, so . . .” He shrugged. “During the height of the political struggle in Venitte, the streets were no longer safe to travel at night due to the sudden rise in assassination attempts. The Stone Throne vanished from its place at the center of the Council of Seven’s main chamber. And Tyrrone vanished with it. No one saw it being moved, and no one saw Tyrrone after that. The chamber itself was sealed by the Servants that remained.”

  “No one searched for it?”

  Avrell snorted. “Everyone searched for it. It was the key to their safety from the Chorl! Or so they thought at the time. But remember, they’d just managed to repulse the Chorl attack, were in the midst of political upheaval unlike anything they’d experienced in decades, and winter was hard on their heels. They couldn’t afford to spend too much energy searching for the throne when each lord and lady had their own estate—and people and power—to protect. The deaths of the Seven created a huge power vacuum, and Venitte fell into total chaos for a period of years before it finally stabilized with the introduction of the Council of Eight to replace the Adepts. Other cities, such as Amenkor, didn’t suffer as much from the sudden absence of the Seven. We already had our own Councils, who reported to the Seven when anythin
g of significance occurred that could affect the entire coast.”

  I slumped back into the settee. “So the other throne is lost. We can’t use it to defend against the Chorl Servants. We can’t use it to replace the Skewed Throne.” The little flare of hope I’d held inside since Eryn had brought the possibility of the second throne up in the throne room guttered and died.

  Avrell tucked the scroll back into his pocket, his motions thoughtful. “I didn’t say that.”

  I glared at him. “You just said—”

  “I said that the throne vanished. But I don’t think it’s lost. There are too many hints in the archives, too many vague suggestions and allusions to what might have happened to the throne for me to believe that it’s completely gone.”

  Feeling the long day creeping up on me, I said impatiently, “Then where is it?”

  Avrell drew in a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. “I have no real evidence to support this, but I think it’s still in Venitte.”

  * * *

  “That would make sense,” Eryn said.

  We stood in the middle of the throne room, both looking down the open walkway to the dais and the unnaturally static throne. I’d related what Avrell had told me a few days before of his search in the archives for the second throne.

  “Why?”

  “Because of what you said: the throne is heavy. It would require a massive effort and extreme planning in order to move it. Which means that more than likely it wasn’t moved far. And a huge risk was taken to move it anywhere at all, because anyone who touched the throne—even then, when there would have been at most a dozen personalities stored within it, perhaps as few as eight—could have been overwhelmed by its power. The effort to move the Skewed Throne safely to Amenkor must have been immense. Keep in mind that the Seven were Adepts, the most powerful men and women of the time. No one could control and manipulate the Sight as well as they could. But there were others that could use the Sight, others like us. The non-Adepts, those that were even then called the Servants. They were the ones who inherited the thrones. Perhaps—”

  But here something caught in Eryn’s throat, and she began coughing. She reached out and clutched my shoulder, bending forward and hacking into her other hand, the sound torturous. I gripped her upper arm and shoulder, steadying her as it continued, until she heaved one final shallow breath and seemed to catch hold of herself.

  She smiled as she straightened, her expression grim. “I thought it was getting better,” she said, voice weak and hoarse. “I haven’t had a fit like that in over a week.”

  “Maybe it is getting better, then.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Look.”

  She held out her hand, the one she’d used to cover her mouth. It was speckled with blood.

  A strange numbing panic raced through me, tingling in my arms, my fingers, squeezing my heart hard.

  “You have to go see Isaiah,” I said. The words sounded distant, lost, as if the numbness had crept into my ears.

  “No,” Eryn said, that grim smile still on her lips. “There’s nothing he can do. You know that, Varis. We’ve already tried.”

  She pushed away. I didn’t want to let her go, my hand refusing to release her.

  She held my gaze, her eyes calm, accepting. Accepting of what the blood on her hand meant.

  I forced my hand to let go of her upper arm, stepped back. I suddenly felt cold.

  “Now,” Eryn said, voice cracking. “Let’s check in on Westen.”

  I didn’t move until Eryn made it halfway to the dais and the throne, my legs refusing to budge. And once I was in motion, it was slow, uncertain. The numbness remained, the sense of distance.

  I sank onto the cracked throne. “Should you—”

  “I’m fine, Varis.” Stern, strong, commanding. The voice of the Mistress.

  I should have been comforted. I wasn’t.

  “There’s another reason to suspect that the throne is still in Venitte,” she said.

  It was said to distract me, to turn me away from the speckled blood on her hands.

  Our eyes met. She knew I recognized the distraction, and written in the lines of her face I saw the plea to accept it and move on.

  I drew in a short breath, not quite ready to give in . . . but then I sighed. “What?”

  Eryn nodded. “Think about the two thrones, and about the agreement between Amenkor and Venitte. Since the thrones were created, the two cities have been tied together, certain agreements between us upheld even when the cities themselves have been at odds.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that even when the two cities have been at war with each other—over trading rights, or land—we’ve always sent the female Servants to Amenkor to be trained, and the male ones to Venitte. Why? For that matter, why is there such a division between the sexes? Why do the females get sent here, and the males to Venitte?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Eryn paced behind the throne. “I never thought about it before, but once you told me what Avrell had found in the archives, I began to wonder. We’ve never had a Master of Amenkor; it’s always been a Mistress. Why? When any men touch the Skewed Throne, they die, whether they are Servants or not. I think the two thrones are split somehow, two halves of a single whole, one female and the other male. I think Amenkor ended up with the female version of the throne, and that’s the reason the female Servants are sent here to train. The male throne remained in Venitte, so all the male Servants are trained there. Being close to the appropriate throne must somehow . . . accentuate the Servants’ power.”

  “And the male Servants, like Brandan Vard, are still trained in Venitte,” I said. “Which means the throne is still in Venitte.”

  Eryn nodded. “I find it hard to believe that the throne would simply vanish. It must still be in use, just not as openly as here in Amenkor. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brandan Vard knows exactly where the second throne is even now.”

  I thought about Brandan’s dark blond hair, of his eyes . . . and of the way he’d hesitated before answering my questions regarding the Servants of Venitte. I’d thought at the time that it was because he’d expected me to already know the answers.

  But maybe it was because he had something to hide. It would explain why everything he said felt like a lie—or rather, a half-truth, as if he were holding something back.

  And it would explain why he wanted to know about me, about Amenkor and how it had survived the Chorl attack.

  Perhaps William and Keven were right. Perhaps the few meetings I’d had with Brandan since he’d arrived hadn’t been by chance.

  “Now,” Eryn said, drawing me back to our reason for being in the throne room, “let’s check in on Westen.”

  I dove into the river, barely concentrating on what I was doing, my thoughts scattered, jumping from Eryn, to the spots of blood on her hand and the pain she felt in her gut, to Brandan and the secrets he might hold, to my own churning unidentifiable emotions about William and the fact that it hurt that he hadn’t come back to the palace to see me. But then I pushed up and out, barged through that thin veil that still tried to hold me back, and sped southward. Coastline surged by beneath me, a blur of motion, of half-glimpsed inlets and coves and rocky plinths reaching into the sea. Halfway to where I’d last contacted Westen, pinpricks of sensation coursed through my ethereal body as Eryn linked with me, flooding me with her strength—

  And then I saw the Fire inside Westen, smelled his scent—honeysuckle and dew—and I let the Fire enfold me, let my concern over Eryn and Brandan and William fade into the background.

  I took a moment to look around through Westen’s eyes—a cook fire in a copse of trees, heavy with the scent of smoke and sizzling meat, hidden in a depression of land, evening sunlight streaming through the branches in thin bands—and then I said, Report.

&nbs
p; Westen froze where he sat before the fire, the sudden lack of movement so subtle and fleeting that none of the surrounding guardsmen noticed. I felt him grin through the Fire, then he turned and reached for the skewered rabbit on a spit before him.

  We’ve skirted Temall and are now to the south, on our way toward Bosun’s Bay. It didn’t appear that Temall had suffered any major attack by the Chorl, although they are aware that there’s an enemy force out there. They seal up the walls of the city during the night and have guardsmen on duty at all times. The outer city is mostly abandoned at dusk, but people still come out during the day to work in the surrounding fields. He bit into the rabbit and I felt hot juice dribbling down his chin, the gamy flavor of the meat flooding my tongue. He wiped at the dribble with one hand, chewing slowly.

  I’ve sent a few men in closer, and it seems that the surrounding towns and villages to the south have also been attacked by the Chorl, mainly raids for food and supplies. But here’s the strange thing.

  He paused to sip from a flask of water.

  What? I said impatiently. I was suddenly hungry.

  Westen smiled, and I realized he was teasing me with the food.

  Not all of the Chorl raids have been successful, he said.

  What do you mean?

  Westen set the flask aside, the rabbit forgotten.

  It seems that on a few of these raids, the Chorl have met with some unexpected resistance.

  Men from Temall?

  No. These men attack from the forest to the east, hitting the Chorl raiders hard, pushing them back until they retreat . . . and then the men vanish. I thought at first they were bandits, but according to what the scouts have heard, the group is too organized for regular banditry, and they only take a portion of what the Chorl would have made off with, almost as if they consider what they take as payment for their services. Most of those that they’ve aided were more than glad to give up those few supplies in return for their protection.

  I pondered this for a moment, but didn’t see how it changed anything. I turned my attention back to Temall, to the Chorl threat.