by Evie Manieri
Two silver eyes, both the same. Eofar slammed down the axe into the block of ice one final time and left it there.
The guards at the front of the cart moved out of the way for the emperor as he circled around it. The dogs paced behind their master, panting and slobbering, but no one else moved. Suddenly Gannon put his shoulder under the shaft and tipped the front of the cart up. The wood creaked and the ice-block slid off and crashed to the floor, scattering people out of its way as it shot forward like a runaway sledge. It finally smashed into the doorframe and the ice cracked in half along the fault Eofar had already made. The imposter’s frozen flesh cracked along with it, splitting apart until bone and muscle came poking out.
The guards pushed them back and out of the throne room until they were able to close the doors on them.
the emperor told the captain, sending ice shards spinning away over the floor as he stalked back to her. The imperial notice swung at last to Rho, as heavy as the axe he had just wielded.
Kira.
Rho’s memory had been kinder to her than she deserved. Her eyes sat further apart than he preferred, and her neck wasn’t nearly as long or as graceful as painted by his imagination.
Rho bit back his first thought: that it was a shame they’d never know if Trey would have lived if they’d brought him to a physic. The emperor’s attention had already turned to Eofar anyway.
Rho watched the white fur of Kira’s robe move softly against her arms and throat as she drifted toward him. The torchlight lent a warm glow to her deep-colored jewels. She looked different, but that wasn’t all; the more startling change was the hollow core where her heart had been. She was like green-glass, glittering and prettily wrought, but with nothing at the center; put her close to a flame and she would melt into nothing. He pushed deeper, trying to peel back that shiny veneer of affectation and found nothing but more of the same.
Her knowledge of events caught Rho off-guard, as did her flippancy.
Rho waited with his heart pounding, hoping that Eofar had worked out what he wanted to say. They would never get a better opportunity than this one.
said Eofar.
Eofar went on with hardly a pause.
Rho felt like he was going mad. He must have hit his head somewhere; or this was another nightmare and he would wake up to the sound of his hammock scraping against the iron rings.
Eofar came and knelt down beside Dramash. “That man is the emperor, Dramash. Just stay quiet and calm and do what I tell you.”
“No.” The boy looked up over his shoulder at Rho. “I can’t.”
Rho swallowed. “You only need to move it a very little.”
“No,” Dramash said again, shaking his head at Eofar. “I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”
The first guard flew thirty feet across the room and smashed into the wall. Then the sword ripped out of the second guard’s hand and fired straight up to the ceiling as if shot from a bow. Rho pulled Dramash back as everyone else jumped to avoid the tumbling blade. The rest of the guards darted forward to surround them, but Dramash ripped every one of their swords away the moment they came close. The guards shook their stinging hands in shock and watched speechlessly as their weapons slid out of their reach.
Captain Vrinna charged forward, but her sword pulled her hand down as if its weight had increased ten times. She managed to force herself forward a few more steps before falling to the ground along with her weapon.
“Dramash,” Rho said, but he wasn’t sure the boy could even hear him. Tears were running down his cheeks, wetting the fur into clumps. Rho dropped to his knees and raised his voice until he could feel the burn in his throat. “Stop, Dramash. Stop now.”
Emperor Gannon drew his own sword, only to have it whip his arm around in the opposite direction. He hung on doggedly, but he looked like he was trying to drag a lagramor out of its hole by its tail.
“Dramash,” said Rho, “it’s all right. No one’s going to hurt you. You can stop now.” Then he saw two guards armed with steel swords—not imperial swords—rushing toward them.
/> The boy screamed in pain and Rho felt it like a spike straight through his head: a single, sharp pitch that made every Norlander in the room double over and clap their hands over their ears. He kept his hand on Dramash’s skin, telling himself that the flesh of his palm was not singeing and peeling away—which was how it felt—and that the pain would stop when he finally pulled his hand back.
Dramash slumped to the floor in a dead faint and Rho staggered back with his stomach heaving and his hand on fire, struggling to keep from joining him on the floor.
Rho did nothing to stop the guards as they picked up Dramash and took him away. He didn’t even watch them go, and he couldn’t look at Eofar either. Instead, he bent down to pick up the glove he had dropped and carefully pulled it back on. Kira had taken shelter on the far side of the cart. Despite her heaving chest, the emotions he sensed from her still had no depth; she remained the same shallow, reflective puddle she had been from the start.
Rho pulled up his hood and went back out into the gallery, down the steps and outside, drawing no attention at all from the crowds still lingering there. He had expected to be followed, and he had expected someone to call to him as he headed down the steps to the Front, but he did not expect the hand now on his shoulder to belong to Eofar.
Rho looked out over the black Front, at the cracks in the rock glowing faintly from the mists far below.
Rho realized his biggest problem was the degree to which he trusted Eofar. Which was not at all.
Chapter 14
Kira found Aline waiting in the gallery, holding her cloak.
She stopped at a crossing to let a cart rumble past.
They walked down the curve of Vine Street and through a series of little courts where the green-glass casters, book-binders, goldsmiths, stonemasons and other artisans occupied themselves adorning and amusing those of her station. People gathered inside and in front of the workshops, but few were working, or even pretending to work. Kira lifted her chin as she felt them staring at her and added a little sashay of unconcern to her walk. She needed Rho to meet the same person he had just met in the throne-room: the emperor’s empty-headed mistress, unconcerned in anything outside of her own shallow interests. She had played her role well enough to fool these people; after three years without a word from him, she was certain she could fool him as well.
The green-glass statue of Arregador, complete with pine-bough wreath and an armful of drooping branches, watched them approach from a niche above the entrance of the crypt. Kira glided up the steps behind Aline, her feet already numbed with cold. A supply of tapers waited just inside the entrance, but a light was already flickering far back in the corner, near Trey’s tomb. The crypt wasn’t very large—the building itself dated from just after the Stonewood Treaty, like most of the buildings in Ravindal, and had been intended only for those few Arregadors who, for whatever reason, could not be buried in the crypts on their family estates. Even so, the Arregadors couldn’t stop jostling each other out of the way in the service of their ambitions, and in angling for the most prominent positions, the placement of their tombs made it look as if someone had dropped them in this haphazard way and then forgotten to come back and arrange them properly.
They made their way inside, winding slowly around pillars, tombs and sarcophagi, breathing in the smell of cold stone, frost and lamp-oil. Kira let her fingers slide over a stone arm here, a carved cheek there, noticing how the decorated lids became less and less ornate the further back they went.
said Kira. Trey’s words came back to her, slippery with his wet blood: I think you owe me that much.