‘Lady, you are my heart’s delight.’
She smiled, but his words sparked only a pang of fear. Since Petalina’s death she seemed full of fears, afraid that something would happen to him or to their baby. She said, ‘Be careful,’ but wagged her finger teasingly, making a joke of it, for she did not want to oppress him with her thoughts, still less for her fears to manifest as the truth.
At that moment the old spymaster Dol Salida was ushered through the door, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane. Fiorentina had known the old man for most of her life and was fond of him, but she smiled and made her exit for she knew Dol would not be able to say what he was there for if she were present.
So she blew a kiss to her husband and, resolving to tell him that evening that she was carrying their child, turned away from him for the last time.
When Leona had gone to her rest just before dawn on the Day of Summoning it was without fear or premonition. And she had slept, as ever, without dreams.
She could not remember dreaming when she was a child, a maid in her father’s house, or when, not much older, she was wooed and wed by the young blacksmith, yellow-haired and handsome, who was always cheerful, who laughed and sang as he worked, and wept with joy when she gave birth to their three children, two fair-headed boys and a girl, her precious girl, with fiery hair like her own.
And she certainly did not dream after they were taken away by the plague which sprang up in the rookeries of Lindo and swept across Amphitheatre and Burman Far before subsiding as quickly as it had appeared, leaving dead more than half the population in those parts of the City.
If other soldiers recalled the tales told to them by strangers in their sleep, and asked about hers, she would shrug indifferently, and they could take that as they wished. Sometimes she believed they were just stories, rich and strange, or trivial, or ribald, created and named ‘dreams’ to entertain comrades, akin to the tall tales most soldiers told to embellish their deeds and sometimes to conceal their misdeeds.
But she sometimes wished she dreamed, that in her nights she could spend time with her children, for they would have been well grown now, and she could see what sort of people they might have become. Dead, still dead, she guessed. Dead on some foreign battlefield, rather than dead in their little beds. Would that have been better, had they lived to fall in love, perhaps had children of their own, before having it all snatched away?
The year women were first drafted into the Immortal’s armies was the year of the great plague. Thousands of young women succumbed to the sickness and the remainder, all the sixteen-year-olds at least, were taken away to serve their City, which most of them did by dying quickly. Almost an entire generation of girls killed within a year. The City had never recovered from this blow to its future population.
Leona, already dead inside, watched this absurdity, then chose to join it. There were no rules that said a mature woman could not sign up, so Leona went through the training process, such as it was, with girls half her age, and in the end she outlived them all. It gave her a life, though not one she had planned, and a family of sorts. In time she became the most senior female soldier in the Immortal’s armies. And she loved the life now, for all the bureaucracy, the pointless regulations, the petty politicking. For at the heart of it, to a man and woman, they were burnished with pride in their cause – to defend the City – and gripped by a zeal to give their lives in its service.
When she first met Valla the girl was just one of the sixteen-year-old recruits, fresh from an orphanage, tall and leggy and terrified, hiding her fear under a thick shield of insolence. She was a natural with a sword. She had speed and grace and balance. Leona had been her training officer and she marked the girl down for progress if she continued to survive. When Leona was promoted out of that hated role – training the hopeless and the desperate for a brief, panicked fight then a merciless death – she remembered the girl and dragged her after her, through infantry regiments and up the ranks. They had been parted when Leona was raised into the Thousand, then an unheard-of thing for a woman. It did not cross her mind to refuse, but she thought she would never see Valla again. But Valla had survived and grown stronger, and she came to the attention of General Boaz. The girl rescued three injured members of her company, defending them against the enemy until help arrived, in a skirmish with Fkeni tribesmen in the Mountains of the Moon. In an army where bravery and honour rarely counted for much, for once a courageous soldier was noticed in places of power. Leona suggested the girl be promoted to the Thousand. Boaz argued that she had no name. Leona pointed out that she herself had been just the daughter of a poor merchant. The two women had served side by side ever since.
Leona wondered how the girl was getting by with her crippled arm and why she had not sought her friend out. In two days’ time she would be off duty and she would find Valla and perhaps they would renew their secret vows to each other, spoken before the all-seeing goddess Aduara.
‘Leona! Wake up!’
Her eyes flew open and she was instantly awake. She did not need Loomis’ hard hand shaking her shoulder.
‘Yes?’ she said, swinging her legs from the bed, trying to bludgeon her mind to alertness. She had been on duty all night. She did not have to look at the notched candle to know her sleep had been brief.
‘The Vincerii want all the chiefs at the Porphyry Gate.’ Her aide added unnecessarily, ‘You don’t want to be the last there.’
Leona dressed as quickly as she could and was still tucking her shirt into her trousers as she hurried out of her chamber after Loomis, who handed her her sword-belt.
She was not the last, not quite. The other commanders of the Thousand, at least those centuries presently in the City, were gathered in the command room in the shadow of the Porphyry Gate, one of the known entrances to the Immortal’s Keep deep in the heart of the Red Palace. Also there were the generals of regiments now deployed in the City. Only the hated Nighthawk, the new man Riis, was not present.
Marcellus was glaring at the doorway. ‘Where’s Riis?’ he demanded of the assembled officers, his face dark. Leona wondered what had happened to provoke his wrath.
‘He has not been seen since early yesterday,’ offered one commander, barely hiding his satisfaction that the horseman had stumbled at his first outing.
‘Then get his second here!’ Marcellus shouted, and an aide ran to obey.
Leona looked around. Rafael, dapper in black, was at Marcellus’ side, while at the rear Boaz loomed above them all. There was the sharp smell of anxiety in the air, mixed with the scents of unwashed bodies, hunger and fatigue, and breath made foul by too much wine. Only a major crisis would bring all the chiefs here at one time. And a crisis directly affecting the City itself, not just a military setback in the field.
While waiting, Marcellus stalked up and down the room, his impatience clear to see, and he glared at the gathered warriors as if preparing to single one out for blame. At last the man sent to find Riis’s second slid back in through the doorway and hurried to the First Lord, speaking quietly to him. Marcellus frowned and asked something. The young man shook his head.
Marcellus turned to the assembled soldiers. His voice was tight with controlled anger. ‘We have information, pristine information, that there will be an assault on the palace today.’
Warriors looked at one another in incredulity.
‘Where?’ Leona asked him.
‘Through the sewers.’
Leona heard grunts of disbelief and quiet murmurings of ‘Impossible!’
‘Who?’ she asked.
Marcellus shook his head. ‘Does it matter?’ he spat. ‘They are the enemy.’
‘All we know,’ Rafael put in smoothly, ‘is that there will be an attack, through the sewers, at some time today. Or that one has been planned. There are a limited number of ways they can get through . . .’
‘Only two I can think of,’ growled Fortance, commander of the Silver Bears, ‘and both are deep under water now.’
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br /> ‘The water levels are ever-changing,’ Rafael said. ‘Both upwards and down. Only yesterday, I’m told, the level of the Leaving Street cistern suddenly dropped by half, despite all the rain. It’s still half-empty, so the water must be draining away somewhere new.’ This was baffling news. The Leaving Street cistern, which supplied fresh water to the Armoury and parts of Burman South and Barenna, rarely dropped except in the driest conditions.
‘Could it be deliberate, the work of these sewer-rats?’ asked Langham Vares, general of the Twenty-second.
‘I can’t see why,’ Marcellus retorted. ‘They can scarcely be hoping to conquer the palace by drought.’ He was badly out of temper.
‘Our source of information is a reliable one,’ explained Rafael. ‘If it tells us an invasion through the sewers is being attempted, then it is so. Only a small number of soldiers can be involved, for the conditions down there must be next to impossible.’ He paused, then added, ‘So we must assume this is just a diversion from some greater attack.’ He stared round the assembly. ‘Our first duty is to guard the emperor so, in the absence of the Gulons, Fortance’s Bears will take on bodyguard duty in the Keep.’
Fortance nodded briskly and Leona saw the pride in the old man’s eyes. The veteran commander had been under a shadow since a foul-up that summer when one of the Immortal’s proxies was almost killed in an enemy ambush. Fortance, then leader of the Emperor’s Hounds, had been in command of the whole benighted operation and had been demoted, but shortly afterwards replaced the leader of the Silver Bears. Clearly he had now been completely absolved.
‘Aquila,’ Rafael went on, ‘your Night Owls will back up Fortance. Are you still six down?’
‘Yes, lord.’
Leona thought to herself, Two centuries in the Keep? Do we really need almost two hundred elite warriors to guard a being who has shown over and over that he cannot be harmed? She always shuddered when she thought of Araeon. Her first duty was to the City and the emperor, but her private loyalty had been, always would be, to Marcellus. She had fought beside the First Lord for ten years and in the silent recesses of her heart looked forward to the day when he ascended the Immortal Throne. Only Marcellus could end the war, for the emperor, she was sure, was too far down the path of madness to do so. But she was a loyal daughter of the City and must, and would, guard Araeon to the death.
As Rafael ordered the deployment of the City’s forces, Marcellus listened, occasionally nodding. Leona’s Warhounds were to search the public rooms of the west wing, while soldiers of the Twenty-second would have the hazardous duty of exploring the lower depths, chambers and corridors abandoned to the rising waters.
When Rafael had finished Marcellus told them, ‘The Great Gates are being closed until further notice.’ He looked at Boaz, who nodded. ‘From today it will take a direct order from the Immortal or from me to reopen any of them.’
They are taking this threat very seriously, thought Leona, and she felt a thrill at the prospect of action.
‘We are lucky,’ Marcellus added, ‘that the Second Adamantine and the Fourth Imperial, our most illustrious of regiments, are in the City at the moment. They are respected by the people of the City and will be a calming presence should there be any disruption today.’ He turned to Boaz. ‘Have the Immortal’s private audiences been cancelled?’
The general smiled thinly. There was a long-standing rivalry between the two men, and Marcellus sometimes amused himself by treating Boaz as a mere secretary to the emperor.
‘All except for one,’ the tall soldier said, agreeably enough.
‘Cancel it,’ Marcellus told him.
‘I will convey your suggestion to the Immortal,’ Boaz responded blandly. It appeared that if he was going to be treated like a secretary, then he would behave like one. Leona was impatient with such games, which she would not allow among her captains.
Perhaps feeling the same, Rafael briskly dismissed the warriors.
‘One more thing,’ Marcellus put in, creating some moments’ disorder as armed and armoured men turned in the doorway, bumping into one another.
‘Today is the Day of Summoning,’ their lord said. ‘A day of very special import to the Families and to the emperor. It will not be a coincidence that the enemy has chosen this day to attack. This insult, adding to the outrage felt by our loyal soldiers, might tempt them to slaughter the invaders to a man. But we must rein ourselves in. Intelligence is our lifeline, as has been proved today. See this as an opportunity to question our enemy both about this raid and about the plans and manoeuvres of the Blueskin armies in general. This might be a vital day in the history of the City, the day the tide turns in our favour once and for all.’
His words were practical, but Leona felt pride and belief swelling in her breast. With Marcellus in command the City would prevail, and this day would be the turning-point of the war. Around her men were echoing her thoughts, murmuring their trust and confidence in their lord.
Marcellus raised his voice. ‘Instruct your troops to identify the leaders, be they senior officers in command or merely platoon leaders. It is vital they are kept for interrogation. The others – kill them all!’
Leona felt it in her bones before she heard the sound: fifty veteran warriors roaring their agreement and their faith. Old soldiers all, their blood rose at the prospect of battling for the life of their City and their lords.
The patchwork gulon was accustomed to waiting. Time possessed no meaning for the creature, for its ancestors had, more than a thousand years before, been bred to have no concept of its passage.
So it carried on doing what it always did. It stalked the Red Palace, through the dark ways known only to gulons and their mortal enemies the rats, gliding behind wainscots, beneath tapestries, sliding and sidling up and down stairways, squeezing through narrow byways and, if absolutely necessary, swimming in the flooded depths of past palaces. It was searching for the woman, not with any intensity of purpose, but relentlessly, as it had done all its life – at least, as long as it could remember. It went to all her favourite haunts, where her smell lingered most strongly, then to other places where it had discovered her in the past, where her passing was barely detectable. After a while some part of its brain realized that she was no longer in the palace. She had left many times before. She always returned.
And the gulon was accustomed to waiting.
But when the alarm gongs started to bawl their brazen warning, two things happened. First the gulon’s ears folded forward into furry grooves in the creature’s skull, protecting its sensitive hearing from the racket. And something deep within its simple brain shifted, telling it its mission to protect the woman was aborted, for the woman was not present to be protected. In times of emergency its mission changed. It would search for an appropriate female to guard.
It emerged from where it was waiting in the mouldy groove behind a pillar and set off for the heart of the palace. Keeping to the dark places and hidden ways, it made its way up through the levels, moving ever eastward. It saw many men on its journey, most of them running towards the Keep or away from it. A band of the black-and-silver ones with their nut-hard skins and sharp sticks raced by. The gulon looked for females among them but there were none. If it noted that this was unusual, it was not disheartened.
Eventually, in a narrow corridor close to the centre of the palace it smelled then saw a lone female. She was not what the gulon had expected, if it had expected anything. The woman had only three limbs, which was not unusual, yet with her single front claw she wielded a sharp stick like the four-limbed soldiers.
As the gulon peered from the darkness, a man stepped lightly into the corridor behind the female. He walked stealthily after her, any sound he made smothered by the bawling of the alarm gongs. The gulon, which recognized stalking when it saw it, knew the man was intent on harm. This was clearly the woman it sought and it had to protect her.
On silent paws it sped from the shadows. It padded up behind the man then, its needle-shar
p claws finding chinks in his outer skin, ran up his back and on to his shoulder. The man had barely time to cry out before the gulon inserted its sharp snout between throat-guard and helm and tore out the two great blood vessels of the neck. The man fell, his blood gouting, his armour clattering and momentarily obliterating the clamour of the gongs.
The woman turned, saw the dead man and the gulon, and fled.
The creature paused, tempted by the man’s soft eyeballs. But it did not want to lose her trail so, licking blood from its whiskers, it padded after her.
CHAPTER TEN
STERN EDASSON OF Adrastto stood on the Adamantine wall on the far south of the City, facing outwards towards the mountains, which were hidden behind a wall of weather. Sleet from the north drilled into his neck then trickled under his old armour, but he was scarcely aware of the cold. He was worried.
As a child he had always been plagued by too many thoughts. His father had tried beating it out of him, his mother had sobbed and said no good would come of it. Stern had learned over the years to hide the ideas that swept through his mind, as relentless as spring plagues and no more welcome. More so since he and his brother had left home to join the City’s armies. No one wanted a soldier who thought too much. But there were times, like now, when he couldn’t help thinking about things that made his head ache.
Standing with his fellow guards in the gloomy morning light high above the Adamantine Gate, theoretically watching the south but seeing only grey, he wondered what in the name of the gods was going on. The rest of the platoon had been content enough with their orders, particularly his brother Benet, for they had come from General Boaz himself.
‘Bar the gates,’ the veteran warrior had told them that morning, riding by and only pausing his mount briefly, ‘and keep them barred on pain of death. Do not open them for any reason, until Marcellus or the Immortal himself orders it.’
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