The Emperor yelled and knocked the comb away when they tried to do his hair. Managed to get a damp stain on his jacket because they somehow had to wash his face again after they’d got him dressed. Silk-velvet, treated with oil of roses, itself getting rarer every day now, the Rose Forest being years’ burned: there was a permanent mark there, a blotch in the fabric’s pile. Wretched boy. But, as it turned out he only had two jackets that fitted, he’d have to meet the King of Death as he was.
Dion, Orhan thought proudly, never made a fuss about having his hair combed or his face washed.
They got the boy loaded into his palanquin, an absurd thing of onyx and dragon bone and more black velvet carried on the shoulders of twelve bearers in black robes and hoods sewn all over with white seed pearls, their bodies strangely humped and twisted, two lumps like horns, surely, rising beneath the cap of their hoods. “It’s too hot,” the Emperor moaned as they got him into it. “Ugly. Too hot.” Bowls of incense burned sending up a thousand different heavy scents. The Emperor coughed loudly, started to moan that the smoke made his eyes itch.
“Look, God’s knives, here.” Darath snapped his fingers and got someone to give the boy a bag of sweets.
Orhan and Darath walked behind. Selim Lochaiel. Aris Ventuel the Lord of Empty Mirrors, Dweller in the House of Glass. Mannath Caltren the new young Lord of Weeping, Dweller in the House of Shadow, a gangly youth of fifteen. Ishkan Remys the Imperial Presence in the Temple. Chief Secretary Gallus. At the rear, in a litter hastily borrowed from Eloise Verneth, the High Priestess of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying in a dress of pure silver and a veil of copper thread. Surrounding all of them like an honour guard, thirty servant girls of surpassing beauty all dressed in white samite, crowned in diamonds, garlanded in lilies, each one carrying a casket of wrought gold filled with precious gems.
“No guards?”
“No guards. If he wants to kill us, he will kill us. No matter how many guards we bring.”
Finally, the people of Sorlost came out of their houses to watch the procession pass through the streets. Still silent. Baffled. Dazed. The wind blew the incense smoke in people’s faces and they coughed, and that was a wonderful omen. There were guards at the Gate of the Evening—oh fitting name! The sun is setting on our empire, it is the evening of our lives and the lives of all who long only to dwell in peace, the shadows fall long behind us, the light fades, the light fades… We could have chosen the Gates of Dust, I suppose, would that not have been yet more fitting? But some things cannot be borne no matter how fitting they might seem—forty guards at the gate, a good proportion of the soldiers of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Sekemleth Empire, they wore gold breastplates and gold helmets and they carried long spears of sweetwood gilded in gold. The Emperor’s palanquin stopped, the velvet curtains moved, the pretty boy’s face looked out at them grave and steady.
The gates opened, and the procession moved on. The day was very hot, even for the desert, the wind that had blown the incense smoke and made the crowds choke had dropped. Though they said the demon had a weather hand, whatever that meant, so perhaps he had brought the heat and the wind and now he brought the calm dead air.
Walk on and walk on through the sand through the burial ground where a thousand years of the city’s dead lie unmourned and unremembered, until we reach the figure standing there before us, a tiny thing still in the distance, but we cannot look away from him, he draws us nearer, trembling, broken, sick with fear, desire for our death beating sensual in our hearts. I see him, I feel him, the tension before a storm breaks, two lovers coming together walking together up the stairs to the bedroom. It would be undignified to seize Darath’s hand, Orhan thought.
And there he is.
He was alone. Orhan had not expected that. Serried ranks of soldiers, fully armed, their eyes hidden beneath their helmets, blood already glittering around their parted lips. The woman who claimed to be the High Priestess Thalia, weighed down in jewels—he liked giving his wife jewels, everyone agreed, all the stories had repeated it, hence the caskets and caskets of gems, God’s knives, Orhan thought with a panic, what if that wasn’t true, or she’d died, there were some confused stories about her, what if they’d brought out caskets and caskets of jewels for her and he was upset, angry, if she had died and he was left looking at piles of woman’s jewels . . . Stop it. Calm. God’s knives, Orhan thought. Try to stay calm.
They came a little closer. He stood there, quite alone, waiting for them. Like the Emperor he was dressed all in black, his skin looked very white against it. The wind picked up again, blowing sand in Orhan’s face. It carried his stink with it. He reeked like a corpse. Fishy, bloody, sweet. He reeked like Orhan’s father had smelled dying of fever, lying in his own bloody excrement. Like the city had when the deeping fever was at its height and bodies lay abandoned in the streets. The wind blew and it wasn’t sand that was blowing in his face, Orhan realized. Dried blood was flaking off the demon’s cloak, blowing around him.
They came closer. The beautiful white face stared at them. He was exquisitely beautiful, pale and fragile like the lilies the girls wore. Thoughtful grey eyes. A tired look to him.
They came closer still. He had too many shadows around him. There was darkness around him, you couldn’t quite see it but it was there like the blindness that comes in bright bright light. He moved his head slightly, tilting his head to one side and a little up. His hair rippled prettily in the breeze. A slight smile on his full red lips. Look at him another way and he was a pile of rotting bodies, one of the towers of carrion his men were said to build. He had died that night in the palace, he had been rotting here in the desert for years.
They knelt down at his feet, Orhan, Darath, Aris, Den, Ishkan, Gallus. Right down flat on their faces, arses in the air, eyes pressed into the hot bloody dust. Breathing in the dust and the blood that flaked off him, taking his disease into themselves. He was wearing a sword, of course, his famous sword Joy, Orhan could feel it see it smell it taste it hanging near him. Pus and semen dripping off its blade.
The litter bearers came forward. The twelve Imperial bearers shuffling their strange awkward gait. Hobbled men. Cloven hooves stumbling in the sand. Nothing, just sand and dust beneath their pearl-encrusted robes. The Emperor’s litter came to rest, you could hear the awkward sound of the boy clambering out in his stiff clothes; Orhan tried to look without raising his head to see the Asekemlene Emperor place his immortal foot on the sand of the desert, hesitate, prostrate himself at his enemy’s feet. The little figure of the High Priestess Sissaleena followed. Her veil made a noise like paper tearing as she knelt.
“We bring you a gift,” the Emperor said in Pernish. Four hours, that morning, getting him to repeat it over and over until it sounded half-intelligible. “My Lord King Ansikander… Ansik… Ansikand… We bring you a gift.”
A rustling, as the women came forward, piled the gold caskets at his feet. There was a pause, and then a soft voice said in perfect Literan, “Thank you.” A further pause, and then he said, “And… the women as well?”
The Emperor was trying to work out what to say. Being five. Oh, God’s knives. They should have thought of this. The sound of feet shifting on the sand. “If… if you like…” the Emperor said, “if you want them…”
“My men would, I should think,” the soft voice said.
“You can have them, then,” the Emperor said, puzzled.
“Thank you,” the soft voice said again.
“I am begging you to,” the Emperor said haltingly in Pernish. “Spare. My people.”
The soft voice said, “You can speak to me in your own language. I have studied Literan since I was younger than you are.”
“Please don’t hurt us,” the Emperor said in Literan in a kind of squeal. “Please. Please. They say you will kill everyone in the city, they say you will kill me, take all my things, pull my palace down, please don’t hurt us, look, look, I’ve given you the women, and the jewels, look, you can ha
ve this coat I’m wearing, if you want it.”
“I don’t want your coat,” the soft voice said.
“Please!” A boy’s sob. The rustle of cloth. A shriek. “You can have it. But I can’t get if off.”
“Here, then, let me help you. What stiff buttons. There.”
“So will you leave us alone now? Please? They said you would, if I asked, if I begged you. They taught me to say it in Pernish, to please you.” He tried the phrase again, getting hopelessly jumbled now: “Beg you people gifts.”
The soft voice said, “You want to come to terms with me? With my army?”
“‘Terms’?” Even the Literan word, the boy did not know.
Orhan got up on his knees. Felt Darath gasp and flinch beside him, have to restrain himself from pulling Orhan back down on his belly in the dirt. He himself felt sick, the ground spinning under him as he raised his head. “Any terms, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane Lord of the World. Any terms you wish.”
The demon’s beautiful face turned to him. The soft grey eyes opened wide, like moth’s wings. A single curl of red-black hair slipped forward over the left eye. The demon raised a hand that was scarred and deformed to push it away. The demon said, “I recognize you.”
The Emperor cowering on his throne. A bright figure, sword raised, bloodied from head to toe. “I’ll kill you now, then.” A boy’s face, falling backwards in a shower of coloured glass. A boy’s eyes meeting Orhan’s eyes a moment, before he fell. Marking each other in that moment as two murderous things. Orhan vomited yellow bile into the sand. The Emperor cried out, “Lord Emmereth!”
He will kill me now, for that. But to Orhan’s confusion the demon flushed red and lowered his eyes away.
“I…” His throat was burned. He choked on fear vomit, his chest felt tight like it was crushed. “I was in the Emperor’s throne room, My Lord Ansikanderakesis Amrakane Lord of the World. That night.”
“Yes.” The grey eyes narrowed. “Take the women and the gifts back to your city. I will send you a list of my demands. I will give you a day, to comply with them. Go.” The demon bent down, gave the Emperor back his coat. “One of the buttons has come loose,” the soft voice said. “You will need to get it sewn back on.”
“He’s offering terms! He’s offering terms! Dance! Sing!” Darath grabbing Orhan’s hands like a child, hugging Selim, hugging the child Emperor, even hugging Gallus. “Terms! Terms!” The city was dancing and singing, every wine shop open offering free food and free wine, merchants handing out their wares for free in the streets. This madness, that they had survived another hour. They danced and sang like men who had won a great victory. And perhaps, in their own understanding of the word, they had. “Terms! Terms! Whatever they are. Whatever he wants! Every last coin in the city, every last trinket, every last grain of gold! The Emperor’s head on a gold plate! Terms!”
At dusk, of course, of course, a messenger rode up to the Gate of the Evening. The gates cannot be opened. The gates are sealed and sealed from dusk to dawn. It is the law, the word of the God. We do not know, Orhan thought, if the gates can be opened once the sun has sunk below the horizon, they were not raised by mortal hands, who knows what enchantments were wrought within them? The Gate of the Evening was heaved back open. A great crash as the gates fell back. Every soldier in Sorlost lined up in the square beyond. Each carried a torch, besides their weapons, to light up the dusk, pretend it was not twilight. Seserenthelae. Night comes.
A very ordinary woman, riding a very ordinary horse. She had pretty curling brown hair, a fresh young-looking face. She did not speak. Rode out of the darkness. Dropped a curled scroll of parchment at Darath’s feet. Turned her horse and rode away. The soldiers stood waiting uneasily. People waiting helpless for someone to give the order to close the gate. Gallus reached down and retrieved the letter. Handed it to Darath. They had agreed to take it back to the palace, open it there, alone, not let the people of the city see. It might yet be something they could manage. Darath opened it. Read it. Handed it wordlessly to Orhan. Gave the order to close the gates.
Flawless, perfect Literan, elegant turn of phrase worthy of a poet, every inflection correct, the symbols neat and well-shaped. Very carefully written—though one might note that the secretary’s hand had a slight shake to it. The Emperor’s head and the head of the High Priestess, one in five of every man, woman and child in the city, every soldier in the Imperial Army, every inhabitant of the Great Temple, the Great Temple itself to be torn down. If they did these things by dawn, they would be spared for ten days.
“He has an army of six thousand soldiers. He was defeated in the mountains. Turain held out against him, is standing proud and untouched. We can hold him. We need only to close the gates.”
“This is the city that defied Amrath. Unconquered. Unconquerable.”
“I would rather die tomorrow, than live for ten days knowing the cost.” A nervous twitch of the head. “But…”
“In ten days,” said Darath, very slowly, looking at Orhan as he spoke, “in ten days we might be able to… do something.”
“They will all die anyway. Longer, slower deaths, even, perhaps.”
Orhan thought: they expect me to tell them to do this. They are waiting for me to give the order. That is what they think of me. And then it shocked him, that he might have hoped they would think otherwise.
Darath said like a child, “Wouldn’t we? Orhan?”
They were all waiting for him to give the order. Orhan licked dry lips. Opened his mouth to speak.
Chapter Forty-Four
Marith Altrersyr Who Is Amrath Returned to Us, the King of Ruin, the King of Death, the Lord of the World
The camp of the Army of Amrath
Dawn. He had not slept, eager, terrified, pacing back and forth in his tent. Ryn’s tent. Thalia had not slept either, sat in the sleeping chamber with her hands clasped in her lap. He had not taken drink or hatha: since penning the letter, he had not felt the need for it. Three times, he had come out of his tent, sent the order for them to saddle his horse; three times, he had told them to take the horse away when they brought it up. I will not go out there early. I will send Ryn or Kiana in my place. I must not look too eager. And then would stare at the sky, see the first false ghost light in the east, he would order them to ready his horse.
“Bury Osen’s head,” Thalia said to him as he paced. “Please.”
He ignored her.
“Dawn is coming,” she said at last. “It’s time.” And the darkness was no different, but of course she knew.
Are you coming? he wanted to ask her. Ten thousand men. Bronze walls that even Amrath did not breach. She looked at him with clear blue eyes and smiled at him.
He took Ryn Mathen and Kiana with him, and a guard of forty men. It was cold, riding in the pre-dawn in the desert. The sand was very cold.
The rising sun was in his eyes suddenly. Tearing at him. A rim of light on the horizon, like the rim of a shield, and the city black against it. The sun must be reflected brilliant on his face.
If they’ve done as I asked, yes, I’ll bury Osen’s head. There’s a bird there, look; if I see another, they’ll have done as I asked and I’ll bury Osen’s head. Osen’s wife might want to mourn him. I’ll send him back to lie next to Carin, perhaps. Or Tiothlyn. Or the midden where they buried my last child.
The city was there right before him. The sun had risen. The gates were closed. There was nothing outside the city. No messenger. No pile of waiting dead. The smell of cold metal. A stretch of pale sand, delft grass in bloom before the heat of the day withered its flowers. Two crows, pecking at the sand where beetles crawled over a pile of dried horse dung.
They hadn’t done it.
He felt an obscure sense of victory.
Ten thousand men. Get them drawn up. Get them ready. The city will stand against us. So we will do as we like to them. They are worthier adversaries than we had realized, it seems, they are not as craven as we had thought, they understan
d the bright value of life. Idiots, he thought. Ten more days, some of them could have had. Ten more days of being alive. Ten more wonderful brilliant days of pain and grief and hate and feeling hurting weeping blood-soaked life. What would I have done, in their place? He thought: I don’t know.
Ten thousand men drew up in lines before the bronze walls. Shadows gathered overhead. This is absurd. They cannot do a thing to harm us. We cannot do a thing to harm them. The walls were a barrier as vast as a mountain, as unbridgeable as a raging sea. They smelled cold, like a well-polished sword; as the day wore on they smelled hot like a forge and the air above them shimmered with rising heat. The gold and silver and marble domes and towers of the city behind them, like a city made of clouds in a child’s bored daydreams. The eye saw tiny people at the windows, resting their arms on the froth of elegantly carved balconies, smoothing down their fine robes with jewel-encrusted hands, sipping wine from porcelain goblets, observing with baffled interest. What could they do, these invaders, prise the gates open with the point of a sarriss? Ride and ride their pretty horses round and round the circuit of the walls?
There were three women left alive from the last village they’d looted. Marith had them bound hand and foot and dragged by three horses round and round the circuit of the walls. No response. He imagined the people inside sipping their wine and wrinkling their noses, asking a servant to play the lyre until the screaming had died away. When the women’s bodies were mostly coming apart he had them untied, stuck them up on stakes at the edge of his camp visible to the city beyond. Every carrion bird for the next hundred miles turned up shrieking and fighting over the remains. It got so noisy over the camp that he had a party of soldiers fight the birds off, cut the bodies down and bury them. Two soldiers ended up too badly wounded to fight.
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