The City

by Stella Gemmell

Shuskara shrugged. “It was the convention in the old days, when there was still peace, of sorts, between the City and some of its neighbours. The tributary kings sent their sons to the emperor’s court to be educated and trained in the arts of war.”

  “They call us guests, but in truth we are hostages,” Arish said bitterly.

  “Yes, hostages for the good behaviour of the king. Yet your father rebelled and you are still alive. As are the others. You are the last. All your fathers are dead, most of them under the swords of the City’s warriors. Yet the emperor has not had you killed. Do you never wonder why, the six of you, when you talk at night?”

  “Perhaps that is the purpose of this trial.”

  Shuskara looked annoyed. “Nonsense, boy! You have a better head than that. If the emperor decided to kill you you would be dead in a heartbeat. He does not need reasons.”

  “Then why?”

  The general leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table. “I do not know. The Immortal does not confide in me. But I believe he is conflicted. He sees you as a potential threat, yet he still yearns for the days when the world paid him tribute and sent its sons to him to be educated, when his court was the hub of culture and commerce for the known world.” He shook his head. “This has not been the case in my lifetime. But you are the last reminders of the days before the darkness fell and the City stood alone against the rest of the world.”

  “Then he should treat us with honour.”

  “Perhaps he has plans for the six of you.”

  “There were eight of us. Two were ripped apart by the dogs. Some plan.”

  Shuskara sat back and sighed wearily. “Perhaps he just wants you dead.”

  “Perhaps he is insane,” Arish whispered.

  “Do not say that to anyone, boy, even to your friends.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Shuskara called for more water and some wine. He offered wine to the boy, who had never before taken wine and turned it down.

  “How did you know my father?” Arish asked at last.

  “I was raised in his court.”

  “You are my countryman?”

  The general smiled. “No. My father was a mercenary. He came from the City originally, but he fought for the highest bidder for his services throughout the world. His name was famous in those days, although I doubt anyone alive has ever heard it.

  “His name was Adrakian. There came a time when he needed somewhere safe to settle his wife and children. Your grandfather, who was then Lion of the East, offered him sanctuary in return for his services. I lived at the Lion’s Palace for ten years.”

  “What happened to Adrakian?”

  The general sighed. “Few mercenaries make old bones. He was killed in an ambush while escorting a convoy of silk intended for the palace bedchambers. It was an easy little job. The attackers were common criminals. Adrakian was hit on the temple by a thrown club. He died half a year later, paralysed and drooling.”

  “No end for a soldier,” Arish responded formally. In the silence he asked, “Why do you owe my father a life?”

  Whenever he was taken to see Mason, Fell schooled himself not to ask about Arish, or react to any mention of the name. He knew his former life had a bearing on his imprisonment, but if he seemed uninterested they could not use it as leverage.

  He nodded to Mason, then sat down in his chair, took the glass of wine offered, and asked affably, “What are we to talk about today?”

  Mason stared at the ceiling as if he had not thought of the matter until that moment. “Your peculiar allegiance to the City and its emperor,” he said finally, “despite everything it has done to you.”

  “I am the City’s loyal son,” Fell repeated, as he had done a dozen times.

  “Yet you are not of the City.”

  Fell nodded.

  “It seems to me, Fell,” Mason said, “that you hold more resentment for your father, for sending you to the City, than you do for the emperor, for killing your father.”

  Fell shrugged. He genuinely didn’t care.

  “The early resentment,” Mason went on, “the child’s emotion, is still stronger for you than that of the man.”

  Fell stared at the ceiling. “I am not given to self-examination,” he said. “And I have no interest in your attempts to get inside my mind. It is unnecessary. I am hiding nothing. If you want to know anything about me, just ask.”

  “I already know everything about you.”

  Fell thought that unlikely, but he said, “Then you know I am a soldier. I have spent my life in the service of the City. I am its loyal son. But if I wanted to raise a rebellion, if that is what you hope of me, then I could not. My army is gone, my company is dead, except for four souls. I could no more lead an army against the emperor than could a beggar in the streets of Lindo.”

  Mason nodded thoughtfully. “You are right. But you misunderstand me. There is only one man alive who can turn the armies against Araeon and it is not you, Fell.”

  Fell stayed silent, waiting.

  “A soldier of genius and charisma, a general all the warriors of the City would follow if he were to ask them, a man who, I believe, would be glad to see the emperor die for all the wrongs committed against him, and against the people of the City.”

  Fell shook his head. “If you are speaking of Shuskara, then he is dead.”

  “No, he is not.”

  “He lives?” For the first time Fell wanted to believe this man.

  “My agents have seen him. His resentment against the emperor is great. With a few good men at his side he could lead a rebellion which would destroy Araeon and the ruling Families.”

  “Then he doesn’t need me.”

  “But he is slow to trust, obviously.”

  Fell found sarcasm rising irresistibly. “He doesn’t trust enemy plotters who ask him to conspire with them against the emperor. You amaze me.”

  Mason smiled thinly. “He trusts only his daughter—and you.”

  “He has no daughter.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  Fell did not have to think about it. “Fifteen years ago, the Battle of Trassic Fields. We destroyed the Blues, an army of Buldekki tribesmen financed by the Odrysians.”

  “And afterwards Shuskara dismissed you as his aide, after ten years at his side.”

  The memory still burned. “Yes.”

  “You were given command of the company they now call the Pit Wolves. Shuskara said you were as a son to him and it was time to further your own career, that one day you would be a general.”

  How can he know this? Fell wondered. No one else knew of the conversation.

  Mason smiled. “It is not hard to guess,” he confessed. “And soldiers gossip like old wives. Everyone knew Shuskara and Fell Aron Lee were as father and son. Everyone knew he wanted to keep you close, like a son, but knew you had to make your own path. He saw you as a future general. Everyone did. In those days.

  “My point, Fell, is that a lot of blood has passed under the bridge since you last saw him. The general was tried, tortured, imprisoned, his family slaughtered. Now he lives quietly under a new name out of the gaze of the emperor. His daughter is adopted. But Shuskara trusts you, and he has his own reasons to want the emperor to fall.”

  “You have spoken to him?”

  “No. It is impossible for a foreigner to enter the City these days. It is a place of dread and mistrust. But messages can pass in and out, with effort.”

  Fell stood to stretch his shoulders and back, and paced around the small room. He had no reason to believe this man, and every reason not to. Despite himself, he was intrigued. He walked behind Mason, who did not turn to face him, or tense.

  “Let me be sure I understand,” Fell said. “You want me to return to the City, find Shuskara, and tell him we should turn the armies and take the City, killing the emperor—because our enemy wants us to? This is your plan?” He laughed, feeling some of the stress falling from his shoulders.

  “You pled
ged once to kill the emperor.”

  “I was a child.”

  “You were thirteen, almost a man, and had just watched a friend suffer a hideous death.”

  Fell felt the brand on his chest itching, and resisted the urge to touch it.

  “There were five of you, and you all endured the pain of the brand, even the youngest, because you believed the emperor was evil and should die. Are your convictions less strong now than they were then?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. “Of course they are. We all make compromise with age. You forgot that pledge and got on with your life. For you were privileged, aide to the famous Shuskara, friend to the greatest man in the land. Why would you remember a child’s vow when you had so much to lose?”

  Fell sat down again but he said nothing.

  “Do you think they all forgot, Fell?”

  “Apparently, for thirty years have passed and the Immortal still lives.”

  He looked into Mason’s eyes and thought he saw contempt there, but he reminded himself that this man was trying to manipulate him.

  “Would you like to know what happened to them? Ranul and Evan and Riis and Parr?”

  “Not really,” Fell replied. “I would like to return to my cell. You are mistaken if you think I have anything to offer you, or you me.”

  Fell.”

  The wall was plastered and had once been painted white. But it was damp and much of the paint had bubbled and fallen off, leaving the dark grey plaster wall with leprous pale patches. Fell had looked at that same small piece of wall every day for more than a hundred days. He knew its islands and oceans and voyaging chips of paint better than he knew his own face. It was home to him, somewhere to retreat to away from the sounds and smells of the two men in the cell with him. He stared at the wall map and in it travelled in his mind to past glories, battles won, women known, friends remembered.

  “Fell!”

  They had stopped calling him “Sir.” Had he told them to? He couldn’t remember. There had been so many conversations. For the first few weeks in the cell they had talked all the time to relieve the boredom and to help Stalker deal with the pain of his shattered ankle. They talked first about the battles they had come through, then about their families and homelands and the women they had known. Then Garret and, eventually, Stalker started to tell of their fears and hopes, the familiar plans so many soldiers cherish, for a farm, a few horses, a family of their own.

  “Fell!”

  He rolled over. “Yes.”

  The cell was barely big enough for the three narrow pallets. There was one along each wall, leaving a rectangular space where the inward-swinging door opened. In that space each of them exercised diligently in turn every day to keep their muscles strong. But the beds were not long enough for Fell or Stalker, and the ceiling was too low for them to stand upright. Each time Fell was taken from the cell he revelled in the chance to walk tall, to stretch his back and shoulders. Neither Stalker nor Garret had left the cell in weeks, and the confinement was bearing down on Stalker particularly. He had been restricted to his pallet while his bones healed, and now he was able to move about, but could not, his leg muscles twitched and crawled as he tried to sleep, and he was subject to agonising cramps, waking his cell mates nightly with yelps of pain. Stalker’s torture was affecting them all, and Fell knew he would have to do something about it.

  He had made two escape attempts. The first time he was being marched to see Mason and he waited until a guard was close behind him then spun on his heel, crushing the man’s throat with his elbow before making a break for the northern wall of the fortress. He had eventually been cornered by six men at swordpoint. After that, before he was allowed out of his cell he had to thrust his hands through the hole in the door to be chained. Nevertheless, with hands chained in front of him he had clubbed down two guards and snatched a sword before holing up in a corner of a small sunlit courtyard. It was two days before they winkled him out, weak from thirst. Now he was chained with his hands behind him until they reached Mason’s interrogation room, when he was shackled by the legs to a metal ring in the floor before his hands were released. He had toyed with the plan of capturing Mason and holding him for ransom, but suspected the dour guards would merely leave the man to die.

  When he rolled over to look at Stalker he guessed the northlander was going to complain again about his confinement.

  “What?” he asked discouragingly.

  But the man surprised him. “I’ve got an escape plan,” Stalker said.

  Fell sat up. “Let’s hear it.” Garret sat up too, ever eager.

  “Well.” Stalker carefully swung his feet to the floor. “The next time you go to see your friend Mason. To take a glass of wine with him.” He paused to underline his point and Fell nodded impatiently. “Ask the man if we can have an urquat board and counters and dice. He’d hardly deny you that.”

  “If they have such a thing. Why?” Fell asked.

  “Oh, and a dead cat,” Stalker added.

  Fell sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  “Then,” Stalker went on without a trace of humour, “we can use the cat gut and bones to make a slingshot, and kill the guards by shooting the dice at them. Then we use the board to make wings and one of us can fly away from here and come back with an army to rescue the others.”

  Fell twitched his face muscles into a mirthless smile. But Garret leaped to his defence. “Don’t you think Fell would get us out of here if he could?”

  Stalker glared at him, and Fell felt irritated too. Over the months it was hard to know which was more annoying, Stalker’s constant griping or Garret’s good cheer. He turned over to stare at the wall again, but Stalker would not leave it.

  “Mason’s given you a chance, man,” he said urgently to Fell’s back. “He wants something of you. It means you have leverage.”

  Fell sat up again. Reining in his anger, he asked calmly, “Are you out of your mind? Assuming I agree to his scheme and convince him that he has convinced me to kill the emperor, and he lets me go back to the City, do you think he will free you too? Why would he? You would be hostages for my good behaviour. When I returned to the City and it became clear the emperor had not been assassinated, then he would kill you and the women in a heartbeat.”

  Stalker shrugged. “Then at least we’d be out of this pigging cell.”

  Chapter 24

  When the gods first walked upon this land, when the stars were young and the world was new, they stepped out of their ships in the great harbour and strode up to the hilltop. As was their custom, they captured an animal, a man, and roasted him alive until his screams stopped, then divided him up among them and ate the sweet meat. They agreed that the meat was good and the land was fertile, and they elected to stay.

  At first the people of the land feared them, as well they might, and ran from them. But over time they found the gods had much to teach them, they had much to learn, and they could profit from learning. So they were taught to trap and snare the wild beasts, to herd and domesticate the meek ones, to grow crops and to make wine and ale. Then they learned the wonders of mathematics, the pleasures of philosophy, and the beauty of art. And the gods taught them to wage war on their neighbours more efficiently.

  So the people worshipped their gods and everyone was happy.

  Eons passed; the City rose and fell and rose again.

  As the people learned to be more like gods, so some of the gods became more like people, and forgot they were gods and bred with the men and women of the City. Their descendants were not immortal, but they lived very long lives and they bred among themselves to strengthen this gift. Some of these started to call themselves gods and were killed by the true gods for their arrogance. The others remained arrogant, but kept their thoughts to themselves.

  Over time the people’s devotion to their deities started to fail. Some even declared they did not exist. These were killed and eaten, but the world was a very fierce place and the non-believers declared it
just a coincidence. Belief in the gods continued to founder and some of the temples fell into ruin and, one by one, the gods returned to their ships and left the land to seek somewhere new where they would be honoured and loved and feared.

  The only gods left were those too old and tired to move on (for even the gods become old, given enough time), or those who most loved the people of the City, or those who still perceived a profit in staying. These were the weakest of them and in time their names were forgotten, their existence forgotten.

  Their descendants, who had banded together and bred together to strengthen their bloodlines, formed seven Families, and these Families ruled the City for millennia. In a very long life you could accumulate a great deal of power, and many descendants to support you and, sometimes even, wisdom.

  Of the seven Families, two died out centuries ago, Kerr and Broglanh.

  “But I know people called Kerr.” Arish interrupted Shuskara’s narrative as they sat in the whitewashed room above the palace dungeons. “There is Flavius Randell Kerr, your friend.”

  “Flavius is not my friend,” replied Shuskara. “But yes, there are many Kerrs, including Reeve Kerr Guillaume, once one of the emperor’s closest advisors. But they are long-ago scions of the Kerr family tree and they are careful to make no claims to belong to a ruling Family.

  “The others,” he went on, “are of course, Araeon of the Family Sarkoy, and Guillaume, Vincerus, Gaeta, and Khan. Of these Sarkoy and Vincerus are the most powerful. You know these names well, of course.”

  “And there is a delicate balance of power,” said Arish eagerly, keen to show he understood the City’s politics. “They furnish the City’s armies. More than two-thirds of the armed forces are supplied by the emperor and the Vincerii, including the Maritime, a Sarkoy army, and the Adamantine, a Vincerus army.”

  Shuskara nodded. “And I have finally come to my point,” he told the boy. “Your advocate is of the Family Vincerus. She is…”

  “She!” cried Arish, appalled. “A woman? What use is a woman to us?”

  Shuskara’s face darkened and his voice became grave. “It seems to me, boy, that you should be grateful for any help you can get. Few people would speak against a decision by the Immortal. An advocate who is also a member of the Families has a better chance than anyone. And Archange is very wise. If she agrees to do this, though I am not sure she will, you should consider yourselves very lucky.”