The City

by Stella Gemmell

  This chamber, into which a hundred men could have been packed, was either an oubliette, where prisoners were locked away and simply forgotten, or a temporary holding cell. He had heard the main palace dungeons were underwater, but there were other prisons beneath the palace. He did not know them all. He briefly allowed himself a happy fantasy in which the invading soldiers of Fell’s army would find his cell and release him, and he would join them, storming up the tunnels, bursting into the Keep, capturing the emperor and condemning him to death as he begged and wept.

  Sitting in the pitch-dark, scraping at a stout wooden door with a tiny pin, his courage faltered suddenly and he sat in hopeless misery for a while. Then he roused himself and started again.

  No sounds reached him in the cell, no distant crying or screaming, no shouted orders or whispered conversations, nothing but his own rasping breath and a sinister glugging from the pipe in the corner of the chamber. And the scuttling and scratching of rodents. So he heard the clump of boots at some distance and he stopped, waiting. The bootsteps became louder and he dragged himself away from the door.

  The painful glare of light poured in and he put an arm across his eyes, cowering against expected violence. There was a soft thud of something being thrown on the floor, then the door slammed and the bootsteps marched away. Bartellus felt around and found a soft cloth with hard shapes in it—biscuits. He thrust them into his shirt before the rats could get them. And a waterskin. He drank gratefully, knowing now he was to be kept alive—for what?

  When he went to work again it was with a fresh urgency.

  It was after noon and Evan had been down to the bakery and returned with a fresh loaf. He and Em sat on their beds eating the warm, pungent bread, while he told her one of his stories about a battle he had been in with her father, although Bartellus had been general and Evan just a dirty grunt, he said. It was a tale full of heroism and humour and Emly drank in every word, her eyes wide, her lips parted in anticipation of his next words. She knew it was partly, possibly all, invention, but she loved to hear him talk and she knew he loved to see her so entertained.

  He roared with laughter when he finished his story, and she laughed delightedly, although the punchline was baffling to her. Then he leaned back against the wall, finishing off the last crumbs of bread that had fallen down his tunic.

  “Where do you come from, Evan?” she asked, keen to keep up the intimate atmosphere. But his good humour slipped away like water down a drain, and he narrowed his eyes. Then, as she watched him, he relaxed again. She guessed it was a reflex in him to be suspicious of questions.

  “From a country far in the north-west. Its people call it Gallia, but in the City it is known as the Land of Mists.”

  “Is it beautiful there?” Em could not remember a time when she had not lived within walls of stone and brick. She glanced out of the grubby window to see rain sheeting down a brick wall an arm’s-length away.

  He shook his head. “I left when I was a child. I do not remember it. Sometimes”—he paused, his eyes gazing into the past—“sometimes I think I remember a blue lake and a waterfall. But perhaps it was something someone told me.”

  “Did you come here with your parents?” She was always eager for stories of mothers and fathers, of families living their lives together.

  He picked more crumbs off his chest. “No. I was brought here as hostage. There were many of us boys, sons of distant kings and tribal leaders, all allies of the City. We were brought here to be trained in the ways of war, and as hostages for our lords’ good behaviour.”

  He added, “I was the very last, the youngest of them. Me and my brother.”

  “Where is your brother?”

  “Dead.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Conor.”

  “I have a brother too. His name is Elija.” Then she said, “Did you ever go home again, to your parents?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They died.”

  His face was sad, but Em felt a selfish spark of satisfaction, for it was another thing that tied them together—they were both orphans.

  She thought about what he had said, then wondered, “Why were you the last? Did the emperor decide it was cruel to treat little boys that way?” For it certainly was, she thought, unconscious that as a child she had suffered in ways that were unknown to him.

  He grinned at her, his good humour restored.

  “No, I don’t think the emperor saw the error of his ways. There are no more allies,” he explained. “No more kings to pay tribute. They’ve all been destroyed by the armies of the City.”

  “All of them?”

  “There are lands far away, across the sea, where maybe they don’t fear the City. But everywhere we know, for hundreds of leagues around, there is only desolation and death. The City has no allies left, only enemies, and soon it will have destroyed them all.”

  She had never spoken of this with anyone before, because Bartellus refused to discuss politics, as he called it, and poor Frayling, the only other constant in her recent life, knew nothing of events outside the walls. She felt very grown-up, discussing these matters with a warrior of the City.

  She hesitated, for she was reluctant to offend him, but she asked in a small voice, “But you are a soldier. You have been part of this.”

  She thought he was not going to answer her, but at last he looked at her and asked, “Have you seen those big flocks of birds? In the autumn. They fly around in the sky, they look like smoke, twisting and turning all together, like one big smoke-bird. Have you seen them?” He waited for her to nod, then he said, “You have never seen one bird decide to go another way, have you, for it would die on its own. Soldiers are like those birds. They do what all the other soldiers do, or else they will die. And when you’re fighting each day, just trying to stay alive, and keep your friends alive, you don’t think of what you’re doing, whether it’s right.”

  She held her breath, not wanting to break his thread of thought. He said, “It takes something…valuable to happen to make you see what you’re doing is wrong, to set you back on the right path.”

  “Did something valuable happen to you?”

  “I met someone,” he said absently, staring at his hands.

  She waited, but he was not going to explain. She guessed he meant Fell Aron Lee, the warrior hero whose fate would shape all their futures. Evan’s face was tender, reflective. He was drifting away from her, no longer thinking of her. His dirty blond hair, which was shaved short as any soldier’s when they first met, had grown over the months, and now it curled in tendrils at his neck. He was clean-shaven and she could see more than one scar marking his face. She remembered the S-shaped brand on his arm, and felt a movement in her loins that was painful in its intensity. She moved from her bed and sat beside him. She put her arms around his chest and nuzzled her face into his neck. He smelled of sweat and bread and an exotic male smell which made her heart race.

  She felt him tense, then he carefully disengaged her arms, picked her up by the shoulders and placed her back on her own bed.

  “We should have sex, Evan,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, as if suggesting a walk in the rain.

  “No. We shouldn’t,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “You are too young.”

  Brought up in the Halls as she had been, Emly was very familiar with human congress in all its forms. And she knew she was not too young. Her body was shrieking to her that she was not.

  “No, I’m not,” she stated, and she smiled at him knowingly and thought she saw a flicker of indecision in his eyes.

  “And you are the daughter of Shuskara,” he added. “He would cut off my balls and string them up to make a necklace with my ears and toes.” He grinned at her, and she knew she would not sway him.

  Then he suddenly stood. “I must go,” he told her. “I’ll be back before nightfall.” And he left the room before she could take a breath.r />
  The rain was so heavy, the attic room so dark, that it was hard for Em to tell when the long day came to an end. She waited, anxious and bored, playing over and over again in her mind her advance to the soldier and his reaction. She tried to think about her new life with the librarian, as housekeeper, but she could not picture it, for if it came to pass it would mean that her father and Evan were both dead.

  When he came back the room was dark, lit only by the two oily candles. He was carrying his worn leather sword-belt and a roll of cloth which he dumped on the floor. It clattered, metal on metal, and she guessed it contained more weapons, knives perhaps. Evan was preparing for war, and she could not go with him.

  She was lying under her winter coat again, for the bakery had closed hours before and the room was cooling quickly. Evan glanced at her, his face expressionless. She wondered what he was thinking. Lifting her hands to her hair, she pulled out the ribbon and let it down, then sat up so it flowed over her shoulders. She looked into Evan’s face and, holding him with her eyes, she threw off the coat and stepped out of the bed, naked. She walked up to him and stood up close, her nipples brushing his chest. He did not move. She reached up and put her hands round his neck, then stood on tiptoes and kissed him. He was much taller than her and she had to draw his head down. For a moment she thought he was going to reject her again, but then his mouth softened against hers. He kissed her for a long time, and she felt his body heat and his hardness.

  He picked her up and laid her gently on his bed.

  Chapter 37

  Riis thought the booming beat of his heart must be audible to anyone as he crept through the corridors of the midnight Keep.

  He had spent his soldiering career facing his enemies from horseback, bearing down on them with a scream, protected by his armour and a moving mountain of flesh and bone. He was unused to stealth in any area of life. And the profound silence all around oppressed him more than the dark and the atmosphere of dread in the emperor’s redoubt.

  The two guards at the doors to the Keep had presented him no problem. They had stood obediently to attention, staring ahead, as the new commander of the Thousand wandered by. He had placed himself between them, greeting them amiably. With two swift strokes of his long knife he slashed the throat of one and spun on the other, who only had time to get his sword half raised before the knife pinned him through the eye. Easy, Riis thought. Too long at their posts, bored beyond reason. When was the last time they had been attacked here in the heart of the palace? Never.

  He had debated if it was worth disposing of the bodies. No guards at the door would raise the alarm as swiftly as dead ones. But in the end he dragged them to a dark spot under nearby stairs—it might give him a few moments.

  Now he was hurrying through unknown corridors expecting the clang of the alarm at any moment. He had no idea where the emperor was, or how big the Keep was, or indeed if anyone else lived in there.

  If I were an emperor, where would I be? he thought.

  Upstairs, of course. No emperor would live in the depths of the palace, near the drains and sewers and rising floodwater. So each time Riis had a choice he went up. Yet he seldom had the choice—the Keep seemed to be leading him ever downward, corridors shelving away steeply, leading to blind alleys and more darkly downward steps. After an hour or so he guessed he was lower than where he started.

  Sliding through double doors, unguarded, he came to a great empty chamber lit by many torches but still cold and dank. It was a round room, high and deep. A wide staircase travelled round the curved wall, spiralling down to the distant floor. He entered at the top, looked down and saw the only other way out was far below. A chilly miasma seemed to cling to the distant floor. He shook his head. He had no wish to go down there. He left again quietly, retracing his steps.

  He had expected to dodge servants and soldiers, as he had when he shadowed Amita during her night walks. But in the Keep there was no one, and the only sound was his traitor heart and the sigh of his breath on the still air. He stopped often, listening for movement. After a while he found himself listening hopefully for a sign of life.

  He was in a narrow, dank corridor, smelling of tainted meat and stagnant water. This is a place of the dead, he thought, and he realised he was terrified. Battling the urge to flee, he unsheathed his sword. The rasp of metal cheered him a little, and the firm feel of the leather grip in his palm.

  Then he heard a sound, a sliding sound, soft and deliberate. It was coming from farther down the corridor where darkness pooled between torches.

  Riis realised he was holding his breath, and he let it out silently, then stepped forward, sword raised.

  In the gloom he could make out a still shape. With relief he realised it was a gulon. He took a deep breath and felt his chest ease. Just a gulon. Standing in his way. He had seen them in the streets of the City from time to time. This was a big one, though, far bigger than he had before seen, its snout almost up to his shoulder. Round its neck it wore a wide gold collar like a pampered lapdog.

  It gazed at him with its eerily human eyes, and its long lashes seemed to tremble in the damp air. It made no move.

  “Shoo!” he said, a bubble of laughter rising to his lips. He raised his sword and stepped forward, though he had no intention of harming the beast. “Out of the way, you dumb animal.”

  It stood its ground, unmoved by his bluster. Riis decided to push past it, then wondered if it would bite him. Do gulons have teeth, he asked himself? Perhaps it would be simpler to just kill the thing. But he was reluctant, as it stood there regarding him with its darkly human eyes.

  It opened its mouth and made a small sound like a baby’s cry. Its breath carried the stench of sewers. Riis shuddered. He lowered his blade, intending to barge past it. He stepped to one side and simultaneously it stepped that way too. Riis grinned. So you want to play, he thought.

  Then, as if unleashed, the gulon lunged forward with unearthly speed and closed its jaws round his throat.

  In the caverns far beneath the Keep those other creatures that lived and died in the Halls, the rats, paused briefly in their perpetual search for food to watch the invading army pass by. It was making slow progress. Though the going was now flatter and firmer, they were still ankle-deep in slippery mud, and the soldiers watched their step, mindful of the moving river of sludge to their right. The stench was appalling and some of those whose stomachs had happily endured the choppy seas and who had laughed at their weaker colleagues now suffered in turn, vomiting regularly beside the path as they marched. They all carried plenty of water, for Indaro had made them aware that dehydration could be a problem by the time they reached their destination.

  She was trudging along at the back of the group when there was a sudden hush and the army faltered to a halt. Like the rest of them, she gazed ahead and her heart sank.

  The river curved towards the south here, and a mountainous pile of debris had built up on the outer side of the curve at some time when the flow was at its highest. It was impossible to say how long it had been like that—an hour, a year. It was completely impassable.

  Indaro looked across to the other side of the river, now unreachable, where the path was clear and flat. We should have gone that way, she thought.

  Gil cleared his throat. “We cannot go on and we cannot cross the river,” he said tiredly. “Therefore we go back the way we have come.”

  “Then go where, sir?” a Petrassi soldier asked.

  “Elija?” Gil turned to the boy.

  “There are other paths, plenty of them,” Elija answered. “We thought this the best way but we were wrong. They shift with every rainstorm. We will have to try another way.”

  “We guessed this would happen,” Indaro added, trying to sound positive, as if it were part of the plan. “That is why we gave ourselves so much time.”

  One by one the invaders turned and started back the way they had come. “Be careful,” Gil ordered. “Watch your feet.” There was a constant drip and drizzle of
water on their heads from the unseen roof above them, and the churned mud underfoot was doubly treacherous going back. Gil knew there was always a temptation to hurry when retracing your steps, a need to chase time, and they could ill-afford to lose warriors before the battle even began.

  There was still plenty of time. Yet Indaro was discouraged by the setback. She missed Doon, for her friend had been a constant in battle, and without her Indaro’s left side felt strangely vulnerable, unarmoured. When they left Old Mountain they had ridden first to the high plain where Fell had left Doon’s body. Together they had buried her in the hard ground, facing the sunrise, while Gil and his men watched. Indaro had spoken the familiar words, commending Doon to the Gods of Ice and Fire and privately, in her heart, to Aduara, goddess of the blood of women, whose worship they shared. As she walked through the sewers Indaro daydreamed that one day, when the war was over, she would ride, perhaps with Fell at her side, to the small farm in the southlands where Doon’s mother might yet live, and tell her of the heroism of her daughter and the courage with which she gave her life for the City. She felt tears welling and she wiped her face.

  She dropped back to speak to Stalker. The extra leagues they were walking would be a torture to him. She fell in beside him, noting he had taken out the stick he carried in his pack and was using it to support his right leg.

  “We will be stopping soon,” she told him, guessing. “I expect Gil will call a halt when we have returned to where we started.”

  “What do you want, woman,” he replied irritably, glaring at the ground, “to send me back in the boats? Well I’ll not go. I’d rather die in this arsehole of the City than be sent to safety like…a woman.”

  She grinned at him and eventually he smiled back, despite his anger, when he realised what he’d said.

  “I was going to say,” she told him, “that I’ll strap your ankle again if you think it’d help.”