The Mountain of Kept Memory

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Scorpions everywhere!” growled Gajdosik, which wasn’t actually true, as this was the first such company they’d seen since entering the city. It was an undersized company, hardly better than a half company, no more than eighty men or so, but that was far too many to brush out of the way.

  The scorpion soldiers were on foot, but so were they all: Gajdosik had known his brother’s men would be on foot, and so of course if they would seem to be scorpion soldiers themselves, they must leave their horses behind. And so they had. Now Gulien, at least, regretted that decision. Horses were difficult to manage in narrow streets, but if they’d all been mounted, he’d have been confident they could take on eighty of Bherijda’s men and win handily. But even so . . . He muttered, “We’re not close enough to the palace yet. If we fight now—”

  “I know,” said Gajdosik grimly “Let’s hope they’re sun-blind, under firm orders to be somewhere else, and too busy swaggering to pay attention to what’s under their noses.” He signaled for his standard-bearers to dip their banners in salute and stepped up the pace to a fast march.

  Gulien looked uneasily over his shoulder. “They haven’t stopped.”

  “They haven’t stopped yet,” snapped Gajdosik. He didn’t turn his head. Gawking around would be thoroughly out of character for the commander of a military detachment, Gulien presumed.

  Gulien said, “We’ll be around the corner and out of their sight in just a—” Then he cut that off, squinted, and said tensely, “They’re turning toward us.”

  Gajdosik still didn’t turn to look. “All of them, or just the commander’s aide?”

  “Looks like all of them.”

  Gajdosik snapped his fingers, and one of his men hurried up.

  “Go tell their commander some tale,” Gajdosik ordered the man. “Something plausible—special orders. We’ve heard that Prince Gulien is in hiding somewhere—” He glanced impatiently at Gulien, who said immediately, “Below the town house north of the next square over that way, in the cellars or near their cistern—that should seem plausible.”

  “Tell them that,” Gajdosik ordered. “Five ships, my brother brought. That commander can’t know every man. Make up a name. Sound confident and he may believe you. Slow him down for us, Marakat.”

  “Sir,” said the man, without flinching, turned on his heel, and strode away.

  Gulien couldn’t restrain himself from staring after the man. It seemed unlikely to him that the other commander would believe Marakat’s story; it seemed far more likely that Gajdosik had just sacrificed him. No doubt that had been the only thing to do. He said nothing. There seemed nothing to say.

  Following the park’s wall took them around a corner and out of sight of Pengolian Square. Though Gulien listened, he could hear no angry shouts behind them. Maybe . . . maybe they would get away with this deception for just a little bit longer. For just long enough.

  Around the park, and then they turned onto another broad street, this one showing signs of a halfhearted attempt at a barricade, but all the debris had been cleared out of the way and the people here had not, evidently, tried again. They were very near the palace now; no doubt the scorpion presence was heavier here and resistance more difficult. Especially with the militia and the palace guard ordered to stay in barracks.

  There was no sign of pillage or recent burning. The shops were closed, the shopkeepers absent from the streets, but the shops were intact, and Gulien hoped that the shopkeepers were also intact. There had been no sign of that kind of damage anywhere in Caras, no bodies in the streets, no slaughtered animals or smoldering, broken homes or screaming women. Whatever bargain Gulien’s father had made with Prince Bherijda, it had done that much, at least. The only damage Gulien could see had plainly happened days ago, during Gajdosik’s own abortive attempt to take the city.

  Gulien could imagine so much worse. Images flickered through his mind’s eye, unfocused and distant: another city plundered and burned, Esai, the Flower of the East, the Painted City, its splendid domed towers broken, the trees of its beautiful gardens cut down and burned, the decapitated heads of its people piled up into a mountain, sightless eyes staring, dead mouths gaping, crows and black kites and carrion vultures overhead, a thin stream of refugees stumbling away from the vast column of black smoke rising behind them. He had known the danger, they had known the danger. The tattooed barbarians of the plains had always threatened the settled peoples of the east, but he had believed, they had believed, he had believed Esai strong enough to hold, but they had been wrong, he had been inexcusably wrong—

  “Gulien!” snapped Gajdosik, and Gulien flinched, shuddering and blinking, glad to be recalled from that memory into a clearer awareness of himself. Esai’s destruction had been terrible enough that even this present moment was better—even marching through Caras disguised as the enemy.

  Then he saw the Tamaristan soldiers drawn up before them in front of the palace, waiting for them. Or waiting for something—Gulien looked at Gajdosik’s grim expression and knew the other man’s impression was identical to his own. He wasn’t certain that he wouldn’t have preferred to stay lost in a distant memory, no matter how terrible.

  “This is a trap,” Gajdosik snapped, confirming Gulien’s fears. “They were waiting for us.” He indicated the road to their right, also blocked by Tamaristan soldiers, and said bitingly, “And the other company is coming up from our rear. This is a trap, and we’ve walked straight into it. They were expecting us.”

  Gulien said, instantly afraid for her, “Oressa.” What had his sister walked into?

  “She wouldn’t have betrayed us, of course.” Gajdosik sounded gratifyingly certain of it. “She’d have told some clever tale as though it were truer than the sky and made my cursed brother believe every word. But something gave us away from the start—from before we even entered the city—or they’d never have put all this together in time. I wouldn’t have thought Bherijda so perceptive.”

  “My father,” said Gulien. “He might have realized what we were doing.” He felt sick. He should have known that his father would be ahead of them from the beginning, every step of the way. But he had not thought of coming against anything like this. Now he did not know what to do. He said, “We can’t fight that many.”

  “We can. We would all die, but we could certainly fight. It’s not what they’re after, though, or they wouldn’t be holding their positions; they’d be advancing. On the other hand, this is your city, not theirs, and your people are plainly not resigned to my brother’s presence here. If we cast down our black scorpions and raised up your banner, Prince Gulien, what would your people do?”

  “Against all those soldiers?” At least three hundred, Gulien thought, maybe closer to four. And if Bherijda had known they were coming, he would have covered at least the western approach to the palace as well; he would be able to pull men off that approach and reinforce his men here.

  Worse, Gulien had no idea what his father might do, or might have done already. If he was truly allied with Bherijda—not impossible if he thought his Tamaristan ally was his key to destroying the Kieba and taking her power—he would use Bherijda and then when a convenient moment arrived slide a knife into his back so smoothly the Tamaristan prince would never feel it go in. And he would not thank Gulien for interfering.

  Only that would leave the Kieba dead or cast down, and after that, no matter what Osir Madalin believed . . . After that, most likely the world would end, as one artifact after another spawned plagues that could not be stopped. Someday the world might be able to stand on its own without the Kieba. But Gulien knew that this was not that day.

  He should have done something to make sure his father could not possibly reclaim his power in Caras. He should have done something to make sure no other Tamaristan force could possibly get a foothold in the city. The harbor cannons—he ought to have made sure they were reset where they could do some good. He should have had the walls repaired. All gods dead and forgotten, how could he have let any
of this happen?

  He said, “We have to fight.”

  “We can’t win,” Gajdosik said impatiently. “Unless the city rises. Will Caras rise? If you raise up your banner, will her people rally to you to throw back Bherijda’s men? Will they do it when they can plainly see you’re allied with me? They’d have to be blind to mistake my people for Carastindin, no matter what banner we raise up.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know.” Gulien was sinkingly certain the people of Caras would not rally. Not fast enough. Not if his father ordered the militia and guard to support Prince Bherijda. Some of the men of Caras would not obey that order, but others would, and the confusion would be Bherijda’s ally.

  Gajdosik must have seen something of this in his face, because he gave a short, sharp nod and said, “Then our choices are unfortunately limited.”

  “Look,” said Gulien, indicating one man who was coming forward alone. “They’re requesting parley.”

  “Of course they are,” snapped Gajdosik. He cast a swift, hunted look around at the streets, empty except for Bherijda’s men and their own company, and at the town houses and shops that lined the streets.

  Gulien followed his example, looking hopelessly for options. He could not find any. Here, close to the palace, where the wealthy merchants and highborn courtiers lived, the narrow windows of those houses and shops were covered by dark wooden shutters, intricately carved and polished to a high glossy finish. But all the shutters were closed. The whitewashed plaster of the walls was blindingly white in the intense afternoon sun, blank and faceless as the sky. Gulien could not guess what the people inside were thinking or might be prepared to do. He couldn’t guess whether anyone recognized him. Probably they did not. He had, after all, intended to be taken for a Tamaristan officer, at least from a distance.

  If he raised a banner—if he raised the Madalin falcon—how many of the people in those town houses would believe it, and of those, how many would respond quickly enough? And how many militia or guardsmen could possibly be concealed behind those blank white walls and carved shutters?

  Time. They needed time. Delay had been their enemy when they had thought themselves disguised and unknown, but Prince Gajdosik was right: Now delay was their ally. Gulien said, “We have to keep them talking.”

  “Yes,” Gajdosik said tersely.

  But this proved impossible. The man, a Tamaristan addat with the black scorpion device on his shoulder, demanded just one thing: immediate surrender. He called both Gulien and Gajdosik by name and declared that surrender would purchase the lives of all their men, that defiance would cost all their lives, and that when the sun had moved a finger’s width across the sky—about ten minutes—he must have their decision or order the attack. From this ultimatum, he would not be swayed.

  “Who rules here?” Gajdosik asked Gulien in a low voice, because they had agreed that Gulien must be the one to represent himself to Bherijda’s officer. “Can your father be trusted to keep his word? My brother cannot.”

  “I cannot believe your brother has outmaneuvered my father,” Gulien muttered back. Then, turning to the scorpion addat, he raised his voice and asked plainly, “In whose name do you speak? Whose command do you convey? Is this the command of your prince Bherijda Garamanaj, or of my father Osir Madalin?”

  “Indeed, Prince Gulien, my prince and His Majesty Osir Madalin speak with one voice, and this is an order both give,” declared the man. “They are allies and friends, with a common purpose and a single voice.”

  Gulien refrained from any comment about people who thought they spoke with one voice with Osir Madalin. He said instead, “Of course we cannot doubt your word; nor do we doubt it. As this is my father’s command, let a man of his come forward to demand obedience in his name.”

  “Alas, my orders are strict—”

  Without lowering his voice, Gulien stated, “If no man of the falcon badge can be found within one finger’s width of the sun’s course across the sky, then we must after all question your understanding of the situation within Caras and believe that Osir Madalin must be your prince’s prisoner and not his ally.” He looked to one side and the other, deliberately, wondering how many of his own people listened and now perhaps waited for the Tamaristan addat’s answer.

  In a low tone Gajdosik said, “Well thought; and now if a man of undoubted loyalty to your father is produced?”

  Gulien shrugged minutely. “Have any useful tactical ideas occurred to you?”

  “Alas!” called Bherijda’s addat. “My orders are clear, and the sun is halfway through its finger width now! You must decide what you will do, Prince Gulien! But I give you my word that His Majesty supports my prince!”

  “Now would be a good time for tactical inspiration,” Gulien pointed out.

  “I have one tactical idea,” Gajdosik muttered grimly. “Agree to everything, get that bastard to think we’re yielding, and then a fast, concentrated effort to break through their lines, right there in front of us, where they’ve got space to retreat. If that fool had met us in the street we’d have no chance, but we might break past them up there in the palace courtyard. So, get past them and get into the palace, take Bherijda and your father both exactly as we planned, and then we can argue out the rest from a position of strength.”

  This plan sounded startlingly plausible laid out like that. Gulien had not expected it, and wasted half a second staring at Prince Gajdosik. Then he said, “Very well. I agree.” And then he stepped forward and called out loudly, “Very well. We agree!” And, spreading his hands in token of surrender, he started forward to do his part, distracting Bherijda’s man while Gajdosik got the rest of this effort organized.

  He was aware, distantly, that they all might die in the next moments, that he might die. No doubt that would interfere with the Kieba’s plans. And Oressa would be upset. He hoped she was all right. He hoped nothing had happened to her and that whatever came now, nothing would happen to her. His father might be upset, too. It was hard to decide exactly what Osir Madalin would do if his heir was killed by this new ally of his.

  He drew a breath to call out something, some agreement, some capitulation that might, if he said just the right thing, lull their enemy for half a heartbeat. Oressa would be able to pull this off. She would sound perfectly meek and sincere while she lied through her teeth—she was a lot more like their father than she wanted to think.

  Then the paving stones of the courtyard began to dissolve before his feet, and he leaped back, astonished and horrified.

  It was Tonkaïan’s Resolve. It was Bherijda Garamanaj with some terrible fragment of Tonkaïan’s Resolve, and nothing Gulien possessed or knew or called upon could possibly match it. There was nothing he could do. They had lost.

  CHAPTER 19

  Oressa was not, after all, allowed to go to her room and have a bath, though she begged in her very best helpless-princess manner. She was all dusty from the road and anybody could see she had to have a bath, but oh no, she was compelled to stay in the pink atrium with Prince Bherijda, and worse, her father. This was infuriating, because if only she’d gotten to her room, she could very easily have gotten out again and then she could have raced down the hill and found Gulien and Gajdosik and warned them.

  Instead, she was forced to sit in a heavy chair carved of pink stone and just watch as her father and Bherijda laid their own plans. Bherijda’s scorpion soldiers would come in and mutter to their horrible prince, and he would speak to her father, and the soldiers would go out again, and it was perfectly infuriating because her chair was against the far wall, too distant for her to overhear what was said. Even worse, whenever there weren’t soldiers hurrying in and then out again, Bherijda amused himself asking her about the secret doors and hidden passages in the palace, and her father didn’t stop him. Although Oressa pretended that Kelian had made all that up, she knew neither of them believed her.

  “Is there a secret door in this very room?” asked Bherijda, not for the first time. He was evidently b
ored because none of his soldiers had come in for several minutes. He looked rather as though if Oressa’s father hadn’t been there he might have started fingering the pink crystal roses carved into the corners of the ceiling or tossing the rugs aside to examine the tiles.

  Oressa didn’t know how she was ever going to recover her meek, dutiful image. She’d been so foolish, claiming publicly that she could get out of any room in the palace—she’d had to explain that to Gajdosik, yes, but she’d been such a fool to let everybody else hear her boast. She did her best to look confused and stupid instead of frightened and furious, but had no confidence she was managing it.

  Her father said calmly, “I fear the palace is not quite so rife with secret doors and panels as Kelian seems to have inferred.”

  “How very disappointing,” said Bherijda. He was almost pouting, like a little boy who wasn’t getting his own way. “I do love secret passages.”

  Another soldier came in, no, two soldiers—one of Bherijda’s men, accompanied by Erren and Kelian. Oressa tried hard to look young and helpless and not as though she was contemplating ways to murder Kelian.

  “They’re headed toward the King’s Park!” Erren announced, loudly enough for Oressa to hear him. Her father fixed his guard captain with a thoughtful look, and Erren flushed, hurried forward, and muttered in a lower voice that Oressa could not overhear. She tried not to roll her eyes and instead gave her father a pleading look. “Please, sire, I don’t feel well. Please may I retire?”