The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3)

by H. Anthe Davis

  Sanava looked down upon him with hard eyes, the bruises on her face still heavy, her jaw set like a vise, and he had no doubt that she would kill him.

  “Yeh gotta,” he rasped desperately. “If I can't help her, yeh gotta. Please.”

  For a long moment, the blade remained still. So did she, only her eyes narrowing.

  Then, with a noise of disgust, she said, “T'okiel's teeth, what d'yeh think I ken do, yeh stupid shit?”

  “Yeh... The Field Marshal's place...yeh could visit...?”

  “What, walk up and tell them that towerin' beast sent fer me? Spread my legs and then make off with the girl while he's sleepin'? I en't yeh savior any more than I'll be yeh whore, Vesha Geiri. Yeh shat yeh bed, yeh clean it up.”

  “The girl—“

  “I dun care. Part those sheets and yeh'll see half a hundred girls in the same muck, nobody rescuin' them.” A pause, then she continued, lower and closer, “No. Yeh wanted t'be an Imperial, and now yeh are. Better learn t'like it.”

  He shivered at the contempt in her tone, as cold as her blade. She released him then, hand and knife retracting, and he tried to turn—opened his mouth to plead with her, to say what he had seen. The horrid light, his little victim...

  Her heel slammed into his back, forcing him forward and down. He caught himself on his splinted arm and felt the bone twinge, and then she kicked it out from under him and stomped him between the shoulder-blades, straight into the noxious mud. He tried to roll away or bring his arms up but found himself trapped against the barrack wall, and for a few endless moments all he knew was her white dress in his face and her bare feet hammering into his gut

  Finally she stopped. By the time he heaved up, coughing and spitting, she was gone.

  *****

  Lieutenant Linciard rose from Vyslin's bedside at the sound of the door, snapping to attention as he saw his commander. Captain Sarovy gave him a quick return salute with the ink-bottle in his hand, then stepped aside for the others, and Linciard's stomach dropped as he saw the pair of crutches in Sergeant Benson's hands.

  He looked down to Vyslin, mouth open to object, but Vyslin gave him the steely stare he had been delivering for the past three days—in between bouts of unconsciousness. The stare that said I've made my choice and you have no right to gainsay me.

  Linciard looked to Medic Shuralla for support, but she had already turned away to busy herself at the other end of the infirmary, shoulders stiff under her striped coat. No doubt she felt the empty stare of Messenger Cortine, who had accompanied the captain.

  “Corporal Cambriel Vyslin,” said the captain in a studied monotone, “I understand that you have considered the Messenger's offer of White Flame placement.”

  “I have, sir,” said Vyslin. Linciard could hardly bear to look at him; his color was good, his eyes clear, and he could almost seem recovered—sane—if not for the brittleness of his smile and the flatness of the bedsheets where his right leg should be.

  “I am also aware that you have been deemed fit enough to travel.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I am required to ask for your answer, then.”

  Vyslin did not hesitate. “I accept, sir,” he said, sitting up on his elbows. “I accepted when it was first offered and I accept it now. Not all the badgering in the world can change my mind.”

  Clenching his hands behind his back, Linciard fixed his gaze on the Messenger's face. Those horrible blank eyes, that satisfied smile. He wanted to grind it off with his whetstone.

  “You understand all that this entails, corporal?”

  “I understand that it will mend me. I understand that I will be bound to service. I understand that I'm already in service to the Empire so what does it piking matter? Just give me the papers!”

  From the corner of his eye, Linciard saw the captain's face tighten, then smooth into something inscrutable. “Then all I require is your signature upon the commission.”

  “Yes, please, finally.”

  The captain moved to his bedside, opposite Linciard, and presented the writing-board with the parchment upon it, then the quill and ink. Vyslin barely skimmed the document before dipping the quill and signing.

  “I'll get this sealed,” Sarovy said as he retook it, then paused a moment to regard Vyslin before intoning, “My congratulations on your new commission, Lieutenant Vyslin. I expect that you shall be as successful within the White Flame as you have been within the Crimson Army.”

  Some of the hostility faded from Vyslin's demeanor, and he nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  “The portal is being opened, but you have a few moments yet. Come out when you are ready.” The captain gestured to Benson, who leaned the crutches against the foot of the bed, then together the captain, sergeant and Messenger exited. The door clicked shut in their wake.

  Vyslin struggled up and reached for the crutches. Linciard caught his hand.

  “What?” snapped Vyslin, yanking away. “Are you going to try to stop me physically now?”

  “If I could, I'd throw you over the back of the horse and ride off,” said Linciard in a low voice. The medic wouldn't talk, and the rest of the infirmary was empty—the others either back on their feet, gone to the Palace or dead—but there could always be eavesdroppers at the door. “But I'm down a horse, and you've made your plans clear.”

  “That's right. I have. So will you quit being such a piking—“

  “Friend? Throne, Cambri, how can you expect me to—“

  “It's none of your business what I do with my life.” His large eyes were narrowed to slits, baleful like Linciard had never seen. “Toss up all the roadblocks you want, whinge at the captain to delay this yet again, but it won't change anything. They have a solution to this.” He gestured sharply to his lack of leg. “So I'll take it, whatever it is.”

  “But what the specialists said—“

  “We're all headed to the Palace eventually, Erolan. I'd rather do it by choice.”

  Linciard swallowed his next words, the ones that went: I still care about you. They didn't matter, just like Vrallek's terse description of the conversion process and the White Flame armor hadn't mattered. Vyslin had always done exactly as he wished, and let nothing stop him.

  And the leg...

  He couldn't deny that Vyslin had no other way to come back from that. If conversion or the White Flame armor could truly compensate for the loss, then it was selfish of him to try to hold Vyslin back. Wasn't it?

  “I just... You could be discharged with honors and a stipend,” he said, his last futile argument. “You don't need to keep fighting.”

  “What would I do, sit around and feel sorry for myself? Take up knitting?”

  “Cambri...”

  “No. It's signed and sealed, Erolan. I'm for the White Flame, and you're for your own duties—and apparently that piker Rallant. Who, by the way, has been to the Palace too, or are you so piking dense you can't connect specialists with conversion? So worry about yourself.”

  Linciard stared, stung, but Vyslin grabbed his crutches and slung his good leg off the bed, and as the other came free—its scabbed-over end just barely protruding from the end of his undershorts—he had to look away. “I'll get the door,” he mumbled.

  “I'm serious. That man is toxic.”

  “He's not— Look, first you argue that the Palace is a good thing and now you're saying it makes people toxic?”

  “Oh no, I think he was born like that.”

  “Cambri...”

  “The Palace just gave him power. So why shouldn't I have power, huh? Why shouldn't I have some piking power after I gave my leg, my life for this army?”

  “It's not—“

  “You have no authority over me, Erolan. You couldn't handle me while we were together, so don't try to handle me now. Just get out of my way.”

  Shoulders knotted, spine stiff, Linciard pulled open the door.

  And found a startled Jonmel Stormfollower on the other side, fist raised to knock. “Lancer?” h
e said as the younger man backed up.

  “Uh. Sorry, sir,” said Stormfollower, belatedly straightening in salute. “I didn't want to intrude. I just came to wish the corporal— Uh, lieutenant well...”

  Linciard exhaled through his teeth. Everyone had been offered the deal: the injured men to be given commissions into the White Flame, and all other Blaze Company given permission for reassignment to the Palace, by order of Colonel Wreth. A few of the uninjured soldiers had taken it, and Vyslin was the last of the amputees to sign on.

  He wished he knew what the captain thought about it, but they had not spoken properly since the ambush at Old Crown. Having seen the man take two crossbow-bolts to the head then pull them out like nothing, Linciard was afraid to be around him. Afraid to ask.

  Was everyone in this company secretly a monster?

  “Fine,” he said, and stepped aside for Stormfollower, returning the salute without enthusiasm. Stormfollower dropped his own and started to edge past, but then backed out, followed a moment later by Vyslin on his crutches.

  “Sorry. Had to get out of there,” said Vyslin. In a loose tunic and undershorts, black hair a mess, eyes fervid, he looked like Linciard remembered from their old trysts, and it hurt. “Stormfollower, hoi. Haven't seen you since the ride. I'm told you brought me in.”

  “Ah, I was one of the few with a capable horse, sir. Just doing my job.” Stormfollower looked edgy, and Linciard caught him glancing up the corridor toward the assembly hall. Worried his Jernizen brethren would catch him in close proximity to an officer they had always derided? Plus another one who—

  Shit, he was right at the door, he must have heard—

  Oh who am I kidding. I've spent the better part of three days at his bedside and everyone probably knows anyway. I'm no good with secrets.

  “Well...thanks,” said Vyslin, and started to swing forward, but in the close quarters his stump clipped a crutch and he gave a gasp and sagged. Linciard caught him around the middle before he could fall, slinging him upright, and saw Stormfollower blanch in discomfort.

  “You should go back to bed,” he told Vyslin, ignoring the Jernizen. “You're not ready.”

  “Shut up, just...stop. Even if it kills me, it'll be better than this. All right? I don't want your pity.”

  “I'm not—“

  “I don't want it!” Wrenching free, Vyslin balanced precariously on one foot and one crutch before fumbling the other under his arm, then glared a hole through Stormfollower until the young man got out of his way. With a wrathful sound of effort, he surged forward on his crutches and got halfway up the hall, wobbled, caught himself, then kept going.

  Linciard ground his teeth so hard he thought they might crack. I won't go after him. I won't. I won't.

  “Sir?”

  “What?” he shouted in Stormfollower's face.

  The young man leaned back, brows beetled over hazel eyes, then said, “Just curious... Why would it kill him? Isn't he going to serve your Light?”

  That was not the question he had been expecting, but it was still difficult to keep from redecorating the wall with Stormfollower's face. Linciard took a deep breath, then another, then a third after the other two failed to make him calm. That one didn't work either, but he was already sick of this—sick of everything—so he just spat, “Piking idiot, him and all the rest.”

  “Uh, sir?”

  “It—“ He thought to bite his tongue, but then realized it hardly mattered. They were surrounded by specialists. “It changes people. The Palace. All the so-called 'blessed', they used to be human like us, but now they're...” He waved vaguely, unsure how to explain it.

  “Corrupted, sir,” Stormfollower supplied.

  “No, no. Don't say that. Never say that to them. But they're—”

  “A lot about your empire is corrupt though, isn't it, sir?” Stormfollower continued. “The fellows and I, we don't get why your folk seem so surprised by it.”

  “What?”

  “Well... When we fought you on the border, we knew something was weird. We had a lot of mentalists and they said you didn't use any, but you all still moved in sync. I guess it was the lagalainas' doing, and don't get me wrong, they're some fascinating women. But watching it from the outside, it was like a horde of bugs coming to devour us, not caring what happened to them personally. Creepy.”

  Linciard eyed him. He had always known that Stormfollower and the other Jernizen were defectors from their land's army, but it had not registered until now that they might have clashed directly. “Why are you even here, Stormfollower?”

  The young man shrugged. “We're not at war anymore, and you need soldiers, so why not? There's nothing for me at home—no girl, no family support. I'm the sixteenth son, y'know? I figured I'd come here, get some pay, find an Imperial girl. Someone who could actually be mine.”

  “What, and live here? Become a citizen of this 'creepy' place?”

  “Better than eating boot soup. Or being eaten. Whole border is bandit territory now, all the fellows who got let go from the army, and let me tell you, it's not pretty. Turning traitor's the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “If it's so bad there, I'd expect more of you here.”

  “Heh. Maybe the rest of 'em would come if they could suck in their pride. Me, I know pride won't feed me. You eastern shi— Folk may be piking degenerates but at least you pay. Jernizan won't change. Better to eat among the dogs than starve among the rich, I say.”

  “Degenerates, eh?”

  “Look, I think it's piking disgusting, the two of you. But you're a fair commander so I got no complaints.”

  Linciard considered Stormfollower, not sure how to feel. His people rarely spoke so bluntly, preferring to let their scorn fester behind closed doors. Though the Jernizens' hostility toward himself and Vyslin angered him, he supposed that with it visible, it could be dealt with.

  Were this the Gold Army, whips would have cracked. But he didn't want to be that kind of leader, and this seemed like progress.

  “I appreciate that,” he said finally. “But you'd best watch your mouth when you talk about officers, Stormfollower. Not everyone is as forgiving as me.”

  The young man scoffed, but then sobered under Linciard's hard stare. “I mean, I respect you, sir,” he said. “We all do. You kept the whole Shadow thing quiet—“

  Linciard had almost forgotten about that. His anger leapt immediately to the fore, but he checked it; Captain Sarovy had not told him to break any heads over it, and though he hated the Shadow now with an abominable fury, he still had his mission. “Don't talk about it,” he hissed. “It nearly ate both of us up.”

  “But it didn't. It—“

  “They're not our friends, Stormfollower. If we could have gotten something out of it, then fine, but it's all gone sour now. Don't think they'll play nice with you just because you're not a real Imperial. Neither was Tycaid.”

  Stormfollower winced at the mention of his fellow Jernizen, swallowed up by the same blackness that had crippled Vyslin. “We think he's still alive in there,” he said in an undertone. “Y'know, like the Shadow Cult nabbed him to pull suspicion off of us.”

  “Or he's dead and you're deluding yourself. Which is more likely: that you're valuable, or expendable?”

  Stormfollower's face clenched, and Linciard regretted his words. Of course he felt expendable. “Look, if they whisper to you, I want to hear it,” he said in a softer tone. “This isn't about money anymore. We're marked for death.”

  “Maybe you are,” Stormfollower spat, but there was fear in his eyes. He stalked away.

  Alone at last, Linciard took a moment to breathe. His head ached. The faint background noise from the earhook—more mental than physical—made it difficult to concentrate, especially with Scryer Mako's own nervous tension underlying the connection.

  Though the company had seen no new assaults, Colonel Wreth's half-brigade had already weathered several. They had also cleared out most of the merchant families in Old Crow
n to use the estates as barracks, with smaller bases in the outlying guardhouses. The city militia had been disbanded and Blaze handed its policing duties.

  Linciard had nightmares of going out on patrol, and the actual patrols felt no different. There was no security, just five-man teams against the hostile city, with the sergeants' earhooks traded out to team leaders at each shift because there were too few to go around. Half the time, communication sounded like it was underwater because Mako was too taxed to stay alert, and Wreth and Cortine kept poaching from the company as if trying to make it collapse.

  Linciard had never been on a ship before, but now he knew what it felt like to sink.

  Mustering his will, he strode up the corridor to the assembly hall, where the portal to the Palace had just been opened. Through its shimmering surface, he glimpsed the luminous walls, and his heart hurt with the knowledge that they were not only alive but hungry. They chewed men up and spat out puppets, and Blaze Company had been sending victims through for weeks.

  And there was Vyslin, crutching through the portal without a backward glance.

  And there was Rallant on the stairs, watching him, gorgeous and dangerous and troubling. A bad habit to fall back on.

  He was tempted to yield to Rallant's beckoning finger—to go derive some relief in whatever way possible. But with Captain Sarovy's new strangeness and the company's precarious position, he did not have that luxury. So he smiled for Rallant's benefit, then turned away. There were orders to go over, horses to check on, soldiers to police.

  He was second-in-command, and he meant to act like it.

  *****

  “Are you sure this is wise, captain?” said Lancer Serinel. “Without even telling anyone?”

  Captain Sarovy did not answer, and after a moment's silence, Serinel heaved up into his own saddle. Sarovy tapped his heels against Havoc's flanks, and he and his two bodyguards rode out from the garrison stables into the bleak light.

  It had been drizzling all day, and the gutters ran like little rivers as they picked their way down the great hill of the city-center. Sarovy's earhook tingled, its faint white noise occasionally broken by status reports he barely registered. He wore it at all times now, for he did not need to sleep—though this did not keep him from feeling weary.