by Devin Madson
The look he gave me was full of amused understanding. ‘Your father was a cynic too,’ he said. ‘But he understood before the end.’
‘I doubt that fate awaits me, Father.’
‘Perhaps not, but you cannot keep this up indefinitely.’
‘Keep up what?’
The door to the council chamber slid and Kin’s guards strode into the passage. Father Kokoro laid his hand upon my arm, leaning in close. ‘The lie you live and breathe,’ he said. ‘It will kill you more surely than the truth.’
I stepped away as the emperor appeared. ‘You know nothing about it, old man.’
‘That is what your father said the first time. Remember, the gods are here for you. You will need them one day.’
Bowing again to Kin, I turned away. I did not look at the scroll, and yet I could feel the man with the ponytail watching me, his eyes boring into the back of my head, his lips frozen in laughter.
* * *
The Pit. I’d never had reason to visit. In fact, it was on my mental list of places I hoped never to visit, and certainly not as an occupant. The smell had a pungent, organic quality, the sort that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in protest. It grew more foul with each step I took down the dim stairwell. My guide seemed not to notice, though the fasteners on his armour were surely about to tarnish.
‘What is that smell?’ I asked.
‘Just filth, Your Excellency,’ the guard said, not turning around lest he lose his footing on the steep stairs. ‘There’s not much in the way of fresh air down here.’
‘Yes, but what else is that smell? The whole city stinks of filth in the summer.’
He chuckled, the sound reverberating around us. ‘Yes, but that isn’t the filth of the condemned, destined to see no light until the day that brings the executioner.’
‘Don’t you think it would be more cruel to execute happy people, Captain?’
‘Pardon, Your Excellency?’
‘It is just a thought. The people kept here are not happy, yes?’
‘Would you be happy with no light, no food, and no one but your jailor to talk to, and he spits in your eye when you try?’
‘How imaginative a place,’ I muttered. ‘No, I would not, and yet we then release them into the soft, warm embrace of death. It must be a relief, no?’
The captain almost froze on the step, so strange was the realisation I had brought him to. ‘I see what you mean, Minister. If they were happier, death would be something to fear, not welcome.’
‘Exactly. Just a thought. Hope should never be extinguished until the very last moment.’
We did not speak again until the floor flattened out, dim light welcoming us into a damp stone room so cold it might have been the depths of winter. The guards all huddled under thick furs, their expressions sour, but the two jailors seemed to have developed thick leather skins that made them impervious to the temperature. If this place could drive a prisoner mad in a few weeks, what was it doing to the jailors?
‘Fur?’
The captain held out a fur cape, shrugging himself into another. Even at this distance I could smell it, every fibre sucking in the dreadful stink of the place. If I put it on I would never get the smell off my skin. I took it anyway, holding it away from my robe and trying not to breathe in.
‘Ah, welcome to the great Minister Laroth,’ one of the jailors said, his leathery neck rumpled. ‘Oh yes, even down in the Pit we’ve heard of you.’
‘He’s here to see the rebel boy,’ the captain said. ‘Alone.’
The man actually cackled, his eyes glowing in a way that was manic if not demented. ‘Nowhere can you get more alone than this. We’re thirty feet underground here, in natural caverns. The river makes it cold and damp, but we do the rest.’ He sounded proud, as though bragging over the aptitude of a favourite child. ‘The boy’s in there.’
He indicated a rusty grate in the floor, the hole it covered no bigger than the opening of a well. The space below was black, like the end of the world dropping away beneath me. ‘Down there?’
‘That’s right.’ The jailor laughed. ‘I’ll light the torches.’
The man unlocked the grating, kicking it open with practised ease. It scraped across the stones, sending a shiver through my skin. Taking a torch from the wall, the old man lowered it into the hole. Another torch burst into life followed by another, causing a chain reaction all the way into the depths. The line of fire lit a ladder’s thick rungs and what could have been a stone floor.
‘He’s all yours.’
I looked into the hole. My oath to Hana had made no mention of climbing into a pit smeared with human excrement.
‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Don’t let me keep you from your important work.’
I dropped the fur cloak into the depths and it fluttered out of sight like a ragged bird falling from its nest. The metal rungs were slippery, but I set my foot on each one with care and descended into the Pit, trying not to breathe in the awful smell.
Overhead the grating slid back into place and a bolt of panic shot through me. I suppressed it with an effort, swallowing every urge to shout up to the jailors to be sure it was no trick.
I continued my descent.
Halfway down, a cavern opened before me, the line of fire illuminating a vast, dank space. When I could see the floor, I dropped the last few feet to the bottom. My sandals sank into the muck. The fur cloak lay sprawled and I snatched it up, moving quickly across the uneven floor toward the figure huddled against the far wall.
‘Hana?’
She didn’t look up. ‘Are you really here?’ she said, the words muffled by her sleeve. ‘Because if you are, I mean to claw your eyes out.’ She looked up then. Her face was stained with tears, but her jaw jutted proudly. ‘Malice said you were Kin’s man. I should have believed him.’
‘I told you to leave,’ I said. ‘You left me with no choice. Here.’ I dropped the cloak onto her legs.
She pushed it away. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘This isn’t the time to be childish and stubborn.’
‘And is it a good time to be an ass?’
I stared down at her, glad and sorry in equal measure to find her as frustrating as I remembered. ‘I see they haven’t broken you yet,’ I said, and crouched in front of her. ‘Even if this is disgusting.’
‘Oh yes, your friends are very backward,’ she replied with a false little smile. ‘Apparently there isn’t even a dedicated shitting corner. How unrefined!’
I grabbed her wrist as she made a mocking gesture of disgust. ‘Hana, stop this. This is no joke. Whatever game you’ve been playing at–’
‘Game? You think this is a game? Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I’ve grown up since you left. I’m not a little girl anymore, getting into trouble for riding out on my pony without an escort.’
‘No, you’re not a little girl. Apparently you’re a man now, and a rebel into the bargain. You know they’re going to find out, don’t you? Councillor Ahmet has the emperor’s permission to question you. His way of asking questions is a lot more physical than mine.’
She pulled her arm away, folding it across her chest. ‘I won’t tell him anything. They can do what they want to me. I won’t talk.’
‘Then you’ll die.’
‘And if I talk, I die dishonoured. I’m not afraid of dying, Darius.’
I took a deep breath of foetid air and tried to remember the sweet girl who had once followed me everywhere, hanging on my every word. But she was right. I had left her. In running from my past, I had run from her, and Malice had been there to take my place.
‘Where is the Tishwa?’
Hana stared up at me, her brow creasing. ‘What Tishwa?’
‘The Tishwa Malice gave you when he sent you in here,’ I said.
Her lips clamped together and
she looked away.
‘Oh? Thought it was your own idea, did you? Was it your own idea to search out Katashi?’
Still looking away she tilted up her chin. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m talking about your cousin,’ I said. ‘Monarch. He has brought the empire to the verge of civil war, such that Kin’s plan for your head has nothing to do with it remaining attached to your body. He will make sure Katashi goes the same way as his father, who, in case you have forgotten, was executed for contriving the assassination of your father, your mother and all of your brothers.’
For a moment she was silent, her fingers writhing restlessly amid the fur covering her knees. ‘Katashi’s father was innocent. There was never any proof.’
‘No, but he lost the war to Kin and his head to the executioner.’
‘All the more reason to get our revenge. Kin executed the last true emperor and stole the throne. It is ours and we will take it back. It is our right. Justice will be done.’
‘There is no such thing as right, Hana,’ I said, mastering the impulse to slap her. ‘This is the real world, not a storybook. There is no justice, there is no truth, and the gods don’t ensure people get what they deserve. The world is just a dirty mess of men willing to spill blood for power. Whatever they say, no man will fight to put you on the throne because your father once sat on it. No one gives their life for nothing.’
She threw the fur cloak back at me, its matted curls oily to the touch. ‘I think you should go.’
‘Tell me where the crown is.’
With a little smile she shook her head. ‘Far away, Darius. He won’t get it back.’
‘Do you expect Katashi to save you?’
‘I told you, I’m not afraid of death.’
I dropped the cloak back onto her legs and held out my hand. ‘Give me the Tishwa.’
‘You really think they would have left me with it when they brought me down here? I don’t have it anymore.’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘Why should I?’ she said. ‘You’ve chosen The Usurper over me.’
‘I am honour-bound to him as I am to you, perhaps that is something you cannot understand.’
She nodded sagely. ‘Oh yes, little Hana is very stupid. She never understands anything. I would ask you to explain, but I don’t want another lecture.’ She threw the fur cloak back to me for the last time. ‘But don’t worry. I won’t tell this councillor of yours anything.’
‘You had better not. It’s a short step from discovering your sex to finding out who you really are. It has already been suggested you could be an Otako bastard.’
‘I’ve heard that before. Apparently my mother was a great whore.’
‘You shouldn’t say so.’
Hana shrugged. ‘Does it matter? She’s dead and soon I will be too. You had better go before they get suspicious.’
There seemed little else I could say. I got to my feet, the hem of my robe damp against my ankles. ‘I’ll do what I can for you,’ I said.
‘It’s cruel to give a prisoner hope.’
I had said something very similar myself not so very long since.
‘Then I am a cruel man. Be strong, little lamb.’
Chapter 8
A mute cry broke through my lips. I opened my eyes to white-hot sunlight and jolted back, slamming my head against a metal bar.
Men laughed. ‘Looks like the boy is finally awake.’
I tried to open my eyes, blinking rapidly. Wheels rumbled beneath me. It was hot. Sweat stuck my robe to my skin and the air stank of unwashed bodies and piss. A horse snorted.
Gradually, my sight returned. I was in a caged cart and I wasn’t alone. Half a dozen men and a boy shared my fate, each one unkempt and red from the sun.
I tried to move, but my hands were tied to one of the bars, the metal warm and slippery with my sweat. Everything ached. My cheek and the back of my head stung so much my eyes watered, and shifting my legs made me wince.
‘You can go ahead and ask him now,’ said an older man with sparse grey hair.
‘He might eat me if I ask,’ the boy returned.
The old man laughed. ‘Be better for him if he did, looks like walking bones, he does.’
‘Come on, he’s got to be dangerous,’ the boy insisted. ‘He’s the only one tied up.’
He was right. The others were free. One slept in the corner, another had his legs dangling through the bars, and the rest looked to be playing dice with an irregularly shaped rock.
One of the players shot me a sidelong glance. ‘I heard he was tied up because he attacked guards in Shimai. The men were talking about it when we stopped there, said they heard screaming, like he was burning them from the inside out.’
I felt broken. Shattered. Emotions seeped in through the cracks in my soul, stronger than they had ever been before. These men were angry. They might laugh and jab at one another, but they were angry in their hearts, the feeling so strong it stained the air.
‘Well, go on then, boy,’ the old man said, nudging him. ‘Ask him.’
‘All right.’ He looked at me, defiance edging its own stain into the air. He had a cut above his lip that gave him a strange, lilting smile. ‘Why did they brand you three times?’
My mind felt fuzzy. Everything was wrong. The boy had a Traitor’s Mark on his cheek, as did every other man in the cage, three horizontal lines crossed by a diagonal. I found myself blinking again, expecting the mark to change, to meld into something else, but it remained black upon his skin.
‘Perhaps he doesn’t talk,’ one of the others suggested, picking up the rock.
‘Well?’ the boy said. ‘Can you talk?’
The brand on his cheek was strange, distorted, as though the hand that administered it wasn’t entirely steady.
‘Just leave him alone.’
Frustration, resignation, anger. It smelt like the eel stew that was famous in the Chiltaen port cities – a strange concoction of ingredients that somehow made a tasty meal. The saltiness always left the tongue dry. Mine was dry now; an awful taste left behind. The men had a water skin, but although I knew how to ask, knew how to be polite, I could not form a single word. My lips were stuck shut.
‘Will there be work for us in Chiltae, do you think?’ the boy asked, watching the stone roll awkwardly across the rocking boards.
From up front the driver let out a bark of laughter. ‘You wish, boy,’ he said. ‘Chiltaens ain’t any different from us. They hate traitors same as we do. You ask them for work and they’ll spit on you straight.’
‘Traitor to who?’ the old man said. ‘The Usurper or the True Emperor?’
‘You watch what you say, old man.’
‘Why? Are you going to brand me again like the poor dumb shit over here? Kin’s blood is no more royal than yours or mine or dumb shit’s. What do you think about that?’
The driver didn’t say anything, but one of the other men shrugged and spat onto the stained cart boards. ‘I couldn’t care less who sits on the throne, it’s all the same to me. The Otakos weren’t gods. They sucked at their mothers’ tits the same as all of us.’
‘Until they were slaughtered in their beds,’ the old man said. ‘From the emperor in his grand apartments to his baby daughter in the nursery. All dead. And there sits Kin on the throne when it was his job to protect them. General Kin, Master of the Imperial Guard.’
Only the rumble of the cart broke the silence. It was another hot summer day. Birds chirped, fluttering from branch to branch as we passed beneath a broad canopy, dappled sunlight touching every haggard face.
‘Didn’t his brother kill him?’ the boy said at last. ‘Grace Tianto?’
‘Emperor Tianto,’ the old man corrected, touching his branding with pride. ‘That’s just lies. What man would kill his own brother?’
/>
Again a pause, then the boy said: ‘I don’t know about you, but I have a brother. I’ve gone for him more than once.’
‘Of course boys fight, that’s just what they do. You wouldn’t harm him, though.’
‘I broke his arm. I think he got off light. I was trying to slam his head into the stones.’
The old man looked horrified and turned his shoulder a little, until he realised that meant he was looking at me. I stared at him and he turned away again.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said with a sniff. ‘What matters is it was all Ts’ai propaganda.’
One of the other men rolled the stone. ‘Big word.’
‘It means–’
‘I know what it means. I was a scholar at Ke’ran.’
‘Then you should know better than to claim any but an Otako as emperor of Kisia. Emperor Tianto–’
‘Is dead. Leave it be or I’ll piss on you.’
The old man scowled, but hearing the murmurs of agreement, he fell silent.
The cart drove on, leaving the brief shade behind. For the rest of the afternoon we travelled through a world that was bright and harsh, full of distractions, of waving trees and fields of red poppies, of scudding clouds and tiptoeing herons. It was a vivid patchwork. Every colour was brighter, every smell stronger, and every breath was so thick with emotion that I felt none of my own.
There was no time, no thought, nothing but pain and thirst and a landscape that flickered through the bars like a variegated painting. The sun grew hotter, my tongue drier. My eyes began to droop.
I tried to sleep, but there was no comfortable position with a branded skull and hands bound at my back. All it took was a jolt to bang my head against the metal and I would be shocked awake, eyes watering. Yet somehow sleep came to me and I dozed into the evening.
From my dreams Minister Laroth stared back, his violet eyes like stones. I wanted to stick needles into them and hear him scream. I wanted to claw at that porcelain face. I wanted to see him bleed and burn.