‘For the conquest of the Inda, yes. If the western empire decides to intervene, then no. Jai, I have officers in place in my force, and they are all men selected by me and by those I trust. As far as possible, this army of conquest is my own. There is just one place I have not filled, and that is the position of my adjutant.’
Jai’s brow furrowed as he turned to the general. ‘Adjutant?’
‘Yes. It is a position usually filled by a senior officer with a distinguished career behind him, a reputation for strategy and a bloodline that stretches back to the first emperor. That is the tradition. I told you I am not an adherent to tradition. I do not need a strategist. I am a good strategist myself. I do not need a senior officer. I have plenty of them. And I most certainly do not need an ancient bloodline. What I need is a man who knows the Inda and their thinking and terrain, a man who can think on his feet and who will aid me in the most painless, pacific conquest we can achieve. You understand?’
‘I do,’ Jai said, turning back to that huge array of soldiers in the valley. They did not look like an army of painless, pacific conquest.
‘Will you accept the position?’
There was a long silence, and the general finally turned to look at the young Inda scout by his side. Jai nodded. ‘I will.’
‘Good. I do not know whether you still pray to whatever the Inda believe, or whether you pray to the gods of the Jade Empire, but I urge you to start beseeching whoever it is for their favour in the coming days.’
In the valley, someone began one of the great martial chants of the empire, and in moments the rhythmic chorus rolled across the valley, back and forth.
The music of conquest.
Chapter 3
From: Gaius Ancius Veridius, governor of Lappa and imperial praetor of the eastern provinces
To: Orosius Devinius, senior overseer of fortifications and military emplacements
Devinius, thank you for your recent reports. They have been most enlightening, and will be acted upon at my earliest convenience. My predecessor seems to have let matters along the River Oxus run to ruin. I shall impose my authority upon the border commanders and have all matters set straight forthwith. Please convey my respects to your superiors.
Dev stood patiently in the dim antechamber, watched over by the serene and rather disapproving busts of emperors, generals and heroes from a dozen centuries of imperial achievement. He was tired, and not just because of the long journey from Germalla. He was tired and dispirited. It had taken him years, after his brief stint in the imperial military, to achieve a post of frontier importance, and that post had immediately wrenched him from the capital and sent him to the Pelasian border for a year, and then to the barbarous northern periphery where tribal lords seemed to look down on his Inda colouring just as much as many of his peers in the empire. Finally, a month and a half ago, he had received his orders to document the eastern border and the installations facing his Inda homeland, the region for which he had been aiming all this time, and barely had he reached the Oxus River and begun his tour there before he received the letter by imperial courier. A summons to Velutio. A thing to dread, but Dev was too tired to be worried and too irritated at being dragged from his beloved east to care why.
His gaze danced around the antechamber once more. The walls were painted so perfectly, providing a trompe-l’œil which suggested he was actually in an open colonnade with wide gardens and lakes stretching away to either side beyond those implacable marble ancestors who so clearly disapproved of him, looking down their aquiline marble noses above sneering marble lips.
Bastards.
But they were strong bastards, and clever bastards. The sort of bastards he’d hoped to find when he came west all those years ago. He tried not to think on the fact that one of those faces had been a most notorious slave beater. Every time the subject of slaves came up, his mind would draw him an image of Jai in chains, defiant. Dev had long since lost hope that his brother had lived. Jai would never have accepted being a slave, and his martial soul would almost certainly have led him to do something foolish early on.
Dev did not like the way that slave-beating, frowning old hard bastard looked at him. If he had had an ounce of art in his soul he would have loved nothing more than to come to this room with a chisel and make one of the old bastards lining each side smile for once. He was chuckling at his own thought as the door opened and one of the imperial guard, a wolf-pelt cloak on his shoulder, gestured for him to enter. As he passed through the door from the dim antechamber into the brightly lit palace hall, a serious-looking functionary in a rich but plain tunic cornered him.
‘Have you been in the imperial presence before?’
Dev shook his head.
‘You will not look at the emperor directly unless he addresses you by name, rank or function. You will not speak unless requested, which I presume will happen since you were summoned. You will keep your language civil, your speech short and to the point. Be respectful, address everyone by their rank or position, and if you do not know it, use “Lord”. Remain standing unless told to sit. Do not cough, sneeze, fart or yawn. Be unobtrusive and useful. Do you understand?’
‘I do.’
‘Go in and stand on the green circle of the first carpet.’
Dev stepped into the presence of the emperor, gripping the reason he was here so tightly in his hand he was crushing the vellum.
An imperial summons. No one wanted an imperial summons. It was said that in the days of this emperor’s grandfather such a command was often a sign of great things and imperial favour. Quintillian had been a great man. His son Camillus had started well, but some sickness that laid him low in midlife left him slightly deranged. His own son died in an accident, and the boy he adopted by his second wife now sat on the throne. No one seemed to be under any illusion as to how appropriate Bassianus was for the role. And now no one saw a summons to court as a sign of great things. At best you were used and discarded. At best…
As Dev came to a halt on the green circle indicated, he took in the court around him, being careful to catch the ruler of the western world only from the corner of his eye in passing, remembering his instructions. Other men had clearly been directed to similar positions around the room by functionaries and waited on coloured carpet circles in the periphery while the emperor and his court held centre stage. Bassianus the Just – the just what? was the common whispered joke – sat on a perfectly serviceable wooden chair as would anyone else, not some great gilded throne as Dev had expected. His court reclined on couches that reached out in an arc to either side of him. The courtiers wore white robes of state, while the emperor sported a rich purple mantle with gold edging.
He did not look mad to Dev. Rich and indolent perhaps, but not mad.
He was a young man, perhaps twenty-five summers old, unblemished and undeniably handsome, with a shock of white-gold hair and olive skin. He had a lazy smile as he listened to the droning voice of some official from the treasury who was concerned with coin devaluation.
The treasury fellow finally finished his tedious report and was dismissed with a bored wave of the hand. The man shuffled out of the room, a slave dumping an armful of papers on him as he left.
As the room temporarily emptied of supplicants, the glorious son of gods who ruled the west with a capricious hand glanced at the seats to his left.
‘I have had one of you poisoned,’ he said, and stifled a giggle. There was a brief moment of silence and then this new imperial joke had been aired long enough and everyone smiled indulgently.
‘No,’ the emperor grinned, ‘I am not fooling. One of you will die. This month there was simply not enough adulation at my officiation of the festival of Solus. I am not pleased. It is a function of my court to guide the people and make sure all public events are appropriately attended, and you failed. One of you will die for that. And when Solus is celebrated next year you will be sure to spark a more appropriate fervour among your clients and their people.’
There was an odd silence which was finally broken by a strangled gasp. Dev stared in disbelief as one of the courtiers looked down in horror at the jewelled beaker of wine in his hand. His eyes widened as he made desperate gagging noises.
‘Ah, Audens. It was you, then. Good. Your northern barbarian fat nose always offended me anyway.’
He grinned as the poisoned courtier cast the wine cup to the floor, rich red liquid splashing across the carpets as he clawed in futile panic at his throat. The emperor chuckled once more as Audens’ legs began to spasm and jerk, lashing out randomly. Bassianus gestured at the flautist in the corner. ‘Play something jaunty, in time with his dance,’ he laughed.
And so the ruined courtier thrashed slowly to a stop, froth on his lips, his distended and swollen, discoloured tongue protruding, in a pool of his own shit and filth as a poor, nervous musician tried to keep his melody light for a man to die by.
To Dev’s further horror, the stinking mess was not removed but left there, his peers shuffling slightly away from the corpse.
Another speaker was announced by the monotone court organiser as though nothing untoward had happened, and the new plaintiff was admitted from another door, allowing Dev little time to reflect on the dreadful nature of what he’d just seen. This was Utis, a minor aristocrat from the Gota borders who claimed imperial citizenship but clearly had little in the way of imperial blood. The borderline barbarian stepped before the emperor, and Dev’s shrewd eye caught three things in quick succession that struck him as impolitic. The man was not standing in one of those circles clearly positioned for all non-court attendees; he approached the emperor, looking at him levelly; and when he came to a halt in the wrong place, he spoke first. Of course, Dev had not been to the imperial court before, and perhaps the same rules did not apply to all visitors, but from the slightly uncomfortable shiftings in the posture of the courtiers, he’d be willing to bet they did.
‘Majesty,’ the Gota lord said in the thick, jagged accent Dev remembered from his time on the northern border. ‘I come to beseech you for military aid. My Gota neighbours are pressing upon my lands, rustling animals and committing acts of banditry. Mere months ago I had sufficient soldiery to protect my lands, but the northern marshal saw fit to reduce my garrison to strengthen his own. I cannot—’
He stopped mid-sentence, sprouting an arrow from his left eye socket, the shaft so deeply embedded the point broke the back of his skull and only the fletching projected from his face.
Dev stared in shock as the Gota lord crumpled without a whimper, dead before he hit the floor.
Now the emperor’s madness became apparent.
Bassianus, lord of men, descendant of gods and master of the world, rose from his chair, stepped over to the corpse and nudged the head with a sandalled foot. The dead man’s cranium rolled back until the arrow point hit the floor and then stopped, the blank face staring up at his killer around the fletching. The emperor Bassianus extended an index finger and wagged it.
‘Please, Lord Utis, permit me to speak.’
A ripple of nervous laughter sounded dutifully from the court.
‘You had those men stripped from you by my order, Utis, as you were using them to increase your personal holdings at the expense of imperial neighbours of more long-standing loyalty than you. It is something of an affront to use your soldiers against my people and then ask me to replace them to protect you from your own. You suffer from a lack of vision,’ he announced to the world at large, then chuckled at his own joke. He stepped away and the head rolled back down. ‘Put him in a box or a bag or something and send him back to his relatives. And use the courier system so he goes relatively fast and doesn’t smell too bad when he gets there.’
Guardsmen dragged the unfortunate northern aristocrat away, leaving just a small spray of crimson on the floor as sign of his passing. So neat. So quick. So barbaric. Not for the first time, Dev wondered whether he had been wise in running west when he left home. The western empire was not the glorious hope for the future he had expected. From the tales he heard and some of the subalterns he met, he suspected it once had been, in generations past, but now he no longer held out much hope for this emperor saving the Inda’s world.
The doors at one side opened to dispose of the corpse, and then closed again.
‘General Flavius Cinna,’ announced the court functionary once again, and another door opened.
The man who entered filled the room immediately. Rarely had Dev seen a man exude such presence without even having to open his mouth. He strode in, took a position in a yellow circle directly opposite the emperor, dropped to one knee and bowed, then rose once more, noting the blood stain with interest as he did so.
Flavius Cinna was a stocky man in his forties, with iron-grey hair cut in a very archaic, severe style. He wore his uniform like armour and a scar ran down the length of his left arm from the tunic sleeve all the way to his middle finger. His very stance spoke of dependability and strength. Here, Dev felt certain, was the empire of older days in which he’d placed his future. Here was what he had been searching for, not that figure in the purple robe.
‘General, you are well?’ the emperor said conversationally.
‘Hale and hearty, Majesty. And your august self?’
‘Tolerable,’ the emperor sniffed dismissively.
There was a strange silence and Dev realised that the soldier could speak no further as he had no idea why he was here. Finally, as though he’d won a battle of wits, the emperor chuckled and wagged a beringed finger at the general.
‘Cinna, you will be aware, I presume, of the reports from the east? Of the Jade Empire?’
Dev’s eyes shot wide, darting from the general and risking a brief sidelong glance at the emperor. Reports from the east, of the Jade Empire? He’d heard nothing of this, and he had been on the damned eastern border a matter of days ago. Was this common knowledge, or simply something within the court that had not reached the civil and military administration yet?
General Cinna simply straightened a little.
‘From what I understand the Jade Empire is massing forces on the Inda border, Majesty.’
‘Indeed,’ the emperor replied, a strange gleam in his eye. Dev realised with a start that he’d seen that same gleam just before the northern lord grew an arrow from his eye. He tensed, half-expecting this general to die in moments. But beneath that tension, his mind was whirling. The Jade Empire was massing troops? Was this it? He had come to the empire so many years ago after Jai had been taken in the hope that the Jade Empire could be made to pay for their actions. Was this the time? He found himself almost stepping forward, but General Cinna broke the strange, tense silence.
‘Majesty, if I might be so bold as to express an opinion as a long-term military strategist, I would heartily recommend sending a deputation to the Jade Emperor and coming to an agreement over the Inda territories.’
No, thought Dev, trying not to move, his fists clenched.
‘Oh?’ The emperor’s tone had a sudden dangerous edge. Dev waited for the arrow. ‘Go on.’
The general scratched his chin in thought. ‘The Inda lands are largely worthless in terms of goods and minerals. We can get everything we need from lands within our boundaries, and those few luxuries the Inda produce that we cannot are a cheap trade resource, certainly not worth losing men over. The Jade Empire has been systematically stripping the Inda of assets for years. Now it seems likely they intend to annexe their lands. If they are allowed to abut our own territory there will inevitably be friction, but an agreement could be made in advance. Our border on the Oxus River is a good one. Defensible and patrollable. A treaty with the Jade Empire could grant them the lands they have already ruined to within, say, fifty miles of the Oxus, where there is another smaller river. There would then be a safe demilitarised zone between our peoples.’
‘You do not advocate a military solution?’ the emperor asked, apparently genuinely puzzled. ‘And you a soldier and a hero. Even the fat pea
ceful aristocrats in my court are advocating the mustering of troops.’
‘Majesty, it takes a soldier to know when not to fight. The Jade Empire is strong. Perhaps as strong as us, perhaps even stronger. We have no idea just how sizeable their army is. But I do know that the only land borders they need to protect are with the horse lords, who have been no real threat since the days of the Khan, and with the Inda. They can afford to commit almost their entire military to Inda lands without leaving a land border open to another enemy. We do not have that luxury. The north is held only by military might, else the Gota and other northern tribes would simply eat away at our territory and perhaps even retake Alba. Pelasia has been our ally for generations, but that alliance has been constructed on increasingly shaky ground and has never been closer to collapsing than now. We cannot afford to pull much of our force from the other borders. And rest assured, Majesty, that if we committed to war against the Jade Empire, it would be one that would shake the world to its core. No, Majesty, I would not advocate a military solution.’
The emperor Bassianus tapped his lip as though pondering his choices, then sat back languidly.
‘Sadly, General Cinna, the decision has already been made. The moment we hear that the Jade Empire has crossed their border and moved into the role of conqueror, we will react. We will not allow that collection of eastern degenerates to annexe those Inda states. They must be made to see the error of their ways and be driven back behind their border once more. This, Cinna, is your commission.’
The general shifted slightly. His keen, steely eyes roved around the courtiers, none of whom held his gaze. They came to rest once more upon the emperor.
‘I will, of course, carry out the commands of my emperor without complaint or question, Majesty, but it would be remiss of me to not make one plea for diplomacy.’
There was a collective intake of breath, and Dev winced. That was the sort of insolence that made men sprout arrows. Perhaps it was Cinna’s reputation, or perhaps that bearing and presence that had automatically made him the centre of the room, but the emperor nodded and waved an accepting hand at him.
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