The Vacant Throne

by Joshua Palmatier

  As we waited, Keven motioned to the guardsmen, who spread out along the perimeter of the garden in both directions.

  Ottul barely noticed. Her eyes had narrowed as soon as she saw the Servants, her back going rigid. She watched the practice session intently.

  Breaking away from the last pair, Eryn came to my side. “Keven sent word that you were coming. I have them practicing shield placement and manipulation, something innocuous, since . . .” Her gaze flicked toward Ottul.

  “Good.”

  “What do you want to do with her?”

  I shrugged. “Let her watch. Keeping her in the room isn’t working anymore. If we want her to cooperate, we’re going to have to let her out sooner or later. Let’s sit her down near the pool. Trielle and Heddan can watch her. I want to see what you’ve come up with regarding the linking of the Servants.”

  I caught Ottul’s attention, led her to a small pool, a curved stone bench at its edge, and forced her to focus on my eyes. “Stay here.”

  When she gave a grudging nod of understanding, Eryn, Marielle, and I moved aside, leaving Trielle and Heddan behind to watch her.

  “We haven’t had much success with linking the Servants,” Eryn said. “Basically, we’re working off the idea that the link is forged like the strength-draining conduit I and the Ochean used against you while sparring or fighting, except in reverse. So far, I’ve managed to get a few of the Servants to connect using such conduits, and to transfer their strength back and forth.”

  “But?” I prompted.

  Eryn shook her head. “But even though they’re supporting each other, augmenting each other’s power, it still isn’t increasing their strengths to the level that the Ochean and the Chorl exhibited. I don’t think this is what they’re doing when they forge a link.”

  “Show me what you’ve done.”

  “Gwenn.”

  One of the Servants halted her construction of a merged shield with another Servant, letting the currents of the river flow back into their natural paths, and stepped forward.

  “Yes, Mistress. Eryn,” Gwenn said, and bowed her head, fidgeting nervously. She was young, no more than ten, and practically seething with energy.

  “The Mistress wants to see you and Marielle attempt a linking. As you’ve done during practice.”

  Gwenn groaned, but Marielle grabbed her by the elbow and stepped to one side, kneeling before her and whispering to her, hands on her shoulders, but not loud enough for me to overhear. Gwenn shot a glance toward me, eyes wide and terrified in her rounded face, then to the ground. Her hands clasped before her, she stared at the ground hard, then closed her eyes and drew in a short breath.

  Satisfied, Marielle stood and stepped away, closed her eyes as well.

  On the river, the flows between them grew disturbed, as if someone had reached forward and swirled them with their hands. Then I felt tendrils reach out from Gwenn toward Marielle, snaking forward and intertwining until they formed a thin conduit. When the conduit reached Marielle, it attached itself to a place near Marielle’s heart, where I could see the White Fire I’d placed inside Marielle before the Chorl attack burning.

  Marielle smiled in satisfaction. “Now form a shield, Mistress.”

  “What for?” I asked, already forming the shield before me. I noted that Eryn had stepped away, had deferred to Marielle now that she and Gwenn were linked.

  “So I can show you how it works,” Marielle said with a twisted smile.

  I waited, shield in place—

  And suddenly felt Marielle pushing at the shield from the far side. It wasn’t an attack, wasn’t an edged blade or a punch of force, but instead a widespread gentle pressure that steadily increased, to the point where I felt myself unconsciously pushing back in order to keep the shield in place, a wall being held up by another wall.

  “This is just me,” Marielle said, her voice a little short with effort. “Now we’ll add in Gwenn.”

  Before she’d finished, I felt energy pouring down through the conduit from Gwenn—

  And I gasped, staggered as the pressure on my shield doubled, shoving me back.

  “Enough,” Eryn said.

  Gwenn let the conduit go, and Marielle dropped the pressure against my shield. Both had satisfied expressions on their faces, although Gwenn’s appeared more exultant than Marielle’s. The older Servant reached out and ruffled the hair on Gwenn’s head, an unconscious gesture that sent a pang through my heart. Erick had ruffled my hair the same way on the Dredge.

  Behind us, I heard someone snort.

  Frowning, I turned and caught Ottul watching, her face twisted into a sneer. As soon as she caught my gaze, the sneer vanished and she dropped her head, as if she were inspecting the reeds at the edge of the pool, or the little minnows in its depths.

  “That felt fairly significant to me,” I said, turning back. Gwenn looked crestfallen, her eyes on Ottul. “Why do you think the Chorl are using something different?”

  “Because when we try to link more than two people together there isn’t a subsequent doubling of the power for each person, as we saw from the Ochean and her links. When four of them were linked together—the Ochean and three of her Servants—the resultant force was around eight times the strength of just one. When we link four people together, we only get about four times the force.”

  “The difference is geometric, rather than arithmetic,” Marielle broke in. “When we link, we’re only adding individual strengths together. When the Chorl link, their strengths are being multiplied together.”

  It sounded suspiciously mathematical. “So they’re using a different kind of link.” I tried to think back to the attack on the outer walls, as seen through Eryn’s eyes. That was the only time we’d witnessed the Chorl actually linking, so that they could destroy the inner gates. They’d linked to destroy the watchtowers over the bay, but no one had seen that attack, only the consequences. “Do you remember seeing how they linked to destroy the gates?” I asked Eryn.

  “No.” Her voice was laced with regret. “I was too distracted trying to defend the gates to pay that close attention.”

  “So was I. They used conduits somehow, though. I remember seeing the conduits form. But it happened too fast for me to see details.”

  We both looked toward Ottul.

  “She knows how to do it,” Eryn said, and Ottul turned, as if she sensed that we were talking about her. “That’s obvious now.”

  “Yes. We just have to figure out how to get her to tell us.”

  “I see you have a Chorl prisoner,” someone said as I left the gardens where the Servants continued to train, Ottul still sitting beside the pool, watched by Trielle and Heddan. “Is she one of the Chorl Servants you spoke of?”

  I halted, blinked at the darkness of the palace corridor, my eyes still dazzled by the sunlight of the gardens.

  Brandan Vard stood at one of the open arched windows that looked out onto the garden a few paces down the corridor, the sigil of Venitte catching the light as he turned toward me. Light brown hair, bleached almost blond by the sun; brown eyes; narrow face with high cheekbones and a thin nose. I hadn’t seen him since I’d questioned him and Tristan about the throne, hadn’t really looked at him even then, too focused on learning about Venitte, about their preparations for the Chorl. But now . . .

  “So, is she?”

  I started, frowned at myself, then straightened. “Is she what?”

  Brandan smiled, dimples appearing in each cheek. He nodded out the window, leaning back against the sill. “Is she one of the Chorl Servants?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you let her watch your training sessions?”

  “Not normally. Today is an exception.”

  Brandan looked over his shoulder into the garden. “She seems more interested in the fish in the pond than in the training.”

  I hesitated, then moved up to Brandan’s side, felt Keven and my escort of guardsmen shift around me without coming close. Brandan seemed . . . different.
Relaxed.

  I wondered if it was because Captain Tristan wasn’t here watching over him. I suddenly wondered what I could learn from him when he wasn’t under Tristan’s supervision.

  Out in the garden, Gwenn had knelt down beside the pond, was pointing to something in its depths, Ottul leaning forward from the bench, listening to the girl’s excited chatter. She couldn’t possibly understand Gwenn’s explanation, but she seemed to be concentrating more on the words than when Marielle tried to explain things to her in her room.

  “Maybe I should have taken her out of her rooms earlier,” I said with a frown.

  Brandan didn’t respond, and when I shrugged and turned away from the scene in the gardens, I found him watching me, head tilted slightly. The intensity of his look sent a shiver through my shoulders, down into my gut. A pleasant shiver.

  “I thought you would have left for Venitte already,” I said, then cursed myself.

  His eyebrows rose slightly, but he laughed. “Hardly. Tristan has business to attend to with the merchants’ guild, especially now that there are four new merchants. He’s kept busy the past few days, arranging shipments, learning what he can of the new Amenkor . . . and the new Mistress.”

  I frowned. “And what have you done?”

  “Everything.” He gave me a mischievous grin, then sighed heavily. He shook his head. “Nothing much, actually.” I could sense the lie . . . but again it was tinged with truth. And on the river, he appeared both gray and red. “I was sent as a token of sincerity, a representative of Lord March and the power of Venitte, nothing more. Once Tristan delivered the message, my duties were done.” A note of bitterness had crept into his voice. His hand drifted to the pendant hanging around his neck, tilted it this way and that in the sunlight. Then he shrugged, met my gaze squarely. “But it got me out of Venitte. Sometimes, with the constant training, both as a Servant and Protector, it feels like I’m trapped in the city, never free to do what I want.”

  My gut twisted. I tried not to think of Avrell telling me—no, ordering me—to stay in Amenkor. The throne had trapped me here before, and now that the throne was gone, now that I was free, I found myself trapped anyway. By my role as Mistress.

  And Brandan had seen me wince.

  “Have you seen the city?” I asked without thought, trying to distract him, to turn him away from whatever he may have seen.

  “No.”

  “Perhaps,” I began, then hesitated.

  I drew in a sharp breath, suddenly suspicious. But there was no taint on the river, only the smell of sunlight, of the sea.

  Brandan was looking at me uncertainly.

  I shrugged the vague suspicion aside. “Perhaps I could show you? I need to check up on a few things anyway.”

  Straightening, Brandan grinned. “I’d love to.” He bowed his head, glancing up through the locks of his hair. “Mistress.”

  That pleasant little shiver coursed through me again. A shiver I distrusted, even though it intrigued me.

  I turned to Keven, caught his warning frown. “Ready some horses.”

  We rode down through the two wards, pausing to inspect the reconstruction going on at each gate, Brandan shocked by the devastation and skeptical at my claim that the gates had fallen within the space of an hour, that in fact the entire attack had lasted no more than a day. Nathem, the aged Second of the Mistress, was overseeing the progress there and reported that everything was proceeding smoothly. The walls to either side were covered with scaffolding crawling with workers and engineers, ropes and pulleys hauling huge stones off of carts that had brought the granite from the quarry to the north of the city. The stone portion of the inner gates was almost completed, a rough arch beginning to sprout from the edges of the two rebuilt walls. Blacksmiths were already forging the iron that would bind the wood for the doors themselves.

  “And there was no way to stop them?” Brandan asked, disbelief still coloring his voice.

  “The Servants were our only defense from the Ochean once she reached the walls. The army was useless. And Eryn and I didn’t hold the wall for long.”

  Brandan shook his head, brow creased in thought.

  From the walls, I turned left, heading away from the main road down to the wharf that passed through the worst of the devastated city and moving east along the River.

  As we passed into the industrial quarter, where the stockyards, tannery, and most of the blacksmiths and other tradesmen worked, I said, “You mentioned training as a Protector. What’s that?”

  Brandan barked laughter. “It sounds more interesting than it actually is. Those of us with talent—like the Servants you have here—are raised in the city, although we aren’t as constrained as it appears you are here. We don’t have to remain in the palace. In fact, we can roam throughout the city, which is much larger than Amenkor, maybe twice as large.”

  “The Servants leave the palace,” I said, although now that I thought about it I realized that they didn’t leave very often. Everything was provided for them in the palace; there was no need for them to roam the city. They’d probably spent more time in the city this past winter organizing and running the kitchens associated to the warehouses than they had their entire time here.

  And Venitte was larger than Amenkor? Twice as large?

  I tried to imagine Amenkor spreading out along the River and up and down the coast, holding twice as many people . . . and couldn’t.

  “In any case,” Brandon continued, “as Servants we, of course, have to train in the use of the Sight. We do that at the College, located in the heart of Venitte, inside Deranian’s Wall. But all Servants are also required to take training as guardsmen as well. In fact, we train to be Protectors, guardsmen who have the honor and distinction of serving under Lord March’s direct authority.” He twisted the words honor and distinction.

  “You don’t make it sound as if it’s much of an honor.”

  Brandan snorted. “It’s not. At least not for the Servants. Most of the Protectors become Protectors by first training in the guard and then earning some type of distinction so that they are promoted to the Protectors. But for the Servants . . .”

  “It’s automatic,” I finished.

  Brandan nodded. “Most of the regular Protectors don’t feel that we’ve earned our place. They think we should be part of the regular guard at first, and only made a Protector once we’ve proved our worth. As a consequence, the Servants tend to keep to themselves. Thankfully, the regular Protectors have a healthy respect for the Sight and aside from some rude comments and general ridicule they leave us alone.”

  I frowned. It sounded like living on the Dredge, where those that were alike banded together into gangs, keeping those that were weak or different apart, separated and ridiculed, until they formed a gang of their own.

  Or until those that were different learned to survive on their own.

  Or died.

  “How many of the Servants are there in Venitte?” I asked.

  Brandan didn’t immediately respond, as if uncertain he should, or surprised that I didn’t already know. “About sixty.”

  “All men?”

  “Of course. Any women that we find in or close to Venitte that we think can use the Sight are sent up here to Amenkor to train, just as you send the men down to us.”

  I nodded. Something was niggling at the edges of my mind, as if there were something here I was supposed to see . . . something I should realize. I concentrated on it a moment, but it slipped away.

  “What about here?” Brandan asked. “How many Servants do you have in Amenkor at the moment?”

  “Twenty-nine. We lost three during the attack, killed by the Chorl.”

  I didn’t tell him that seven had died last year, when Avrell and Nathem had been trying to replace Eryn as Mistress while she was still seated on the throne and going mad.

  We’d reached the edge of the blacksmithing section and as I dismounted, Brandan following suit, Keven sent one of the escorting guardsmen into the long ope
n building that roared with the sound of bellows and the steady clangor of hammers on steel and anvil. I’d been forced to raise my voice to answer Brandan as we approached and now didn’t even attempt to talk. I stood outside one of the open arches into the interior of the building as heat rolled outward, blowing the hair back from my face and turning my skin taut and waxy with sweat, sucking the breath from my lungs and making it hard to breathe.

  Inside, heat distorted the air, men and boys moving among the seething coals and embers, sparks flying from white-hot metal as it was shaped, steam rising as pieces were dunked into waiting pails of water. Finished pieces—armor, swords, pikes, halberds, and daggers—lined the nearest wall. A few other unidentifiable pieces lay among these, parts needed for the gates, the reconstruction of the ships, or any of the other hundred projects scattered throughout the city.

  Brandan’s eyebrows rose as he saw the stockpile of weapons, but he said nothing.

  The guardsmen Keven had sent returned abruptly with one of the blacksmiths: Hugh, the man huge, at least twice as wide as me and half again as tall. I watched him approach, feeling myself tense even though I was surrounded by Keven and the escort.

  Which made it all the more disconcerting when the man suddenly dropped to his knee, sketched the sign of the Skewed Throne over his chest, and bowed his head down before me. “Mistress,” Hugh murmured, his voice deep and pleasant, booming over the roar of the smithy, “it’s an honor. You saved us all.”

  The noise of the smithy fell into a sudden lull.

  Swallowing against the heat, conscious of all of those watching me, including Brandan, I reached forward and touched the blacksmith’s head. “Thank you.”

  Hugh rose, and the clamor of work rose again. As he stood, I could see the pockmarks of scars up and down his arms from the sparks of the fires. An old but vicious burn ran the length of his upper arm, pink and rough compared to the smooth heat-tanned skin around it.

  “An accident when I was an apprentice,” Hugh said in answer to my unasked question. He grinned. “It’s nothing. What can I do for you?”

  Drawing my eyes away from the burn, I shouted, “I came to see how things were progressing.”