The Vacant Throne

by Joshua Palmatier

  Fighting back the pain in my leg, in my knee, I staggered upright. Reaching forward, I forced the collected power into the channels I’d created, felt the others doing the same, all of them suddenly intent with purpose. The thrones throbbed beneath the concentrated channels. The Threads seethed, whipped back and forth, lashed and crackled with hideous abandon. Thunder rumbled through the room, followed almost instantly by another cry, the deep sound cut short.

  Across the chamber, I saw Garus stumble, his face a rictus of pain.

  And then he collapsed, face forward, hitting the floor with a sickening, meaty thud.

  No, I thought, despair washing over me, draining away the strength in my arms, piercing my heart.

  Seth bellowed, a sound of horror, of denial and disbelief.

  “The construct is too intense!” I shouted. “We have to control it! We have to contain it or it will kill us all!”

  But before anyone could react, something slipped. The power rose higher.

  And the funnels opened wide.

  I gasped, the sudden draw of power intense, sucking the breath from me. I struggled against its pull—the same pull I’d felt from the stones after I’d created them for the Servants to use against the Chorl, a vortex that drew me in, except this was a thousand times stronger. I fought it, felt the others fighting it as well, Atreus with a wild desperation, Liviann with arrogant strength.

  But it was too late.

  The vortex split, one snaking down and down to the first throne, touching the stone with a sizzling snap of energy I felt crackle through my skin. The second vortex touched, and suddenly it was as if my body had caught fire.

  My back arched as the energy of all of the Seven coalesced and flowed through me, my mouth open to the ceiling in a silent howl of anguish, of raw, hideous torture. Seth fell, seizures racking his body, his silk shirt soaked in blood, his heels juddering into the floor as his own scream roared through the chamber and bled into my own. Atreus crumbled without a sound, succumbing to the ferocious pull almost gracefully, the only sign of her struggle a spot of blood leaking from her nose, staining her too pale face.

  Alleryn and Liviann held out the longest, both contorted in pain where they stood, both with grim faces, each intent on surviving longer than the other. Alleryn’s dress grew spotted with darkness as she began to sweat blood. Liviann’s hands were clasped in front of her, her fingernails piercing her skin, clenched so tight her skin was white, the veins standing out like purple bruises. They glared at each other across the room, the thrones between them, power pouring down between them, sucked into the thrones, saturating them, crackling and potent.

  And then Alleryn fell.

  Liviann collapsed a heartbeat later.

  And then there was nothing but the thrones. Nothing but the grief, now a thousandfold worse than before. Nothing but the tears coursing down my face.

  Held in a vortex, the Threads that bound it together, the Fire that burned at its core, I had a moment to think, Olivia, what have I done.

  And then the thrones swallowed me.

  I woke with tears streaming down my face and my body tingling as if with residual energy. Cerrin’s horror, his grief, washed over me, choked me, and I rolled to the side, reaching for the dagger beneath my pillow for comfort. My hand closed about its handle—

  And then I froze.

  Through the doors of my chamber, I could hear voices arguing, too muted to pick out any actual words.

  I slid from the bed, dagger in hand, and shifted into the night shadows of the room, edging toward the door, back pressed against the wall. As I passed the window, someone screamed and my flesh prickled.

  But the scream degenerated into laughter, faded.

  I cursed softly to myself. It was the third day of the Fete, and even in the dead of night the citizens of Venitte celebrated.

  And there was still no sign of Haqtl or the Chorl.

  Edging forward, I slid through the open entrance to the outer receiving room, wound my way past the tables and chairs, and came up to the outer doors. Breath held, I crouched, listened.

  Keven. Arguing with Alonse.

  Sighing, I stood and wrenched the door open.

  Neither man jumped, but both of them spun, their hissed conversation cutting off sharply, already well on its way to hushed shouting. Keven’s hand rested on his sword, his grip white. Two other guardsmen stood to either side of the door.

  Blinking into the harsh candlelight of the hall, sensing Keven’s disgust, Alonse’s agitation, I said, “What is it?”

  Alonse flinched at my tone, then bowed. “Mistress, the Protectorate—”

  He cut off, and I narrowed my eyes. I’d never seen Alonse so upset. He’d always been perfectly calm, if disapproving.

  “What is it, Alonse?”

  He straightened, and with a supreme effort, calmed himself. When he spoke, though, his voice still shook. “General Daeriun requests your presence immediately. The Protectors have found something.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” Keven said, “but he became insistent.”

  I nodded, noting the lines of tension in Alonse’s face. His entire body seemed to be vibrating. “It’s all right, Keven. Gather an escort.” When Alonse sighed, tension draining from him, his head bowed as he murmured a prayer I couldn’t hear, I added, “Quickly.”

  Alonse glanced up, his eyes dark, intent. “I’ve already summoned a carriage.”

  Ten minutes later, I emerged from the estate, dressed in my usual white shirt, brown breeches, dagger within easy reach.

  “I tried to get him to stay,” Keven said as he held the door to the carriage open before me.

  I frowned, stepped up onto the carriage’s outer step, ready to ask who, then paused.

  Alonse sat in the carriage seat, his eyes wide but his face set, jaw tight. “I have to come with you,” he said in a commanding tone. Then he seemed to remember his station as Steward. “Please, you have to let me come with you.”

  A sudden disquiet settled into my stomach. Somewhere, one of the Fete revelers cried out, the shriek—not quite laughter, not quite terror—smothered by a sudden burst of music.

  “Very well,” I said, then climbed into the seat next to him.

  Keven traded a glance with me as he followed. Two more Amenkor guardsmen joined us.

  And then the carriage moved, trundled out through the gates and into Venitte’s streets. We passed a drunken group of men, staggering through the dark, bottles in hand. A lone reveler turned his head as the carriage sped by, the piercing beak of his mask startling, feathers sprouting from the mask above his eyes in a tuft of plumage.

  “Do you know what this is about?” Keven asked Alonse. His tone was neutral, but Alonse stiffened.

  “No,” he said, but I could hear the lie in his voice. “Only that they found a body.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In the Gutter,” he answered grimly, voice thick with a sick dread.

  I turned away.

  The carriage ascended toward the council chambers, passed through Deranian’s Wall, the celebrants crowding together in the the Merchant Quarter, then dropping away as we entered the heart of the city. But we didn’t halt at the Council chambers, the carriage slipping past the huge domed building, revealing the smaller palace behind, where Lord March resided, and then from there the carriage descended again, down toward where the Wall curved around the inner city, separating it from the slums.

  We paused as the gates on this side were opened, then slid through into the Gutter.

  I leaned forward, toward the window, breathed in the air that came into the carriage. It smelled of piss and refuse, of decay and sickness, the scent becoming heavier as the carriage meandered down through the streets, farther from the Wall and deeper into the Gutter. The street was still paved with stone, but here it was dirty, the buildings to either side also stone, slicked with grime. I caught sight of a few of the people that lived here, a furtive glance from a huddled figure crouched
at the base of an alley, a flash of movement in the gaping emptiness of a window, the shifty movements raising the hackles on the back of my neck . . . and touching off the Fire at my core, the white flames flickering to life, edged with warning.

  It was the Dredge, only different. There was no crumbling mud-brick, only well-worn granite from buildings that had once been part of the heart of the city. And unlike the Dredge, there was no transition from the inner city to the slums, no slow descent into shit and degradation. The Wall sliced through the two sections of the city like a dagger, cleanly separating Lord March and the members of the Council of Eight from the gutterscum.

  Settling back into the hard surface of the carriage’s seat, the ride suddenly rougher as the vehicle ground over the broken surface of the street, I noticed Alonse’s grimace of distaste and smiled tightly.

  Turning to Keven, I said blandly, “It reminds me of home,” knowing that Keven would understand I meant the Dredge.

  The Amenkor guardsman grunted. Alonse looked horrified.

  Then the carriage slowed with a jerk, halted abruptly.

  We stepped out into the shadowed darkness of a slum street in the dead of night. There were no candles here edging windows with warm light, no lanterns hung on street corners. Everything was black and gray, and I slid beneath the river without a second thought, breathed in the familiar stenches, felt the familiar presence of people hunkered in corners and bolt-holes, watching us.

  And I felt the particular disturbance that told me where Daeriun and the other Protectors waited.

  I moved before all of the guardsmen had stepped down from the carriage, heard Keven curse beneath his breath. Alonse followed at my heels, practically tripping over me. I shot him a glare that he couldn’t see, noted his widened eyes, his quickened breath.

  I startled the Protectors, stepping out of the shadows at their backs without a sound. One of them barked an order, hand flying toward his sword, the others reacting instantly, clustering around Daeriun at the end of the jagged alley. Daeriun didn’t even flinch, his gaze locking onto mine.

  It was not friendly.

  “You wanted to see me,” I said, as Keven and the Amenkor guardsmen filtered out of the narrow at my back to either side. Alonse remained close, peering over my shoulder.

  “Yes,” he said. “I wanted you to see this. I want you to explain it.”

  He motioned toward the other end of the alley.

  I stepped forward, my shoulders tensing as I edged around the Protectors, their gazes hard, dangerous. The Fire licked upward, and beneath the river I could feel their own tension, their distrust. If I’d been the gutterscum I once was, I would have been contemptuous, but I wasn’t, no matter how comfortable the Gutter felt to me, how familiar.

  Slipping past them, their presence behind me prickling my skin, I moved toward where Daeriun had indicated, saw a body crumpled to the ground. The man lay on his side, knees tucked in slightly, back toward me. Even without the river I would have known he was dead. Had been dead for at least a day by the smell.

  Frowning, I knelt down by his side, glanced toward Daeriun, toward the general’s harsh face, stiff frown.

  “Do you know him?” he asked.

  Turning back, I reached out, touched the man’s shoulder, and rolled him toward me.

  My eyes settled on the wounds first. He’d been stabbed in the chest, twice, the bloodstains on the clothing still damp. Ship’s clothing. A white shirt, a fitted jacket, the embroidery hard to distinguish beneath the blood. My eyes darted up to the man’s face, expecting to see Bullick, or one of the Defiant’s crew—

  I heard Keven suck in a sharp breath, heard Alonse gasp.

  But it wasn’t the man’s face that caught my attention, that forced me to jerk back.

  It was the deep cuts in the man’s forehead.

  Cuts in the shape of the Skewed Throne.

  Chapter 14

  I stood abruptly, turned on Daeriun.

  “The Seekers didn’t do this.”

  "Who else could it have been?” he asked, almost snarling, his anger palpable, leaden on the river.

  I stepped toward him, let him feel my own anger, my outrage, the Amenkor guardsmen and the Protectors both bristling at the sudden movement. Daeriun didn’t stir.

  “I haven’t sent the Seekers out to hunt,” I growled.

  “This is the second body we’ve found with the Skewed Throne carved into the forehead tonight. Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “Yes,” I hissed, my voice heavy. “I haven’t sent the Seekers out to hunt, Daeriun.”

  He drew a sharp breath in through his nose, held it, his eyes searching my face. I could see he wanted to believe me, that he needed to believe me. That’s why he’d brought me here rather than simply had me arrested, so I could defend myself before word spread. But the body and its discovery was still too close, the smell of death still in the air. He hadn’t decided whether he would believe me yet.

  “Do you know who he is?” he asked.

  I didn’t need to look toward the mangled flesh of the man’s face again. “No.”

  With a sneer of disbelief, he said, “It’s the captain of the Squall.”

  I started with surprise, glanced down toward the man’s face. But I’d never seen him up close, had only watched the men on the Squall from a distance. “That’s not possible. Westen said the Squall left port a few days ago, with the captain on board, headed south, toward the Warawi islands.”

  Daeriun grunted in contempt. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  I spun back, eyes narrowed, tried not to the draw the dagger that my hand now gripped with white knuckles. I felt as if I were under attack, but there was no one here to fight. “Who was the other man?”

  Something in Daeriun’s eyes flickered, a flash of doubt. He shook his head, but when he spoke there was still a hint of sarcasm. “It wasn’t a man. She was a whore on the wharf.”

  A sudden pit opened up in my stomach, full of bile, and I settled back onto my heels, hadn’t even realized I’d shifted my weight to the balls of my feet.

  Demasque’s whore, the Squall captain . . .

  Demasque was cleaning house.

  And he was throwing the bloody bodies at my feet.

  Daeriun must have seen the shocked recognition in my eyes. He hardened, that moment of doubt fading. “Who was she, Mistress? ” he asked, breaking through my shock. “Why did you have her killed?”

  “It wasn’t me!” I spat, and even I heard the hint of desperation in my voice. I forced it down with a dry swallow, feeling the trap closing around me, the alley suddenly more narrow, more enclosed than before, the body of the captain a heavy weight at my back.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried for a calm, reasonable voice. “Demasque killed her. My Seekers were following her, were following the Squall’s captain as well. That was how Demasque passed information to the ship, by visiting his whore on the wharf and then having her take his messages to the captain.”

  Daeriun hesitated. The muscles in his jaw clenched. His eyes flicked toward the dead body and his brow creased.

  Gathering myself, I stepped forward, so close he was forced to look down at me. In a low, tight voice, I said, “I’m not stupid, General. If I’d wanted them dead, I wouldn’t have announced the kills to the Protectorate or the Council by marking them with the Skewed Throne. You would never have found the bodies. And I wouldn’t have gone after Demasque’s minions. I would have gone after Demasque himself.”

  Daeriun struggled a moment longer, then exhaled sharply, the breath coming out in a half-formed curse. He paced the end of the alley a moment, halted standing over the figure of the captain, the dead man’s eyes staring up into empty space.

  I hesitated, then moved to his side.

  “He’s cleaning up his mess,” Daeriun said, tight but thoughtful. Angry.

  “Yes. And he’s doing it in such a way as to hurt me as much as possible.”

  “If I didn’t know what
he said in the Council, if I hadn’t been told of his lies . . .”

  I didn’t respond, my lips tightening. The bastard was clever. He’d done everything he possibly could to damage my credibility, with the help of some of the other Council members.

  “I’ll want to see the whore’s body,” I said.

  Daeriun grunted. Then he turned away from the captain’s corpse, his face grim. “You know what this means.”

  I nodded. “Demasque doesn’t need his network anymore. Whatever it is that he has planned, it’s already been set in motion.”

  Before either of us could comment further, Alonse said, “His name was Bernard.”

  Both of us turned toward the Steward. He was trembling, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of Bernard’s body, off of the blood on the captain’s chest and the gashes in his forehead.

  Whoever had killed him hadn’t been practiced making the mark. None of the Seekers would have left such ragged cuts.

  Alonse sucked in a choked breath. “And the whore’s name was Yvonne.”

  I narrowed my gaze, saw Keven shift slightly behind the servant, a few of the other guardsmen following suit. “How do you know?”

  He must have heard the danger in my voice. With an effort, he dragged his gaze away from Bernard, toward me. “Because I knew her.” He swallowed, wincing as if in pain. “Because I reported to her,” he said in a dismayed voice. “She was one of my contacts.”

  I felt myself stiffen, watched as Keven’s face grew rigid, the Amenkor guardsmen shifting forward. Alonse seemed unaware of them, his entire attention on me. He stepped forward, hands coming up in supplication, but Keven’s hand clamped tight onto his shoulder, held him back. His grip must have been painful, but Alonse didn’t react.

  “You have to protect me, Mistress,” the Steward pleaded. “He’ll kill me!”

  “Who?” Daeriun barked. “Demasque?”

  Alonse shook his head. “No. Haqtl.”

  I felt the name like a physical blow to my stomach, stepped forward almost without thought and grabbed Alonse by the throat. He jerked back from my rage, but Keven held him, and beneath my hand I felt him shudder, felt his blood pounding through his veins, felt his throat click as he fought down an outcry.