The Vacant Throne

by Joshua Palmatier

“—Or they’ve already been taken by the Chorl,” Sorrenti finished. “In either case,” and here he did turn, “we can’t get through this gate.”

  I straightened, thought about Amenkor, about the attack by the Ochean and the attack here in Venitte by Haqtl.

  “Yes, we can,” I said, not even bothering to turn to Marielle, Heddan, and Gwenn to see if they were willing. I could feel them already moving forward.

  “What—” Sorrenti began, but then he saw the other Amenkor Servants gathering behind me. His eyes narrowed and he swallowed his question. “We can’t defeat the Chorl with less than thirty men!”

  “Why not? What did you think we’d find here? An army?”

  “I expected to get reinforcements here,” he growled. “Men from the walls, enough to at least double our forces.”

  “There is no one here,” I countered. “So we attack with what we’ve got.”

  Sorrenti snorted. “And get slaughtered! We’d never make it to within a hundred yards of the Council chamber.”

  “Then perhaps we could help.”

  Everyone in the party spun at the new voice, the Protectorate and the Amenkor guardsmen instantly circling us, creating a wall against the three men who stood in the street of the Gutter behind us. They were dressed in armor, but it was worn, used, sunlight catching in nicks and dents. Their surcoats were coated with dust and dirt from the road, stained with sweat and blood. Two of the men wore their hair pulled back in a tight braid, tied and bound with twine. The third man, the leader, was bald.

  The words had been uttered calmly, almost casually, the voice gravelly, like stone grating against stone. A familiar voice.

  “Who are you?” Sorrenti demanded.

  Then I saw the banner one of the men held, the pole tall, fabric tied to a crosspiece, hanging down and secured near the man’s hands where he held it upright. And painted across the folds of black fabric in bright red—

  The Skewed Throne.

  My gaze flicked back toward the bald man, toward his face, partially shadowed by the banner. My nostrils flared, and in the depths of the river, I smelled him, recognized the presence, the flows that surrounded him, and I tasted the bitterness of betrayal.

  The anger rose so fast and so sharp it felt as if it cut me from stomach to throat. With every ounce of that anger clear in my voice, I said, “Baill.”

  Baill—former captain of the Amenkor palace guard—shifted slightly, his face now visible in sunlight. His jaw was set, not in anger, but in regret, in respect.

  He closed his eyes, bowed his head. “Mistress.”

  I moved before I thought, dagger out, my body in liquid motion, slipping through the wall of guardsmen meant to protect me. But before I could pass beyond them completely, a hand clamped onto my arm, so hard I knew it would leave bruises, and brought me up short.

  I spun to face Erick, barked, “Let go!”

  “No,” Erick said, short and simple. If it had been anyone else— Sorrenti, Marielle, perhaps even William—I would have cut them, forced them to let go by drawing blood.

  But it was Erick.

  He caught my gaze, held it. I could hear myself breathing, the air huffing through my nostrils, my jaw clamped down tight, mouth closed. I narrowed my gaze, the rage seething inside me, hot and visceral, tingling in my arms, in my blood. I could feel it on the river, radiating from all of those from Amenkor, from Marielle and Avrell, William and Erick himself. “He sold us to the Chorl,” I hissed. “He stole our food, sold it to them. He betrayed us.”

  Before Erick could answer, Baill said loudly, “I didn’t betray Amenkor. Not to the Chorl.”

  Avrell snorted with contempt. “You sold our food—food we’d hoarded so that we could survive the winter!”

  Baill shook his head, his eyes going hard. He stepped forward. “Yes! But I sold it to Alendor. He sold it to the Chorl, a fact I didn’t learn until after you attacked us at the fountain during our meeting and captured him. He betrayed us to the Chorl. Not me.”

  “And we should forgive you because of that!” Avrell demanded contemptuously, on the verge of attacking Baill himself.

  “No,” Baill said. But unlike Avrell, his voice had grown quieter. “No. Because I did betray Amenkor to Alendor. And I betrayed you, Mistress. I did not think you could rule. You were gutterscum. I thought you would fail.”

  I shifted, felt Erick’s hand tighten on my arm, his fingers digging in deeper in warning, but I ignored him. “You thought you could hand Amenkor over to Alendor, and when he seized power— as he tried to do with the consortium—you would gain control of the palace through him.”

  Baill straightened, back stiff, shoulders pushed back in defiance—

  But then he sighed, drawn breath exhaled loudly. “Yes.”

  The admission blunted my anger. Erick must have felt it, for his hand relaxed its grip.

  But he didn’t let go. He knew me too well.

  “I’ve hunted the Chorl since I found out what Alendor did,” Baill said, voice hard, harsh with hatred. “I gathered together what forces I could—those guardsmen who helped me steal the food from the warehouses and were forced to come with me when I fled, some of Alendor’s men, some of his mercenaries. I used them to hunt the Chorl in Temall, and then when their armies headed south I hounded them down the entire coast, all the way here, to Venitte. I hunted them in the name of the Skewed Throne, in the name of the Mistress. In the name of Amenkor.”

  No one said anything, their anger still simmering on the eddies and currents. But now it was tinged with a thread of doubt. Grudging doubt, but doubt nonetheless.

  Because Baill’s words resonated with truth. A truth I could sense on the river, could feel, even though every part of me screamed not to trust him.

  I had never seen Baill working directly with the Chorl. Only with Alendor.

  And I had seen him fighting the Chorl in Temall, had watched him through Westen’s eyes as he helped turn back the Chorl attack on the walls, using the Skewed Throne banner as his sigil.

  Before I could respond to the silence, Sorrenti broke it himself. “You offer to help. But three more men will not change the situation.”

  Baill smiled. He motioned to the man on his left, the one not holding the Skewed Throne banner, and that man whistled, the sound piercing.

  From the alleys and narrows behind them, from the empty windows and cavernous sockets of the doorways, men stepped forth. Not the gutterscum I’d assumed the watchers were when I’d sensed them on the river, but men in armor. Makeshift armor, as dented and nicked and dirty as Baill himself, the men with grizzled beards, hair tied or braided, eyes sharp, cold, and calculating. They formed up behind Baill and his two cohorts, shifting into neat ranks and files, no one speaking, only the rattle of armor and swords, the tread of heavy booted feet on flagstone, interrupting the silence. Over a hundred men emerged from the shadows, a few spitting to the side casually before taking their places, all of their faces pinched and drawn from the march down the coast, from the skirmishes they must have fought. And all of their gazes fixed on me. A few bowed their heads in short nods. Over half of them signed themselves across the chest with the Skewed Throne symbol.

  And I suddenly remembered seeing Baill’s forces leaving Temall, heading southward. Over a hundred men.

  These hundred men. This Band.

  Chasing after the Chorl.

  “We are more than three,” Baill said. He spoke to Sorrenti, but his eyes never left me.

  I held his gaze, felt the guardsmen that protected us close in tighter as I hesitated.

  I needed these men.

  But the taste of Baill’s betrayal lay like acid in my mouth. I couldn’t trust him, couldn’t trust his men, not after what he’d done, no matter what the river said.

  I straightened where I stood, and felt Erick’s hand fall from my arm, knew that he had reached for his sword. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sorrenti watching me, uncertain. He didn’t understand the situation, didn’t know who th
ese men were, didn’t understand the extent of the betrayal. But he’d picked up on the tension, on the anger and hatred.

  I drew breath to turn Baill away—

  And Sorrenti gasped. A horrified, choked gasp. One hand reached up to his chest, fingers digging into the flesh above his heart. The other reached out toward me.

  “The throne,” he wheezed, eyes stunned, bewildered.

  Then he collapsed. It was completely graceless. All animation, all tension in his muscles, simply ceased.

  His body hit the grit-blackened stone of the Gutter with a heavy thud, his scabbard grating against granite, his arms flopping to either side.

  A moment of silence followed—

  And then his guardsmen cried out, their commander lurching forward and kneeling at his side with a curse.

  But Brandan and I had moved faster. Brandan knelt next to his Lord on one side. I knelt on the other, grabbed Sorrenti by the chin, jerked his head so I could see his eyes—

  Wide open. Staring into nothing, into everything.

  “What happened?” Brandan asked.

  Sorrenti’s commander replied, “He’s barely breathing!”

  I shot a glance at Erick as I sat back onto my heels, saw the same confusion in his eyes. He hadn’t been in the throne room when the Ochean came, hadn’t witnessed any of those events, hadn’t seen my own collapse when the Ochean had touched the Skewed Throne.

  “The Chorl have reached the Stone Throne,” I said, and even I heard the deadness in my voice.

  Erick’s face hardened, the Seeker beneath slipping forward. He straightened where he knelt. “Then we have no choice. We have to take the risk.”

  Fresh anger spilled into the river. “I won’t. We can’t trust him. We can’t trust his men.”

  “We have no choice!” Erick repeated, the teacher now, the man who had trained me on the Dredge. Curt, decisive, his tone suggesting there was no argument.

  I frowned, felt the argument forming anyway.

  And then Sorrenti’s commander interrupted.

  “You mean those men,” he said, his voice tight, filled with derision. “They’re nothing but mercenaries! They haven’t even given us a price!”

  I caught his eyes, saw him flinch back. “Oh, they’ve asked for a price,” I growled, turned meaningfully to Brandan. “A hefty price.” My gaze flicked toward Baill. “They’ve asked for my forgiveness.”

  And I didn’t want to give it. Even with every eddy of the river telling me that Baill was sincere. I didn’t want to give it because Baill had betrayed me, had hurt me. And I didn’t want to deal with him anymore.

  Baill hadn’t moved. None of his men—his Band—had. They watched in silence, but I could feel their hope on the river, their fear that I would refuse them, would turn them away.

  They wanted redemption.

  I rose, felt Avrell step up to my side, felt his presence like a wall beside me.

  “Mistress,” he said, then hesitated, began again, in a softer voice. “Varis. Think of the throne, of the coast, of the Chorl.”

  I turned toward him with a twinge of surprise. I’d thought he’d tell me what to do, that he’d order me to do it, as he’d ordered me to stay in Amenkor instead of going on the scouting mission, as he’d ordered me to come to Venitte.

  Instead, he simply nodded. “It’s your decision.”

  Then he stepped back.

  I looked at Baill, at his men, felt Brandan kneeling beside Lord Sorrenti beside me. In the distance, I heard a reverberating thud, an explosion, whether from the water of the port or the northern quarters I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter.

  I moved, stopped a half pace before Baill, a little too close. The two cohorts to either side shifted, restless, but Baill didn’t react, simply stared down at me.

  And then, before I could speak, he knelt.

  With a rustle of armor and cloth, every member of the Band knelt as well, most crossing themselves with the Skewed Throne, a few murmuring prayers, too softly for me to hear the words.

  I stared out over their hunched bodies, their bowed heads, the black-and-red banner flapping fitfully once.

  And then I said, “We don’t have time for this. Erick! Work with Baill to organize the men. You!” Sorrenti’s commander started as I pointed to him. “Gather up Sorrenti’s body and bring it with us. Carefully!”

  The commander looked toward Brandan, who nodded curtly as he stood.

  “And what do you intend to do?” Avrell asked as the group kneeling behind me suddenly lurched into motion, Erick’s and Baill’s orders shattering the silence, Sorrenti’s men joining them, four squatting down by Sorrenti’s inert body. Two of them threw his arms over their shoulders and lifted, his feet dragging on the ground beneath them.

  “I intend to take care of the gate,” I said, walking forward until I stood ten paces from the iron-bound doors themselves, the Wall looming above me, stone stretching out to either side. Staring up at its height, I barked, “Marielle, Heddan, Gwenn!”

  When I turned, I found them already behind me, Erick ordering the rest of the men back. I frowned. Gwenn and Heddan stood to either side of me and slightly behind. Marielle stood two paces farther back midway between them, centered, directly behind my position. An array I recognized—the diamond pattern the Ochean had used with her Servants when she’d attacked Amenkor, when she’d shattered the gate in the last wall.

  They’d already submerged themselves in the river. I could feel their power pulsing, felt a shiver as conduits slid into place.

  Behind them, Baill’s forces and those guardsmen that had survived the Chorl at the Stone Garden stood ready, William, Ottul, Avrell, and Brandan Vard among them. I caught Erick’s gaze, Baill’s, and said, “This is going to have to be quick.”

  “Then it will be bloody as well,” Baill said in answer.

  I nodded gravely in acknowledgment, then spun, flung my arms out wide to either side as the matrix of conduits that Marielle, Heddan, and Gwenn had formed snapped into place around me, touched me, and poured power into my body. An electric power, the force sizzling against my skin, wild and raw and ferocious, like the lightning that Brandan commanded, like the power Cerrin had called that had burned through him while creating the thrones. It surged up through my chest, up through my arms, pulsing with the beat of my heart, with all of our hearts as I forged it into a hammer, into a ram to beat down the gates. More energy then I’d ever handled without the throne to support me, more power than one person should wield alone. It tingled in my fingers, arced out from my hands in invisible sheets, flared higher and higher as it built, a coruscating field of light that I knew could only be seen by the Servants, smelling sharp and bitter, tasting of acrid smoke and the dry husks of dead pine needles, of sap and bark.

  And when it felt as if I could no longer contain it, when it felt as if my body would explode with the contained power, I released it toward the gates, toward the Wall, with a wordless roar.

  Chapter 16

  The hammer fell with ponderous and invisible weight, and the gates shattered. Wood beams as thick as a man cracked with a dry snap, like tinder. Metal shrieked as it twisted, wrenched from stone, the torturous sound piercing the shocked cries of the men behind me, blending with my own roar of frustration, of sheer anger.

  But the Wall—Deranian’s Wall—the stone that had stood for thousands of years . . .

  The Wall itself resisted.

  I had enough time to sever the conduits that fed the hammer, enough time to draw in a sharp breath, eyes widening in shock—

  And then the backlash of power from the Wall, a shudder that rippled away from the gates in a wave, struck.

  I flinched, flung my hands up before me, expecting the wave to hurl me backward into the mass of waiting guardsmen, expecting it to suck the breath from my lungs, to hit me with killing force because I hadn’t had time to erect a shield to shunt it to the side. I heard Gwenn shriek, heard Heddan gasp in dismay, felt a dagger of guilt sink deep inside me for
acting so rashly, for carelessly wielding a power I’d never controlled before—

  But with cold smoothness a shield appeared, stretching from building to building across the Gutter’s street, the river solidifying in the space of a breath. I felt the wave ripple up the shield’s length, wash past overhead, its horrible, angry weight pressing down on me like heavy cloth, smothering me, crushing me. I heard the horrifying rumble of stone as the buildings to either side took the brunt of the recoil of power and shattered beneath it, splinters of stone hurtling down into the street. I felt a sliver of pain as one nicked my neck, heard screams and groans from behind, tasted blood on the river. Dust filled the air, the grit cloying, and without thought I sucked it into my lungs, instantly began coughing, shielding my eyes against it. . . .

  And saw Ottul, one hand raised, her eyes closed, their corners pinched against the strain of holding the shield as the wave of power washed overhead.

  When the rumble of settling stone faded, she opened her eyes and her gaze fell on me. Lowering her hand, she bowed her head. The gold rings in her ears glinted with the diffuse sunlight. “Ochean.”

  I didn’t respond.

  To one side, dust beginning to settle, someone gasped, “Mistress’ tits.”

  I shot the man a glare, then turned.

  The gates stood open. One side hung by a twisted hinge, skewed inward, its center cracked and indented as if it had been struck with a battering ram the size of a wagon. The other door had been completely ripped free from the stone.

  The Wall itself seemed whole. Only a few cracks had appeared in the outer edges of the arc, a chunk no larger than my head ripped free in one spot. The most serious damage had occurred where the iron of the hinges had been embedded in the wall.

  And to the Gutter’s buildings on either side. The backlash had collapsed the building on the right, and only two walls remained of the one on the left. They’d been reduced to heaps of rock.

  “What happened?” Erick demanded, moving up to my side with Brandan.

  “There’s more to Deranian’s Wall than just stone,” I said flatly. “It protected itself.”