The Vacant Throne

by Joshua Palmatier

  “I wonder if the Chorl encountered the same thing at the main gates,” Brandan said.

  Erick’s eyes narrowed as he took in the damage, then fixed on something on the far side. “There are bodies.”

  Something twisted in my gut, but before I could react, Erick had motioned the men forward. They surged over the strewn rubble, over the blocks of stone that had skittered out into the street, over the dust and shards of wood at the gate. After a quick glance to make certain that my Servants had survived—my gaze flickering over their somber faces—I followed, close on Erick’s heels.

  The guardsmen fanned out on the far side. In the near distance, horns sounded. I could see the Council chambers, Lord March’s smaller palace behind, the barracks for the Protectorate. Men battled near the main gates, jagged lightning occasionally punctuating the sky. Daeriun’s forces must have hit the gates while we were entering the Gutter. Smoke and dust rose into the air from that direction, and farther away, beyond the Wall to the north, where Lord March battled Atlatik.

  But here, at the Gutter’s gate, everything was quiet.

  Because everyone that had been stationed at the gate was dead.

  “They were killed hours ago,” the commander of Sorrenti’s guard said from where he knelt beside one man’s body. The neatly trimmed beard of the dead man was matted with dried blood, the stain a flaky brown. He’d been stabbed in the neck.

  Sorrenti’s commander leaned back, his eyes flicking over the debris inside the Wall, over the bodies.

  There were at least twenty within sight.

  “I’d say they were killed when the battle first started, when the Chorl made their appearance in the Stone Garden,” he said. Then he caught my gaze, Brandan’s. “The assassinations of the Council members, the appearance in the Stone Garden, the elimination of the guards here—it must have been a coordinated attack.”

  “By who?” Erick asked. “Who killed these men if the Chorl were in the Garden or at the main gates?”

  Standing beside Erick, Baill shrugged. “Does it matter? Someone with forces inside the Wall.”

  “Demasque,” I said, with certainty, with fury, even though I had no reason to believe it. “And Lady Parmati.”

  No one answered. But when a thundering roar echoed from the main gates, followed by battle cries, all of the guardsmen tensed.

  “Where do we go from here?” Brandan asked.

  I straightened. “The Council chambers.”

  All eyes turned toward the immense building, toward the battle raging in its courtyard, a seething mass of men, indistinguishable from one another at this distance.

  “Then let’s get moving,” Baill said, and I could hear the grim determination in his words, could feel his anticipation of the coming fight on the river. It smelled of old blood, of sweat, and strangely, of fresh earth and loam.

  Erick barked orders—the orders repeated by Baill’s lieutenants at Baill’s nod.

  And then we ran.

  No one spoke, everyone’s eyes fixed on the battle in front of the Council chambers. There was no need to speak. Everyone could see that the plaza in front of the building contained Venittian guardsmen, the Protectorate mixed with one of the Lord’s or Lady’s personal men. I couldn’t tell which Lord or Lady, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the doors to the Council chamber were being defended by the Chorl, the area in front clogged with their brightly colored clothing, their fierce faces, the tattoos bold in the sunlight, their blue skin striking. They fought with a raw intensity, with no mercy, and unlike their attack on Amenkor, they fought in relative silence—no battle cries, no ululations. Because they didn’t want to draw attention to this fight, to this battle. The real battle. Atlatik and the forces outside the Wall—the forces attacking to the north and in the harbor—they were the diversion.

  Haqtl was the true threat.

  If he took the throne, he would take the city.

  And as we drew closer, as the screams and grunts of the men grew louder, clearer, as the clash of swords and armor became sharp and piercing, as the pool in the center of the plaza came into view and I saw it stained with blood and clogged with broken bodies, I realized it was going to be harder to get into the Council chambers than I’d thought.

  Because on the river, power gathered, and fire bloomed, men shrieking as they fell back from the door, those closest to the building twisting as they were engulfed by flames.

  I spat a curse, picked up speed, felt Erick and Baill, my shadows to either side, adjust to the new pace without thought.

  “What?” Erick gasped. He wasn’t winded, but his voice was tight and clipped with effort.

  I shook my head. “Haqtl has Servants.”

  “Of course he does,” Baill responded, his voice laced with condescension. “They helped take down the gates.”

  I nodded, would have cursed my own stupidity if I hadn’t been focusing on the doorway, on the Chorl, on the ebb and flow of the battle.

  We were almost upon the rear of the Venittian forces. Bodies littered the street, the trampled gardens and grounds to either side.

  Our forces pulled in tight.

  “Straight to the doors,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Whatever the cost.”

  I sensed both Erick’s and Baill’s acceptance, didn’t turn to catch their nods. Reaching for the river, gathering it before me in a wedge shape, I thought of what Baill had said at the Gutter’s gate.

  This was going to be bloody.

  And then we reached the fringe of the fighting force, a battle cry rising from the men on all sides, a warning to the Venittians already fighting, most at the rear clutching wounds, faces haggard with shock.

  I didn’t wait for them to get out of the way. I pushed the wedge on the river forward, thrust the Venittian men to either side, heard them cry out as the wall of force I’d created hit them from behind and shoved.

  My forces plowed into the opening, the Venittians stumbling away to either side, or flung there.

  In the space of one heartbeat, two, I found myself facing one of the blue-skinned Chorl warriors.

  I’d already drawn my dagger, couldn’t remember when. Without stopping, without even slowing my forward momentum, I slashed the dagger across his eyes, felt the blade connect with skin, grate against bone, heard the warrior scream as my other hand connected with his chest, grabbed the colored, silky cloth—purple and gold—and wrenched him out of my path, still alive but blinded. I had no time to think about him, the Chorl crushing forward. I took the next man in the gut, the dagger punching in and out in a single, sharp motion as my hand found the back of his head, pulled his body down and into the thrust and then shoving him down farther, to the flagstone underneath already littered with bodies, the white stone stained black-red. I heard Erick grunt to my left, tasted his blade on the river as it cut, as it slashed, felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into the ebb and flow as my dagger sank into a neck, slipped free smoothly, grated past ribs, pierced armor and cut sinew and muscle on arms, shoulders, faces. To the right, Baill bellowed, his roar filling the plaza, echoing against the walls. An answering roar came from behind, from the Band, from the Venittian guardsmen and the Protectorate, men surging forward. Lightning bit into the Chorl forces, plied by Brandan. I felt it on the river, had sunk so deep the entire plaza had coalesced into a single moving force with its own currents, its own tides. Like the ocean.

  And like the ocean, I felt the Venittian forces behind beginning to swell, to build as they rallied and pushed forward against the Chorl.

  The Chorl began to solidify in reaction. The Chorl Servants began to link, the conduits snapping into place with a visceral shudder.

  Ottul barked out a warning, her voice behind, distant. Marielle shouted, “Mistress!”

  I grunted as I shoved my dagger up into a Chorl warrior’s arm-pit, his sword arm dropping limp to his side as he howled into my face, splattering me with blood and snot. Jerking the dagger free, I stepped back, let him fall, felt Erick t
ake my place without pause, without direction, the motion smooth, practiced.

  Marielle reached for me on the river, Heddan stretching out from the opposite side. All of the sessions in the palace garden at Amenkor slid into place as we linked.

  Gwenn began to join the link, from farther back, near where Ottul’s voice had come from, but I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see, blocked her efforts using the river. I smelled her confusion, her disappointment, bitter, like smoke and ash.

  “The Servants!” I shouted, not certain she could hear over the battle, over the screams and the clash of weapons. But her confusion faded.

  Then there was no time. The Chorl Servants’ power escalated . . .

  And released.

  Fire blasted upward, no longer targeted toward a single location. This fire spread out from the Chorl center in a wave, rising high over the Chorl warriors’ heads, arching outward, cresting as the flames reached their peak and began to boil downward.

  Down toward the Venittian forces, toward the Band.

  I gazed up at the falling flames. Not a ball of fire like on The Maiden. A sheet of fire, falling like rain.

  Men to either side screamed as they saw it, began to break the lines, to retreat.

  Brow creasing, I drew from Marielle and Heddan and threw up a shield.

  The fire struck; I gasped as it bore down, sank down to one knee, and gritted my teeth beneath its weight, hands flying up over my head, palms flat, as if I were pushing against the fire myself. It sizzled as it met the shield, hissed in fury as it boiled up its length as the Servants that controlled it sought the shield’s edges, until the entire front ranks of Venittians and the Band were covered in a seething, roaring blanket of fire. Men cried out, first in fear as they had on the practice fields, then in shock and wonder. Heat seeped downward, turned my face waxy, sweat dripping from my chin in a stream. The ranks that had a moment before been on the verge of collapse hesitated.

  And into the hesitation I felt the river form into a scintillant sliver of power, felt the dagger of force release.

  Gwenn.

  A scream erupted from the Chorl forces as the dagger struck. A scream of rage, of pain, and the power that fed the fire overhead jerked as one of the conduits was severed.

  Before anyone could react, two more daggers flew into the Chorl forces—from both Gwenn and Ottul—followed by two more cries of pain.

  The Chorl Servants couldn’t defend themselves. They’d poured all of their strength into the fire.

  The force behind the fire weakened. One Servant dropped out, her conduit cut, the energy shunted into a shield. Another held her conduit tight, in desperation, but another of Gwenn’s daggers took her in the throat.

  The awful weight of the fire overhead lifted. The flames shuddered as the power that fed them began to retreat, to pull back and regroup.

  But they didn’t retreat fast enough.

  Lurching to my feet, I shoved my own shield upward and forward with a growl, tilting it—

  And sent the retreating fire—its strength drained, the power that had controlled it dissipating—cascading down onto the Chorl warriors.

  Screams pierced the plaza, instant and fierce, as fire rained down from above. Half of the Chorl forces were engulfed, the quarters too close and too packed for the warriors to retreat, to flee. They were trapped between the building and the Venittian forces.

  The black smell of burning flesh, of charred, crackling skin, slammed into the river, drove me back a step as the backwash of wind from the feeding fire pushed against my face. Oily smoke rose, and the leading edge of Chorl broke.

  The Venittians and the Band hesitated a heartbeat, two . . . and then surged into the disintegrating line.

  “The doors!” Erick barked.

  I spun, immediately spotting the Council chamber’s open doorway and the relatively clear path the fire had purged to it.

  “Baill!” I barked, but he’d already seen it. With chilling precision, he stabbed the Chorl warrior he fought through the heart, shoved the body off of his blade, and barked, “Warren! Patch!” and nodded toward the door.

  The two men he’d singled out whistled sharply, and suddenly Erick and I were surrounded by twenty bloody, sweating men, all from the Band, all with swords drawn, a few with obvious nicks or wounds, none of them serious.

  “Mistress,” Baill said, gruffly.

  “Go.”

  The men surged through the break. Erick and I followed, stepping over charred bodies, some still on fire, past the last desperate struggles between the Venittians and the Chorl, past the fallen corpses of two of the Chorl Servants, their green dresses stained black with blood from Gwenn’s daggers.

  We entered the grand foyer and huge inner chamber, Chorl wounded and dead lining the walls. Without asking, moving swiftly, Baill and the members of his Band cut the throats of those still alive, a few struggling to raise their swords, their wounds too grievous for anything but a token defense.

  “Where to?” Baill asked as he cleaned his blade using one of the dead Chorl’s brightly colored shirts.

  I nodded to the inner doors. They’d been closed, but I could feel the power of the throne already, could feel its presence, could hear the faintest of whispers, a hissing of agitated voices, like the skitter of dead leaves across cobblestones.

  I shuddered.

  The Band formed up to either side of the doors. Erick stayed at my side, his jaw clenched, his hand clutching his Seeker’s dagger, the knuckles white. I tried to catch his gaze, but he was too focused on the doors, on the inner chamber.

  At Baill’s nod, Warren shoved against the doors, hard, the cords in his neck standing out with the effort.

  Finally, he gasped and drew back, shaking his head. “It’s barricaded on the inside.”

  Erick’s brow furrowed, but before he could respond, before Baill could even turn, I said, “Allow me.”

  I gathered the river, saw the comprehension on the Band’s faces a moment before they leaped back from the doorway.

  The doors exploded, the tables and chairs that had been stacked against it on the far side splintering as they were flung backward, Lord March’s desk scraping across the marble floor. Men shouted warnings, blue-skinned Chorl rushing forward toward the breach, but Baill and the Band raced into the new opening and met them.

  Swords clashed, but I didn’t watch the fight, barely noticed it on the river as the last of the Chorl’s minimal force were killed, as the Band formed up on either side of the door.

  Because the Council chamber beyond, where the Council of Eight ruled, had changed, had been transformed.

  The banners of the Lords and Ladies still hung on the walls, but the tables and chairs the Council had used to preside over Venitte’s affairs had been turned into a barricade at the door and were now scattered and broken around the room, Lord March’s immense desk now shoved to one side by the blast, scarred and cracked. Where it had stood, where the far black wall curved outward into the room, the patterned marble floor radiating outward from the wall in triangular rays like a sun, now stood a pointed, open arch, a doorway that led—

  I felt the visceral pain of death, of memory, slide through me, bitterly cold and torturously sharp.

  Cerrin, I thought.

  And felt an answering whisper from the throne, a momentary rise in the whisper of voices, like a gust of wind.

  “What is it?”

  Erick’s voice slid through the memories that cut me, through the barely audible voices that froze me in place.

  I turned my head, caught his gaze, saw the raw urgency there, saw the hatred. A deep, burning hatred that halted my breath.

  And then I remembered, then I understood: Haqtl waited on the far side of the room.

  Haqtl—the man who had placed the blanket of pain over Erick, had tortured him at the Ochean’s command, had driven the spine into his chest.

  I drew in a short breath, forced the anger that rose from Erick’s pain to one side.

&
nbsp; “It’s the entrance to the true Council chambers,” I said, and even I heard the rawness in my voice, rough, like stone grating against stone. “The Council chambers the Seven ruled from.” I turned back to the opening and in a much softer voice, I added, “That’s where they all died.”

  The archway that now stood behind Lord March’s position, where he had presided over the Council of Eight, was filled with a white light that obscured what lay within. A light as bright as the White Fire that had engulfed the coast seven years before. I’d seen the doorway many times from the far side, through Cerrin’s memories, but never from the outside. Yet even here, I could feel the throne, its force so much more intense than it had been outside. It filled the room, heavy and dense. I breathed it in with every breath, felt it touching me, the fine hairs on my arms prickling beneath it. I heard it circling, tasted it against my tongue. Raw and powerful and angry.

  And waiting.

  No one moved. The Band shifted restlessly. I sensed their hesitation, their fear, knew that they could feel the throne as well, even if they couldn’t identify it.

  Drawing in a steadying breath, I stepped forward, through the debris, across the chamber where I’d faced Lord March and the Council of Eight, where I’d faced Lord Demasque. Splinters and stone grit ground beneath my feet, cracking and popping as I moved.

  I paused before the doorway, before the white light, raised a hand before me, felt its soft glow without touching it, recognized its frigid taste.

  The Fire inside me pulsed with the same heartbeat.

  Then I stepped into it.

  The Fire slid through me, entered inside of me, the flames licking down deep, deeper, as deep as they had when the wall of White Fire blazed through Amenkor, when I was eleven and trapped beneath the hand of the ex-guardsman I’d killed moments after the Fire had passed. I shuddered as the memory rose to the surface, as real and visceral as if it had just happened, as clear and penetrating as it had felt then. I trembled beneath the pain, beneath the terror, realized that I had trembled then, dazed, back grinding into the stone roof where I’d been thrown beneath the chill night air, beneath the stars as the man’s hand pressed hard into my chest, forcing the air from my lungs, his hands fumbling with the drawstrings of his breeches, his voice hoarse, ragged with anticipation. I saw his rough, unshaven jaw, his feral eyes with grit at their corners, his dirty, splotchy skin, his matted chunks of hair. I smelled his rank breath, his musty clothing. And I tasted the cold steel of his knife, his dagger, forgotten in his haste, in his excitement.