by Matthew Ward
The crowds offered all the concealment Kai had sought, filled with so much mingled raiment and colour that a handful of fugitives with stolen cloaks drawn tight barely elicited notice. A celebration for a war won, with all the drunkenness and cheer expected until the light of a new day brought stark tally of those lost.
Yet beneath the merriment – beneath the songs and the jugglers’ whirling flames – Kai sensed melancholy, as if the Tressians already knew their loss, or else had suffered wounds he could not see. More than that, he marked few guards amid the crowds, and fewer soldiers still. He put Melanna’s claims of a divine war from his thoughts. This was no night for speculation. If the Tressians lacked for swords even within their greatest city, then so much the better.
In ones and twos they crossed the plaza – Kai, Devren and the three Immortals who were companions on his Last Ride – swords concealed and eyes wary. In ones and twos they came to the servant’s entrance Elspeth had spoken of, and the guard staring glassy-eyed across an empty service passage, set dreaming by her touch. A silver hand beckoned from the doorway. And then they were inside, cloaks divested, swords drawn and the door closed behind.
“Is it done?” asked Devren.
Elspeth offered a sly smile. “Nothing stirs on this floor. The servants dream, and the warriors sleep with the Raven. The doors are locked. There will be no interruptions, my Emperor. Your enemy awaits.”
Kai glanced through the storage room door to the austere corridor beyond. “Devren, old friend. This is your last chance to leave.”
The other man stiffened. “I have shared your victories and your disappointments for thirty years. I have feasted or starved with you as fortune decreed. I will not abandon you now.”
“Then barricade the doors with whatever you can find. Return when it’s done.”
“Of course, savir.” Devren beckoned to the Immortals. “Come.”
Kai unbuckled the Goddess’ sword.
Elspeth watched him, eyes narrowed. “You’ll need that.”
He shook his head. “Devren will bring me another. This sword goes back to Melanna.”
Pale lips pursed. “No. My place is at your side.”
“We are dead men. I will not have you perish also.”
“You swore I’d never leave your side!”
“The bargain was that you’d stay by my side until the war was done.” He shook his head, the swell of weariness nothing to do with the emptiness in his bones. “The war is over, Ashanal. All that remains is a father’s desperation to expunge failure in blood, and show the Golden Court that the House of Saran deserves respect. I will sacrifice much in this pursuit, but not your life. Take the sword.”
“No!” The shout dropped to a thin hiss, her eyes tight with fury. “I’ve come this far, defied my own mother. I will not abandon you!”
“You claimed me as father. Would you defy me too?”
“Yes!”
“Then you do not comport yourself as a daughter should. Our bargain was worthless, and my last memory of you will be one of shame.”
She flinched. “You cannot ask this.”
“I ask nothing. This is simply how it must be.” He spoke slowly, urging her to understand. “If it is to count for anything, what comes next has to be my deed, not the will of the divine.”
Elspeth’s glare softened, spite driven away by sorrow. A shaking hand closed around the scabbard. “Can I do nothing?”
“Lay hands upon me one last time. Grant whatever strength you can spare.”
Her empty hand found his cheek and empty bones filled with moonlight. Overcome, Kai sank to his knees. For a moment, he glimpsed something beyond the storage room’s drab walls. A city of shining spires, rising up above silver trees.
Then Elspeth kissed his brow, her tears hot and cold upon his forehead. The vision faded. Grey reality slid in, and with it, strength. The vigour of youth, forgotten with advancing years. One last gesture. One last deed to echo across history.
“I’ve given you all that I can. May it serve you well.” Elspeth drew away, her movements suddenly frail and uncertain, an old woman clad in young form. “Saran Brigantim.”
For a moment, she looked as though she meant to say something else. Then she was gone into the night, the sword clasped to her chest.
“Saran Brigantim,” murmured Kai. “My thanks, Ashanal.”
Sixty-Eight
“Josiri Trelan as First Councillor? Preposterous!”
Lamirov’s complexion turned an outraged shade of puce. An omen of fraught and difficult times. But in that moment Malachi found only the satisfaction of a decision well made. How loathsome to find courage in tragedy, but more so never to find it at all. It helped that it took little to imagine Lily at his side, hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t believe so, Leonast,” he replied. “Josiri, more than any, is responsible for the city’s salvation. Even for the Republic’s. You said it yourself. We should have listened to him, and we didn’t. Leadership is as much about knowing when to stand aside as when to stand up. It’s well past time I stood aside.”
Lamirov didn’t know about the bargain with the Crowmarket, but he would. Secrets always wormed their way to the surface. All the more reason to get this done before reputation and authority crumbled. Malachi would miss neither. The only reason he held on at all was to take the burden of the war settlement. Let Malachi Reveque be known as the man who’d signed away the Eastshires. Josiri Trelan, once the phoenix of the south, would surely find a way to bring them home… Especially with Viktor as his right hand.
“Stand aside if you must,” Lamirov replied. “But your replacement should be appointed by a vote – a full vote of a restored Council. It wouldn’t be proper for Lord Trelan to act as First Councillor in the interim—”
“You have someone else in mind, Leonast?” A week before, Messela would never have dared interrupt her elder, but Malachi supposed he’d not been the only one to find courage. She sat upright and proud – a rock against which to be tested or broken. “Yourself, perhaps?”
“I am but the Republic’s humble vessel. I will serve in whatever capacity—”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Malachi. Lamirov’s complexion deepened further. To be interrupted once was bad enough. Twice was unthinkable. “As First Councillor, and thus the embodiment of both Councils, and therefore the Republic, I’m grateful for your support.”
Lord Marest abandoned seeming examination of the tabletop. “A southwealder at the head of the Council? The people will never stand for it.”
“Enough saw him fight for their future just yesterday.” Malachi waved a hand towards the balcony passage and the growing roar of the crowd. “I understand he’s become quite popular. Perhaps you’d like to take it up with them? You’ve deeds of your own to showcase, perhaps?”
Marest blanched. Messela grinned. Even Zarn offered what might have been a brief smile – a rare display of… something… from a man who’d said nothing since his arrival. A man into whom Malachi had poured all his own failings and weaknesses rather than confronting them in himself. Yes. It was well past time to stand aside. First, one last politician’s deception. Had Josiri known what awaited him, he’d have found all manner of excuse for not attending. But couched as a necessary meeting of the surviving Council…?
“This Republic is not governed according to the will of the masses,” said Lamirov.
“No. It is governed by me. This is not a discussion. It is not a vote. It is a decision. And if Lord Trelan has at last arrived, we can get the matter underway.” He raised his voice. “Moldrov?”
The door remained resolutely closed, and the steward remarkable by his absence. Malachi stifled irritation. The man had his own woes to bear from recent days, with a brother still missing and two daughters likely dead on Govanna Field.
Messela scraped back her chair and moved for the door. “I’ll go.”
Messela knew something was wrong before she reached the stairway, though the shape rema
ined elusive. It wasn’t that the palace was quiet. It had been nothing but since the Grand Council’s suspension, since most of the constabulary guard had lost their lives in the mists. More, it was a feeling. One that hooked deep into the darkness in her soul. Not fear. Not exhilaration. Not any emotion she could name… just that inevitable, unutterable feeling that something was out of place.
Skirting the row of gilt-edged doors – once the guestrooms of long-dead kings, and now private offices – she continued along the landing, the unwelcome sensation growing black against her thoughts. The evening sun blazed like fire through high windows, the song and hubbub of the crowd rushing in through open lights.
A huddled shape lay at the head of the stairs.
“Moldrov?”
Gathering her skirts, Messela knelt. The steward’s eyes were closed, his lips moving soundlessly. A discarded tray lay three steps further down, the carpet stained from emptied goblets. Darkness crawled tight about Messela’s lungs, and she forgot how to breathe.
Outside the walls, bells chimed to mark dusk. The song of the crowd swelled.
Messela fought for breath, inch by inch reclaiming command over recalcitrant lungs. But the darkness refused to abate. It prowled about her soul, a hound awaiting command. She breathed slower, steadier, willing it back into the void between truth and imagination.
Along the landing, the door to Malachi’s private office creaked open. Sidara emerged, Altiris and Constans a pace behind, the former with drawn sword and none of them at ease.
“Lady Akadra?” Sidara gripped the banister and stared down at Moldrov. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Something’s coming.”
Gold gleamed in the girl’s eyes. The darkness slunk away. Messela found enough breath to speak. A tangible sensation scraped her thoughts. A metal-rich scent atop the palace’s musty air. Blood.
“Saran Amhyrador!”
The brute rounded the landing from the south wing, sword slick with gore and murder in his eyes. Messela again forgot how to breathe. She doubled over, clutching at the banister for support as darkness clawed up through her throat. Hadari? In Tressia? In the palace?
Darkness gorged on fear in a bid to escape. Through blurring vision, she saw Altiris fling himself into the Hadari’s path. The screech of swords. A bellow in an unfamiliar tongue. A heavy thud. The metallic scent of blood waxed stronger.
“Altiris!” shouted Sidara.
New shapes crowded the corner. Two of similar build to the one gulping his last at Altiris’ feet. A scarecrow of a man in a bear cloak. And one whose tanned face was mottled grey beneath a neat beard, whose silver aura flickered whenever Messela choked back the darkness.
The strike of the bear-cloaked man’s mace cast Altiris over the banister. The lad’s sword thumped at Messela’s feet. Then he was gone – a tangle of flailing limbs thumping down the stairs.
Sidara flung back her arms. The crowd’s song drowned beneath her shriek and the stairway blazed with sunlight. Glass shattered. The banister shook beneath the mace-wielder’s impact. Of the two behind him, one struck the wall with a sickening thud and a crackle of breaking bone. The other slammed sidelong into a statue, sword skidding from a nerveless hand.
The silvered man came on, sunlight parting before him like a flame in the wind.
Constans yelped and scurried away, eyes dark in a bloodless face. Sidara’s scream turned bleaker as anger kindled. Golden light seethed from outstretched hands. Still the silvered man came on – as one in the teeth of a gale, but still he came.
Sidara clutched her bandaged arm and dropped to one knee.
Darkness scrabbled at Messela’s throat, begging, demanding, screaming to be free.
For the first time in her life, she set it loose.
Broken glass shimmered gold in the dying sun and rained down upon the crowd. Josiri flung up his hands to shield his face. Song faded to cries of alarm. Screams and whimpers broke out as razor-edged glass found flesh. A girl’s cry of rage ripped through the relative quiet.
Sidara.
Darkness coiled from ruined windows, swallowing sunlight and scattering icy trails across stone.
Josiri’s blood ran cold, fed by memories of the year before. Of a war thought done, only for Malatriant to have wormed her way into his home. He reached for a sword he wasn’t wearing. Viktor was already running for the palace entrance, his long stride eating up the terraced approach. Tearing his eyes from the seething mass of daylight and darkness, Josiri ran after him.
“Open this door!” bellowed Viktor.
The nearest constable grabbed at the handle. Wood thumped against stone.
“It’s bolted.” He tugged again. “It’s bolted from the inside.”
Viktor rammed his shoulder against the door with no more effect than the constable’s tugs. The old part of the palace was as much fortress as mansion, with high-set windows and doors sealed with countersunk metal pins as a precaution against an unhappy populace. It’d take a kraikon to burst through.
“You!” Josiri stabbed a finger at the other constable. “Find a proctor. Quickly!”
He glanced left and right as the woman fled. A flat run would bring him to one of the side doors in a matter of seconds, but would do no good if they too were bolted shut. He peered up at the windows and the balcony high above. A day before, Ana had flown him there. Even today, she could probably have flung him high enough. But Ana was halfway across the city.
“We have to try another entrance,” he said.
“No,” Viktor replied. “We don’t.”
Shoving the constable aside, he laid his palms on the door. Shadow rushed across the timbers, ice crackling in its wake. Tendrils clawed and scrabbled.
Finding purchase, they heaved.
For the second time in as many minutes, Josiri shielded his face with his hands. Not against glass, but shredded timber and hunks of stone borne forth on an icy wind. When he let them fall, the door’s splintered scraps hung in the archway’s broken smile.
Shadow dancing like a cloak behind him, Viktor strode on.
Kai strained, awash in sunlight and shadow. Sunlight was the weaker of the two, its wielder flickering like a fading flame before the silver that glimmered about him like a moonlight shield. The magic of one goddess called to contest that of her jealous sister, and the moon outshone the sun.
But the shadow? The Dark of legend that Melanna had sworn held no grip on Tressia? It writhed and squealed before him, cold against his dying flesh; a thin, serpentine hiss in his thoughts. In place of the young woman who bore it, he beheld an icy, shifting presence, with eyes like gashes in the night sky and skin that rippled and seethed.
Sunlight buckled. The girl at its heart became a demon of cruel feature and forked tongue. Golden eyes sought submission; demanded he forswear Ashana for the tyranny of the sun. To grovel. To beg.
A piece of Kai recognised that this perception wasn’t his own. He felt the cold coil of moonlight within his being – woken by the first flare of sunlight – and knew without doubt that it was feeding on his soul just as the Goddess’ sword had done. Elspeth’s gift – her magic, her bleakness – making tinder of the life he’d lived to grant meaning to his death.
But what meaning could his death hold if it was ushered in by madness?
He halted, the sword frozen in descent. The gold demon scrambled away on heels and hands, a fiend one moment, and the next a girl, shaking with effort and fear. Sunlight melted away, extinguished between the contest of moonlight and shadow.
Steel ripped into Kai’s chest, chased by the thump of the crossguard against his ribs. He dropped his sword and sagged against the wall, the pain guttering liquid fire with every breath.
“Warn your father.” The shadow demon’s words crackled and spat like dark flame. “Go!”
A boy helped the golden fiend to her feet. Form bleeding and ebbing between demon and girl, she stumbled away.
Black blood gushed cold. Kai pushed away from the wall and left a smeared p
alm print behind. Hot metal speckled every breath. But the pain? That was distant, beyond the shimmer of moonlight. Without it, Kai knew he’d already be dead. Even with it, death would find him soon enough.
The shadow demon closed both hands about the hilt of her sword. Pain rippled outwards as she strove to free it from the prison of his flesh. Her form decayed further, no longer more than a swirl of tattered skin and ragged cloth wrapped about shadow.
Moonlight resurgent in his soul, Kai lurched clear of the wall and clubbed her down, breaking her grip on the sword. The shadow bled away until only the woman remained.
Twisting the sword from his chest and flinging it away, Kai hoisted her high. Eyes blazing darkly into his, she spat full in his face.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she gasped.
Her defiant glare never wavered. Not even when he broke her neck.
Kai cast the body aside and fell to one knee, the madness of moonlight gaining purchase alongside pain.
Devren drew level, breathing hard and his right foot dragging. The surviving Immortal followed close behind. “My Emperor—”
“Follow them!” he gasped. “Find the others!”
Was there anything worse than victory ushered in by madness? Yes. Failure. Failure was worse by far. No more hesitation. No more doubts.
Rising to his feet, Kai Saran cast the last of his soul into moonlight.
They found Altiris at the foot of the stairs, breath ragged and phoenix tabard soaked with blood. Not as bad as he’d been in the aftermath of the warehouse raid, but bad enough. In the headlong run from the gate, Josiri had seen too many others who’d had it worse. Guards and servants, some cut down without mercy, others witless without a mark on them.
Josiri crouched at the lad’s side as Viktor took the stairs three at a time. “Altiris? Who did this?”
His eyes opened a slit and fell closed. “Hadari. In… In the palace.”
Not Malatriant. Not old ghosts. Never mind how they’d gotten inside. That would wait. Josiri grabbed the constable who’d followed from the front gate. “Make him comfortable.”