Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  Should he care so much about it, after all that had been done? If it was the price he paid for Aesonia’s death, perhaps even the Empire’s ruin, then not to pay it was unforgivable. Particularly not when others had paid with their lives, or their souls. When Ruthelo’s pride had helped destroy him and all his people.

  ‘You have only to ask, and it will stop,’ Aesonia said.

  Raphael didn’t even reply. No need to give her the satisfaction.

  No-one spoke. The Empress had spelled out, in detail, what would happened to anyone who interrupted this. And Petroz, who alone might have spoken despite that, knew why Raphael was doing this.

  ‘Thais,’ Aesonia said. ‘Perhaps you should be doing this. You will, after all, be involved later on.’

  The tribesman stopped, and as Thais walked forward, her face set, he handed the knife to her. Raphael looked up at Thais’s face, and knew why she’d wanted to die with the barge.

  ‘Don’t break the skin,’ Aesonia said.

  Thais nodded, and Raphael felt the point of the knife run up along his shoulder, the last piece holding the robe in place, and then stop at the collar, as shouts sounded from the other side of the Fountain Court, and the spell was broken.

  And, a moment later, Valentine ran into the hall, four of his guard behind him. They quickly grabbed hand-crossbows from the nearest marines, and Zhubodai handed one to Valentine. The Emperor didn’t feel comfortable without a weapon in his hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded, pale with fury, seeing Raphael, and Aesonia, and Thais.

  ‘He is Azrian,’ Aesonia said. ‘I will have my revenge.’

  ‘My men are dying for your revenge!’ Valentine said, and pointed at Thais. ‘I ordered that she was to be treated with honour, not brought into one of your power games.’

  ‘She broke every rule of our order. She will be punished.’

  ‘Because it was the only way to escape your service!’ Raphael said, speaking for the first time, feeling the fury return. ‘Is this how you want to be served, Valentine? By slaves so desperate to escape that they’ll sacrifice their lives for your enemy’s cause?’

  The first Salassans and Chirias were arriving now, forming a thin line in each of the windows, weapons levelled, but unable to fire at the troops without hitting a great many others.

  The rows of marines Aesonia had lined up on the far side of the hall, Ulithi and Canteni, broke ranks at a sharp gesture from Valentine and moved to intercept.

  ‘Petroz!’ Valentine said, catching sight of the Prince of Imbria standing over to one side, and ordered the tribesmen to loose him. Petroz waited until one of them gave his cane back, and slipped through the lines of tribesmen into the square with Raphael, Thais, Aesonia and the Emperor.

  ‘Yes?’ Petroz said, coldly.

  ‘Stand your men down.’

  ‘No,’ Petroz said. ‘I hold the advantage.’

  ‘You hold nothing,’ Valentine said. ‘I respect your courage, but you have a few ragged survivors here. Your allies have surrendered. My troops occupy the entire City, and the rest of this palace.’

  ‘The time when I would have surrendered to you is long past,’ Petroz said, facing the Emperor calmly.

  Aesonia closed her eyes.

  Petroz gasped, clutched at his chest, the fingers of his left hand curling round, and crumpled to the floor, the cane rolling across to lie against Raphael’s knee. Raphael saw the proud green eyes cloud over, and the aquiline face suddenly relax.

  There was utter silence. Raphael heard more footsteps, wondered who else was approaching, but they didn’t speak.

  ‘Anyone who believes I can’t do that to them,’ Aesonia said into the silence, ‘is mistaken. Blood isn’t so very different from water.’

  And Raphael realised, suddenly, finally, that he couldn’t win. He’d thought her power was in waves and hands from the deep, too blunt to use in such a place. No water-mage had ever wielded such a power as this.

  She didn’t like to kill, but she’d just shown that she would.

  Raphael heard a sharp intake of breath, saw Leonata move through the Salassans at one end, followed by Silvanos and Anthemia, all three of them staring at the white-clad man who lay dead on the floor.

  ‘You can’t do that to all of us,’ Raphael said.

  ‘Can’t I?’ said Aesonia, looking down at him. ‘Do you want me to show you?’

  ‘No,’ Raphael said. Aesonia closed her eyes. ‘Please, Empress Mother!’

  ‘You didn’t need to do that,’ Valentine said.

  ‘First rule of statecraft,’ said Aesonia. ‘People won’t believe what you can do until they’ve seen proof. After that, they’re a great deal less trouble. Now, every last one of you, put down your weapons and kneel to my son and me.’

  Bitterly, finally, the Salassans and the Ice Runners put down the weapons that might have turned the tide. Even the tribesmen obeyed. Silvanos did not. Leonata, Raphael thought, would have defied the Empress, but for Anthemia’s presence, knowing too well that Aesonia would kill her daughter to make a point. Anthemia, her face a Fury’s mask, stayed standing.

  Iolani, awkwardly, with a hopping step, pushed herself to her feet. Aesonia’s eyes swept the room, and came to her last. Silvanos and Anthemia were still unseen, behind the Empress.

  ‘Nothing you can do,’ Iolani said, ‘is worse than what you’ve already promised. I am Iolani Velasu Theleris, and I am free of you. Go on, and kill me. Deprive yourself of your revenge.’

  Raphael tensed, pushing the boots of his shoes back to follow suit, found himself stopped, and felt a swift knife cutting through his bonds on hands and feet. Thais’s eyes met his for a split second.

  ‘Each of us dead is one slave you lose,’ Silvanos said, behind Aesonia. ‘I am Ithien Morias Azrian, son of Ruthelo Morias Azrian, Doge of the Thetian Republic, and Claudia Salassa, and I am free of you.’

  There was a whisper from the edge of the hall, and the prisoners began to stand.

  Aesonia, oblivious, swung to look at Silvanos, and turned her back on Raphael. Raphael swept up the cane, launched himself to his feet, finger scrabbling for a second for the catch, the snake’s eye, felt the lower part of the cane spring off with a clang onto the floor. Aesonia, just sensing a threat, began to move.

  And Raphael thrust Petroz’s sword-stick with all his anger and pride and fury through the Empress’s heart, saw the disbelief in her eyes as she staggered back, trying to gather her magic, failing. Raphael felt a searing pain across his back, and then heard a shout from the edge of the Fountain Court.

  ‘Bastard!’ one of the Chiria marines shouted, and fired his crossbow straight into the Emperor’s chest, a second after Valentine’s bolt had grazed Raphael’s back.

  Zhubodai swung his crossbow, and Silvanos’s third dart caught him in the throat. The second tribesman died a moment later, from the last dart.

  Aesonia clutched convulsively at the hilt of the sword-stick and fell back onto the wooden floor, her sea-blue eyes glazing over in death. A few paces away, Valentine lay limp, his white uniform stained with blood.

  As the third and fourth of the Emperor’s bodyguards moved, the Ice Runners and the Salassans were already on their feet, weapons swinging up towards the tribesmen. But neither of the bodyguards, fast as they were, had time to draw their swords. They were standing too close to Anthemia Mezzarro, who had seen her honorary uncle Petroz murdered, and Odeinath Sabal, who had lost a man who’d sailed with him for the better part of three decades.

  Raphael, his back on fire, stumbled and barely recovered his balance, twisting round in time to see the last act.

  The Ice Runners snatched back their weapons, ugly polyp tubes carrying death inside them, and levelled them at the tribesmen.

  ‘Surrender with honour,’ said a clear voice. Leonata’s. She was on her feet again, walking past the bodyguards. ‘There’s been enough death for one night.’

  And the tribesmen, fearless warriors that they were, sworn to an
Emperor now dead, looked at the black-clad Ice Runners and the weapons they were holding, and saw their own death – and, worse, their obsolescence. Their skill counted for nothing before these weapons, the hybrid offspring of Thetia and the Tuonetar, conceived in the icy northern mines the Empire had intended to be its salvation.

  The tribesmen dropped their weapons, and a moment later, with a clatter, the Canteni and Ulithi marines did too.

  Raphael felt blood soaking the back of his robe, the tearing pain, and almost fell, only to be propped up by another man. Silvanos, he realised a moment later, who hadn’t even picked Raphael up when he fell over as a child.

  The Salassa and Chiria marines moved to round up their captives, while the Ice Runners fanned out into the Fountain Court. The reinforcements were surrendering.

  Leonata picked up the knife Thais had used and sliced through Iolani’s bonds, then dropped it again, and hugged her.

  ‘Now,’ Leonata said, apparently unconscious of all the eyes on her, ‘you can get someone competent to teach you to sing.’

  Iolani smiled, and Raphael had never seen a face change so much.

  He looked over to Thais, still standing where Raphael had been with a few ruined loops of rope and stray shards of Raphael’s clothes, her eyes wild as she looked at the three corpses.

  All of them, Raphael realised a moment later, of his own family. His great-uncle, his great-aunt, and his cousin. Known, and gone, in less than an hour. Now it was only him and Silvanos, as it always had been.

  One of those corpses the woman who had owned Thais’s soul for eleven years, and, no matter what happened now, she would never hurt Thais again.

  ‘Thais,’ he said, and she met Raphael’s eyes, and slowly walked over to him. She had saved him, she’d saved them all. There were no words. ‘You had a choice, after all.’

  ‘I’m not free,’ she said, with a hesitant smile, looking from Raphael to Silvanos and back, ‘but you are.’

  ‘You will be,’ Silvanos said, ‘one day.’

  Leonata walked out into the centre of the room, and very deliberately brought one foot down on the broken loops of rope.

  ‘We still have the surrender of the other Imperial forces to arrange,’ she said, as if it were a foregone conclusion. She had taken charge, effortlessly, without anyone challenging her.

  Within a week, she would be wearing the dogal corno as ninety-first Doge of the Vesperan Republic.

  ‘We are at your service,’ said Raphael.

  Also by Anselm Audley from Attica Books:

  www.atticabooks.com

  @ttica

  The Aquasilva Trilogy

  Heresy

  Inquisition

  Crusade

  For Rosie and Jessica

  Thanks to Kezia Gaitskell, Naomi Harries, Darcy Krasne, Katherine Richardson, John Roe, Alison Squires, Kathryn Taylor, my sister and my parents.

  Particular thanks to John Jarrold for his editorial work, to Paco and everyone at Minotauro, and most of all to Rosie and Jessica Buckman.

  Quotes and part titles taken from:

  THE ORESTEIAN TRILOGY: AGAMEMNON, THE CHOEPHORI, THE EUMENIDES by Aeschylus translated by Philip Vellacott (Penguin Classics 1956, Revised edition 1959). Copyright © Philip Vellacott, 1956, 1959. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Indicia

  Vespera City Map

  Thetia Map

  Prologue - Hubris

  Part I - A Song Without Music

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Interlude I - Lamorra

  Part II - A Clamour Of Furies

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Interlude II - The Ruins Of Eridan

  Part III - For Blood Shed Long Ago

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Interlude III - Death's Kingdom In Life

  Part IV - A Drought In The Soul

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Also by Anselm Audley

  Dedication