Wincing, he slid down the wall, blood slicking his leg, and slumped next to Kiva.
‘The doctor is coming.’ He leaned over and smiled weakly. ‘We won, Kiva. We won.’
And he closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Epilogue
It did not escape Quintillian’s notice that this was the very room where Kiva had found their father on the morning of his death. He gazed out of the window of Isera’s Raven Palace, through the rows of fruit trees to where the graveyard lay, a series of mismatched grey teeth rising from the neatly tended green towards the broad blue canopy of the late spring sky.
It was not the peaceful view Quintillian had been used to as a boy due to the brutal activity off to the northern edge of the cemetery. If he squinted hard he could almost see their faces as they solemnly rested their neck on the block and waited for the heavy sword to fall. The Khan, captured in his own command tent and regally defiant to the last, had refused to accept any kind of terms. The prince was pleased, in truth. He’d not been keen on Kiva’s offer to accept the Khan’s fealty. This process of inviting barbarians into the empire had clearly failed. But the Khan had not accepted an overlord anyway, stating that he would rather die a thousand times than live one day under another man’s rule. The Khan would receive the heaviest, sharpest sword and would die quickly and well. One blow. In accordance with his rank, regardless of any ills he had caused, he would be buried in the imperial cemetery, among the rulers of a nation he had coveted. A better end than Ganbaatar, whose corpse had been rolled from the palace parapet and left to rot on the rocks.
There was a ragged cheer in the distance, indicating that another head had fallen. Would that be the Khan? Perhaps. But Aldegund of Adrennas was in that queue also, fated for a blunter blade than the Khan. Traitors deserved more than one blow, after all. And his body would be cast into the sea among the rocks for the gulls to peck. The traitor lord, true to form, had left his army to die and fled northwest with his household and his personal bodyguard. The new marshal, Laetius, had caught the rebel on the plains of Danis. They were already referring to the result as the Battle of Danis, though from Laetius’s description it hardly deserved the name. The rebel army had been overcome some halfway between here and there, putting up the meagerest of fights. Aldegund himself had been bound and handed over by his own guards, spitting fury and bile at his captors and the men who had turned traitor on the traitor.
Aldegund would die badly. But so too would each officer of the imperial army who had fought for the enemy at Velutio. Two prefects and nine captains would die by the blunt sword on that green sward to the west of the Raven Palace. The non-commissioned officers had had their sword hands struck from their wrists and been discharged. A life as a beggar was likely the best they had to look forward to for their treachery. The ordinary soldiers had simply been dishonourably discharged without pay or pension to seek a new life in another sector of society. After all, if the emperor punished every man, there would be weeks of constant funeral pyres at Velutio.
Another distant cheer.
It was over. Already the army’s engineers were moving through the city, logging the damage and planning the rebuild. The sigma was being cleared and would be built anew, much stronger, though Quintillian had his own worries about that. That new tube weapon of the Khan’s had been capable of destroying even the heaviest walls. They had the weapon, of course, but no one had any idea how to work it. The Khan had had his artillerists executed as soon as he realized he’d lost. Titus’s engineers were poring over the thing trying to work it out, but no one could understand what the burn marks were made by and what propelled the stone. Quintillian continued to worry. The Khan came from the east, from the lands of the Jade Emperor, and he’d brought this monster from there, for this was clearly not the work of horse nomads. And that meant that the Jade Emperor had access to this technology. In the future, would even the strongest walls protect Velutio?
Still, for now they had won. They were secure. Ashar’s Pelasians were encamped in the former enemy positions and were aiding the imperial military in the immense task of removing and burning the dead, clearing the rubble and so on.
Behind him, the connecting door opened and a man entered, bowing low with respect. That very doctor who had tended him at the palace harbour the evening of their victory. Wearing a newly-pressed, clean white robe emblazoned with the twin winged staves, and a circlet of copper in his hair, his expression was grave. Quintillian turned, wincing, from the window.
‘What are you doing out of bed, sire?’
Quintillian sighed. ‘I needed the air. You said air was good for me.’
‘The same air wafts across the window as across the bed. I’ll wager you’ve opened your wound again. I’ve stitched that side so often in the last four days that it looks like freckles now. And your leg will be suffering too.’
The prince sighed and grabbed his stick, limping back towards the door. He could feel the wetness as fresh blood began to blossom on his clothes, and he smiled wanly at the long-suffering look from the doctor. ‘I will rest shortly. But first I need to see Kiva.’
Hurriedly, the doctor closed the connecting door behind him. In the next room, Jala, Titus and King Ashar of Pelasia were gathered around the emperor’s bed.
‘Sire, I am still concerned about your brother – confused even. He is a man on the cusp – death hovers by his shoulder waiting, and I cannot fathom why. The arrow was not a critical strike. The emperor was phenomenally lucky. The shaft passed through his body with such minimal damage the gods were clearly watching over him. His lung was cut but should heal fully if he rests, since he has stopped producing blood from his mouth. His heart muscle was grazed, but again it was a scratch and there is no pooling of blood to drain. He is in recovery. He is wounded but there is no life-threatening damage, and yet he continues to decline. He cannot take food and I can identify no medical reason for it. It is almost as though he is fated to die no matter what I do.’
Quintillian winced again, and the doctor pursed his lips. ‘I need to tend to you, though, sire.’
The prince shook his head. ‘See to me later when the visitors have gone. You said I was in no danger.’
‘I said you were in no danger as long as you rested, sire, but you are up and out of that bed with astonishing regularity.’
‘Later,’ Quintillian said firmly, and tottered forward, using the stick for support. The doctor sighed and opened the connecting door once more. Flashing a calculatedly irritating grin at the medic, he entered the next room and closed the door behind him, shutting the man out.
He had not seen Kiva thus far this morning, and Quintillian’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of his brother lying prone amid the white sheets, his skin colour not much darker than the linen. He looked dreadful, and thin as a rail.
Jala was seated by his head, fresh tear tracks glistening down her face. On the far side, Titus sat with an expression of forced levity, telling one of his most off-colour jokes. In happier days, Quintillian would have rushed over and shut him up before the punchline, given the presence of the empress, but it hardly seemed to matter today.
‘…and so the merchant said, “But you should see the size of his scrotum now!”’
Across the bed Ashar, God-King of Pelasia winced at the joke as Titus chuckled to himself. Kiva smiled weakly and his chest rose and fell into a coughing fit from which it took him surprisingly long to recover.
‘Eat something, you lazy sod,’ Quintillian said lightly as he limped across the room.
‘I… I cannot eat, Quint.’
‘As Titus here would say, bull bollocks. You can. You just don’t.’
‘It makes me sick, Quint.’
‘I’ve not seen you vomit, nor even take a bite. Eat some bread. Bread harms no one.’
‘Can’t, Quint.’
‘Kiva, the doctor says you should be recovering. There’s nothing truly life-threatening about your wounds. You and I, we were watche
d over by gods this past week. We fought like lions, both of us, and our enemies lie dead, yet we walk and we will live. The army are calling us god-born. You believe that? They call you Kiva the Golden. Laetius says it was because when you were fighting on the roof, your mail glowed gold in the sunset. I think there’s more to it than that. You have to get better. You can’t disappoint your people.’
‘My people are in good hands, Quint,’ the emperor said, weakly but meaningfully.
‘Listen: your lung is recovering. No more blood in your spittle means the wound is healing. And your heart was grazed, but the doctor says you’re not bleeding inside any more and there’s nothing else left that’s wrong. Your heart wasn’t pierced, Kiva. It will recover like any other muscle.’
The emperor favoured him with a sad smile. ‘I think not. Some maladies cannot be cured.’
‘Kiva…’
‘No, Quint. I am drawing my last breaths as we speak. I will not see sunset, which is good. The last sunset I shall truly remember as I go to the next world is the one in which we saved the empire, you and I, and Ashar and Titus… and Jala. Only one thing needs be done now.’ He turned to Titus. ‘You have the documents?’
The marshal nodded. ‘I do, but I don’t want to do this, Majesty.’
‘For the love of gods, Titus, call me by my name at least in my final day. We have known each other all our lives. I introduced you to your first girl.’
Titus grinned for a moment, though it quickly slid into a sad melancholy again. ‘I’m ready.’
‘What do I need to do?’ Kiva asked, then coughed badly again for a while.
‘Just your signature, Kiva. The rest is already set down.’ He handed the vellum sheet across to the emperor, who took it and then the proffered stylus. Briefly, he scanned down the text. He trusted Titus implicitly, of course, but some things had to be checked carefully.
‘What is that?’ asked Quintillian suspiciously.
‘Confirmation of the succession. No one would argue, I am sure, but given what we’ve just been through, I want everything done legally and officially, so that there is no room for argument. You will be emperor tomorrow.’
‘Kiva…’
‘No. And I have the easier job. I just get to rest and pass away. You have hard years ahead of you, Quint. You have a city and an empire to heal and rebuild. You have the border policy with the barbarians to consider, the west to bring back under control, though I think your friend Laetius will be useful there. And then there’s the problem of the horse clans. Now that they know what they can do banded together this will not be the last time they rise. There is so much to do you will not have time to mourn me.’
Quintillian gave him a sad, sour, grief-filled look, his eyes sliding momentarily to Jala. She was crying again. When his eyes slipped back to his brother, Kiva was giving him a knowing smile.
‘You will be greater than I, Quint. You will be the best of emperors, I think. And after an appropriate period of mourning… well, you know.’
‘Kiva.’
‘No,’ the emperor said weakly, quickly scrawling his mark on the document before handing it back to Titus. ‘And now I need to rest so that I have the strength to meet my ancestors face to face. Titus, have that filed with the records office immediately, but keep it to hand. You will need it in the morning. Quint, you need to go back to bed. The doctor tells me you won’t get better if you don’t rest.’
‘This from you!’
Kiva smiled a pale smile. ‘And Ashar, if you would give me some time. I want to speak to Jala alone.’
With sad smiles of regret, the three visitors made their way back out into the other room, leaving Kiva and Jala alone. Titus and Ashar bade him farewell and then left the suite. After a few moments at the window, Quintillian crossed to the bed and slumped into it, feeling the tension in his wounds relaxing again.
Kiva was right about the tasks facing them, but already Quintillian was thinking and planning all the work to be done. The Library of Carius would be his grandest project. Rebuilt, possibly as the Library of Kiva the Golden, though to consider that was to accept that Kiva would die. But it would be greater than ever. And he would have to have that weapon investigated again. Perhaps it was time to send a deputation to the Jade Emperor. Perhaps they would learn something useful while they were there. One thing was certain: the world was expanding now. The empire was no longer the world itself, with scattered barbarians at the borders, but needed to be viewed more as a single patch in a quilt of such pieces.
At some point in his thought process, Quintillian, marshal and prince, drifted off to sleep and when he woke in the darkness of late evening to the muffled sound of Jala’s tears in the next room, he was no longer that man. He was Quintillian the Great, Emperor of Velutio, and the world waited on him.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © 2016 by S.J.A. Turney
The moral right of S.J.A. Turney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781910859810
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Look for more great books at www.canelo.co
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 39