The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  When she withdrew the blade from Bator’s neck, it was to Gevenan that she turned. He was holding Valorian by the arm, with a dagger at his throat.

  ‘Gev,’ she said mildly, ‘he was the one who just saved me. He tripped the bastard up. Let him go.’

  Gevenan dropped the point of the dagger, but his reluctance was obvious. She guessed his suspicion was spilling out in all directions, but she could not feel it.

  She continued, ‘I want you to get your men organised and the slaves under control. No looting. No more killing.’

  He looked at Valorian. He was still clutching the Legate by the arm. ‘And what about his men?’

  ‘You two are going to have to learn to like one another. You had better start now. Legate Valorian, you are still in charge of your forces. For the time being, until such time as they take a new oath of allegiance to me, they will have to give up their swords, shields, javelins and spears. Gevenan here will organise that. They can keep their daggers.’

  ‘Allegiance to you?’ Valorian swallowed. He could not quite conceal his horror. ‘You are going to be the new Exaltarch?’

  ‘I am. Get used to the idea. Gev, I want Bator’s head on a spike at the palace door. And send someone to find my son and bring him to me. I shall be in the palace.’

  Valorian, struggling to absorb the idea of a woman Exaltarch, finally managed to recover some of his aplomb. He asked, ‘Can I assume then, Domina, that you are not Melete? Or some other goddess, for that matter?’

  ‘Her?’ Gevenan interrupted. ‘The gods would never let her near Elysium!’

  Ligea glared at him and turned to Valorian again. ‘You’ve made one wise decision today already. Now’s the time to make another. You can serve me, or you can retire, preferably somewhere a long way from Tyr.’

  He took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ll serve whoever sits in the Exaltarch’s seat.’ He jabbed Bator with his boot and shrugged. ‘Seems he just abdicated.’

  She nodded, smiling faintly at the way he had worded the statement. ‘Fair enough. You’re a careful man, Valorian.’

  He gestured at the Imperial Guards, who were already relinquishing their weapons to Gevenan’s men. ‘One thing I should make quite clear right now, though. Those are not my men, and never have been. They are Bator’s hand-picked thugs. I would advise that you have them killed.’

  She squinted against the light, looking at the men above her, trying to assess their feelings. She could discern nothing: all her power had vanished. It was disconcerting to have no sense of the mood of those around her. Disconcerting and dangerous. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just have them locked away somewhere for the time being. I will interview each man later before I make any decisions. Can you see to that, Valorian? You may choose twenty men of your own—men you trust—who can keep their weaponry. Gev, give him back his sword.’

  She looked at the crowd. At least three-quarters of them were kneeling. Kneeling. To her. She found the notion suddenly repellent. Mostly they were silent, although those at the back were pestering to know what was happening at the front. ‘I think you had better start doing something before they get restless. It’s Vortexdamned hot out there. When you have anything to report, either of you, I will be in Bator’s private quarters.’

  With that she walked towards the palace doors. She wasn’t immediately aware that Gevenan had signalled a dozen of his men to follow her.

  She did hear Valorian ask Gevenan, without realising just how well his voice carried, ‘Who the sweet hells is that daughter of a bitch?’

  Gevenan, who knew exactly how loud to speak in order for her to hear him, gave an audible sigh and said, ‘You know what, Legate? Take my advice: you really don’t want to know. Let’s just say that she’s stubborn and cantankerous and as hard as a hobnail. She has powers that could send you to Acheron with a flick of her wrist. But she’ll also make the best damned Exaltarch this country has ever had.’

  Ligea smiled.

  Now if only I can get inside without falling flat on my face with fatigue…

  ‘Exalted One?’

  She woke with a start, the name bringing her up from sleep into an instant state of terror. But it was only Gevenan who had woken her. ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘Exalted One.’

  ‘Call me that again and it’ll be your head on a stake at the gate.’

  He smiled. ‘Nice to know you’re not going to change your nature just because you’ve become the greatest despot of the known world. Lord of Tyr, High General of Tyrans, Exaltarch of the Tyranian Empire, and all that.’

  ‘I wish you’d grow sweeter-natured with age, Gev.’ She glanced around, still a little befuddled by her sudden awakening. ‘Is everything all right?’ It was dark outside; she must have slept for hours. She sifted through her memories of what she had done before that. She had spoken to the palace slaves, had a bath, eaten yet another large meal. She’d been looking through the Exaltarch’s papers, when she must have fallen asleep at the desk. Anyone could have killed her and she wouldn’t have known a thing about it.

  No ward put in place, no senses to tell her where people were, or what they were feeling. It was as if she had been rendered deaf and blind all at once. How could she ever survive without those skills? She looked at her cabochon. It was almost clear in colour, but she thought it might be a shade less transparent now that she’d eaten and slept.

  It will be all right, she thought. It will come back. It must.

  Because there was one thing for sure: if she didn’t have Magor power, she’d be dead within days. If she wasn’t able to tell a lie from the truth, she’d never be able to know whom to trust.

  ‘It’s about Arrant,’ Gevenan said.‘We’ve found him.’

  ‘Oh, good. Is he here?’

  ‘Well, he’s just had a bath. He needed it.’

  There was a peculiar tone to his voice, and even without her abilities she knew there was something wrong. She stood up. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Foran is dead. We don’t know exactly what happened, but the two of them got caught up in some of the fighting. Apparently Arrant tried to help Foran but he couldn’t control his power properly.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Ligea, there’s no good way to say this. My men found him just outside the North Gate. Everyone was too scared to go anywhere near him. He was standing in the centre of a circle of…disintegrated people. Bits of flesh and fragments of bone. And blood. A lot of blood. The ground was red with it. So was Arrant. We think he killed our own men, as well as the legionnaires who were attacking. And the gorclaks too. And probably Foran as well.’

  She felt all the blood drain from her head, and sat down abruptly. ‘Is he—?’ She stopped. Her mind couldn’t think of the right question to ask.

  ‘He’s in a state of shock. He’s not speaking. I asked the slaves to lay out a meal for him in that end room through there, next to your bedroom, but he hasn’t eaten it. There’s a bed in there for him, too. But—er, he doesn’t seem to know who I am. He doesn’t seem to hear when anyone speaks to him. I’ll go and fetch him, if you like.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

  When he had gone, she sat frozen in place. Victory. Shouldn’t I have known it? Victory always comes at such a terrible price…

  She looked up to see Gevenan leading Arrant into the room. Eyes unfocused, he looked straight through her, as if she weren’t there. She rose and crossed to where he stood. She tried to gather him into her arms, but he stood rigid, unbending. Unseeing.

  ‘Arrant—are you all right? Arrant? You are safe now. I’m here. Mater. And Gev. You’re in the Exaltarch’s palace. The war is over; it’s all over and we have won.’

  He didn’t look at her. Gevenan tried speaking to him too, but nothing had any impact, and in the end Gevenan led him away.

  She covered her face with her hands. This was the price of victory? She didn’t want to pay it.

  Don’t let me lose my son. Please don’t let me lose Arrant.

 
Not him too.

  PART FIVE

  SON OF THE EXALTARCH

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Arrant decided he hated banquets. This one was his first, but two hours into the evening and he had already made up his mind he didn’t like the people who attended them. They weren’t his mother’s friends; in fact many were people who hated her. Men who would have killed her if they had known how to do it.

  People had tried, at first. Fifteen assassination attempts in the first two years of her rule; he’d counted them. Ligea hadn’t told him about the ones that didn’t happen under his nose, but Arrant knew anyway. He hadn’t needed Magor senses; he’d heard the palace gossip. Individual assassins with a dagger hidden in their wrap, archers shooting from a rooftop as she passed, poison in her food, even on one memorable occasion an attempt to drown her at the Public Baths. Thanks to her Magoroth abilities, she’d never been as much as scratched and, finally, as her reputation for invulnerability grew, and with all the assassins dead one way or another, the number of attempts in the following two years had diminished. The last one was, what—six months ago?

  He looked around the banquet hall, cursing himself for having pleaded to come. True, the food was good. He regretted Tarran’s absence—his brother would have loved the pheasant pie and the sweetbreads and the honey cakes—but when he’d called him, there had been no reply.

  I wonder how he knows when I am desperate and when I am not? He’s always come when I am in real trouble.

  Part of him despaired. Tarran’s visits purely for fun were becoming rarer and rarer.

  A woman he didn’t know was staring at him from the other side of the room. She was elderly, but still beautiful in a regal, haughty way. She wore an ornate pendant to match her gold-trimmed wrap; Arrant had never seen such a large item of jewellery. Pieces of it dangled almost to her waist. Her eyes flicked from Ligea to himself and back again, as though she was comparing the two of them, her gaze arrogantly contemptuous. She bent to speak to the man next to her, and he knew she was talking about him. The man murmured something and shrugged.

  Arrant blushed hotly. The bitch, he thought. She had no right to look at him like that, as though he was an unwashed street urchin. He looked away, deciding he would ignore her.

  Fortunately the two men seated to his right weren’t too bad. The Reviarch Javenid and Arcadim Asenius, moneymasters. Arrant didn’t mind them. They didn’t patronise him, nor did they try to slime their way into his confidence. He suspected they didn’t much like banquets either. Assorians didn’t eat meat of any kind, for a start, and the feasting table was full of suckling pig and lamb, goose and swan, dormouse and sea slugs. The Reviarch ignored the meat and picked at the fruit and bread and cheese; crumbs clung to his beard, mixed in with his pearls. Arcadim just looked sick and uncomfortable. He sliced the cheese on his plate into smaller and smaller pieces, but none of it ever reached his mouth.

  The moneymasters may not have enjoyed an imperial banquet, but they came when asked. Arrant knew why: it was their way of paying homage to Ligea, their way of showing everyone she had the support of Assorian money. She had granted the vassal state of Assoria its freedom almost immediately after she had become Exaltarch, and they were repaying the debt.

  He also knew that an independent Assoria paid just as much money into Tyr’s public coffers now as they ever had. They had to buy Tyranian protection, or end up losing their newfound freedom to the tattooed barbarians on their borders. Doubtless they would eventually have their own army, but in the meantime they paid for the use of Tyranian legions. The irony of that delighted Arrant, especially when he realised his mother had banked on just such a situation arising, not just in Assoria, but along all the borders of the old Exaltarchy.

  The moment the new Tyrans had granted the provinces and vassal states their freedom, all the barbarians and vagabond nomads, whether they were the blue-bearded desert marauders of the south, the fur-clad bear people of the north, the corsairs of the Wild Waters, or the tattooed peoples to the east, had seen it as a sign of weakness and attacked. Kardiastan was strong enough, and Altan prepared enough, to defend themselves, but other freed provinces and vassals, now sovereign states, were forced to invite the old enemy back in to patrol and defend their boundaries. And for a little extra, Tyranian engineers would also build or repair paveways and aqueducts and border walls, just as they had back in the days when the Exaltarch had lorded it over a huge empire. Arrant loved the symmetry of that.

  He watched as one of the Tyranian highborn came across to talk business with the Reviarch, while Arcadim continued to play with his cheese. The noble was wanting a loan to pay the labourers on his country estate. He wanted a promissory note against the value of his wheat and grape harvest, and grumbled audibly about his hardships now that he was not allowed to own slaves. The Reviarch shot Arrant a glance and tried to subtly inform the man that he was making indiscreet remarks in front of the Exaltarch’s son, but the man continued, oblivious. Few people actually knew who Arrant was.

  Arrant knew the moneymasters weren’t too happy about the slavery issue either. Keeping slaves was illegal everywhere in Tyrans now, though everyone tried to circumvent the law, much to Ligea’s exasperation. ‘Those Vortex-blamed Assorians,’ she’d said to him once, ‘I know those god-worshipping moneymakers still keep slaves. But what can I do about it? Not one of their slaves will admit they are still enslaved!’

  Arrant wondered about that. He caught the eye of Arcadim and asked, ‘Do you Assorian moneymasters still have slaves, Master Arcadim?’ He tried to look innocently naive, but he was being mischievous. He was well aware the moneymaster believed, erroneously, that Arrant could tell a lie from the truth. He would therefore be forced to dodge the question, or be honest.

  The moneymaster shot an agitated glance at the Reviarch, who had finally managed to get rid of the highborn man, but the Reviarch was sipping his wine, oblivious. Arcadim agitatedly tore some bread on his plate into smaller pieces. He said, looking at the bread without really seeing it, ‘All Assorians in Tyrans pay their slaves now, Arrant.’

  The Reviarch heard that remark and jerked his goblet, spilling some of his wine. Arcadim amended hastily, ‘Pay their servants, I mean, of course.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Er…um.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Each servant gets a silver sestus coin per year, plus food, a pallet and two sets of clothes. And a new pair of sandals when needed.’ He sounded a little shamefaced, as well he might. A silver sestus was not enough to live on independently for even a month; it certainly wasn’t enough to get a man home to Assoria.

  ‘And can they leave whenever they want?’ Arrant asked.

  ‘Yes. Naturally.’ His bread was joining the pile of cheese crumbs.

  Arrant asked innocently, ‘Would they find employment in another Assorian household?’

  Arcadim shrugged and looked away.

  They wouldn’t, of course. That was the catch. And they couldn’t go to non-Assorian employers, because they thought it a sin to live in the house of an unbeliever.

  Arrant glanced away from the moneymasters. He knew the slavery issue had been his mother’s greatest problem as Exaltarch. How do you persuade people to pay for something they’ve always had for free? How do you do away with all the other litter of the old system dragging in slavery’s wake? Slaves hadn’t even been acknowledged to exist in the previous Exaltarchy’s legal system! And what do you do with all the slaves no one could now afford to employ? How do you keep a country prosperous when the whole scaffolding of its economic life had depended on its having free labour and the looted wealth of the provinces, for as long as anyone remembered?

  He looked at Ligea, sitting with the most important guests, smiling at something said by the head of the Gracii merchant family.

  Why doesn’t she talk to me any more? he wondered.

  He learned all he knew of Tyr and the new Tyrans from his tutors, not his mother. She never included him in any of her negotiations wi
th the merchants, or the diplomatic meetings with envoys, or her discussions with her advisers. He had thought that would change once he reached the age of twelve, officially now a youth wearing a wrap, not a boy in a tunic, but that had been a year past and she had continued to exclude him.

  He thought, distressed, She always will. Because I am not really a Magoroth. Because I’m nothing at all, just a Kardi youth with a cabochon that only works when it feels like it…

  As he acknowledged the truth of that, the shrunken mass under his breastbone contracted. He knew what it was, that shrivelled-up bit of himself: the ball of atrophied feelings and grim memories that he couldn’t afford to think about because they hurt too much. They sat there in his midriff as ugly as dead weed on a beach, waiting for him to bring them out and pick them over.

  He pushed the ball back down.

  She’s not my mother any more, either, he thought. Not really. She’s the Exaltarch.

  He took a deep breath, trying to grow in courage. He had to accept what she was, what he was. Even if there wasn’t really an empire any more, she was a ruler with no time for a son who was of no value to her.

  He looked up from his plate and caught the eye of the woman with the ornate pendant. She was still staring at him, her eyes as hard and cold as marble.

  ‘She’s a clever woman, our Exaltarch,’ the Reviarch said and added, almost as though he had been following Arrant’s previous line of thought: ‘Who would have dreamed that inducting freed slaves into the army and navy would have solved so much of Tyrans’s monetary crisis?’

  ‘Who would have thought she would be able to sell a Tyranian armed force as an agent of peace?’ added Arcadim.

  Arrant pulled his thoughts away from his personal pain and nodded politely. ‘Rent an army,’ the sarcastic had called it. His politics tutor had explained how she’d had even more success with the Tyranian navy by converting part of it into the greatest merchant fleet the world had ever seen. And you could ‘rent a navy’ too, if pirates were a problem along your coastline.