by Anthony Ryan
“Justice, as ordained by the queen.” Frentis could hear the hollow note in his voice. The sight of the grey-clad girl lying dead in her mother’s arms was yet to fade. So many years of battle and death, so many faces forgotten, but he knew this image would never dim.
“And the city is not destroyed,” he added. “Any damage will be restored according to the queen’s design, in time.”
“A task dependent upon a successful outcome to this war.” The Fleet Lord’s gaze went to the harbour, crowded with Meldenean ships and captured Volarian prizes, many more vessels anchored in the estuary beyond. They had arrived the day before, the sight of so many masts on the northern horizon provoking the newly freed populace to panic. Frentis had managed to calm them, though not before several hundred had fled the city with their bundled spoils. He arrayed his own people at the dockside in a thick defensive formation with archers on the surrounding rooftops, then ordered Draker to begin a cheer at the sight of the Red Falcon sailing into the harbour.
“I believe we have sufficient space to carry your entire command,” Ell-Nurin said, gesturing at the fleet. “I have to say there wasn’t much heart in the enemy when we caught up to them. Seems their admiral committed suicide rather than face the Empress’s wrath. Most gave up without a fight.”
“Carry my command where, my lord?”
“Volar of course. The queen will expect reinforcement.”
“Most people now bearing arms in this city were slaves up until two weeks ago. The others joined me to win freedom, not acceptance to the Realm. The Realm folk we freed will come, I’ve little doubt of that. The Garisai too, though many will expect payment. Perhaps two thousand swords in all. The others have suffered much, more than I would ever have asked them to.”
“They may have seized a city and slaughtered their masters, but lasting freedom will only come through victory. As I’m sure you’ll explain to them.” There was a hardness to Ell-Nurin’s voice, a reminder that he held rank here.
Frentis sighed and gave a slow nod of assent.
“Very good. This”—the Fleet Lord turned to a young woman standing amidst his entourage of captains—“is Sister Merial. You will give her a full report of your operations, and any useful intelligence gathered, for onward conveyance to the queen.”
Frentis frowned at the woman, finding her perhaps a year or two shy of his own age, dressed in clothing he assumed had been chosen for its plainness. She was also palpably uncomfortable in the presence of so many Meldeneans, though they seemed inclined to provide her with ample space. “Seventh Order?”
“Quite so, brother.” Ell-Nurin leaned closer. “And, however tempting it might be, you really don’t want to touch her.”
“Nine thousand more, y’say?” Sister Merial spoke with a strong Renfaelin accent, largely devoid of honorifics and rich in dubious inflection. “Of these terrible red men.”
“They’re real enough,” Draker growled. “Plenty of us with the scars and burns to prove it. Got one on my arse if you want to see it.”
“I think I’ve seen sufficient horrors recently.” Merial gave Draker a broad but empty smile and accepted a bowl of goat stew from Thirty-Four.
They had occupied the unfortunate governor’s mansion, though much of it was rendered uninhabitable due to the mob’s attentions. Frentis camped in the main courtyard, the rest of the army that had followed him from Viratesk taking up residence in the extensive gardens. He had been surprised and gratified by their discipline, keeping to their companies and taking a comparatively small part in the looting that continued to preoccupy the newly liberated populace. Perhaps a dozen fighters had disappeared in the aftermath of the city’s fall, and a few more had asked his permission to leave, either to return to distant homes or in frank admission they had seen their fill of war. He told them all the same thing, “You freed yourselves the moment you joined me. Queen Lyrna thanks you for your service.”
“So the queen marches on Volar?” Illian asked Merial. “Despite losing so many at sea?”
“Not a woman to be easily dissuaded, the queen.” Merial took a bite of stew and favoured Thirty-Four with an appreciative grin. “Better ’n that slop the pirates dish out, when they’re not bein’ overly free with their hands.”
“When do we sail?” Illian asked Frentis, a keen eagerness shining in her eyes.
Will she ever grow tired of it? he wondered. “At the discretion of the Fleet Lord. He holds rank here.”
“Fuck his rank,” Lekran muttered around a mouthful of stew, speaking in his laboured Realm Tongue. “Don’t know him.”
Frentis turned back to Merial. “You say the queen believes Lady Reva dead?”
She nodded. “Gone to the bottom along with half her heretic followers.”
“No, she lives. In Volar.” He shuddered at the memory of the previous night’s dream, the surging joy as she drank in the sight of Lady Reva battling the dagger-toothed cats. “Though for how much longer I can’t say.”
Merial frowned at him, a line of suspicion appearing on her brow. “You know this, brother?”
“I do. Beyond doubt.”
Her frown deepened as she angled her head, eyes tracking over his face. “I sense no gift in you…”
“I know it,” he said, an edge colouring his voice. “And the queen should know it too.”
She gave a cautious nod and returned to her meal. “Allow a girl to fill her belly first, then I’ll have a word with my darlin’ husband.”
“What husband?” Draker asked with a bemused frown but Merial just grinned and kept eating.
Later she sat apart from them, taking on a concentrated stillness, eyes close and face devoid of expression. “Don’t like this, brother,” Draker murmured, moving to Frentis’s side and eyeing the sister with obvious distrust. “Dark ain’t s’posed to be seen.”
“The world changed when Varinshold fell,” Frentis told him. “Now none of us have anywhere to hide.”
Sister Merial gave a sudden jerk, her back arching and eyes flying open, a small but distinct gasp of shock escaping her lips. She slumped forward with a groan, hands covering her face, slim shoulders moving in jerking sobs.
“Don’t like this,” Draker muttered again, moving back to the fire.
Frentis went to Merial, now hugging herself, face set in forlorn misery. “Sister?” he prompted.
She glanced up at him then looked away, hands tracing over her tear-streaked face as she rose, walking from the courtyard without a word. He waited a while before following, finding her perched atop a podium in the gardens. The statue it once held had been torn down and hauled off during the riots, no doubt destined for the smelter, bronze being a valuable metal. Sister Merial suddenly seemed very young, legs dangling over the edge of the podium as she raised her still-damp face to the sky. She spared him a brief glance before returning her gaze to the stars.
“They’re different,” she said. “Not all, just some.”
“The Maiden’s arm points home,” he said.
She nodded, lowering her gaze. “Aspect Caenis is dead.”
He winced as the pain hit home, a slashing stroke of instant grief. Sagging a little, he went to the podium, resting his hands on its heavily chipped edge. “Your husband told you this?”
“Brother Lernial, whom you’ve met I believe.”
“I didn’t know the Seventh Order were permitted to marry.”
“’Course we are. Where d’you think all the little brothers and sisters come from? We’ve always been more a family than an Order, ever on the hunt for new blood though.”
He sighed a weary laugh. “How did it happen?”
“A battle. The details are vague, my husband’s gift is a tad erratic, ’specially when coloured by so much grief. A rather terrible encounter, from what I can gather. Your red men are a ghastly lot indeed. It seems the queen secured victory in the end, so I doubt they number nine thousand any longer.”
Caenis … He had seen him only once at Varinshold, a brief
exchange at the gates of the Blackhold. “Many trials await us, brother,” he had said. “I can only wish you well.”
Caenis, who had laboured to tutor him on the Order’s history, with only marginal success in the end but still he cherished the lessons. During his ordeal in the pits he had occupied the time between combats by delving into memory, attempting to recall Caenis’s many stories, knowing they somehow kept him anchored in the Order, kept him a brother and not a slave.
“The Aspect and I were brothers once,” he told Merial. “I learned much from him.”
“As did I. He was my master, y’see. We’d meet in secret, whenever the Order could spare him. He taught me so much, the Faith, the mysteries…” She raised her gaze once more. “The stars.”
He touched his hand to hers for a second. “I grieve for your loss, sister.”
“I told my husband,” she said as he turned away, “about Lady Reva, and everything else.”
“Did you divine anything regarding the queen’s intentions?”
“Only that they are unchanged.” She turned to the city spread out before them, fires flickering amidst the many ruined buildings, the pyres still burning beyond the walls. “On to Volar,” she murmured.
“Who were they?”
He stands in the street outside the baker’s shop, looking down at the girl and her mother once more.
“How can you be here?” he asks.
She moves into view, wearing the face he remembers, the face she wore when they killed together. “You dream, I dream.” She nods at the mother and child. “Did you know them?”
He sees then that the face is not truly the same, the cruelty, the madness not quite gone, but diminished, as if this shared dream somehow strips away much of her waking self.
“No. They died when the city fell.”
“Always so intent on drowning in guilt, beloved.” She moves closer, stepping over the corpses that carpet the street to cast an incurious glance over the lifeless mother and daughter. “It’s always the way with wars. Battles rage and the small people die.”
An old, long-stoked anger builds in his breast. “Small people?”
“Yes my love, the small people.” Her voice carries a note of weary impatience, like a tutor lecturing a child on an oft-forgotten lesson. “The weak, the petty, the narrow of mind and purpose. Those, in fact, who are not like us.”
His rage builds, stirring words he had longed to utter during their journey of murder, unchecked now by any binding. “You are a pestilence,” he tells her. “A blight upon the world, soon to be wiped away.”
Her face betrays no anger as she looks up, only a faint smile, her gaze sad but also rich in knowledge, reminding him of just how old she is, how many corpses she has seen. “No, I am the only woman you will ever love.”
He finds himself drawing away, though also unable to take his eyes from her face. “I know you feel it,” she says, following as he retreats. “However deep you bury it, however much rage you stir to drown it. You saw the future we could have shared, we were meant to share.”
“A vile illusion,” he says in a whisper.
“Our child will never be born,” she says, implacable now. “But we will make another, heir to a dynasty so great…”
“Enough!” His rage is enough to give her pause, the heat of it sending a ripple through the ground, threatening to tear this dreamscape apart. “I never wanted any part of your insane plots. How could you imagine I would ever surrender myself to your ambition? What madness drives you? What twisted you into this? What happened on the other side of that door?”
Her face becomes utterly still, eyes locked on his, not in anger but naked terror.
“You dream, I dream,” he tells her. “A girl, lying in bed, weeping as she stares at her bedroom door. Do you even remember it when awake? Do you even know?”
She blinks and takes a slow, backward step. “There were times I thought of killing you. When we travelled, sometimes I would take my knife and lay it against your neck as you slept. I feared you, although I told myself it was only anger at your many cruelties, your practised hatred. Somehow I knew my love for you would kill me, and so it proved. But I have not a single regret.”
She reaches for him, and he doesn’t know why he lets her touch him, why he allows her hands to trace over his own, why he opens his arms and welcomes her into an embrace. She crushes herself against him, and he hears the restrained sob in her voice as she whispers in his ear, “It’s time you came to Volar, beloved. Bring your army if you like. It doesn’t matter. Just make sure the healer is among them. If I do not see both of you in the arena within thirty days, Reva Mustor dies.”
The leader of New Kethia’s former slaves named himself as Karavek, apparently the name of the master he had beaten to death during the first night of riots. “He stole freedom from me, I stole his name,” he said with a thin smile. “Seemed a fair exchange.”
He was a large man, somewhere in his fifties, with grey-black hair sprouting in an unkempt mass from his once-shaven head. However, despite his size and fierce appearance his voice told of an educated past and a mind keen enough to fully appreciate the reality of their circumstance, unalloyed by the glow of recent triumphs.
“Volar is not New Kethia,” Karavek said when the Meldenean made his formal request for alliance on behalf of Queen Lyrna. He had arrived at the governor’s mansion in company with a dozen fighters, all bristling with weaponry and regarding Fleet Lord Ell-Nurin with a naked suspicion that bordered on hostility. “This city is a village in comparison.”
“There are many still in bondage there,” Frentis said. “As you were.”
“True enough, but I don’t know them and neither do my people.”
“The queen has granted all in this province a place in the Unified Realm,” Ell-Nurin said. “You are now free subjects under her protection. But freedom carries a price…”
“Don’t lecture me on freedom, pirate,” Karavek growled. “Half the slaves in this city died paying that price.” He turned to Frentis, lowering his voice. “Brother, you know as well as I how precarious our position is. Any day now the southern garrisons will march to reclaim this city for the empire. We can’t fight them if our strength is off dying in Volar.”
Victory at Volar will end this empire, Frentis wanted to say but felt the words die on his tongue, knowing how hollow they would sound. “I know,” he said. “But myself and my people must sail to Volar, with any willing to join us.”
“We rose because of you,” Karavek said. “The Red Brother’s rebellion, the great crusade birthing hope in the hearts of those condemned to a life in chains. Now it seems just a diversion so your queen faces fewer enemies on the road to Volar. And if it falls, what then? Sail away leaving us to face the chaos of a fractured empire?”
“You have my word,” Frentis said. “Regardless of my queen’s intentions, when our business in Volar is complete I will return here to help in any way I can.” He glanced at Ell-Nurin. “And the queen has given assurance that, should your position here prove untenable, her fleet will carry your people across the ocean where you will be granted land and full rights in the Unified Realm.”
Karavek straightened at this, narrowing his gaze at the Fleet Lord. “He speaks true?”
Ell-Nurin maintained an admirably placid expression as he said, “Only a fool with no regard for his life would dare to speak falsely in the queen’s name.”
The rebel leader grunted, running a hand through the shaggy mess of his hair, brow knotted in consideration. “I’ll speak to my people,” he said eventually. “Should be able to muster a thousand swords to go with you. I trust your queen will appreciate the gesture.”
“She is your queen now,” Frentis reminded him. “And she never forgets a debt.”
The freed Varitai were encamped in the ruins of Old Kethia, along with a large number of grey-clads who found the former slave soldiers more welcoming company than the newly freed denizens of the city itself. A few dozen had b
een chased into the ruins by a mob in the immediate aftermath of the city’s fall. Their pursuers’ bloodlust abated somewhat at the sight of seven hundred Varitai drawn up in full battle order, Weaver standing at their head with his arms crossed and face set in stern disapproval. Even so the mob had lingered for a time, their fury still unquenched, and the matter might have degenerated further but for the arrival of Master Rensial’s mounted company. Since then a steady stream of beggared Volarians had made their way to the ruins, more trickling in from the south every day, having found life in the wilderness too great a trial.
“Will the Varitai come?” Frentis asked Weaver as they sat together in what he assumed had been the old city’s council chamber. It was a rectangular structure comprising six rows of ascending marble benches around a large flat space. The roof had vanished but the massive pillars that once supported it remained, though standing at perhaps half their former height. The floor was covered in a vast mosaic, the tiles faded in the sun and pounded to fragments in many places, but still complete enough to convey a sense of accomplished artistry, a greatness brought low in the fury of war.
“They have a new name now,” Weaver said. “Politai, which means unchained in old Volarian. And yes they’ll come, there being so many more of their brothers to free in Volar. I shall ask them to leave enough men here to guard these people though.”
“I’ve obtained assurance from Karavek they’ll be left in peace, provided they don’t venture into New Kethia.”
Weaver gave a slight nod, his eyes roving the ruin. “Did you know, the people of this city would choose their own king? Every man who owned house or livestock was given a single black stone every four years. A vase would be placed before each of the candidates who would stand there,” he pointed to the head of the chamber, “and each man would reach his hand into every vase, keeping his fist closed whenever he drew it out, so none would know into which vase he had dropped his stone.”
“What if you dropped two stones?” Frentis asked.