The White Luck Warrior

by R. Scott Bakker

  She ignored him after that, visibly angered.

  Glutton, the secret voice reproached. You need to take care.

  “Most Holy Empress,” Lord Sankas said into the ensuing silence. “I fear the situation with your brother-in-law grows untenable …” Kelmomas glanced back at the man. He almost looked like Thelli’s grandfather, he was so tall and slender. Decked in full martial regalia—a ceremonial Kidruhil cuirass and the purple cloak of a retired general—and cleanshaven in the traditional way, he resembled the old Nansur that Kelmomas so often saw engraved or painted in the original parts of the palace.

  “Fanayal is in Shigek,” she replied testily. “If you haven’t noticed, Sankas, I have more pressing concerns.”

  But the Patridomos was not so easily silenced. “Perhaps if you were to speak with hi—”

  “No!” the Empress exclaimed, wheeling around to glare up at the man. The wall to their left had yielded to an open colonnade that overlooked the Imperial Precincts and the east more generally. The Meneanor heaved dark beneath the sun on the horizon beyond.

  “He must never see my face,” she said more evenly. The shadow of an arch divided her from waist to shoulder so that her lower gown shimmered with light. Kelmomas pressed his face into the warm, scented fabric. She combed his scalp out of maternal reflex. “Do you understand, Sankas? Never.”

  “Forgive me, Most Holy!” the caste-noble fairly cried. “It-it was not my intent to cause offence …”

  He trailed awkwardly, looking as though he had tripped across some disastrous suspicion. “Most Holy Empress …” he said tightly. “May I ask why the Shriah must not see your face?”

  Kelmomas almost chortled aloud, saved himself by looking away in the appearance of little-boy boredom. Over a jumble of roof and structure, he glimpsed a formation of distant guardsmen doing drills on one of the seaward campuses. More soldiers were arriving every day, so many it was becoming impossible for him to adventure in the old way.

  “Thelli,” his mother said from above. “Please, would you assure Lord Sankas that I am not a skin-spy.”

  The Patridomos blanched. “No … No!” he blurted. “That is certainly no—”

  “Mother is not-not a skin-spy,” Theliopa interrupted.

  His mother’s hands and presence slipped away from the boy. Ever conscious of her menial stature, the Empress used the view as an excuse to step clear of the looming Patridomos. She gazed out over the Meneanor. “Our dynasty, Sankas, is a … a complicated one. I say what I say for good reason. I need to know that you have faith enough to trust that.”

  “Yes—certainly! But …”

  “But what, Sankas?”

  “Maithanet is the Holy Shriah …”

  Kelmomas watched his mother smile her calm, winning smile, the one that told everyone present that she could feel what they felt. Her ability to communicate compassion, he had long since realized, was easily her strongest attribute—as well as the one most likely to send him into jealous rages.

  “Indeed, Sankas … He is our Shriah. But the fact remains: my divine husband, his brother, decided to trust me with the fate of the Empire. Why might that be, you wonder?”

  The man’s pained squint relaxed in sudden comprehension. “Of course, Most Holy! Of course!”

  Men cast their lots, the Prince-Imperial realized. They gambled time, riches, even loved ones, on those great personages they thought would carry the day. Once the gambit was made, you need only give them reasons to congratulate themselves.

  His mother dismissed both Sankas and Theliopa shortly afterward. Kelmomas’s heart cartwheeled for joy. Again and again and again, he was the one she brought with her to her apartments.

  He was the one! Again and again. The only one!

  As always, they passed the ponderous bronze door to Inrilatas’s room with their ears pricked. Kelmomas’s older brother had ceased screaming of late—like the seasons he had his tempests and his idylls—leaving the young Prince-Imperial with the troubling sense that he was there, his cheek pressed against the far side of his door, listening to their comings and goings. The fact that he never heard Inrilatas doing this troubled him even more, for he was quite fond of hearing things. Theliopa once told him that of all his brothers and sisters, Inrilatas possessed his father’s gifts in the greatest measure, so much so they continually overwhelmed his mortal frame. Though Kelmomas did not begrudge Inrilatas his insanity—he celebrated it, if anything—he did resent his greedy share of Father’s blood.

  And so he hated Inrilatas as well.

  Mother’s body-slaves rushed from their antechambers to line the hall to either side, kneeling with their faces to the floor. The Empress brushed past them in distaste, pushed open the bronze doors to her apartments herself. Kelmomas never understood why she disdained using people—Father certainly never hesitated—but he adored the way it gave them more time alone. Again and again, he got to hug her and to kiss her and to cuddle-cuddle …

  Ever since he had murdered Samarmas.

  Sunlight rafted through the airy interior, setting the white-gossamer sheers aglow. A sycamore stood dark and full in the light beyond the balconies, close enough to glimpse the limbs forking through the shadows behind the bushing leaves. Sandalwood scented the air.

  Capering across lavish carpets, the Prince-Imperial breathed deep and smiled. He swept his gaze across the frescoes of Invishi, Carythusal, and Nenciphon. Around a corner’s fluted edge, he glimpsed the tall silvered mirror in her dressing-room. He saw the chest with the toys he pretended to play with when she was preoccupied. Through the propped doors to her sleeping chamber, he saw her great bed gleaming in the murk.

  This, he thought as he always thought. This was where he would live forever!

  He assumed she would seize him in a hug and spin in a pirouette. A mother finding strength in the need to be strong for a beautiful son. A mother finding respite in the love of a beautiful son. She always held him when she was frightened, and she literally reeked with fear. But instead she wheeled him about by the arm and slapped him hard across the cheek.

  “You are never to say such things!”

  A tide of murderous hurt and outrage swamped him. Mummy! Mummy had struck him! And for what? The truth? Scenes flickered beneath his soul’s eye, strangling her with her own sheets, seizing the Gold Mastodon set upon the mantle and—

  “But I do!” he bawled. “I do hate him!”

  Maithanet. Uncle Holy.

  She was already holding him in a desperate embrace, shushing and kissing, pressing her tear-slicked cheek against his own.

  Mommeee!

  “You shouldn’t,” she said, a thumb’s breadth from his ear. “He’s your uncle. Even more, he’s the Shriah. It’s a sin to speak against the Shriah—don’t you know that?”

  He fought her until she pressed him back.

  “But he’s against you! Against Father! Isn’t that a si—?”

  “Enough. Enough. The important thing, Kel, is that you never say these things. You are a Prince-Imperial. An Anasûrimbor. Your blood is the very blood that flows in your uncle’s veins …”

  Dûnyain blood … the secret voice whispered. What raises us above the animals.

  Like Mother.

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” the Blessed Empress continued. “Do you realize what others think when they hear you disputing your own blood?”

  “No.”

  “They hear dissension … discord and weakness! You embolden our enemies with this talk—do you understand me, Kel?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have come upon fearful times, Kel. Dangerous times. You must always use your wits. You must always be wary …”

  “Because of Fanayal, Mommy?”

  She held him tight to her breast, then pressed him back. “Because of many things …” Her gaze became suddenly absent. “Look,” she continued. “There’s something I need to show you.” She stood and with a rustle of silk moved across the bed chamber, paused before the
frieze on the far wall, belts of mythic narrative piled one atop the other.

  “Your father raised two palaces when he rebuilt the Andiamine Heights,” she said, gesturing to the sun slanting through the unshuttered balcony. “A palace of light …” She turned, leaning forward on her toes to peer at the top panel of the marble frieze. She pressed the bottommost star of a constellation Kelmomas had never seen before. Something clicked elsewhere in the room. The Prince-Imperial literally swayed with vertigo, so surprised were his senses. The marble-gilded wall simply dropped away and swooped out, rotating on a perfect central hinge.

  Light only filtered several feet into the black passage beyond.

  “And a palace of shadow.”

  “Your uncle,” Mother said. “I don’t trust him.”

  They sat where they always sat when the Empress took her “morning sun,” as she termed it: on divans set near the heart of the Sacral Enclosure between two of the taller sycamore trees. A thin procession of clouds rode high in the blue sky above. The Imperial Apartments surrounded them on all sides, colonnaded walkways along the ground, verandas on the upper floors, some with their canopies unfurled, all forming the broad, marmoreal octagon that gave the Enclosure its famous shape.

  Theliopa sat immediately next to Mother, a distance that suggested mother-daughter intimacy but was really an artefact of the girl’s blindness to the rules that governed proximity. Her face, as always, was pale and sunken—skin stretched across the tent-poles of her bones. She wore what looked like several luxurious gowns sown into a florid motley, as well as dozens of jewelled broaches set end to end along the sleeve of either arm. Tree shadows waved across her, so that she seemed continually ablaze with reflected sunlight.

  Wearing only a morning robe, Mother looked plain and dark in comparison—and all the more beautiful for it. Kelmomas played in the adjacent garden. With blackened fingers, he had started forming walls and bastions, a small complex of dirt structures he could strike down, but had quickly stopped when he discovered a stream of ants crawling from the earth to the blue-tiled walkway, hundreds of them. He began executing them, one by one, using his thumbnail to chip off their heads.

  “Wha-what do you suspect?” his sister asked, her voice as dry as the air.

  A long breath. A hand drawn to the back of her weary neck. “That he is somehow behind this crisis with the Yatwerians,” his mother replied. “That he intends to use it as a pretext to seize the Empire.”

  Of all the games he played, this was the one the young Prince-Imperial relished the most: the game of securing his mother’s constant attention while at the same time slipping beneath her notice. On the one hand, he was such a sad little boy, desolate, scarred for the tragic loss of his twin. But he was also just a little boy, too young to understand, too lost in his play to really listen. There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have sent him away for conversations such as this …

  The real ones.

  “I see,” Theliopa said.

  “Are you not surprised?”

  “I’m not sure surprise-surprise is a passion I can feel, Mother.”

  Even watching from his periphery, Kelmomas could see his mother’s expression dull. It troubled her, the little boy knew, filling in what was missing in her children. Perhaps this was why he didn’t despise Theliopa the way he had that bitch, Mimara. Mother’s feelings for Thelli would always be stymied by the girl’s inability to reciprocate her love. But Mimara …

  Some day soon … the secret voice whispered. She will love you as much … More!

  “Have you conferred with Father-Father?” Theliopa asked.

  His sister was a face reader. She had to see Mother’s bewildered heartbreak as easily as he could. Did Thelli lack the heart to grieve this as well? Kelmomas had never been able to read much of anything in his sister. She was like Uncle Maithanet that way—only harmless.

  If Mother were to ever look at him with those eyes …

  “The Far-callers …” Mother said with the reluctant air of admission. “They’ve heard nothing for two weeks now.”

  The merest flicker of horror slackened Theliopa’s pale face. Perhaps she could feel surprise after all—as crippled as her heart was. “What?”

  “Do not fear,” Mother said. “Your father lives. The Great Ordeal continues its march. I am certain of that much at least.”

  “Then-then what has happened?”

  “Your father has declared an Interdiction. He has forbidden every Schoolmen in the Great Ordeal, on pain of execution, from contacting any soul in the Three Seas.”

  Kelmomas recalled his lessons on Cants of Far-Calling well enough. The primary condition of contacting someone in their dreams was to know, precisely, where they were sleeping. This meant the Great Ordeal had to contact them, since it travelled day by day.

  “He suspects spies among the Schools?” Theliopa asked. “Is this some kind of ruse to draw them out?”

  “Perhaps.”

  His sister was generally averse to eye contact, but those rare times she deigned to match someone’s gaze, she did so with a peculiar intensity—like a bird spying worms. “You mean Father hasn’t told you anything?”

  “No.”

  “He abides by his own embargo? Mother … has Father deserted us?”

  The young Prince-Imperial abandoned the pretense of his garden play. He even held his breath, so profound was his hope. For as long he could remember, Kelmomas had feared and hated his divine father. The Warrior-Prophet. The Aspect-Emperor. The one true Dûnyain. All the native abilities possessed by his children, only concentrated and refined through a lifetime of training. Were it not for the demands of his station, were he more than just a constantly arriving and departing shadow, Father would have certainly seen the secret Kelmomas had held tight since his infancy. The secret that made him strong.

  As things stood, it was only a matter of time. He would grow as his brothers and sisters had grown, and he would drift, as his brothers and sisters had drifted, from Mother’s loving tutelage to Father’s harsh discipline. And one day Father would peer deep into his eye and see what no one else had seen. And that day, Kelmomas knew, would be his doom …

  But what if Father had abandoned them? Even better, what if he were dead?

  He has the Strength, the voice whispered. So long as he lives, we are not safe …

  Mother raised a finger to scoop tears from either eye. This, the young Prince-Imperial realized. This was why she had struck him the previous day! This was why the fat fool, Pansulla, had so easily goaded her, and why the tidings from Shigek had so dismayed her …

  If Father is gone … the secret voice dared whisper.

  “It would appear so,” she said, speaking about a crack in her voice. “I fear it has something to do with your uncle.”

  Then we are finally safe.

  “Maithanet,” Thelli said.

  The Empress mastered her feelings with a deep breath. “Maybe this is a … a test of some kind. Like the fable of Gam …”

  Kelmomas recalled this from his lessons as well. Gam was the mythical king who faked his own death to test the honour of his four sons. The boy wanted to shout this out, to bask a moment in Mother’s pride, but he bit his tongue. For the briefest of instants, he thought he saw his sister glance at him.

  “It need not have anything to do with Uncle,” Theliopa said. “Maybe the Consult has discovered some way of eavesdropping on our communications …”

  “No. It has something to do with Maithanet. I can feel it.”

  “I can rarely fathom Father,” Theliopa admitted.

  “You?” the Empress cried with pained hilarity. “Think about your poor mother!”

  Kelmomas laughed precisely the way she wanted.

  “Ponder it, Thelli. Your father assuredly knows about the strife growing between us, his wife and his brother, so then why would he choose this moment to strand us each with the other?”

  “That much is simple-simple, at least,” Thelli replied.
“Because he believes the best solution will be the one you find on your-your own.”

  “Exactly,” Mother said. “Somehow he thinks my ignorance will serve me in this …” Her voice trailed into pensive thought. For several moments she let her gaze wander across points near and far within the Sacral Enclosure, then shook her head in sudden outrage and disgust.

  “Damn your father and his machinations!” she cried, her voice loud enough to draw looks from the nearby Pillarian Guardsmen. She glanced skyward, her eyes rolling with something like panic. “Damn him!”

  “Mother?” Theliopa asked.

  The Empress lowered her head and sighed. “I am quite all right, Thelli.” She spared her daughter a rueful look. “I don’t give a damn what you think you see in my face …” She trailed, her mouth hanging on these words. Kelmomas held his breath, so attuned had he become to the wheel of his mother’s passion.

  “Thelli …” She began, only to hesitate for several heartbeats. “Could … Could you read his face?”

  “Uncle’s? Only Father has that-that ability. Father and …”

  “And who?”

  Theliopa paused as if weighing the wisdom of honest answers. “Inrilatas. He could see … Remember Father trained-trained him for a time …”

  “Father trained who?” Kelmomas cried, the way a jealous little brother might.

  “Kel—please.”

  “Who?”

  Esmenet raised two fingers to Theliopa, turned to Kelmomas, her manner cross and adoring. “Your older brother,” she explained. “Your father hoped teaching him to read passions in others would enable him to master his own.” She turned back to her daughter. “Treachery?” she asked. “Could Inrilatas see treachery in a soul so subtle as Maithanet’s?”

  “Perhaps, Mother,” the pale girl replied. “But the real-real question, I think, is not so much can he, as will he.”

  The Holy Empress of all the Three Seas shrugged, her expression betraying the fears that continually mobbed her heart.

  “I need to know. What do we have to lose?”

  Since Mother had to attend special sessions with her generals, the young Prince-Imperial dined alone that evening—or as alone as possible for a soul such as his. He was outraged even though he understood her reasons, and as always he tormented the slaves who waited on him, blaming his mother for each and every hurt he inflicted.