Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  Majesty’s eyes go distant and calculating. “I see it.”

  “He was created Duke by Toa-Phelathon, the last legitimate ruler of the Menelethids. That makes him a Duke for real, in the eyes of the nobles; they might deny titles conferred by Ma’elKoth, but not by their beloved Prince-Regent. Toa-Sytell also controls the King’s Eyes. You want to run the Empire, you need him.”

  “Who says I want to run the Empire?”

  “Screw running it,” I tell him. “When shit blows up, all you have to do is come to Toa-Sytell with an offer of support. The Kingdom of Cant will be the only real, organized troops that can keep order in the city. By being the first to come to his side, you could make him pretty grateful; I should think he’d express his gratitude with a title—maybe even a Dukedom and a seat in the Cabinet. Say, maybe, Commerce and Taxation?”

  That cold calculation in his eyes starts to ring up stacks of gold coins.

  I go on. “I mean, you guys already have a relationship, right? You trust each other?”

  “More or less,” Majesty allows. “But Ma’elKoth—holed up in the Colhari Palace, he could stand a year’s seige . . .”

  I lean forward and let all the easy humor drain out of my eyes, let my face go as passionless as an ice sculpture. “You can let me handle that.”

  Majesty gives me a frankly scornful look. “You?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “So, let’s see if I’ve got this plumb,” he says sarcastically. “These are your plans for tomorrow: Get up, have breakfast, kill Berne, sneak into Victory Stadium and discredit Ma’elKoth, grab some lunch, sneak out of Victory Stadium and into the palace, kill Ma’elKoth, sneak back out of the palace again, have dinner, maybe a couple of drinks, go to bed. Is that about it?”

  “Roughly,” I tell him. “You forgot one thing.”

  “What, your afternoon nap?”

  “No.” I reach out with my words to tap that trump on the table one more time. “I’m going to rescue Pallas Ril.”

  Her name siphons the color out of his face, and his eyes drift closed.

  While the Charm keeps him off balance, I hook him and reel him in. “The point is that Toa-Sytell is a fundamentally decent guy with a stake in keeping things calm. He has both power and a reputation for ruthlessness. He’s exactly what you need to keep the Empire from dissolving into civil war; on the other hand, he can’t hold the city without you until he brings the army to heel. He’ll need you as much as you need him. He’s perfect.”

  “He’s also devoted to Ma’elKoth,” Majesty points out.

  I grin. “I think we’ll take care of that part of the problem tomorrow. He’s devoted to the throne, not the man.”

  “God damn you, Caine,” he says. “God damn if you don’t have it figured to the butt end. Paslava?”

  The thaumaturge can barely tear his gaze away from contemplation of the beauty of the griffinstone in his hand. When he does, his eyes are pools of fiery possibility. “We can do it,” he says.

  “Kierendal?”

  Unnoticed, her face and form have shifted throughout this conversation; her eyes have shaded from gold to hazel, and her platinum hair to a dirty blond that borders on chestnut; the harsh lines of her razor cheekbones have softened into an easier, more human oval. She gives Majesty a look that makes the air between them smoke, just a little. “I can help,” she says slowly, in a husky voice that reminds me, inescapably, of Pallas. What is she playing at? Can she read the Charm on him, somehow?

  What she says next removes my doubt. “I’m with you, Majesty, but we must . . . cement our alliance, in a more, mmm, formal way,” and her tone is suggestive enough that she’s giving me a hard-on; I can only imagine the effect she must be having on Majesty.

  He looks like he’s been sucker-punched; a moment passes while he remembers that there are other people in the world. He reddens, coughs, and looks at me, shaking his head. “And you get out of this . . . what? The gratitude of a new Duke? But you don’t even really care about that, do you?”

  I shrug. “No, not really.”

  “You’re telling me,” he says slowly, “that you’re bringing down the Empire just to get a shot at saving Pallas Ril?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “All right,” he says, suddenly grinning like a maniac. “I’m in.”

  I almost gather him into a hug before I remember myself and settle for sticking out a hand.

  He takes it. “And thanks. I mean, really thanks, Caine.”

  “For what?”

  “For giving me a chance to help you save her. That means a lot to me.”

  “Yeah,” I say, feeling just a little sick. “I knew it would.”

  A long, slow, mediative silence drifts into the room like a shadow of tomorrow’s war. All we can do, for this eternal instant, is sit and contemplate the enormity of what we have decided, here tonight.

  Finally, Paslava breaks the silence with a cough.

  “And I am also curious,” says Paslava, “about this silver net of yours. I would like to examine it, with your permission.”

  “That, ah, that won’t be possible until tomorrow. I stashed it.”

  “Do you think that wise?” Paslava asks with a sudden frown of alarm. “The success or failure of this entire plot depends upon that net! If it is stolen, or lost—!”

  “It’s perfectly safe,” I reassure them with a secret smile. “You’ll get a chance to look it over tomorrow. For tonight, I, ahh, have somebody watching it for me.”

  21

  CURSING SILENTLY, BERNE rappeled down the natural chimney to the very limit of the torchlight above and peered down into the black abyss below him. How deep did this fucking shaft go? How in fuck’s sake did Caine get down here without leaving a rope behind? And why was he hiding out down here? How did he even breathe down here in these reeking goatfucking fumes?

  Before continuing down, he wrapped his wrist in the rope and used his now-free hand to draw the dagger Ma’elKoth had magicked for him. He swung it in a short arc, and sure enough its green glow was strongest still when it pointed straight downward. In fact, it was brighter than he’d yet seen it.

  Bright enough, it was, to illuminate the bottom of the chimney only a few feet below and the untidily piled net that lay on the rock as though it had been carelessly tossed there.

  Berne’s curses were no longer silent; they echoed off the stone loudly enough that the Cats waiting above startled like spooked horses.

  Caine knew, somehow that slippery little fuck knew, and he’d ditched the net on purpose. Berne released the rope and dropped the rest of the way, taking the shock of landing with a slight bend of his strengthened legs. He bent to pick up the net, then hesitated and changed his mind. He grunted to himself, then swarmed back up the rope to the torchlit cavern above.

  “You four,” he snapped, picking them out at random from his followers, “you’re staying here. He’ll be coming back for this. Don’t interfere with him. As soon as he shows, one of you come for me at the Colhari Palace. The others, follow him. Don’t let him know you’re there; if he makes you, he’ll make you dead.”

  “The palace? You’re not going home?”

  “Probably not tonight,” Berne said with a grimace that reflected a sharply twisting knot of apprehension in his guts. “I have to go tell Ma’elKoth that we’ve lost Caine.”

  22

  LAMORAK SAT AT a broad scarred writing table in the den of Berne’s house and stared out the window at the approaching storm, a massive wall of cloud that blocked the polar stars. Lightning speared almost continuously in the north, and the thunder was loud enough already to rattle the windows. Big freaking storm, big as he’d ever seen, but he watched it with only a scant corner of his attention.

  What it really came down to, see, was survival, he told himself. Sure, he didn’t want Pallas to die, but having Pallas alive wouldn’t do him any good if he wasn’t around to enjoy her, right? And Caine . . . Well, fuck Caine. Caine
knew that Berne and the Cats were tailing him, and he’d led them right there to Lamorak’s room. Caine might as well have locked him into this den personally.

  Lamorak cherished no fond illusions or hopes of mercy from Berne. His only hope was to buy his freedom, to get himself at the very least out of the Cats’clutches and into the care of the Constabulary or the King’s Eyes—and to do it before Caine stirred the shitpot tomorrow. Even if Berne himself died in the inevitable riot at the stadium, the Cats would cut his throat before they’d let him go.

  No: he had only one chance. He had to make a deal while there was still a deal to be made.

  He couldn’t speak to his guards; they’d been well prepared against him. Instead, he ransacked the den until he found a sheet of lambskin parchment and a pen. A few minutes’ further search found an ink pot that still sloshed faintly when he shook it.

  He wrote:

  Berne:

  You left before I could tell you. I have news to sell, news of Caine that may save the Empire, if you act upon it. Come with Duke Toa-Sytell or the Emperor himself to guarantee my freedom, and I will reveal all of Caine’s sinister plot. You will not regret it.

  Urgently,

  Lamorak

  He folded the parchment and wrote on the outside:

  Give this message to Count Berne, and he is sure to reward you

  He held it in his hand for a moment, weighing it briefly; it was no heavier than any other parchment, and it meant nothing at all.

  He hobbled to the locked door and slid the parchment beneath it. Somebody should find it there by morning. He turned and leaned a moment to rest against the door before the trip back to the chair at the writing table. Outside, lightning flared and thunder crashed. The first scattered drops of rain mixed with a spurt of rattling hail clattered against the window. The rising wind howled like wolves in the wilderness.

  Going to be one big bastard of a storm, he thought. Glad I’m not out in it.

  DAY SEVEN

  “Do you, Professional Hari Khapur Michaelson, take this woman, Professional Shanna Theresa Leighton, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, to love, honor, and cherish forever, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to cleave to her only all the days of your life, until death alone doth part you?”

  “I do.”

  1

  THE THUNDERSTORM BATTERED Ankhana from midnight until an hour before dawn, breaking windows and cracking doors, peeling roof tiles off houses like a fisherman scaling a trout, kicking over trees like an angry child stomping through his mother’s garden.

  The blinding downpour drove the mobs shivering to shelter; the streets belonged to the army. Between the smothering rain and the military bucket brigades, the fires were soon brought under control.

  The riots, though, weren’t over: this was only a pause, a hitch in the breath between inhale and shout. All over Old Town, every sheltered spot was filled with North Bankers caught in last dusk’s initial chaos. Men and women, primals and stonebenders, ogrillos and trolls huddled in shattered storefronts or stretched out beneath overhanging eaves. Plenty of whiskey was still to be found: jugs passed hand to hand among drowsy folk who waited with a sort of sullen excitement for the end of the rain.

  The army and the Constabulary were still too busy fighting fires and their own internal dissensions to engage in street sweeps and mass arrests; everyone knew that more trouble lay ahead.

  Runners from the Imperial Messenger-News had braved the storm to summon every one of the pages that the IMN employed, hammering on their doors and yanking them from beds in the middle of the night. By the time the storm ended, they were all assembled and had received their instructions. When the first rosy glow pinked the summits of the eastern mountains, they streamed forth to take positions throughout Old Town and many more waited patiently on the ways for the bridges to lower at sunrise.

  When the uppermost spires of the Colhari Palace were kindled by the first rays of the morning sun, bells began to ring all over the city, from the mighty brass clang out of the Temple of Prorithun to the intricate silvery chiming of the Katherisi’s carillon, from the crash of shields struck by swords in the Sanctum of Khryl to the hand bells of the IMN pages. An instant later the bells were joined by all varieties of horns, from simple bugles to the massive three-man bruhti atop Victory Stadium. The skull-splitting cacophony kicked citizens from their beds and drove them to their windows; it shocked dozing rioters scrambling from their improvised bedrolls and brought every soldier to attention.

  The pages roamed the streets, swinging their bells and calling out their news. They did not wait for the coin and the nod that is usually required to get a story: this was an Imperial Announcement and was free to all.

  The Emperor enjoined his citizens and Beloved Children to stay at home and remain calm, to hold fast to their faith in him. This day was declared a holiday; no store would open and no business would be conducted. The streets were ordered to be vacant until midmorning. From midmorning until noon, all who wished could make their way to Victory Stadium on the south bank, where the Radiant Emperor would greet his subjects and allay their fears. All were welcome, all would be safe, and the Emperor would calm every heart and answer every doubt.

  The Subjects of Cant were still out in force, under orders to keep the pressure on. The rain had forced some changes of plan. The fires that began now started from within the still-damp buildings—from their dry interiors—and there were, perhaps, not quite so many. Nonetheless, a pall of grey-black smoke soon struggled with the lingering clouds above.

  The army also took advantage of the curfew, reasoning that all honest folk would obey the Emperor’s order and stay indoors: all the troops that could be spared from fire fighting were organized into small units of ten to fifteen, and they roamed the streets at random in search of looters. Some were arrested; many more were surrounded and beaten to death.

  The army took some losses as well, though; the looters began organizing into larger bands for self-protection, and many of these bands were well armed, especially in Alientown. There was longstanding, almost traditional bad blood between the humanoids and the authorities there. Much of that bad blood soon flowed through the gutters.

  And a new story was on the street this morning, a fresh rumor about the Aktiri that afflicted the Empire. It spread from rioters to bartenders, from stevedores to carters, and it was muttered, whispered, and argued over wherever a knot of citizens might gather: The tale was of a magickal net whose merest touch would slay the most evil Aktir and send it screaming back to the hell from whence it came.

  Also, in the new light of dawn:

  A Grey Cat, lounging at the far end of a long upstairs hall, saw a folded slip of parchment lying on the floor in front of the door he’d been set there to guard.

  In a cautiously neutral-ground room filled with the accouterments of the most luxurious bedchamber imaginable, Majesty and Kierendal gazed upon each other. The dawn light sparkled like lust in Kierendal’s eyes; Majesty’s smile had the sleepy satisfaction of a well-fed lion’s.

  Berne reclined in the palace bedchamber he maintained and watched his twin nude valets. The brother and sister—both still musky with the sweat of sex and marked with bloody stripes left by the switch with which Berne still toyed—brushed his slashed-velvet tunic, making fearful glances back over their shoulders to be sure of his approval. He watched closely for the slightest flaw. The tunic must be perfect before he would set them to shine his boots: today would be a formal occasion, and he intended to look his best.

  Ma’elKoth stood alone in the Lesser Ballroom and stared up at the Great Work. The room was silent around him; no clay boiled in the cauldron nor coals glowed beneath it. He had no leisure for art this day. He squinted at the emerging structure of the face that he’d built there, seeing something new in it, something he’d never intended—seeing one of those artful accidents that give great works their life.

  It was to have been a model of his own f
ace, but now, as he looked at it, he realized that without altering the existing structure one whit, a mere change of intent could make the Great Work into the face of Caine.

  2

  TOA-SYTELL RUBBED HIS gritty eyes and snuffed the lamp at his elbow. The window at his back in the scriptorium of the Monastic Embassy had an eastern exposure, and the rising sun was vastly easier on his eyes than the lamp had been. He grimly tried to bring the tiny letters on the page before him into clear focus.

  He shook his head, surrendering. He rose and stretched, and his spine popped in a wave from his neck to his waist. He sighed and crossed his arms to rub his aching shoulders. He’d been at this all night and still had more questions than answers.

  He’d gone to the embassy directly after Caine’s arranged escape. He’d had some difficulty getting in; the embassy was designed and built to be a fortress in the middle of the city, and it was buttoned up tight against the riots. But eventually, his calm-voiced reasonableness got him not only inside, but into the presence of the Acting Ambassador. This man he recognized: the Acting Ambassador was the grim-voiced older friar who’d been present at Caine’s arrest and the murder of the previous Ambassador. The Acting Ambassador had become deeply thoughtful when presented with Toa-Sytell’s request.

  “Our records are our own,” he’d said slowly. “But here there are some special circumstances. The matter of Caine has been brought before the Monastic Council, but it is too early for a decision. It is possible that his death will be ordered; it is nearly certain that he will be cast out from Brotherhood, if not actually outlawed. I think that perhaps I may be forgiven for opening his record to unsworn eyes.”

  “You have them? You have them here?” Toa-Sytell had asked, surprised. “I’d thought we’d be forced to send for them to, to, er . . .”