“Early? The fight is in four hours, the streets are already full of people — everyone is going to the Arena! You think everyone is gonna get in, dumbass? Come on, let’s go!”
There were many groups like the one Weasel was in, and they were scattered all throughout the capital. One of the hounds reinforced each of them. It was all drawn up the day before, as soon as the emperor was escorted out of the cave The old man Law took him right to the palace, then came back excited and struck everyone dumb.
“‘e invited me to the palace! Said it was late, dangerous at night and that, said I could sup and sleep in the palace! Sacred Mother, holy cripes! Me! In the palace!”
“You didn’t say yes, I guess,” someone’s laughing voice said.
“‘Course not,” the old man said, offended. “Here I am standin’ ‘ere, in front o’ ya!”
“Idiot!” the same man answered.
Narrowing their eyes, the people left the cave in pairs and wandered down different paths to eventually meld into the human stream and enter the city. Weasel’s partner was Ramo, a slow fodder thief who recently made his way to the capital from some ramshackle village.
“So they sayin’ true that you and Hector are close like?” he asked.
“We were,” Kane condescended to answer. “He and my pa went to war together. But now, ya know how it is... Different paths.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Ramo agreed. “He’s a Jamalayan tiger, we’re ferrets. And the wolf ain’t no sheep-friend! You’re like a fifth wheel to a dog for ‘im now!”
Having released this snippet of his own folk wisdom on the world, Ramo’s mental reserves were exhausted and he was silent for most of the journey to the city gates, save for wheezing and snorting, until another question finally occurred to him.
“What’s gonna happen, eh?”
“Ignatius and the emperor gonna fight,” Weasel muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. “That’s what.”
“Naw, I know that,” Ramo said, stretching out his syllables. “But I’m sayin’, all this ain’t no accident. When we ever seen the emperor fightin’ in person like, just for fun, for us dirty common folk? He gone crazy or what? Listen, listen...” Ramo suddenly got worked up, stopped and grabbed Weasel by the arm. “Listen, what if he’s gone west?”
“Uh, what do you mean..?”
“Y’know, gone west. His mind’s gone. Got a screw loose. Eh? What d’ya reckon? And ‘Natius agreed for some reason... Damn, this ain’t no accident! Must be Two-horns putting the Sour up to this!”
The Sour was the people’s title for the emperor. Weasel realized that Ramo had been absent from the previous night’s performance, but he had no plans to explain matters to the village boy. They melded into the crowd.
Like a swarm of hornets, the crowd buzzed in the streets. Weasel felt himself part of the stream, found himself enmeshed in this tar-thick mass, surrendering to the flow of the walkers around him. Among them he saw dirty and ragged beggars from the outskirts and suburbs, clean-shaven tattooed craftsmen from the workshops... And some madman in a torn black cloak bearing the symbol of Two-horns hung from a street lamp and shouted of the coming end of the world and the awakening of the Sleeping Gods in comparison to whom Two-horns himself was nothing more than a peon.
The crowd soon stopped. The people continued to pile in from behind. Weasel and Ramo had to deal out some punches to some of the less patient types. We ain’t gettin’ in by nightfall if this goes on, Weasel thought.
“What’s goin’ on there?” he shouted. “Why we stopped?”
“The palace guys’re comin’!” someone shouted from up ahead. “They closed the street!”
At that moment, someone threw a cobblestone at the prophet of Two-horns. He fell, caught his cloak on the lantern and hung there, helplessly waving his arms and legs. The crowd roared and writhed with laughter.
Eventually they started moving again. Frenzied and impatient with youth, Weasel surged forward, elbowing away and knocking down the snail-paced people ahead of him. Ramo hurled out abuse, kicking and clouting people left and right. It helped, but not much.
Nonetheless, soon they managed to squeeze into a familiar alleyway where they had a little more freedom. Their pace quickened; they knew these twisted alleyways by heart. Soon they merged again with the procession, this time at its head as it moved into the arena.
It was oval-shaped, and you could get inside through one of many arches all around its edge, apart from one — the Imperial Arch of Unity, built by the first emperor Ma Ju Ro, the founder of the dynasty. That was where the stand for the best people of the Empire stood, divided from the other stands by deep pits with sharpened stakes at the bottom. There were soft benches there for the imperial family, the advisors, the numerous courtiers and courtesans, the upper aristocracy, the Reyks and the barons staying in the capital.
Uncle Hector must be there already, Weasel thought, walking past the Arch of Unity. According to Ignatius’s plan, their group was to station itself in the narrow stand above the Gates of Death, where the disfigured bodies of the deadly wounded and slaughtered gladiators were carted out.
“Hands to yourself! Now!” he commanded Ramo, noticing the village boy’s hand stretching toward a spectator’s pocket.
“Huh, why..?” he began to argue, but withdrew his hand.
Not realizing how lucky he’d gotten, the nearly-robbed self-important merchant clapped his chubby palm on the backside of a matron in front of him. She gave a shrill laugh, turned and shot the merchant a promising and playful smile.
Sitting down, Weasel started looking around in boredom, searching for familiar faces. Shket and his crew were sitting a few rows down. He was the underage leader of a street gang. A little further along, hiding his face in his hood, blind Uritim was banging his cane around; one of the senior members of the Beggar’s Guild. The western stand of the nobility was still almost empty, but steadily filling up.
“Oh-ho!” Ramo said, clapping and rubbing his hands together. “Grub! Hey! Come ‘ere!” he shouted at a marketwoman with a basket.
She nodded with a smile and elbowed her way to the men. A breathtaking smell emanated from the basket. Weasel’s stomach began to rumble; he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
“What ya got there?” Ramo asked, inhaling the aroma.
“Fried fish for two coppers, crabcakes or baked cassava for a copper.”
“Crab, eh? If it turns out to be rat, you know where I’ll shove those cakes?”
“My cakes are good!” the tradeswoman frowned, an older woman with a face covered in bright makeup. “Me husband catches the critters, I cook ‘em! Ya don’t like it, go sup with Two-horns!”
“Woah there,” Ramo chuckled.
“Gimme one of each,” Weasel said. “Anythin’ to drink?”
“Mash beer.”
“Pour me some of that piss,” Ramo said happily. “This is the life!”
While they ate and drank, the Arena filled up with people. The advisors had arrived, along with courtiers, Reyks and their dolled-up wives and lovers. Only the emperor’s seat remained empty. Weasel saw that giggly girl by the name of Kora in the seat next to the emperor’s, the one he’d met in the palace; word had it she was Ma Ju Ro’s new favorite. They’d exchanged a few words then, and something about her made his heart beat faster.
Suddenly everyone fell silent. A familiar figure walked out confidently from the gates opposite the Gates of Death. The emperor!
The excited whispers and cries abated in vague expectation. All the eyes in the Arena were fixed on him. Ma Ju Ro stopped in the center and slowly looked around as if trying to look into every face. Clapping broke the dead and strained silence, at first weak and scattered, then stronger, echoing throughout the Arena.
The emperor raised his arm and the applause cut off instantly. Weasel even felt as if he’d gone deaf.
“Brothers and sisters!” Ma Ju Ro said, his booming voice echoing throughout the Arena. “Today you have gathered here to see me fight Ignatius,
former gladiator, champion of the Arena and leader of the criminal world...”
“You hear that?” Ramo grinned like a cat and elbowed Weasel. “We’re the emperor’s brothers!”
“We will fight...” the emperor continued.
“And you’ll die!” someone from the stands interrupted him. Weasel’s gaze sought and found the heckler. One of Ignatius’s hounds.
“Perhaps I will,” the emperor replied coolly. “In any case, this will be a fight for the Empire. Ignatius is in league with my cousin Rezsinius, and if he is victorious, then you will have a new ruler.”
“Better him than you!” the same man shouted.
“No, not better!” Ma Ju Ro raised his voice, although it seemed it couldn’t get any louder. “Because I am more than an emperor. I am more than a man! And now I will declare it openly to all! The Sacred Mother came to me and showed me the way! With her aid, the Empire will be great again! With her blessing, I will make our citizens’ lives better! Free medicine! Free education for talented children! Peaceful and safe roads and cities..!”
Weasel thought Ma Ju Ro was overdoing it. An unremitting fool could see that all his words were empty, and the emperor was saying them to fool an already fooled people even further. He only half-listened to the rest of the emperor’s rousing speech, surprised somewhat that the majority of the spectators were listening to the emperor’s promises with fascination.
But the last words the emperor said suddenly stirred something not only in the stands, but in Weasel himself.
“Rezsinius wants to break up the country! I want to unite it! Now, before my fight with Ignatius, I will prove that the Sacred Mother is on my side. Any cripple or sick person may descend to me now from the stands, and I will heal them!”
The emperor fell silent. In the resulting silence, the stunned audience suddenly heard a voice:
“Hey, y’majesty! I’m Finn, I ain’t walked since I was born! Everyone knows me, I ain’t no sham! Want me to come down, eh?” The shouter laughed mockingly.
“Go on, Finn! Call the Sour’s bluff!” the people laughed. “We know ya!”
Everyone knew Finn. The leader of the Beggar’s Guild, whom every citizen met at least once in their life, was something of a respected figure and would have been able to live in the upper crust of the capital in a fine manor if it weren’t for his strict ideas about what a beggar could and couldn’t have. If you call yourself poor, you have to be it. He donated his money for the good of cripples like him.
“Of course, Finn!” the emperor managed to shout above the noise of the stands. “Come down!”
The cripple crawled agilely on his powerful arms toward the stairs leading to one of the few metal doors to the Arena’s fighting ground. It was surrounded by a twenty-foot tall fence and a pit.
Accompanied by the crowd’s sarcastic commentary, Finn crawled across the bridge over the ditch onto the Arena’s sands, then to Ma Ju Ro, leaving a trail behind him from his dragging legs. He sat down and stared at the emperor. He turned back to the crowd and shouted:
“His majesty is real! Just like... in the paintings!”
The crowd laughed, then fell silent in expectation of a rare spectacle. Weasel even rose up slightly to get a better view.
The emperor placed his hands on Finn’s shoulders and froze, staring into space. The cripple went limp, but the emperor held him up. A minute, two, three... Weasel could hear Ramo breathing, his eyes wide like a child’s, his mouth agape in expectation of a miracle. Finally, the emperor jumped back and the beggar started to fall, but at the last moment he caught himself with his hand and froze.
A voice from the stands impatiently cried out. “What’s ‘appening, Finn?”
Finn was listening closely to the emperor’s voice as he spoke quietly. Then he nodded. Then his foot moved. Then the other one. After that, he lifted his legs and tried to stand. He nearly fell, but Ma Ju Ro held him up again. Then something even more surprising happened! The former cripple embraced the emperor, dropped his head onto his shoulder and burst into tears! In the growing noise, as the emperor held him, he raised his head and lifted his arm.
“A miracle!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “In the name of the Sacred Mother, a true miracle! People! I feel my legs! I can walk!”
All hell broke loose! The crowd came alive. The people went ballistic, crazed, shouting that they too were sick and in need of healing. Some tried to break through onto the sands, but the guards slammed the doors shut. A stampede formed...
“Make way for the blind!” Uritimu shouted, waving his cane.
True, he was going the wrong way and had nobody to direct him.
A large woman broke into the fore, carving a path with her prodigious bosom. “I’m barren! Heal me, your majesty!”
I’m deaf in one ear!” Ramo added to the general clamor, but Weasel held him back.
The emperor’s sonorous voice boomed out over the Arena. “People of the Empire! Silence! Return to your seats at once!”
That brought the people to their senses. The afflicted unwillingly returned to their places, reining in their thirst for a miracle cure. Finn returned to the stands. A crowd immediately surrounded him and drowned him in questions. His legs were still weak, but he could stand with support.
“As of tomorrow! At the free imperial clinic! We will be accepting patients!” Ma Ju Ro said, brokenly as the thoughts came to him. “I will handle the incurable and the terminal myself! And now — that for which you have come!”
After this miracle, the arrival of Ignatius received a more than cold reception. It occurred to Weasel that at least the cripples would now be fans of the emperor.
The former gladiator, clad in armor with the purple cloak of a champion on top, raised his hand to greet the onlookers. The stands hummed, and Weasel didn’t know if it was from the healing of Finn or the accusation that Ignatius was in league with Rezsinius.
“Greetings, respected people of the capital!” Ignatius roared and drew his sword. “Thank you for coming to support me in this duel with the usurper!”
Some of the assembly buzzed, some started to chant the boss’s name, but the majority watched the events on the Arena’s sands silently. The emperor crossed his arms on his chest and waited for Ignatius to enter the circle. The boss was in no hurry. He drank in the almost forgotten attention of many thousands of eyes.
The gong sounded. Ignatius walked into the circle and spat. The gong sounded again and Ignatius stood in his battle stance. Only then did Weasel realize that Ma Ju Ro was standing unarmed, just like the previous night. He wasn’t even wearing armor, unless the Sacred Mother had endowed her chosen one with invisible defenses. Kane was no longer sure of anything.
The gong sounded a third time to signal the start of the fight, and the ringing echo resounded through the stands. The enemies moved toward each other. Ignatius crouched, his round shield extended before him, his sword held over his head. Ma Ju Ro walked with the heavy pace of a fat slob. The sight was so unusual that some people laughed hysterically.
Once he was less than twenty paces from his foe, Ignatius rushed forward, bellowing a dreadful battle cry. Running to the emperor, Ignatius dealt a crushing blow. Ma Ju Ro blocked it with his hand, but against all expectations, he didn’t lose it; on the contrary, he grabbed the sword and pulled it from the former gladiator’s grasp. With fingers extended, he thrust his hand beneath the shield, piercing Ignatius right through.
The onlookers’ breath caught, and all heard the bubble of blood spitting from the mouth of Ignatius the Furious. The emperor pulled out his hand and raised it high, squeezing the heart of his enemy. Ignatius fell to the sand, convulsed and stilled.
In the sepulchral silence that followed, Weasel heard Ramo’s voice.
“Holy Mother. What now..?”
Weasel closed his mouth, gulped and answered.
“We got a new boss now, Ramo. We got a new boss.”
Chapter 42. Ambassador of the North
THE
COUNCIL HALL had had a dark reputation since the palace was built. After the triumphant arrival of the first emperor’s family, an advisor’s head was found underneath the set table.
A month later, during a meeting, a second advisor whose name history has forgotten fought with a third by the name of Panchen, and once all intellectual arguments were exhausted, he resorted to a physical one. This turned out to be a dagger which he inserted into Panchen’s eye. The emperor quartered the unnamed killer, but kept the knife as a reminder of the danger of allowing weapons within the council walls.
It didn’t help much. The advisors of the second emperor, Kiloug the Defender, were poisoned to a man, including the fourth advisor, of the Cross family. They said it was the work of Kiloug’s spouse, offended by a lack of respect toward her (it seems the statesmen didn’t let her take part in the council sessions).
Blood of Fate Page 31
