“I’m glad you recognize that,” said Lodi. “He is easy to despise but he made it to the top of the dung pile here so he cannot be a complete imbecile. His wrath is to be feared.”
“I agree. And our true objective is sure to leak out, too. But we should be good for two more days. He thinks he bested me in the negotiations. To be safe, I suggest we dump the iron when we’re at sea. We’ll need the room in the hold when we pick up the troops from Istana Kush—that is, if they don’t mind sleeping in the slave decks. I hear these Dokra companies are rather touchy about their honor, in fact, extremely precious about it—for bought-and-paid-for mercenaries. Although they are reputedly the best on the market.”
“They’ll do as they are damned well told,” said Lodi. “Or I’ll dump them over the side, too. Soldiers—pah!—far too choosy these days about where they lay their lubberly heads.”
“We need them, Cyrus. The plan comes to nothing without the Dokra. They should be well content, at least, with their pay. It is lavish by any standards. Who offers gold for swords these days? An hour ago I was discussing the opposite exchange.”
Captain Lodi said nothing. He scowled at the teak deck between his broad boots.
“Two days, then,” said Farhan.
“Two days,” said Lodi. “But no more gambling. You cannot afford to make a mess of this mission. The Amrit Shakti will never forgive you if this goes all to cock. Neither will I.”
CHAPTER 4
Katerina slid a linen shift over her head and shoulders, covering her naked body. She glanced once at the corpse of the big man lying in her marriage bed, and admired the blue-black of his glossy hair and the contrast with the trickle of scarlet upon the white silk pillow. It was a shameful waste of a handsome male, she thought, but it had to be done. And now it was. She walked over to the pair of big window shutters at the far end of the room. They were in the old Indujah style and reached from the floor almost to the ceiling. She threw them open and looked out onto the courtyard beyond. It was a dry, chilly night, with a quarter moon high above the palace wall on the far side and, as far as she could make out, the courtyard was empty. The palace was silent. The revels had continued for an hour or so after the happy couple had retired for the night and then, no doubt at the urging of the stewards, the guests had tiptoed away into the night or composed themselves for slumber.
She reached into the leather valise in the corner of the room where she kept her washing things and pulled out a coil of thin but very strong silk rope attached to an iron hook. Stepping over the low sill of the Indujah window, she walked calmly across the empty courtyard and across to the wall that marked the palace boundary. Beyond its twenty-foot height sprawled the dense network of filthy, narrow streets that made up the city of Ashjavat, the metropolis that gave its name to the whole of this wide Southron principality.
Her principality now.
She whirled the iron hook once, twice, and hurled it upward. It hit the top of the wall and clattered down again, landing with a thud at her feet. The noise alarmed her. She paused for a second, listening. But nothing broke the stillness of the courtyard. She tried again, giving herself more of the silken rope to swing, and this time the hook caught the lip of bricks at the top of the wall. She tugged once, and finding the hook secure, she left the rope hanging in the chill air and went back to her chamber, stepping back over the sill and making sure to only half close the pair of shutters behind her. She sat down on the bed, drawing an ice-bear fur around her shoulders—suddenly she felt very cold. Then, glancing again at the corpse, she hissed through her teeth with frustration.
A mistake, she thought. A bad one, too. But it could be rectified.
She shrugged off the white fur, and went over to the corpse. The jeweled handle of the ceremonial knife was still sticking out from the dead man’s temple. She tugged the little weapon loose—with a surprising amount of difficulty. It was as if the prince’s skull did not wish to give up its prize. Then she went to the water closet, where she washed the gore from its shiny length. She dried the blade, replaced the dagger in its sheath on the silver belt, and sat back down again on the bed, drawing the bearskin up over her shoulders once more.
It was, she judged, about an hour or two before dawn. There was no reason to wake the palace this early—the servants had all worked very hard to give her a perfect wedding; they surely deserved a little more time in their cozy beds. Gods knew there would be mayhem enough for everyone when the world did finally awaken.
It was, she realized, the first time she had been totally alone in weeks—she did not count the cooling corpse of her husband as company—in months, actually, and she relished the feeling of freedom. She settled the white bearskin more comfortably around her shoulders and gave herself to her thoughts. What would Papa be doing now? she wondered. Was he still alive, even? The Emperor had still been living, just, though clearly sinking fast, when he had summoned her to the Imperial Palace and told her that she must marry this large, rich, Southron princeling. But that had not been the worst shock she had received that short snowy November day, exactly two weeks and two days ago . . .
* * *
• • •
The runners of the sleigh hissed in the snow, and Katerina looked out of the fogged-glass window and glowered at the indistinct shapes of the peasants who lined the road to pay their respects as a Princess of the Blood passed them by. It was her time of the month and she felt clammy and puffy and her temper was short. Indeed, she had ordered her maid, Ilana, to be whipped for being clumsy while fixing her hair that very morning. The Cossack guards had tied her up to the post in the parade ground and flogged her until the blood puddled in the snow, and Katerina had watched every stroke of the long, leather knouts from her bedroom window. After that savage punishment, Ilana would be no good for work for a month, Katerina knew, and that cack-handed slut Sara would have to do her duties. She must learn to control herself, Katerina thought. Her maid’s incapacity would be most inconvenient.
The princess wiped the glass with her scarf end and waved languidly with a silk-gloved hand at the vacant, doughy peasant faces that flashed past her window. And when they had passed through whatever one-mule town that had been, and were back in the clean white expanse of the snowfield, she rummaged in her furs for a slim flask of marak and took a frugal sip. Not too much; it would not do to greet Papa drunk. No, just a sip to make the cramps in her belly more bearable. An hour later they stopped the sleigh to change the horses and Katerina stepped down from the stale but warm interior and into the frigid blast of winter. She raised an eyebrow at the Niho knight who was seated on the roof of the sleigh, muffled in furs and black-lacquered armor with only his flat black eyes showing below his helmet rim. The man immediately understood her query and lifted an arm and pointed to a building constructed of pine logs, which was gently steaming in the frosted air.
As Katerina relieved herself in the fetid stink of the latrine hut, lifting her skirts and straddling the log-lined pit to piss into its mist-wreathed depths, she thought about the meeting with the Emperor that would come at the end of her journey. The summons had been unexpected, unusually brusque in its tone and delivered by a captain of the 5th Imperial Cossack Regiment, who had arrived with a troop of twenty riders, delivered the crisp note with the Imperial seal and departed within the hour. There had been no need to wait for a reply. When the Emperor of Khev himself summoned you, you could not refuse.
The summons was unusual, too, in that, at this time of year, when the ground was ice-locked, few people were put to the inconvenience of travel, even by the Emperor. He had adopted one of the customs of the new religion some years ago and would summon his extended family to the palace for the Feast of the Martyr’s Nativity, on the day that had once been celebrated as the midwinter solstice, and all twenty-odd cousins, uncles and aunts—none holding a rank below Grand Duke or Duchess—would roost there in gloomy, drink-sodden splendor for all twelve days of
the celebration, gossiping, complaining, arguing, plotting, playing the tedious and never-ending games of power. For the rest of the long, snowbound winter, the Imperial family lived in happy seclusion in their own lavish private palaces, scattered in a hundred-mile arc around the Imperial city of Khev.
That city seemed utterly deserted as Katerina’s sleigh rushed up the grand boulevard toward the Imperial Palace and slewed to a halt outside the vast, ironbound gates. The air had grown colder still and driven all the inhabitants of Khev indoors. And it was indeed a shock as Katerina stepped down, out of the brazier-heated interior of the sleigh, and her boots crunched into the snow. She stumbled slightly and, in that instant, a black-clad form had leaped down from the roof of the sleigh, landed like a cat beside her and was offering a steel-bar arm for her to clutch.
The Niho knight—his name was Yoritomo, Katerina recalled, and he was captain of her twelve-strong detachment of bodyguards— did not seem to notice the cold, despite having sat on the roof of the sleigh for the past four hours as it sped through the snowscape. She had read somewhere that because of their harsh, mountainous homeland the Niho knights’ blood was different from ordinary men’s—a thicker, more viscous, purplish fluid—and that they could deal with extremes of temperature far better as a result. Whether this was true or not, Katerina did not know. But the middle-aged man in black-lacquered armor beside her, now offering her his arm, seemed entirely unperturbed by the frigid air that was now, after only a few moments outside, making her own uncovered nose tingle painfully. His near-black eyes looked at her impassively from under the broad rim of his black helmet. And while Katerina’s breath was pluming like dragon’s smoke before her face, Captain Yoritomo seemed not to be breathing at all.
The Niho knight marched beside her, by her right elbow, like an equal, as Katerina entered the palace and made her way through a massive hall and toward the audience chamber. The knight’s right hand was tightly gripped around the hilt of a long, slightly curved sword, which was stuffed through the sash bound around the armor at his waist, and Katerina knew that he could draw and strike down an enemy faster than the blink of an eye, if she were threatened. She had seen him do it. Two years ago, a raggedy Martyrite madman had once shouted obscenities about fire and death and lunged at her in the marketplace and Yoritomo had cut the wretched fellow almost in half before she knew what was happening. That knowledge gave her courage as she swept through the opening double doors and marched into the audience chamber toward the high dais, where a figure in Imperial blue and gold sat beneath a vast canopy.
“Princess Katerina Kasimirovitch Astrokova,” intoned a servant beside the huge double doors, and Katerina dipped her knee and bowed her head before the Imperial throne.
“Daughter,” said a rich, slow, well-modulated voice, a voice like the slide of warm honey, “come closer. Come nearer to me.”
Katerina was aware that the Niho knight had melted away to her right and that she was moving, almost unconsciously, toward the dais. From the corner of her eye she could see the massed ranks of Khevan courtiers and the envoys from a dozen lands: strapping bearded boyars, huge-bellied in leather and fur; tall, pale, flame-haired Franks from the western lands; neat Han lords with their smooth, round faces; merchants from the Indujah Federation, all flashing dark eyes and easy smiles, with an outrageous compliment ever on their lips.
She took a step up toward the Emperor, and for the first time risked a direct glance at her father’s face. The shock of it nearly made her falter, but she forced herself to put one foot before the next and sank to her knees at the top of the steps. She gazed at her father, wrapped in a thick, blue, cotton-stuffed silk gown embroidered with golden eagles, and wearing a capacious blue-velvet cap pulled down over his ears, with a golden lightning-bolt pin stabbed into the front of the cloth above his speckled eyebrows. It was the face beneath the cap that made Katerina draw a sharp breath. It was gaunt, the big square jaw and sharp cheekbones pushing through the tight white skin, and had sunk in on itself. The teeth were splayed and prominent. The eyes, softly brown as old leather, seemed huge, bulging even, and the irises were ringed with the gray bands of age.
The Emperor pushed forward a wrinkled, liver-spotted hand, and Katerina seized it quickly in both of hers and bestowed a dry kiss on the papery skin.
She had not seen her father since the summer and the change in him, his palpable weakness now, the obvious proximity of death, was a reproach. He had been full of life then, dominant, virile, laughing—now his very stare was a self-pitying complaint about the inevitable mortality of all mankind, even the most high of that doomed race.
“Are you well, my dear?” the Emperor said quietly.
“I am, Father,” she said. And did not dare to ask the same of him.
He smiled at her then. “I worry about you, Katerina. I hope you know that,” he said. “And I only want—all I have ever wanted is—is what is best for you.”
“I know it, Father. I worry about you, too.”
“There is no need to worry about me—my future is plainly written,” he said with a smile. “There are no surprises in store for me. But your life lies ahead of you—a long and happy one, I hope and pray. But I must think not only of you but also of the fate of the Empire when I am gone. It is the burden of our rank, my dear: we do not have the luxury of thinking only of ourselves, of our own comfort and happiness. There are duties that come with our privileges. You understand that, I think.”
Katerina felt her heart sink. Whatever was to come next—it would be bad. Her father was trying in his own clumsy way to soften the blow. She was his only daughter; there were no longer any sons to carry on his name. And she thought, with a hollow stomach, that she might have an inkling of what the old man had in his mind . . .
The Emperor made a beckoning gesture with his right hand. And Katerina half turned and saw a tall young man, a year older than her, with very long yellow hair, broad-shouldered, slim, straight as a lance, walking toward the throne. She knew him well. She had grown up with him, in fact: it was her cousin Vladimir, her aunt Oksana’s eldest son. A prick. An arrogant prick who made a great show of his devotion to the Holy Martyr. He had tried to kiss her the summer before last, when she had visited her father, and the boy had been astounded, then angry, when she had slapped his face. He’d tried to grab her then, using his superior strength. And she’d dipped her shoulder, as she had been taught by her retired Cossack defense instructor, and punched him in the groin to teach him some better manners.
They had not spoken since.
“You know Archduke Vladimir Barezhnikov, of course, my sister’s boy.”
Katerina allowed that she did. She was staring at his face, and he was smiling horribly at her. He knows, she thought. He knows what fate the Emperor has in store for me. She knew it, too, then. But the white noise buzzing in her head made it impossible to think or even hear. Her father was talking but she could only see his lips moving. She shook her head to clear it.
“. . . and there is the Imperial Army to think of, my dear. The Emperor is commander in chief of all the regiments, as you know. Even the wildest, hairiest Cossack trooper must swear a personal oath of loyalty to him. The Emperor must command the respect not just of the boyars—and they can prove troublesome enough—but also of the whole Army and its entire officer corps; otherwise, he wouldn’t survive a month. That is where the true power lies, with the Cossacks and Army; so you see, my dear, it really must be a man on the Ice-Bear Throne if the Empire is to survive into the new age. But you will be well provided for, have no fear. The Ministry has found a splendid match for you, a handsome young Southron fellow, very rich . . .” He gestured to a flunky, who leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “Yes, yes, of course, he is the Prince Khazeki of Ashjavat. And you will take all your people with you, of course, maids, servants, guards and so on. You will lack for nothing, my dear, I promise you, for the rest of your life. I only want for yo
u to be happy . . .”
* * *
• • •
Seated on the bed, with the cooling corpse of her very rich Southron husband by her side, Katerina still felt the embers of rage in her heart glow and pulse as she recalled the satisfied look Vladimir had given her when she had been dismissed by her father. Had that long-haired turd yet placed his skinny arse on the Ice-Bear Throne? Surely not. She would have heard, even down here, more than a thousand miles from the Imperial city. The news of the death of one Khevan Emperor and the accession of another would certainly have flown to the four corners of the world in a matter of days.
She told herself that the succession was entirely within the gift of the Emperor—he might choose anyone of royal blood, even the meanest, raggedy-cloaked count, if such was his whim. There were no fixed laws about the transmission of power. The Emperor was perfectly entitled to choose Vladimir. Indeed, perhaps it was a wise choice . . .
But another voice in her head drowned out these sensible words. He is my father and I should inherit his mantle. I am his closest living blood. There is no good reason to overlook me. None, save my sex. None, save the absence of a prick between my legs. If he thinks I am weak, he is wrong. I will show him differently. I will show my father, I will show Vladimir the Usurper, I will show the whole world that I am a true daughter of the Ice-Bear.
Katerina looked out of the partially opened shutters, and saw that the first pink light of dawn was suffusing the courtyard outside. It was time.
She slipped off the heavy bearskin, glanced quickly at the corpse, threw back her chin, opened her mouth and screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
CHAPTER 5
Gates of Stone Page 5
