The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  Gerrold appeared at the door to the room. “Something’s going on in the harbor, Master Borund.”

  Borund grunted. “Yes, I see. Send Gart to see if he can find out what’s happening. Quickly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gerrold left, and Borund shifted forward, his stance going rigid, a dark frown touching his eyes, his mouth. “What . . . ?” he began, but didn’t continue.

  The Mistress’ sleek ships began to slow, drawing up alongside the mouth of the bay. They began a slow pattern, weaving back and forth across the opening of the harbor. The merchant ship made slow progress forward, but when it got close to the line, one of the sleek ships broke from the formation and approached. The ships were too distant to see anything more than blurred movement on the decks. But there was movement, even as the merchant ship slowed to a halt, sails going slack.

  Borund sucked in a breath, held it.

  “What is it?” William barked.

  Borund didn’t respond, simply shook his head.

  On the water, the sleek ship backed away and the merchant ship began to move again. But the sails didn’t go back up in the same configuration.

  The merchant ship began to turn, and Borund let his held breath out forcefully, as if someone had punched him in the gut.

  Behind, I heard someone tearing up the stairs and down the hallway. The door burst open and Gart skidded to a halt just inside.

  “The Mistress . . . has closed . . . the harbor,” he gasped, eyes wide in shock, fear, and a child’s uncontrolled excitement.

  * * *

  The gates to the palace were thronged by the time Borund and I made it up through the two outer wards. Most of the men yelling at the palace guardsmen lined up in front of the closed and barricaded doors were lesser merchants and representatives from the ships—both local and foreign—that were now locked inside the harbor, all with a sick desperation on their faces. Beneath the river, the mob was a nauseating churn of anger moving in strange, unpredictable eddies that tasted of salt and smelled of sweat. Tensions were so high I had edged in as close to Borund as I could get without touching him, leaving myself barely enough room to wield my dagger if necessary. He stayed back from the main crush of bodies, but even so I was jostled into his back once or twice.

  Borund swore under his breath after scanning the mob, then thankfully turned and edged away from the gates. “We’ll never get into the palace. Captain Baill must have shut the gates before he issued the orders to close the harbor, and this crowd isn’t likely to disperse any time soon. Damn! I need to know what’s going on!”

  I continued to scan the crowd, shoulders tense, uncertain whether I should make any suggestions. That was William’s job.

  I caught Borund’s eye, saw the stress around the edges of his face, the darkness from lack of sleep. The exhaustion was clear. I suddenly wondered how often he had gone in to watch William sleep late at night, as I had.

  I drew breath to suggest we go to the guild hall, but someone stepped up to Borund’s side, someone gray.

  “Master Borund?”

  The boy was short, dressed in ordinary clothes from the docks, with dirty hair and a round, grime-smudged face. His eyes were large and intent and flicked continuously over the crowd.

  Borund frowned as he tried to place the boy. “Yes?”

  “Avrell, the First of the Mistress, would like to see you,” the boy said. “He said to give you this.” He handed over a small chunk of stone, the outlines of an ancient snail embedded in one side, then darted back into the press of bodies near the gates.

  Borund grunted. I recognized the piece of stone from Borund’s office.

  And I suddenly recalled seeing Avrell leaving through the side entrance to Borund’s manse.

  Borund motioned for me to follow.

  The dock boy led us through the edge of the mob, at first heading toward the gates. But before the press became too close, the boy angled away and we passed into a side street of the middle ward running parallel to the wall enclosing the palace. Once we were free of the area in front of the gates, we moved swiftly, the boy motioning us forward while checking to see if we were followed.

  I scanned behind as well but saw no one.

  The boy ducked into a small building set back from the wall that was once a stable. The reek of manure still clung to the musty air inside, but there were no horses. Instead, the building was packed with marked crates, straw poking out through the cracks between the wood.

  Borund gasped as the dock boy led us into a narrow space between the stacked crates. “Capthian red! Crates of it! I haven’t been able to get this since last winter, not a single crate!”

  The narrow path turned, branched once, then opened up into a small niche that barely fit the three of us hunched over. The dock boy motioned us out of the way, then pulled at a chunk of the plank flooring. A section lifted away, cut with a ragged edge so that it couldn’t be seen when set in place.

  The boy motioned us down into the rounded opening below. I could see that it dropped down into a thin tunnel, even though there was no light.

  Borund hesitated, glancing at me for confirmation.

  “It’s safe,” I said. “It drops down to a tunnel. There’s no one down there, and I can see a lantern ready to be lit.”

  Borund nodded and, with a bit of maneuvering, managed to lower himself down into the hole. The dock boy stared at me the entire time.

  “How did you know there was a lantern?” he finally asked. “It’s too dark to see it.”

  I didn’t answer, simply dropped down smoothly after Borund once he moved out of the way. The dock boy followed, handing the lantern to Borund along with an ember box to light it. The ember inside was still glowing hotly.

  The lantern flared just as the dock boy fit the cover to the tunnel back into place. Squeezing past both me and Borund, he took the lantern and said, “Follow me.”

  The tunnel grew narrower at first, until we had to proceed sideways, backs scraping the rough-chiseled wall, then branched to the left and right. We’d followed the left path for twenty paces before I realized the wall to the right was the same eggshell color as the wall of the palace, but darker, not as sun-bleached as the walls above. More tunnels branched off to the left, but we continued forward for another hundred paces before turning away from the palace wall. After two quick rights, we hit stairs leading sharply downward. The twists and turns, darkness and narrow niches, reminded me forcibly of the Dredge.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Borund turned back and murmured in a subdued voice, “We’re passing under the palace walls.”

  After twenty paces, a new set of stairs led up to a door set in the ceiling. The dock boy set the lantern carefully on a shelf, then rapped lightly on the door.

  It lifted open, light pouring down into the mostly darkened tunnel. Blinking away the sudden brightness, I saw a palace guardsman kneeling, holding the door, and standing above him was the First of the Mistress.

  “Welcome to the palace,” he said.

  Then another guard leaned down into the tunnel with an outstretched hand to help pull us up.

  * * *

  “We haven’t needed those passages in years,” the First said, almost to himself.

  We’d moved from the small room where we’d emerged, through a few short corridors lit with wide oil sconces, to a bare room containing wooden chairs and a table with wine and a platter of breads and cheeses. The room was dusty, the walls stained with old soot from torches.

  I sat on my heels in one corner, quietly watching Borund and the First where they stood. The guards had been positioned outside, and the dock boy had split from the group on the way to the room. The only other person I’d seen was a woman robed in white who had brought the food and wine. One of the Mistress’ servants. She’d smiled as she set the platter on the table, but the smile had faded whe
n she turned back to Avrell and gave him a solemn nod before leaving.

  Avrell’s mouth had tightened . . . and then he’d pointedly ignored me.

  “Why is the harbor closed?” Borund asked tersely. “Who ordered it?”

  The First sighed and motioned to a chair. “The Mistress herself ordered it.”

  “What! But why?” Borund shook his head in confusion. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” the First said flatly.

  It took Borund a moment to catch all the implications the First had put into his voice, but when he did, he leaned back into his chair, the wood creaking in the heavy silence.

  “So the rumors are true,” he finally murmured. It wasn’t a question.

  The First nodded. “I wasn’t certain, can’t be certain, even now. The Mistress has been acting erratically since the Fire, but nothing alarming, nothing that couldn’t be explained at the time as rational, if a little odd. But recently . . .” He sighed, his rigid stance sagging slightly. He moved to a chair. “Maintaining the Skewed Throne is not as simple as it would seem. The Mistress has always acted strangely in the past, given orders that made no sense at the time. But later you could always look back and see why the order was given. And none of the previous Mistresses . . . changed while seated on the throne. Not in any significant way.

  “But since the Fire, this Mistress has. Her orders no longer make sense. There is no reason to close the harbor, and no real reason to saturate the city with the palace guard.”

  “So that wasn’t you,” Borund interjected. “Or Baill.”

  Avrell shook his head. “No, that came directly from the Mistress.”

  He paused, as if undecided whether he should say anything more. He watched Borund carefully, and Borund stirred in his seat under his gaze. Then he turned to me.

  I held perfectly still, tried to remain expressionless.

  Avrell considered me a moment more, then straightened and turned back to Borund, as if coming to a decision. “In the past few months, the Mistress’ actions have shifted from simply eccentric to truly bizarre. She ascends to the tower and stares out at the sea at odd hours, even in the dead of night, in the rain, remaining there until one of the servants or the guards is forced to drag her back inside. She roams the halls of the palace, mumbling to herself, laughing, sometimes singing, sometimes growling, often in languages that no one understands. I’ve placed guards at the door to her chambers, to follow her, to make certain she does not harm herself, but somehow she manages to elude them. I ran across her in one of the gardens not two days ago, staring down at the roots of a tree when she was supposed to have been sleeping. She told me the sea was red with blood, the throne was cracked, and that the garden had once been a plaza. I took her back to her rooms, and the guards assured me they had not seen her leave. Nothing like that happened before the Fire passed through the city.”

  Borund had grown increasingly uncomfortable as the First spoke. “Why are you telling me this?”

  The First kept quiet for a moment, then smiled grimly. “Because more is going on than it would seem. If it was the Mistress, and only the Mistress, I believe I could handle the situation myself. But no. There’s too much going on in the city. You told me yourself about the attack in the Broken Mast, and the deaths of the merchants.”

  “Yes.”

  The First nodded. “I heard nothing of it until our meeting a few weeks ago, the night you were attacked in the middle ward and your assistant—William, I believe?—was wounded.”

  Silence, as both Borund and the First watched each other.

  The First stirred. “There is a conspiracy among the merchants, an attempt to seize control of trade within the city at a time when trade, not only here in Amenkor but everywhere on the Frigean coast, is in peril. At first I thought it was something that should be left to the guild to be sorted out. Guild politics in play, if you will. But after speaking to you a few weeks ago at your manse . . .”

  He let the thought fade, but Borund picked up the thread.

  “You think that this conspiracy—I’ve been calling it a consortium—extends into the palace itself.”

  “Consortium,” the First muttered, as if trying out the word for the first time. He smiled. “I like that. But, yes, I think this . . . consortium is much larger than a few merchants, and has connections in the palace. In particular, I think it includes the good captain of the palace guard, Baill.” Avrell’s voice twisted with distaste at the captain’s name.

  Borund’s face darkened as well. Reaching for the glass of wine that had so far gone untouched, he drank, brow creased in thought. The First eased back in his seat and waited.

  After a long moment, Borund glanced in my direction.

  I dove deep beneath the river, shifting the currents toward Borund as I went, then turned toward the First.

  In the swirling gray currents, the First appeared gray.

  As I let the river go, I felt something tug at the currents, heard a vague noise, like the dry rasp of dead leaves blown across stone, like a voice . . . or many voices. But it faded.

  I nodded to Borund, Avrell watching the exchange with interest. He said nothing, but his gaze was intent, much more focused than before.

  I sat back and dipped beneath the river again, but the sound of dead leaves was gone. I shrugged it aside.

  “Charls is dead,” Borund began.

  The First straightened slightly. “So I heard.”

  Borund grunted. “I thought he was the man behind the deaths of the other merchants, and in one respect I was right. He was the one organizing and ordering the deaths. He tried to kill me at the tavern on the wharf, but failed due to Varis’ intervention. I suspected he was behind the deaths of the other merchants after that.”

  Borund paused, and the First glanced toward me. I didn’t react.

  “I see,” he said. And he did see. I could hear it in his voice.

  “Only after the fact did I learn that it wasn’t really Charls giving the orders, that more merchants were involved.”

  “And do you know these merchants?”

  “Yes. But the only one of consequence is Alendor. He controls almost half of the trade in Amenkor himself. If you factor in all of the other merchants I believe he has sway over . . .”

  “He can control the entire city, especially if he feels he has power over the guard.”

  Borund nodded in agreement. “There are only three significant merchants left in the city not under his control: myself, Regin, and Yvan. I had thought that if the three of us allied ourselves together, we could send out what ships remained under our control still in the harbor before the weather changes. Perhaps we could find enough resources, buy enough staples, that the city could survive the winter months. William and I were just beginning to discuss this option when we heard the noise in the harbor.”

  The First grimaced. “By order of the Mistress, the harbor has been closed. Not even Baill expected this. He protested more than I did.”

  Borund leaned forward, placed his hands flat on the table. His face was drawn, his voice so intent it almost shook. “I’ve calculated what stores Regin, Yvan, and I already have here in the city.”

  “And?”

  Borund shook his head. “The city will never survive the winter. There will be famine. At least half the city will starve, and that’s assuming the winter is mild.”

  “And where there is famine, there will also be plague.” The First frowned, looking down at the floor. “What of Alendor’s stores? Would the city survive if we could seize control of what this consortium holds?”

  “I cannot say. Based on what we know they hold, perhaps. But I don’t have access to Alendor’s books. Nor Charls’.”

  Avrell’s frown deepened, his shoulders tensing as he thought. Anger and desperation flowed off him in waves, tightly controlled.


  Borund stood. “We have to get our ships out of the harbor,” he said, voice tight, “or the city will starve.”

  When Avrell glanced up, his eyes were dark. “I believe that Nathem, my Second, and I can deal with the Mistress. Somehow, we will get her to open up the harbor again. But even if we succeed with the Mistress, there is still the consortium. We need their stocks, and if Baill is in league with them, we cannot take them by force. We have to break the consortium itself. Now.”

  Borund nodded grimly. “In my opinion, the best way to do that is to eliminate Alendor.”

  The First’s lips thinned.

  And then they both turned toward me.

  * * *

  On the walk back to the manse, Borund muttered to himself continuously about what would need to be done once Alendor was dead, but I ignored him. I watched the street for threats, but did not see it. Not really.

  I had agreed to kill Alendor. Another hunt, like Charls. Only this one would be worse. Because now I wouldn’t see the man threatening Borund and William and the other merchants of the city. I wouldn’t see the man attempting to gain control of all of the trade, the man willing to starve all of Amenkor to do it. No. I’d see the man underneath as well, the man that would plead for his life at the end if he had the chance.

  We reached the manse, Gerrold opening the iron gate outside to let us in. Borund had ordered it kept locked since the first attack.

  As we passed inside, something drifted through the river, a scent I felt I should recognize but couldn’t, like lantern oil and straw.

  I straightened, halted just inside the gate and stared out at the street, gaze flickering swiftly over the few people, scanning the few alcoves where someone could hide. But I saw no one, and the scent—so vague—was already fading.

  “Varis?” Borund asked behind me. “Is something wrong?”

  Frowning, I turned and said curtly, “No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  He pulled back, hearing the lie in my voice. But he said nothing, confused, as I moved past him to the house, Gerrold shutting the gates behind us.