The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  When we’d worked most of the way free of the press of the bodies, Eryn moved up beside me.

  “I replaced the warding on the building.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak. Tremors had begun to run through my arms and my hand trembled. I gripped the handle of my dagger to make it stop, turned my attention to Avrell.

  “Did you get what you needed?”

  He swallowed once, his face pale, his eyes wider than usual. “Yes. I think so.”

  “Good. Let’s head back to the palace. I’ve had enough of the city for one day.”

  Eryn snorted, the sound weak.

  I didn’t stop trembling until we passed through the inner gates.

  * * *

  When Erick returned from his hunt on the Dredge, I was working with Marielle, huddled over a padded board, a piece of chalk clutched tight in one hand.

  “You’re pressing too hard,” Marielle said. “You don’t need to force the chalk into the slate. And you’re holding it too tightly. No wonder your hand hurts after each session. Just relax.”

  I growled with frustration, shot Marielle a hateful glare which she ignored, then focused again on the black stone.

  Marielle had drawn a few lines at the top and written letters between them, the writing smooth and fluid. Beneath, she’d drawn more lines, with the same spacing.

  I’d copied the first two letters onto the second set of lines, my script shaky and jagged. I frowned at the attempts. “I hate this.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Marielle said, but I could hear the strain in her voice. “Try the next one. And this time don’t press so hard.”

  I sighed, took the chalk in a death grip, and scanned the next letter. I bit my lower lip and concentrated, the room fading away behind me as I touched the chalk to the slate. I began a slow, careful curve, but it began to waver almost immediately. I gripped the chalk harder, but that didn’t help. I felt sweat beading on my forehead.

  When the chalk broke halfway through forming the letter, I barked in a half yell, half growl, “I can’t do this!”

  “Can’t do what?”

  Both Marielle and I shot a glance toward the door—Marielle’s in relief, mine in irritation. Erick stood there, his Seeker’s clothes stained with the Dredge, his eyes bright with laughter.

  I grinned, then stood abruptly, shoving the slate behind me. “Nothing,” I said.

  Erick’s brow furrowed and he stepped through the doorway. Eryn moved into the room behind him.

  “I ran into her in the corridor and escorted her here,” Erick said as he approached, voice low. He paused, caught my shoulders and held my gaze, expression suddenly serious. “It’s done. Corum’s dead.”

  I straightened, regret leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Regret that I hadn’t killed Corum myself, not regret that he was dead. But even that regret faded, washed away by the metallic taste of rainwater, leaving only a sense of rightness, of balance and satisfaction.

  Erick watched me closely, then nodded in approval, letting his hands drop from my shoulders.

  “What about those he had working for him?” I asked. “The other gutterscum he was using as slaves?”

  Erick’s face turned grim. “Most of them scattered when the guardsmen raided the building where he had them working. They’re back in the slums beyond the Dredge. A few didn’t have anywhere to go or were too weak to run. The guardsmen have them right now, down in the barracks. A healer is checking them for disease and wounds.”

  “And what happens to them after that?”

  Erick shrugged. “We let them go.”

  “Back to the slums,” I said bitterly, “where they end up with someone else like Corum.”

  Erick shifted uncomfortably. “What else can we do with them?”

  What could we do with them? I didn’t know. But there must be something. I couldn’t get Darryn’s face—his contempt, his hatred—out of my mind.

  But he’d let us go without harming us.

  “So . . .” Erick said, his voice too casual, “I hear that you disarmed Westen in your first match.”

  I snorted. “And then he brought me to my knees, my arm twisted up behind my back. With one hand.”

  Erick didn’t laugh. “No one’s ever disarmed Westen in a bout before, not since he became captain of the Seekers.”

  I hesitated, hearing the serious note in Erick’s voice. “I cheated,” I said finally. “I used the river.”

  His eyebrows rose. “That’s not cheating. And the Seekers have let the palace and city guardsmen know. You shouldn’t have any problems with the guard after this. If they doubted your ascension as Mistress before, they don’t now.”

  I didn’t know what to say, a strange sense of exhilaration filling me at the pride I heard in Erick’s voice.

  “You’re also the talk of the Dredge,” Erick added. “I don’t know what you did yesterday, but it certainly caused a stir.”

  There was a hint of disapproval in his voice—probably over the fact that I’d confronted Darryn personally—but before I could answer it, someone coughed lightly and Erick stepped aside, revealing Eryn, the moment broken. She had halted three steps into the room, her hands folded before her, her black hair loose, spilling down her shoulders, stark against her dress.

  “If you’re ready,” she said. “I thought we could try to determine who is influencing your dreams today.”

  I frowned, stomach tightening into a knot. Setting aside the slate, facedown so that Erick wouldn’t see it, I nodded to Eryn. “What do you need me to do?”

  Eryn hesitated, then seemed to steel herself. “I think it would be best if we tried this in the throne room.”

  I froze, eyes going slightly wide. The tension in my stomach doubled and I swallowed, hard.

  I hadn’t been to the throne room since the night I’d taken control, had been avoiding it completely. My only concession had been to issue an order to have the damage done to the doors by Baill and his guardsmen that night repaired.

  “Very well,” I said weakly.

  Eryn turned to lead the way into the hall.

  I shifted, caught Erick’s eye.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  I felt better instantly.

  The entrance to the throne room wasn’t far from my chambers. The three of us halted before the iron-bound, wooden doors, the wood gleaming with an inner warmth. The soft curves of the ironwork were delicate yet formidable, newly wrought after Baill and the guardsmen had ripped the doors from the walls trying to gain entrance to the throne room almost a month before. I could still hear the iron hinges clanging to the marble floor inside, could hear the crack of the wood as it split under the battering ram. I remembered standing outside these doors that night, knowing that the Mistress waited for me inside, that the throne waited for me, and that it was a trap.

  I felt sweat break out on my palms, felt nausea rising as Eryn hesitated. For a moment, we shared a look, and I saw in her eyes the same apprehension I felt.

  Then Eryn nodded to the guardsmen who opened the doors with a ponderous creak of new wood and the faint squeal of new hinges.

  Eryn and I stepped into the room together, Erick a pace behind. A long walkway led up to a tiered dais, thick columns rising to either side. Every torch and sconce of oil in the room had been lit. There were no darknesses, no places to hide. And at the end of the walkway, on the dais, sat the Skewed Throne, a white-and-gold banner covering the wall behind it.

  It was just as I remembered. A twisted thing, its shape shifting before my eyes, at one moment a high-backed seat of stone with flat square arms, the next the stone warping, the seat molding itself to a new form: a simple chair, but with one leg shorter than the others. And then it would twist again, shifting fluidly, the motions sickening and silent, straining the eyes. A long divan; another square throne but with etched scro
llwork and no arms; a river-worn rock.

  But it was always stone. Cold, hard granite.

  I shuddered, turned away. Before, I’d felt the power of the throne throughout the room, stalking me, a predator circling me, hunting me as I hunted for Eryn, my only protection the Fire inside me, and the river, holding it at bay. But now the voices were a part of me, and I felt them respond to the presence of the throne. Their shrieking increased, harsh with anticipation, with expectation.

  With a conscious effort, I strengthened the Fire holding them back, felt a surge of hatred in return.

  “You must sit on the throne,” Eryn said, her voice steady but weak. We’d moved to the bottom of the dais, and I could see that she would not move closer, would not risk touching the throne again. Any qualms I’d had about having her there, so close to the throne, so close to seizing power again, faded. She feared the throne as much as I did; perhaps more, since she knew what it was capable of, knew what it could do.

  I suddenly wondered what she’d felt when Avrell had tried to replace her with one of the other Servants. Had she felt them die? Had she died along with them?

  Or had she helped kill them, however inadvertently?

  I left her at the bottom of the dais, moved up the steps slowly, and stood before the twisting shape.

  Then I turned, braced myself, and without further thought sat down.

  I felt the throne move beneath me, revulsion prickling along my skin, shuddering up through my body as my breath caught, as my heart quickened. The voices surged higher, melding as one into a roar—

  And then they relaxed, suddenly calm.

  The throne stabilized, solidifying into a smooth curve of stone with two arms and no back. My hands curled around the edges of the arms and my back straightened, the pose completely natural. I felt suddenly heavier, the room before me more solid, more real. And through my pulse I could feel the city, could feel its heartbeat, could feel the people moving through the streets, the ships floating at the dock, the water of the harbor and the river slapping against the wharf and the riverbed. I throbbed with life, with emotion, an immense rush of sound and movement I could feel tingling in my skin.

  I drew in a deep, steadying breath, let it out slowly as I submerged myself in the sensations of the city, and then I turned to gaze down on Eryn at the bottom of the dais, at Erick shifting uncomfortably a few paces beyond. Erick smelled of sweat and oranges, the scents more intense now. Eryn smelled of loam and leaves, like tea.

  I focused on Eryn, felt the currents of the city shift around me. “What do I do?” I asked. My voice sounded thicker, more dense, as if it had the weight of all of the voices of the throne behind it, but neither Eryn nor Erick reacted.

  Eryn licked her lips. “Focus on the voices, but don’t try to pick out any words. Just listen to them as a whole. Think of them as . . .” her brow creased in thought, “. . . as people in a marketplace, all yelling and talking at once. You’re just standing at the marketplace’s edge, letting the roar wash over you, not really paying attention.”

  I frowned, closed my eyes on the throne room and focused on the pulse of the city around me, moving deeper into its life until I came to the edge of the White Fire that protected me. The voices reacted as I drew nearer, the stronger ones pushing forward, but I pushed them back, never let the Fire waver. I tried to imagine the marketplace in the middle ward outside the merchants’ guild hall, tried to picture myself at the corner of a street, staring out over the white stone plaza at the rearing bronze statues of the horses at the fountain in its center, the voices of the throne individual people in the square. But the image wavered, grew ragged and torn at its edges, until I couldn’t hold it anymore.

  I grunted as it slipped away, clenched my hands tighter on the edges of the throne as I gathered my strength to try again.

  Below, I could feel Eryn’s expectant tension, could taste Erick’s concern, like musty clothes.

  I re-formed the image of the marketplace—the four horses, the gurgle of the fountain—tried to place the voices there . . . but the image began to slip again. I grasped at it in desperation—

  And felt something pull.

  The marketplace darkened, white stone growing grimy and gray, regular flagstone shifting to odd cobbles. The roar of the hawkers on the square became the raucous noise of a street.

  Then, there was a gut-wrenching lurch.

  Instead of standing at the corner of the guild hall’s plaza, I found myself crouched at the mouth of an alley on the Dredge, the sound of the hundred voices of the throne now the familiar rushing background wind of the river.

  My hands unclenched from the arms of the throne, and my breathing slowed.

  After a long steadying moment, I said softly, “I’ve got it.”

  “Good.” Eryn’s voice seemed distant, as if coming from a far corridor, but I could still smell the scent of tea close by. “Now, think about the dream. But not what happened in the dream. Think about what the dream felt like. If someone was influencing the dream, changing it in some way, you should be able to feel them, like . . . like a shadow in the background.”

  Like gutterscum on the Dredge.

  I began to replay the dream in my head, starting at the gates, moving swiftly through the streets to the stable, to the trapdoor and the tunnel. I let the dock boy’s conversation seep past me, tried to focus on the movements, the tread of feet, the brush of clothes against the crates as we squeezed through the narrow opening to the tunnel’s entrance. But there was nothing.

  I tried again, slower, heard the rasp of our boots on the cobbles, felt the light from the oil lamp as Borund lit it from behind.

  Nothing.

  On the third try, as I lost track of the dock boy and Borund, as they melded into the smooth flow of motion, I caught the shadow. But it wasn’t a feeling, it was a scent: loam and leaves. Like tea.

  I jerked back, stumbled deeper into the alley, away from the Dredge, then caught myself.

  In the depths of the throne room, I heard myself say, “It’s you.”

  “What?” Eryn asked, voice still remote, but tinged with confusion.

  “The shadow I sense behind the dream is you,” I said more forcefully.

  A pause, the noise of the Dredge still surrounding me.

  “But that’s not possible,” Eryn said. “The Sight can’t be used that way. And besides, I didn’t know about the wine! I don’t remember hiding it in the stable!”

  Ignoring Eryn’s growing agitation, I edged back up to the alley’s mouth, crouched down behind a wagon half full of scabrous apples. “Wait,” I said.

  On the eddies of the Dredge, where all of the voices of the throne lay, I’d caught a scent. Faint, but there.

  I drew in a breath, let the instincts I’d honed on the Dredge take over . . . and caught the scent again.

  I pushed forward, past the wagon and into the crowd, moving swiftly. But unlike the real Dredge, the people on this Dredge didn’t ignore me. Instead, they turned, shouted in my face, grasped at my tattered clothes, at my arms, thrust themselves in my path to catch my attention. I struggled through them, noticed that they were almost all women, old and young, pockmarked and fair, with blonde hair, black, a muddy brown with green eyes, in all manner of clothes. All of the past Mistresses, and anyone else who had somehow touched the throne, all trying to gain my attention, hundreds of them. I fought them, fought through their scents: tallow, ripened melon, sea salt, and dead fish. I followed the scent of tea.

  Until I rounded a corner at the edge of a narrow, where I halted.

  Just inside the narrow, huddled in the darkness, was Eryn. But unlike the voices of the throne behind me, this Eryn was somehow less real, a shadow compared to the rest. A ghost.

  The shade of the Eryn I knew raised her head, her eyes haunted, darkened around the edges with fear and strain.

  “Look,” sh
e murmured, then pointed down the narrow, away from the Dredge, into the darkness.

  I turned, brow creased, mouth set.

  But instead of the narrow I expected, the darkness looked out over the city of Amenkor.

  With a start, I realized I was standing on the roof of the palace tower at night, Eryn’s shade beside me. The city lay spread out before me: the inner ward, the middle ward, the outer ward; the wharf, the warehouse district, the lower city; and across the River, the slums beyond the Dredge.

  And the city was burning. All of it. Huge pillars of smoke boiled into the air, tinged red from the fires beneath. On street after street, husks of buildings stood out as fire ate at their foundations. Ships burned at the docks, a few blazing cold and harsh in the water, flames reflected on the waves. Even as the full extent of the scene began to register, to penetrate through the shock, I felt a surge of power—a pulsing wave on the river—and one of the guard towers at the entrance to the harbor exploded, stone and wood debris flying up and out, arching over the water of the bay, trailing flame and smoke and embers. The fire was a living thing, hissing, spitting. A sizzling fwump rose up from the middle ward as a guild hall collapsed, stone cracking, more embers rising high into the night.

  As I stepped to the edge of the rooftop, horror welling up inside me, choking me, closing off my throat, the water of the harbor caught my attention, rising on slow swells, dark and viscous.

  The harbor water was red. Not with reflected firelight, but with blood. And the waves were choked with bodies.

  Eryn’s shade drew up close behind me. “Do you see!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with insanity. “Do you see!”

  Then the winds shifted, blew smoke into my face so that I squinted, blew Eryn’s black hair back in streaming tangles. And the smell from the city below hit, a noisome wave of smoke and ash and blood, of salt and sea and death.

  I turned away from the stench, doubled over as my gorge rose, and in a panic I let the river go, shoved it aside with a wrench. I felt the Fire inside me flare as if to protect me, felt part of it get caught and tear free as I shoved the vision of the city away in desperation. I heard Eryn scream in pain as the wave of power spread out on the river, as it tore through the vision of blood and water and fire.