The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  In the darkness of the alley behind us, Darryn stood, flanked by two other men and the elder with the milky eye. Darryn’s face was blank, eyes centered on me. After a considering moment, he glanced toward the mob, then scowled before turning back to me.

  “I can take you to him. You can stay with him under our protection until this dies down.”

  I almost spat in contempt, as the milky-eyed elder had done to me, but stopped myself.

  Straightening, I nodded.

  He led us deeper into the alley, back into the warrens that three years ago I had called home, the others falling in behind us, guarding our backs. As we slipped from narrow to narrow, passing through crumbled alleys and dead courtyards, the roar of the mob falling behind, I found the dread returning, not as powerful as before, but still there.

  I shivered.

  Then Darryn ducked through a low opening, nothing more than a hole in a wall.

  I glanced back at Erick, saw him nod, and followed.

  It opened up into a wide room, half sunk below ground, filled with tables, a few chairs, pallets against one wall. In the center of the room was a circular basin which must have once been a pool or fountain. A few chipped tiles remained at its edge, dirt ground so deep into them that there was nothing left of the pattern they must once have held.

  Sitting on one of the chairs was Avrell, one hand clutching the opposite arm. Blood stained his shoulder, his dark blue shirt ripped aside. A man leaned over the wound.

  “Mistress!” he said as I entered, then gasped as the man prodded the wound. “It was only a stray mud-brick,” he finished weakly.

  Darryn moved up to the man’s side. “Well?”

  The man grunted. “It needs a good cleaning and some stitches, but he’ll live.”

  The rest of the men scattered throughout the room, one collapsing onto a pallet. The elder with the milky eye stayed behind at the rough opening, keeping watch.

  Darryn turned back to me, ignoring Avrell’s yelp of pain as the man I assumed was a healer began washing his wound. “And is this how you intend to feed the Dredge?” he asked acidly.

  Erick’s hand fell heavily onto my shoulder, restraining me. His grip was tight, the fingers flexing in warning as I tensed, trembling with rage.

  I forced myself to relax, forced the hand that held my dagger to drop to my side. “You know how I intend to feed the Dredge,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. A day’s work for a day’s worth of food.” He smirked. “How’s that going to work if you can’t even get the food to the kitchen?”

  I gritted my teeth, jaw flexing, my hand kneading the handle of my dagger.

  And then all the tension drained out of my body, and I smiled. “You’re going to help me.”

  One of the other men barked out a short burst of laughter, but Darryn’s face had gone completely blank. “What do you mean?”

  I stepped forward, slipping out of Erick’s grip. No one in the room moved, not even the healer. He held a needle in the air with a thin thread of gut running from its end down to Avrell’s half-stitched wound, his face openly shocked.

  “The crowd we drew on the Dredge when we first visited the warehouse didn’t attack because you didn’t want them to. They looked to you for permission. They obey you.”

  Darryn snorted. “Have you seen the Dredge today, Mistress? I don’t control anyone.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t control everyone. The ones ripping the wagons to pieces right now aren’t the real people of the Dredge. The real people—the people I want to help survive this winter—are all cowering in their own niches right now, waiting for the animals to finish feeding so they can pick up the pieces. Just like you. Those are the people you control. And if you can get them organized, get them to cooperate . . .”

  The man who’d laughed before began to chuckle.

  “Shut up, Greag.”

  The room fell silent. I stared into Darryn’s eyes, saw his age in the wrinkles around his eyes, saw the gray beginning in his hair. He watched me in turn, considering.

  Then his gaze flicked to Erick. “Is she serious?”

  “She’s always serious.”

  Darryn frowned. “How do you expect to protect the food once it’s here?”

  “The warehouses will be warded by the Servants, who will also be present in the kitchen. And there will always be palace guardsmen—” I halted. Darryn was shaking his head.

  “That won’t work. The Servants maybe, but not the guardsmen. If you’re truly from the Dredge, you’ll know that.”

  And I did. The guardsmen wouldn’t survive as a permanent presence on the Dredge. They were too feared, too hated.

  “What do you suggest?”

  Before Darryn could answer, Erick stepped to my side, motioned toward the sword that hung at Darryn’s waist. “Can you use that?”

  Darryn stiffened. “Yes.”

  “What about these others?” Erick said, nodding toward the rest of the men hidden in the niche along with us.

  Darryn shifted uncomfortably. “To varying degrees.” Behind him, the healer grunted and returned to his stitching.

  Erick turned to me. “Then have them protect their own warehouse and kitchen. Form a militia, made up of people from the Dredge, under Darryn’s command.”

  I frowned, saw Avrell frowning as well but ignored him. “What do you think?”

  He glanced around at the men in the room, asking a silent question and receiving silent answers—a nod, a shrug.

  Then he turned back to me. “I think it might work.”

  * * *

  “Mistress,” Marielle said, her voice soft but strained. She winced as lightning flared through the open doorway leading out to the balcony, silver light flooding the room, followed a few seconds later by a harsh crack of thunder that shuddered through the air. “Come back to the settee, please! The storm is too close!”

  I turned away from the balcony with a smile, felt the cold wind sweep into the room around me, tugging at my hair. Rain hissed onto the stone of the palace, harsh and relentless, a fine mist touching my face. The storm raged around me, prickled my skin, and with each flash of lightning I felt my heart respond with a quickened beat. Each roll of thunder shivered through my body, raised the little hairs on my arms, at the nape of my neck. I reveled in the sensation.

  “Can’t you feel it?” I said.

  Marielle shuddered with terror. “Please! Come to the settee!”

  Deeper inside the room, Erick shrugged, his expression as unconcerned as my own. We’d both been hardened to the weather. On the Dredge, there was little protection if you were caught in a storm.

  Thinking of the Dredge brought a small surge of satisfaction. The kitchen and warehouse had finally been stocked with Darryn’s and the Dredge militia’s help. The militia only consisted of twenty men so far, and Baill was furious that the unit had been formed in the first place, but even now he and Captain Catrell were training more Dredge denizens who, when their training was complete, would be added to the force.

  And more laborers were reporting to the warehouse district for work as well, a significant portion of them coming from the Dredge.

  Lightning flared, the resultant thunder almost instantaneous. Marielle let out a small shriek. “Mistress, please!”

  I sighed, closed the balcony door, but refused to draw the curtains, leaving the windows open. I moved to the settee, took the slate from Marielle’s relieved hands. She stood and moved to pour me some tea to ease her own nerves.

  I glanced down at the slate, picked up the chalk loosely in one hand. After her discussion with Erick, Marielle had given up trying to get me to draw elegant, curved letters. Instead, she’d had me think of the shapes as slashes, as if from a dagger—sharp and linear, with cutting, blunt edges. Forceful.

  My letters had improved dramatically. We were working on
words now, and simple sentences.

  I stared down at the three-word sentence Marielle had scrawled on the top line, but as thunder shook the building again, Marielle casting a frightened glance toward the ceiling, I set the slate aside and stood.

  “How long is the storm going to last, do you think?”

  Erick cocked his head, listening to the wind, to the rain lashing against the stone. “It moved in swiftly from the ocean about midafternoon,” he murmured, “but it doesn’t sound like it’s letting up any. I’d say not for another few hours.”

  I began pacing the room, too energized by the storm to remain still. “Then let’s go see Avrell.”

  Erick nodded.

  I stepped toward Marielle, who’d set my tea down. “Are you coming, Marielle?”

  She turned. “If it’s all right, I’ll stay. I have . . . things I need to finish here.” She cowered as more lightning flickered through the room.

  I frowned, but nodded, turning toward Erick who held the door to the rest of the palace open for me.

  We found Avrell in his office, poring over sheets of parchment with Nathem, Baill, and two masons I’d noticed leading labor crews at the warehouses.

  “Avrell,” I said.

  All five men looked up, startled, their muttered argument cut short.

  Avrell frowned, then stepped forward. “Yes, Mistress?”

  Wondering what Baill was doing here, I asked, “What’s happening with the warehouses?”

  Avrell relaxed slightly. “We’re progressing nicely, mainly due to the sudden influx of labor. The foundation to the main warehouse I showed you has now been finished and we’ve started on the walls, but of course we can’t work on those today.”

  As if in answer, a rumble of thunder sounded, muffled by the stone of the palace this deep inside, but still audible.

  Behind Avrell, one of the masons coughed meaningfully. Avrell’s brow creased with annoyance.

  I sighed. “What is it?”

  Flashing his own glare of irritation at the mason, he said, “Two things actually. And at this point, neither of them have been investigated in any great detail.”

  I let my gaze narrow and Avrell stepped back behind his desk, pulling out a few sheets of paper. He still favored the shoulder that Darryn’s healer had stitched up, moving the arm carefully as he shuffled through the pages. “The first is regarding the stone we need to rebuild the warehouses. As I said before, we have enough to rebuild the main warehouse, which is what we’re working on now, but quite a bit of the stone used in the original buildings has been cracked by the heat of the fire and can’t be reused in the new buildings.”

  Nathem spoke up. “We’ve been trying to figure out where to get stone from. We do have a quarry, but that is some distance away. Transporting the stone into the city during winter would be extremely difficult. Plus it would take time to cut the stone even before we begin to transport it.”

  “What about mud-brick?” I asked.

  Glances were passed among everyone except Baill, who stood silently in the background, arms crossed, watching intently, his face the usual unreadable mask. Except that recently—since I’d forced him to initiate the militia on the Dredge—it had taken on an edge of bitterness.

  “Mud-brick is possible,” Avrell finally answered, “but it is somewhat unreliable, especially for the size of these buildings. And it is also labor-intensive. We’d still need to transport in the material used in the bricks, and then it would have to be mixed and fired. . . .” He shook his head.

  “Why do you need to make it? There’s tons of mud-brick from old buildings sitting unused in the Dredge.”

  Avrell and the masons looked momentarily stunned. Then Avrell turned to the masons. “Is that possible?”

  The masons stared at each other a moment. “I don’t see why not,” one of them finally said. “We’d have to pick through it carefully, make certain it was sound. And we’d still need good stone from the quarry for the foundations and a significant portion of the walls. But . . .”

  “Good,” Avrell said. “Send some work crews down to the Dredge as soon as you can and check it out.”

  “Make certain they get in touch with Darryn,” I said. “He’ll want to warn the residents of the Dredge that you’ll be there and what you’ll be doing. And he’ll want to escort the work crews while they’re there, for their own protection.”

  I shifted my gaze toward Baill. An ugly red-and-purple scab marked where the stone had struck his head during the riot. He still hadn’t spoken, and I couldn’t see why he’d be involved in an argument over where to find usable stone for the warehouse construction. “What’s the other problem?”

  In an almost concerted move, the stonemasons and Nathem stepped back, eyes looking anywhere but at me. Avrell remained at the desk, but deferred to Baill.

  A smile tugged at Baill’s mouth, but it was fleeting.

  Without moving, he said flatly, “We may have some stores missing from one of the warehouses.”

  I stilled. Missing supplies was a far more serious problem than where to find stone. “Is it missing from the Dredge?”

  “No.”

  I almost heaved a sigh of relief. I wanted to believe Darryn could be trusted, knew he could be trusted if the river was any indication, but having supplies go missing almost immediately after I’d given him control . . .

  I focused again on Baill. “Then how is that possible? I thought the city guard was watching over each warehouse on this side of the River, that the merchants were keeping track of the supplies under their care.”

  Baill nodded. “They are.”

  “Then how could some of the food have been taken?” Anger had begun to tighten my voice, and Baill reacted by straightening subtly, an answering flare of anger passing swiftly through his eyes.

  “We don’t know. As Avrell said, we don’t even know for certain that the food is missing.”

  Avrell stepped forward cautiously. “According to our records, and the merchants’ records, the Priem warehouse was supposed to have eighteen barrels of packed, salted fish. However, upon inspection, we couldn’t find those barrels. It may just be a clerical error, or the barrels could have been taken to a different warehouse by mistake. It’s too early to tell. I summoned Baill immediately and we were just beginning to discuss a course of action.”

  Baill nodded. “I think we should start with an inventory of the warehouses done by the guard, to verify that all of the supplies supposedly stored in each warehouse are actually present. If anything else is missing, we should find out now.”

  I considered for a moment, then said, “Do it.”

  Baill moved to the door. As he stepped outside and began to issue orders, I turned to Avrell.

  “Which merchant has control of the Priem warehouse?”

  Avrell’s eyes never wavered. He’d been expecting the question. “Regin.”

  I bit off a curse, then forced myself to stop leaping to conclusions. Avrell admitted that perhaps the fish wasn’t missing. Maybe it had simply been misplaced.

  But somehow I didn’t believe that.

  In the corridor outside there was a sudden commotion, brief but loud enough to hear over the continuing thunder. I turned as the doors to Avrell’s study opened and Baill stepped back through. His brow was creased with a frown, and his clothes were disheveled and damp in patches.

  “There’s someone here to see the Mistress,” he said formally. “He wouldn’t say what it concerned.” Then he shifted to one side.

  A boy stood behind him, surrounded by guardsmen, wide-eyed and breathing hard, splattered with mud and soaked to the bone, a puddle forming on the floor beneath him. He was dressed in a rough homespun tunic and breeches with no boots, his face pale, lips almost blue.

  As I stepped forward, he shuddered with cold. “What is it?” I asked.

 
Teeth beginning to chatter, the boy sputtered, “There’s been a shipwreck down in Colby.”

  Chapter 6

  “From what I can gather from the boy,” Avrell said, leaning back in his seat, wincing as he adjusted his shoulder, “the villagers didn’t find an actual shipwreck. What they found was debris on the beach, large sections of a ship, just before the storm struck. They managed to haul the largest pieces of the debris up above the storm waters so that it wouldn’t wash away, and then they sent the boy here.”

  After the boy’s bald statement in Avrell’s office, Avrell had taken him aside and questioned him, with my repeated assurances to the boy that it was safe to talk to the First. Servants were sent for dry clothes and food, while others were sent to inform the other captains, Eryn, and Borund. We’d convened in the same meeting room Avrell had used to introduce me to the captains of the guard.

  “Were there any survivors?” I asked.

  Avrell shook his head, mouth turned down with regret. “According to the boy, there weren’t even any bodies washed ashore. Just wood and rigging, a large portion of the mast. . . .” He shrugged.

  “But enough to identify the ship as coming from Amenkor?” Borund asked. He was still damp from his brisk ride up to the palace in the rain after being summoned.

  Avrell nodded.

  At the far end of the table, Captain Catrell of the city guard leaned forward. “The question is, how did the ship founder?”

  At his side, Westen nodded in agreement. “Was it by storm? But if so, what storm? The villagers found the wreckage before this hit.” He glanced at the ceiling. The storm was moving off now, but the occasional rumble of thunder could still be heard through the thick stone walls. He leaned forward, eyeing Avrell. “How old was the wreckage?”

  “The boy didn’t know. The villagers sent him almost immediately after finding the debris. Aside from what I’ve told you already, he knew nothing.”

  Silence fell. Glances were exchanged between Eryn, Erick, and myself. We were the only ones in the room that knew of the vision of the city burning, and I could see in both Erick’s and Eryn’s eyes that I wasn’t the only one thinking the wreckage could be from something other than a storm.