The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  I watched him for a moment, saw Borund wince as he began to yell, Regin’s face tightening as if in pain. Then I turned away and approached Keven, who held my mount.

  Yvan’s yelling escalated, then dropped away into heated murmuring as the guardsmen surrounded the cart.

  “Is everything in the market ready?” I asked. A sense of nervous tension had slid into the anger and I felt the palms of my hands go sweaty.

  Keven nodded sharply. “Yes, Mistress. Everything is set.”

  “Then open the gates.”

  Keven motioned toward the gates. As they began to creak open, I mounted, Keven doing likewise beside me, and everyone in the entourage came to attention, straightening their clothing or calming their own mounts. My horse—a relatively calm dusk-colored mare—shifted beneath me and I felt my stomach twist. Yvan fell silent, but I could feel the anger radiating outward from him on the river, like a slowly pulsing sun.

  It wasn’t until Keven, the escort, and I rode through the gates that I noticed the crowd.

  I shot a questioning glance toward Keven.

  “I told the guardsmen to spread the word,” he said. He caught my confused frown. “The people of Amenkor need to know that the wealthy get punished as swiftly and as harshly as the poor. They’ve come to expect it from you after you had that man Hant whipped on the construction site. They’ll want to see justice done with Yvan as well, especially after what he’s done. His crime hurt them as much as it did the power of the Skewed Throne.”

  I didn’t respond, wasn’t certain I really understood. As we emerged out into the street, the crowd of townspeople shifted out of our way, a murmur rippling from the front ranks to the back as they saw me. But unlike that first time I’d appeared outside the palace, when I’d forced Avrell to accompany me to the stablehouse where we’d discovered the Capthian wine hidden away, this murmur was one of excited awe, not frowning curiosity. Women leaned their heads together, pointed, eyes alight. Men craned their necks to see, and children elbowed their way to the front. A number of those gathered signed themselves across the chest with the Skewed Throne symbol.

  I looked toward Keven again, who held himself proud, back straight and rigid, his attention on what lay ahead. His men fanned out around us without any evident order given and kept the townspeople at bay, even though they weren’t being unruly. I saw a smile touch the corner of Keven’s mouth, a flicker of movement, there and then gone, the deadly serious expression returning.

  Straightening, I turned my attention back to the street ahead, noticed that people lined the entire route, blocking the cross streets and alleys, some hanging out of the windows of the second floor.

  The farther we moved, the louder the murmur grew.

  Then Yvan and the cage emerged. The awed murmur turned to a hiss, anger welling up like an ocean wave on the river, rippling out as word spread down the street faster than we were moving.

  Keven picked up on the sudden change, his stolid poise slipping as he frowned. “We’d better move a little faster. I’m not sure the guardsmen will be able to hold the people back if we don’t pick up the pace.”

  I nodded, feeling the rage swell, and then Keven motioned sharply to the guardsmen on either side. Our horses began to walk faster.

  We passed through the middle ward gates into the outer ward, the crowd content to hiss, shifting in agitation as the cage drew up alongside them. Once it had passed, the men, women, and children fell in behind the entourage, until we trailed a large contingent of townspeople behind us. And the more people that joined the entourage, the more agitated the crowd became.

  We passed out into the lower city, through the gates of the inner ward, and the temper of the crowd changed. In the upper city, it had been composed of businessmen, lesser merchants, guildsmen, the wealthier citizens and their families, but once we reached the lower city. . . . Dockworkers and sailors and servants to the wealthy mixed with those from the Dredge who had come to the warehouse district to help with the construction. Hawkers and farmers shouted out cruel obscenities alongside gutterscum and whores. The noise grew to a roar as we descended down through the streets, past alley and narrow, courtyard and tavern, escalating as the crowd behind Yvan’s cage tripled.

  As we entered the edge of the marketplace and began to shove our way through the hundreds gathered there toward the pillory at the center, Keven kneed his horse forward and leaned in close. “This is uglier than I thought it would be!” he shouted over the cacophony as those already in the marketplace caught sight of the cage. “We’d better get done with this quickly and get out, before it gets out of hand!”

  Not able to answer, the guardsmen pressed in close, the crowd shoving in from all sides, I nodded. Keven’s hand latched onto my arm as we were crushed together, then pulled apart, our horses snorting and tossing their heads, until we burst into the center of the marketplace where the guardsmen had cleared a wide area around the pillory itself.

  I gasped, drew in a few steadying breaths as Avrell, Eryn, Nathem, and the merchants cleared the crowd. The cart carrying Yvan was having more trouble, the crowd closing in tightly, threatening to overwhelm the guardsmen set to protect it.

  Dismounting, all of us watched, stunned, as it inched forward, until it finally reached the edge of the cleared area.

  Keven heaved a sigh of relief. As we turned, I saw Baill approaching, his gaze sweeping the mob as he drew to a halt. “Do this quick,” he growled, then caught my gaze.

  I tried not to flinch, felt myself tense instead, felt my fury escalate, supported by the roiling hatred of the crowd.

  He hesitated, as if he saw something in my eyes, in my stance, then he spun and bellowed out an order to pull the cart up onto the raised platform of the pillory. I watched him as he retreated, snorted in contempt.

  “We’ll deal with him later,” Keven murmured, his voice unnaturally calm. He turned toward me, and I saw in his dark eyes the same hatred and sense of betrayal I felt deep down inside myself. There was a promise there—a promise he’d made to Erick, a promise he meant to keep.

  I nodded, and set my feelings aside, focused on Yvan. The guardsmen had managed to haul the cage up onto the pillory’s platform, were ready to pull him out and clamp him into the pillory.

  But there was one last thing that needed to be done . . . and it needed to be done by me.

  I walked up the ramp leading to the platform, my attention entirely on Yvan, not even noticing that Keven and a select group of guardsmen had followed me until I’d reached the edge of the pillory and halted before Yvan. Only then did I become aware of something else as well.

  The entire market had gone silent.

  The silence sent an itching sensation across my shoulders and down my back, but I didn’t let the prickling touch my face. Eyes as hard as I could make them, anger as blatant in my frown as possible, I stared at Yvan.

  He smelled. Of sweat and piss and grime. The smell of terror. All of the hatred, all of the vituperative obscenities he’d flung at me, all of the haughty arrogance of the wealthy merchant elite, was gone. He stood in front of the pillory, held by guardsmen, eyes wide, shaking.

  I sighed, saw a faint flare of hope wash over him, then I reached for the river, cast out another net, also passed on to me by Cerrin, that encompassed the entire market square.

  “You are guilty of hoarding food,” I said in a quiet voice, but because of the net everyone in the market heard it clearly. There was a rustle of reaction from the crowd, but it subsided. “Do you deny it?”

  Yvan flared with defiance, the scent sharp and bitter, like dandelion milk, but then his shoulders sagged and he hung his head. “No, I don’t deny it.”

  A grumble rolled around the square, the crowd shifting, uncertain, their anger blunted.

  Yvan lifted his head slightly, enough so he could see me, so that he could judge my reaction.

  It was a look
of sly cunning, of buried deceit.

  It reminded me of Bloodmark.

  Anger flared, sharp and acidic and I turned toward the crowd, drew my dagger, and held my arms up to the sky. Yvan jerked back from the movement, startled.

  “People of Amenkor,” I said, raising my voice even though I still held the net in place. “Merchant Yvan has declared his guilt. As Mistress of the Skewed Throne, I pronounce the following sentence.”

  A hush fell, and I turned back to Yvan.

  “Yvan will be stripped of all of his possessions except for the clothing he currently wears. All of his estates, all of his goods, belong to the Skewed Throne. His license from the merchants’ guild is revoked. All of the rights and protections, given to him as a citizen of Amenkor, are removed.” I took a careful step forward, my grip tightening and loosening on my dagger. Yvan tried to pull away, but the guardsmen held him tight. “He is no longer under the protection of the Skewed Throne. He is a traitor and will be branded as one.”

  I didn’t give him a chance to react. Without hesitation, with a smoothness and quickness that Erick would have been proud of, I raised the dagger, placed the tip on the side of Yvan’s forehead, one hand behind his neck to hold him steady, and with three quick slashes I carved the Skewed Throne into his forehead.

  Yvan screamed and jerked back, a short, high-pitched bark of sound that cut off and sank into panting whimpers as the guardsmen caught him and shoved him forward again. The sly look of cunning was gone, cut away. Blood welled in the three slashes, began to slide down between his brows, past his nose, and into his mouth.

  I let the net go, leaned forward into his stench, caught his wild eyes and held them. “You’re gutterscum now.”

  Then I stepped away, motioned with one hand to the pillory. The guardsmen shoved Yvan forward, thrust him down to his knees and over the open block of wood. He struggled, cried out, and kicked, but there were too many guardsmen. Three held his head in place, two each for each arm, and then the top of the pillory was slammed down over his neck and wrists and the lock slid into place.

  The guardsmen stepped away as I reached the end of the ramp. Keven and my escort formed up around me, leading our horses, the rest of the entourage—Avrell, Eryn, Nathem, and the merchants—hastily mounting and filing in behind them.

  The mob surged forward, streaming around us and our mounts as if we were boulders in a river. The first stone was thrown before we’d made it halfway to the edge of the market square. A small stone, nothing more than a pebble.

  Yvan screamed like a stuck pig. The mob burst into vicious laughter. Someone started a chant, others applauded, more stones sailed through the air, no longer just pebbles.

  “He won’t last the night,” Keven said, his voice grim. “They won’t be satisfied with small stones for long.”

  My eyes narrowed. “We have more important things to worry about.”

  “Like Baill?”

  I shook my head. “We’ll get Baill eventually. I meant the Chorl.”

  Chapter 11

  The wind gusted sharply on the top of the tower overlooking Amenkor, catching in the loose folds of my shirt and tugging at my hair. The banners attached to the outside of the tower walls snapped and whuffled. The wind brought with it the scent of the ocean and a hint of warmer weather. Winter was ending, spring officially only a few days away.

  My stomach growled and I pressed a hand against it to quiet it. I wasn’t the only one hungry. In the last three weeks, since Yvan had been stoned to death on the pillory, rations had been cut back severely. Winter might be ending, but we still needed enough supplies to last us another month, until the first spring harvest. Farmers were already out on the surrounding land plowing fields and planting in hopes that the weather would hold and an early harvest would be possible. But it wouldn’t come soon enough. There were already deaths reported in the Dredge.

  I sighed, drew the power of the throne in tight around me, and Reached for the Dredge, slipping into the flows, drifting on them, then directing them until I stood on the broken cobbles near Cobbler’s Fountain, where once I’d gone to meet Erick, to tell him I’d found a mark . . . or killed one.

  The memory, the sight of the dry, dead fountain, brought a sharp pain, one that I thought would have been blunted by now. I suppressed it as best I could, stared up into the cracked and pitted face of the woman who stood at the center of the fountain, as I’d once seen Erick do. He’d been searching for something in her face then, didn’t know that I’d followed him, that I was watching. I hadn’t completely trusted him yet.

  But seeing the doubt in his face, the mute appeal for something I couldn’t understand back then, had felt wrong, had made my stomach queasy. It had been too personal.

  It was the last time I’d followed him.

  The stone statue of the woman—one arm holding an urn on her shoulder that had once poured water into the fountain, the other on her hip, only a stump at her shoulder and a few fingers remaining—revealed nothing, so I turned away. There was a flash of bright sunlight, a faint echo of a giggling child splashing in the pool of water at its base, but these faded quickly. That part of my life was over. I’d survived it and moved on.

  I turned to the warren of alleys and narrows beyond the Dredge instead, moved down the old familiar paths, into buildings where people huddled or slept, their faces gaunt, haggard, but still alive. I saw families, saw children roving in gangs, saw a cat that had managed to survive instead of being eaten, its ribs sticking out through its matted, mud-caked fur.

  I moved deeper, not bothering to creep from shadow to shadow as I once would have done. I wasn’t really here, was only observing. So I stalked down the middle of the alleys, ducked and slid through impossibly small holes into niches and alcoves, into secluded rooms, using the throne and the river to seek out those that still survived.

  Until I found a woman and child tucked away in a crumbling courtyard. The woman, hair thin, face pale and sweaty in the sunlight seeping down from the opening above, gasped in short, irregular, phlegmy breaths where she lay on a twisted, tattered blanket on the ground. The skin around her eyes was blackened with sickness, her eyes staring off into nothing.

  The child, a girl of no more than six, dressed in a makeshift dress, played with a doll with no arms or legs in the dirt of the courtyard to one side.

  The woman coughed, the sound horrible, tearing at her throat, and the girl looked up. “Mommy?”

  She stood, motions careful and ponderous, doll clutched tightly in one arm, and moved to her mother’s side. The woman had rolled onto her side, and the girl halted a few small steps from her and stared down.

  “Mommy?”

  With a supreme effort, she rolled her head to one side, eyes finding her daughter. She couldn’t move her arms. She was too weak. It was obvious any food she’d had had gone to her daughter.

  “Ana,” she gasped, voice nothing more than a whisper.

  Ana crouched down on her knees and elbows in the dirt, doll still tucked tight to her chest, and leaned in close so she could hear.

  The woman’s eyes closed and her panting breath halted. For a horrified moment, I thought she’d died. But then she gasped, eyes flying wide. She focused again, licked cracked, dry lips.

  “Ana, go to the kitchen. Go . . . to the guardsmen.”

  Ana frowned, eyes squinched tight. “Can’t leave you, Mommy.”

  The woman snorted, the sound defeated, lost.

  She knew she was dying.

  “Just . . . go. Bring them back.”

  The words exhausted her. Her head rolled back into place, and her eyes closed. Her breaths panted, her form shaking with each one. Her skin took on a waxy, feverish quality.

  Ana hesitated, stood and watched her mother’s trembling form a long moment, one hand petting the top of her doll’s head where it was clutched to her chest.

  Then
she turned and walked to the edge of the courtyard, mouth set in a pouty, uncertain frown. She paused once, turned back, then dashed out into the narrow.

  I could sense her terror as she ran, followed it with one part of my mind as I turned back to the woman, as I knelt down beside her.

  Her breathing was coming faster now, and on the river I could sense her fever, could sense the sickness in her, like a splotch of darkness in the sunlight.

  I reached out to touch it, but her breath caught. Her eyes flew open again, latched onto mine.

  “Oh,” she breathed. A light suffused her face, a smile touched her lips. “It’s you.”

  And then she died.

  My hand fell to my side.

  I stayed with her a moment, then followed Ana until she made it to the kitchens, until Darryn had been summoned. He’d take care of her.

  Then I returned to the palace, to the tower, knowing that people like the woman were dying all over the Dredge, succumbing to sicknesses they would normally survive if they had enough food, some dying of exposure, or starvation. Mostly the old and the young, but a few like this woman, who’d sacrificed everything to save her daughter.

  And there was nothing more I could do.

  My stomach growled again, but I ignored it.

  I heard Eryn approach from behind. She halted beside me, stared out over the harbor, face to the wind. Her white dress and long black hair hissed and flapped in the breeze, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “Any word from Captain Catrell?” she asked. It had become a daily question, something I asked Keven every morning upon waking, to the point where all I needed to do was send him a questioning look.

  I shook my head, lips pressed grimly together, Keven’s usual response. “And no word from the guardsmen Keven has set to keep a lookout either.”

  Eryn bit her lower lip. “Baill is laying low. He managed to keep Catrell busy and distant until your summons to the throne room to tell us about the threat from the Chorl. He must have known Catrell was suspicious of something. But he couldn’t order him to disobey a direct summons.”