The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  * * *

  “I see you have a Chorl prisoner,” someone said as I left the gardens where the Servants continued to train, Ottul still sitting beside the pool, watched by Trielle and Heddan. “Is she one of the Chorl Servants you spoke of?”

  I halted, blinked at the darkness of the palace corridor, my eyes still dazzled by the sunlight of the gardens.

  Brandan Vard stood at one of the open arched windows that looked out onto the garden a few paces down the corridor, the sigil of Venitte catching the light as he turned toward me. Light brown hair, bleached almost blond by the sun; brown eyes; narrow face with high cheekbones and a thin nose. I hadn’t seen him since I’d questioned him and Tristan about the throne, hadn’t really looked at him even then, too focused on learning about Venitte, about their preparations for the Chorl. But now . . .

  “So, is she?”

  I started, frowned at myself, then straightened. “Is she what?”

  Brandan smiled, dimples appearing in each cheek. He nodded out the window, leaning back against the sill. “Is she one of the Chorl Servants?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you let her watch your training sessions?”

  “Not normally. Today is an exception.”

  Brandan looked over his shoulder into the garden. “She seems more interested in the fish in the pond than in the training.”

  I hesitated, then moved up to Brandan’s side, felt Keven and my escort of guardsmen shift around me without coming close. Brandan seemed . . . different. Relaxed.

  I wondered if it was because Captain Tristan wasn’t here watching over him. I suddenly wondered what I could learn from him when he wasn’t under Tristan’s supervision.

  Out in the garden, Gwenn had knelt down beside the pond, was pointing to something in its depths, Ottul leaning forward from the bench, listening to the girl’s excited chatter. She couldn’t possibly understand Gwenn’s explanation, but she seemed to be concentrating more on the words than when Marielle tried to explain things to her in her room.

  “Maybe I should have taken her out of her rooms earlier,” I said with a frown.

  Brandan didn’t respond, and when I shrugged and turned away from the scene in the gardens, I found him watching me, head tilted slightly. The intensity of his look sent a shiver through my shoulders, down into my gut. A pleasant shiver.

  “I thought you would have left for Venitte already,” I said, then cursed myself.

  His eyebrows rose slightly, but he laughed. “Hardly. Tristan has business to attend to with the merchants’ guild, especially now that there are four new merchants. He’s kept busy the past few days, arranging shipments, learning what he can of the new Amenkor . . . and the new Mistress.”

  I frowned. “And what have you done?”

  “Everything.” He gave me a mischievous grin, then sighed heavily. He shook his head. “Nothing much, actually.” I could sense the lie . . . but again it was tinged with truth. And on the river, he appeared both gray and red. “I was sent as a token of sincerity, a representative of Lord March and the power of Venitte, nothing more. Once Tristan delivered the message, my duties were done.” A note of bitterness had crept into his voice. His hand drifted to the pendant hanging around his neck, tilted it this way and that in the sunlight. Then he shrugged, met my gaze squarely. “But it got me out of Venitte. Sometimes, with the constant training, both as a Servant and Protector, it feels like I’m trapped in the city, never free to do what I want.”

  My gut twisted. I tried not to think of Avrell telling me—no, ordering me—to stay in Amenkor. The throne had trapped me here before, and now that the throne was gone, now that I was free, I found myself trapped anyway. By my role as Mistress.

  And Brandan had seen me wince.

  “Have you seen the city?” I asked without thought, trying to distract him, to turn him away from whatever he may have seen.

  “No.”

  “Perhaps,” I began, then hesitated.

  I drew in a sharp breath, suddenly suspicious. But there was no taint on the river, only the smell of sunlight, of the sea.

  Brandan was looking at me uncertainly.

  I shrugged the vague suspicion aside. “Perhaps I could show you? I need to check up on a few things anyway.”

  Straightening, Brandan grinned. “I’d love to.” He bowed his head, glancing up through the locks of his hair. “Mistress.”

  That pleasant little shiver coursed through me again. A shiver I distrusted, even though it intrigued me.

  I turned to Keven, caught his warning frown. “Ready some horses.”

  We rode down through the two wards, pausing to inspect the reconstruction going on at each gate, Brandan shocked by the devastation and skeptical at my claim that the gates had fallen within the space of an hour, that in fact the entire attack had lasted no more than a day. Nathem, the aged Second of the Mistress, was overseeing the progress there and reported that everything was proceeding smoothly. The walls to either side were covered with scaffolding crawling with workers and engineers, ropes and pulleys hauling huge stones off of carts that had brought the granite from the quarry to the north of the city. The stone portion of the inner gates was almost completed, a rough arch beginning to sprout from the edges of the two rebuilt walls. Blacksmiths were already forging the iron that would bind the wood for the doors themselves.

  “And there was no way to stop them?” Brandan asked, disbelief still coloring his voice.

  “The Servants were our only defense from the Ochean once she reached the walls. The army was useless. And Eryn and I didn’t hold the wall for long.”

  Brandan shook his head, brow creased in thought.

  From the walls, I turned left, heading away from the main road down to the wharf that passed through the worst of the devastated city and moving east along the River.

  As we passed into the industrial quarter, where the stockyards, tannery, and most of the blacksmiths and other tradesmen worked, I said, “You mentioned training as a Protector. What’s that?”

  Brandan barked laughter. “It sounds more interesting than it actually is. Those of us with talent—like the Servants you have here—are raised in the city, although we aren’t as constrained as it appears you are here. We don’t have to remain in the palace. In fact, we can roam throughout the city, which is much larger than Amenkor, maybe twice as large.”

  “The Servants leave the palace,” I said, although now that I thought about it I realized that they didn’t leave very often. Everything was provided for them in the palace; there was no need for them to roam the city. They’d probably spent more time in the city this past winter organizing and running the kitchens associated to the warehouses than they had their entire time here.

  And Venitte was larger than Amenkor? Twice as large?

  I tried to imagine Amenkor spreading out along the River and up and down the coast, holding twice as many people . . . and couldn’t.

  “In any case,” Brandan continued, “as Servants we, of course, have to train in the use of the Sight. We do that at the College, located in the heart of Venitte, inside Deranian’s Wall. But all Servants are also required to take training as guardsmen as well. In fact, we train to be Protectors, guardsmen who have the honor and distinction of serving under Lord March’s direct authority.” He twisted the words honor and distinction.

  “You don’t make it sound as if it’s much of an honor.”

  Brandan snorted. “It’s not. At least not for the Servants. Most of the Protectors become Protectors by first training in the guard and then earning some type of distinction so that they are promoted to the Protectors. But for the Servants . . .”

  “It’s automatic,” I finished.

  Brandan nodded. “Most of the regular Protectors don’t feel that we’ve earned our place. They think we should be part of the regular guard at first, and only made a Protecto
r once we’ve proved our worth. As a consequence, the Servants tend to keep to themselves. Thankfully, the regular Protectors have a healthy respect for the Sight and aside from some rude comments and general ridicule they leave us alone.”

  I frowned. It sounded like living on the Dredge, where those that were alike banded together into gangs, keeping those that were weak or different apart, separated and ridiculed, until they formed a gang of their own.

  Or until those that were different learned to survive on their own.

  Or died.

  “How many of the Servants are there in Venitte?” I asked.

  Brandan didn’t immediately respond, as if uncertain he should, or surprised that I didn’t already know. “About sixty.”

  “All men?”

  “Of course. Any women that we find in or close to Venitte that we think can use the Sight are sent up here to Amenkor to train, just as you send the men down to us.”

  I nodded. Something was niggling at the edges of my mind, as if there were something here I was supposed to see . . . something I should realize. I concentrated on it a moment, but it slipped away.

  “What about here?” Brandan asked. “How many Servants do you have in Amenkor at the moment?”

  “Twenty-nine. We lost three during the attack, killed by the Chorl.”

  I didn’t tell him that seven had died last year, when Avrell and Nathem had been trying to replace Eryn as Mistress while she was still seated on the throne and going mad.

  We’d reached the edge of the blacksmithing section and as I dismounted, Brandan following suit, Keven sent one of the escorting guardsmen into the long open building that roared with the sound of bellows and the steady clangor of hammers on steel and anvil. I’d been forced to raise my voice to answer Brandan as we approached and now didn’t even attempt to talk. I stood outside one of the open arches into the interior of the building as heat rolled outward, blowing the hair back from my face and turning my skin taut and waxy with sweat, sucking the breath from my lungs and making it hard to breathe.

  Inside, heat distorted the air, men and boys moving among the seething coals and embers, sparks flying from white-hot metal as it was shaped, steam rising as pieces were dunked into waiting pails of water. Finished pieces—armor, swords, pikes, halberds, and daggers—lined the nearest wall. A few other unidentifiable pieces lay among these, parts needed for the gates, the reconstruction of the ships, or any of the other hundred projects scattered throughout the city.

  Brandan’s eyebrows rose as he saw the stockpile of weapons, but he said nothing.

  The guardsmen Keven had sent returned abruptly with one of the blacksmiths: Hugh, the man huge, at least twice as wide as me and half again as tall. I watched him approach, feeling myself tense even though I was surrounded by Keven and the escort.

  Which made it all the more disconcerting when the man suddenly dropped to his knee, sketched the sign of the Skewed Throne over his chest, and bowed his head down before me. “Mistress,” Hugh murmured, his voice deep and pleasant, booming over the roar of the smithy, “it’s an honor. You saved us all.”

  The noise of the smithy fell into a sudden lull.

  Swallowing against the heat, conscious of all of those watching me, including Brandan, I reached forward and touched the blacksmith’s head. “Thank you.”

  Hugh rose, and the clamor of work rose again. As he stood, I could see the pockmarks of scars up and down his arms from the sparks of the fires. An old but vicious burn ran the length of his upper arm, pink and rough compared to the smooth heat-tanned skin around it.

  “An accident when I was an apprentice,” Hugh said in answer to my unasked question. He grinned. “It’s nothing. What can I do for you?”

  Drawing my eyes away from the burn, I shouted, “I came to see how things were progressing.”

  Hugh nodded, face becoming serious. “We should have enough to outfit the entire group of men currently in training. We’ve already started on the armor for the next contingent.” He led me a little deeper into the heat of the forge, pointing to the stacks of completed armor, then moved on. “Avrell and Catrell wanted us to start working on some shields as well. Then there’s the chain.” He halted before a heap of huge linked ovals, each link as tall as I was, and as thick as my waist.

  My eyes widened. I didn’t think I could lift one of the links by itself, let alone several of them together.

  “What’s the chain for?” I asked.

  Hugh grinned. “For the entrance to the harbor. Avrell and Regin think we can stretch it across the opening, hung close to the bottom so that it won’t interfere with the ships. They want the ends to be connected to some heavy-duty winches inside the new watchtowers. Then, when the Chorl return . . .” He mimed grappling with a winch, and in my mind’s eye I could see the heavy chain, strung across the harbor, rising until it was high enough that it would impede incoming ships. “Like a gate for the harbor,” Hugh finished.

  “An ingenious idea,” Brandan said, startling me. I hadn’t realized he’d followed us into the ironworks.

  Hugh nodded. “If we can get it to work.”

  It made me wonder what else Avrell and the others had been thinking up in the way of defenses.

  “And what’s all this,” I said, nodding toward a heap of unfamiliar objects to one side.

  “That is for Master Borund. For the new ships he’s building.”

  Surprised, I waved Hugh back to work, the large blacksmith bowing before ambling off toward the fire, pulling on heavy work gloves as he went. I hadn’t realized Borund had progressed so far. I knew he’d begun work on a portion of the wharf, redesigning it for his new ship-building operation, but other than that. . . .

  I’d have to ask William about that.

  Brandan and I carefully made our way back to the forge’s entrance, mounted up, and headed back toward the center of the city. As soon as we were away from the tumult of the smithy, Brandan said, “Many of the people have made that sign on their chest as we passed them on the street.” He mimicked the smith’s gesture. “What is it?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my saddle, the horse snorting as it picked up on my discomfort. I hadn’t noticed the people making the sign. “It’s the sign of the Skewed Throne. Don’t they have something similar in Venitte?”

  “Nothing like that. The people of Amenkor revere you as more than a leader, almost like a religious figure.”

  I didn’t answer. “Don’t they treat Lord March the same way? Doesn’t he have the Sight?”

  Brandan gave me a strange look. “Lord March isn’t one of the Servants. Servants serve as Protectors, and our Master, Sorrenti, serves on Lord March’s Council as an adviser, but Lord March isn’t one of us himself. The other Council members would never allow it. Someone with the Sight controlling the Council . . . it could never happen. They would have too much power. Even Lord Sorrenti’s presence on the Council is barely tolerated.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand. Lord March doesn’t rule the city?”

  Brandan snorted. “The Council of Eight rules the city. Lord March is the head of the Council, and has enough power that he can generally do whatever he wants. But he has to get the Council to agree, since they control the key interests in the city—the trade, the lands, the guilds. For anything significant, Lord March has to have their approval.”

  “But if the Council members control the land and the guilds, where does Lord March’s power come from?”

  “The Protectorate,” Brandan said. “Lord March controls the Protectorate and the general guard. He controls the army.”

  We continued down to the Dredge, crossing over the River so that I could check on the kitchen and warehouse I’d kept running using the palace’s resources in the slums. While there, I noticed that those that worked in the kitchen—mostly women and children—all wore white dresses similar to the ones the palace
servants wore, and all of them bowed or nodded their heads to me, signing across their chests.

  And the Dredge itself had changed. Near the River, some of the buildings had been damaged in the attack, but for the most part the slums had remained untouched by the fighting. However, the streets and alleys, niches and narrows, were all . . . clean. No heaps of piled stone and debris, blurring the edges of the buildings and crevices. Cobblestones were still cracked underfoot, uneven and broken, but all the garbage and detritus I’d come to know while living in the slums had been removed. Part of it was because Avrell had used the old stone of the crumbling buildings in the slums as part of the reconstruction efforts in the warehouse district near the wharf, the stone cheaper and closer than stone taken from the quarry. But that couldn’t account for all of it.

  Then I noticed the militia, those men under Darryn’s command who had taken it upon themselves to protect the kitchen and warehouse over the winter and who were now extending that protection to the rest of the slums. A rogue gutterscum thug—one not unlike what I’d once been—hovered near the entrance to an alley, watching those passing by on the street with sharp eyes. When he caught the militia man’s eye, the soldier simply frowned, and without a word the thug vanished into the alley, moving on to better hunting grounds.

  The two militia men moved farther down the Dredge. Before passing from sight, I noticed that the Skewed Throne symbol had been hand-stitched to the front of their shirts.

  As we crossed the bridge back into the lower city of Amenkor and began to head toward the wharf, I thought about what Eryn had said. Even without the throne, you are Amenkor. You became Amenkor this past winter, in the minds of its people.

  “You’re quiet,” Brandan said.

  I glanced toward him, noticed he was watching me carefully, realized he had been watching me carefully since the tour had first begun. I gave him a hesitant smile. “It’s . . . different. It’s not the same as when I lived there. It’s cleaner. Safer.”

  Brandan turned to look back toward the Dredge, brow furrowed in thought.