He bent his knee formally at the dais as he always did and went about the calming business of removing and handing his outer coat to his assistant, who was yet too insignificant to warrant the use of a name.
The Empress addressed him in the cold, ghostly tone of the Eight – a sound that never failed to make him shiver with irrepressible dread, coming from her ordinary throat. It carried the harmonics and resonances of multiple speakers in a way unnatural to any human vocal cords, and that would have been alarming enough, but in addition it boomed, like the ocean in a huge seacave, and it broke at the edges into distortions that were surely sounds unproducible by flesh. It was unlike any other voice and its effect on him, as on others, was absolute. It spoke and what it said became the truth by which life would continue. He was so used to it now that he could witness his own craven response and laugh at it, though he couldn’t alter it.
‘We are disturbed to hear of imminent war with the Karoo. What say you?’
He was prepared for this in advance, had been working on his response since the Karoo itself arrived in the city proclaiming honest soldiery. ‘The incursion of the relic digsite on to the Overgrowth is very minor. We have no intention of staying there beyond the necessary length of time it takes to conclude the expedition. It is at the behest of the University and the Magisterium that we are there at all. Our defences and military operations are solely acting to protect the civil engineers at the sites. We have seen no emissaries and our only encounters have been with the wildlife.’
‘That is a pretty way to describe a massacre.’
Alide ground his teeth, silently. His jaw ached. ‘It is the expedition that is the aggressive action. That is your business, Highness. To facilitate the expedition we must have soldiers, munitions, weapons, activity within the Overgrowth.’ He may, he realised a moment before the hammer fell, have overstepped the mark in telling her what her business was.
The voice pressed him to the back of his skull as if he were a strip of wet paper. ‘There is almost nothing left of the expedition. Your business.’
This rebuking crush had also happened before. He waited, the silence returned him to himself. ‘In terms of the Empire as a whole its interests are best served by completing the Expedition in the hopes of retrieving artefacts that will be sufficiently useful to overpower those who seek to destroy us. The portal at Breakneck Pass is complete and the Southern Aspect portal functional as of last week. This will end the need to cross hostile territory between us, ending the skirmishes with the Steppe clans. We may withdraw from the campaigns there immediately by your command. Any residual ill feeling from the Circle will then become border issues and given their behaviour one may anticipate a lengthy guerrilla situation so I suggest strengthening the outposts, maybe sending some fortresses down there and then infiltrating the population with sleeper agents.’
He paused, his gaze around her sandalled feet, seeing almost nothing. Checks and balances tipped in his head on the elegant fulcrum of the ever-changing moment. He knew she was experiencing her own version of this, wondered briefly what that was like: eight clockworks attempting to mesh. What gears she must have. What complexity. He spoke again as she paused. Her expectation was tangible.
‘I recommend you use the Karoo infiltrator as an expert to prove his good intentions. If he is promising war we will show faith at least to hear their part by sending him south to the front. He will ensure the safe conduct and conclusion of the mission there, explain to the Karoo that we have no intention of lingering. If our safe exit is managed we might consider some longer attempt to establish communication. Who knows what lies underneath the Overgrowth, after all?’
And, he thought, if he is a spy, and he is, and if he complicates matters here too much, which he does, then he can be got rid of there very easily. After all, hundreds have already vanished without trace there. How difficult would it be to lose a few more? But then he closed down those thoughts. He knew she could not read them but it felt dangerous to even think of them in her presence. They led inexorably towards his treachery, hidden in the centre of his brain. The Karoo were the perfect gift. He could destroy Glimshard and remake it, corrected, with such an instrument. But that was a delicate thought, fragile as crystal. Then he knew who else was trouble. Huntingore. Who knew what was in that rotting cache of hers? But her daughters would be easy to manipulate if she was out of the way. They were little more than children and their heads full of social nonsense.
‘You would need more specialists there too, of course,’ he added, as if generously thinking of this to aid the situation, and then wondered if he went too fast, too far. He had to fight not to look up at her and then her voice hammered him flat within himself.
‘I will take your advice under consideration. Leave me.’
He bowed and took his leave. He was unable to consider his own mind until he was clear of the courts but when he did that low, grinding anger rose up first from the wreckage she made of him. It dulled on his walk back to the Ministry. Although it was too late to do anything but sleep now he still went about the movements of returning, sifting his papers, closing up, pausing to eat at the late night rice stand. Snuffling through peas and chopped meat with hot sauce, he was able to consider it at last from the happy distance of an hour.
He liked to pretend for most of his life that it was the Empress’ power of control over her subjects that he was opposed to, in principle. It made her a tyrant, potentially absolute, and her ministers and courtiers only tools. As a male and one of a specific family, he could never rise higher than he had already. He was made to serve, but he baulked at it, not because he didn’t want to, but because it was not voluntary. He felt, as it galled him, that this position was inherently ridiculous: he was suited to his post, his life was reasonably good, his health adequate, his wealth generous. He was free, outside his duties, to do as he liked. But when it came to the duties, particularly those he must serve the Empress direct, he resisted. He knew that if it were not for this perversity he could have been content and his life a rounded, wholesome thing instead of this twisted, dry meander it had become. He saw that his – spite, was it? Very well, his spite was unfounded. The Empress was not a lone operator. She absorbed the will of the population in as many ways as she exerted her controlling guidance on it. Nobody here could be said to be exempt from the sum total of the will of the whole. But he blamed her. He disliked her position, so powerful and unbalanced. He disliked bitterly the physical vessel of her present avatar in this city. So young, and he was not. So inexperienced, and he was not. It was more than that… more.
He had to stop eating. Food was lodged in his gullet over a spasm that sent a curl of hot acid up into his throat and burned him. Even thinking of her made him ill. He stretched up to his tallest, sitting in the conservatory of his house, alone, in the dark, with his food on his lap. He knew it was craven folly to envy her and hate her. It was pointless. She was no more the author of her situation than he was of his. But he could not stop and as he sat, listening to water drip from the long leaves of his bromeliads into the moist dirt and waiting for his stomach to stop its contradictory revolution against his taste for spices, he knew that it was because he enjoyed hating her. It added a dimension without which he would suffocate in greyness; his own of course, for he had so little of any note to do, until lately. He’d created malice from boredom, because he liked conflict, and the hidden drama of it fed the hungry, vicious beast he fancied lay inside him, perhaps inside all men, mad with civilisation’s curfews and desperate to rend, tear and destroy with the sweet taste of justice. For a defence there must be an attack. To look like the defender when you were not required only the right bait and the right timing. The Karoo were, to a fault, mindlessly vicious and provoking them was child’s play compared to provoking the Empress. But you had to practise with what you’d got.
He fooled himself he’d accept a stronger woman on the throne of Glimshard. He smiled, knowing he could find another reason to dislike her, or
someone else to make war on. Contentment. He began to eat again, more carefully, his guts calmed by this sense of endless purpose. He went alone to bed in his quiet house and set his water clock to wake him at dawn. He would ride to the portal and see it working. When he was satisfied his agents were in place he could return and tidy matters in the city. Borze would have enough to deal with in counteracting news from the expedition front and by next week the interest in Tzaban would have worn off a little.
Before he put his light out he wrote and sent a few letters. One was to Shrazade, asking her for an inventory of the Huntingore house. She must have a way. He didn’t care what it was, or what it cost. He wanted to know what else was in there. He enclosed the Ministry Seal with instructions as to how she might present her bill upon success and dispatched the letter with a runner from his own house who was well versed in handovers: by the time it arrived at its destination there would be nobody in the city who could have said where it had originated.
He put out his light and slept soundly.
TORADA
Torada closed herself off from the others and they also retired to think on matters, agreeing to regroup in a few hours’ time. She waited for the strange off-balance shift to settle as they departed from her consciousness. In the first instant, as ever, she missed them, even Spire, who wanted her dead. For a few minutes she lost control of her body and when she returned to it she found herself on her bed, the cool sheets under her, Hakka leaning over her, watching and waiting, his expression hard and dark with concern.
‘I’m all right,’ she said, crossly, as usual, so glad he was there as she pushed him away. Under her fingers the incredible hardness of his arms was like marble. She always marvelled at it, so different to her own even though she did train and thought of herself as strong. That idea too made her want to laugh and finally, rid of the seven, she did. She felt so exhausted she could have been transparent, worn to nothing.
Hakka obediently played his part in the old ritual and got up from the bed, stretching and yawning. He brought her a lightly alcoholic fruit drink and she sat up on her pillows to sip it. Runners came, saw, dashed off to set evening lighting and dispose of loitering courtiers.
The doors closed with a soft thud of padded joints meeting. She heard the bolts slide home. From their adjoining suites Jago and Eth padded quietly in; beasts from freshly opened cages. Both men were as efficient and deadly as Hakka, albeit very different in personality and style. Both wore their ceremonial white and red livery to mark them as her property, her personal guard. Jago was the taller and heavier of the two, dark as a mahogany table, his hair, eyes and skin all the same colour, his serious nature evident in every deliberate, exacting move. Torada, herself now alone and not the Empress, feared Jago a little.
Eth, approaching from the far end of the room, was so light and springy as he ran he seemed half the size he really was. Instead of Jago’s full formal robes he wore only the kilt section and darted barefoot, not booted, to catch up so both of them met Hakka in the middle of the circular carpet. Tawny and narrow-limbed Eth’s pale gold hair streamed unbound, at Torada’s request, the fringes tamed in two bound ropes by silver rings. He joined Jago immediately and in silence to divest Hakka of his heavy plate chest and greaves, harness and cloak.
Torada loved Eth, sweetly, fiercely. She loved to watch his long fingers tangle and caress Jago’s fingers as they unbuckled their lover from his trappings, loved to see Hakka emerge like a horse from under the saddle now that he was off duty at last. They could never leave her unattended, but the routines for shifting responsibilities were well worn-in. By his dress code she knew it was Jago who was in charge of her security now although none of them were permitted to leave her or separate while Hakka slept and rested. For this reason, and because Hakka was her greatest, dearest friend she had employed Night’s unique skills to hunt down Eth and Jago, to be sure he was well cared for – to be certain that he would be loved as she felt he deserved. It was recompense for her theft of his life. She knew it was not enough. She wished it were. She would have given him anything. Herself the least of it if he had wanted that. Probably it was better he didn’t. She told herself that daily. Probably it was better.
Now she hugged her pillow to herself, hid in the pile of them, nerveless and wan, and devoured with her eyes what she would never have for herself. She watched as Eth impishly stood on his toes to kiss Jago as if he were stealing apples from a tree. Jago always made like it was nothing, Eth always smiled, eating up Jago’s single downward glance of pleasure and dancing off with it. He was happy by nature. Jago and Hakka both lightened in his presence. She did too. He flashed a grin at her as he turned, seeing her where she always was, alone in the middle of her huge bed. Then his attention was all given over to Hakka, who sat and accepted the rubbing of his shoulders, neck and back by Eth’s sensitive hands. Jago watched them for a moment, dark and smouldering, then turned to take up his post across the room, between the doors, his swords rustling quietly against the cloth panels of his tunic. His impassive face reflected his inner control. In response, Torada relinquished the last of hers, sinking deeper into the bedding. With the three of them present she could sleep. But instead she watched with her sore eyes.
Eth, who slept the mornings out, was full of energy. He worked on Hakka’s body where the armour had marked it, where he knew all the knots built up from carrying the weapon and standing about all day long. Hakka drank water as he was treated, murmuring to Eth so Torada couldn’t hear the words. She liked their gruff, low voices. Eth’s was softer and lighter. Hakka’s in relaxation was more gentle than usual. The tones and vibrations altered as they spoke; once they had cross referenced information the cadence became playful. Hakka caught Eth’s hands, oil rubbed and slippery, and slid them on himself, fingers in the same caressing dance as Eth and Jago’s had been, before he stood up and with a sweeping turn picked Eth up in his arms and carried him over to the bed.
Jago shifted his weight, his spear shaft clanking softly against one of his swords. Torada scooted over to the side, a girl in an enormous cotton wasteland, behind boulders, as Eth was flung down beside her in a gasping, laughing heap. She hid her grin in a bite of pillow as Eth’s outflung arm reached further and tickled her at the waist. He turned his pretty head for a second and said,
‘You’re not even dressed for bed. Dayclothes? Bath?’
She poked him in the ribs, too tired to move, and they both paused to watch Hakka shed his undergarments and crawl on hands and knees, naked, over Eth. He smiled slowly into Eth’s face, a knowing, carnal grin, and at the same time picked up a loose cushion and batted it over the top of Torada’s head.
‘Go get your bath.’
‘I can’t,’ she said and he batted her again, the blow as soft as a cat’s paw and modified by the cushion’s overstuffed down. Under her pillow-wall Eth’s hand found hers for a second and gripped tightly. She closed her eyes and concentrated. When Hakka kissed him, the hand loosened, thumb caressing her thumb gently. When Hakka entered Eth, the hand gripped hard for a moment and then relaxed and opened. She stroked the oil-softened skin with her fingertips and imagined their pleasure. The bed bounced her lightly as they moved and their growls, moans and sighs filled her ears.
She thought of Spire, maliciously, and held Eth’s hand, longing to be touched. She knew she could do what Spire did, and move into Eth herself, feel what he felt as Hakka made love to him. But she didn’t want it stolen and, as she was, she had nobody but the seven. She had nothing but herself and her intent not to harm. Spire was right. Pathetic indeed. And now maybe not enough to hold against Alide, who felt like he meant her ill. His presence made her scalp prickle.
She pushed the cushion off her head and watched Hakka and Eth kiss. When Eth begged and Hakka teased him she lay still, heart pounding. Watching them transported her to the same state, all wanton longing and nobody to salve it. She closed her eyes again and thought of Isabeau Huntingore, how pretty, how cool, how aloof she’d b
een. Eth’s hand was so strong, so calloused, so him there was no imagining that to be Isabeau’s hand. She and Isabeau would not growl and grunt deep like men. Isabeau was light and cool and rounded, soft as the pillows on her, delicious as the feel of the fine sheet and the passionate, intense heat of her beautiful bodyguards. In that, yes, she could be the same. Maybe…
Then Hakka found Eth’s errant hand, searching for it to pin it down with his own. He crushed her hand under it.
‘Hold him.’ Hakka’s guttural command was for her. She gripped as hard as she could and felt Eth’s palm mashed flat between hers and Hakka’s. Between her knuckles Hakka’s fingers bit in painfully. Eth cried out as Hakka changed his stroke, voice assenting wordlessly as Hakka told him, ‘Wait for her.’
Torada rolled to her side and pushed all the intervening pillows away. She looked at Hakka’s body, saw Eth’s pleasure as the initial softer tones of romantic lovemaking gave way to him getting the long, hard fucking he was begging for. She watched Hakka’s fascinatingly hard and thick member slide and slide again into Eth’s body and her own body shivered, tingled and shocked her with the build of heat as it pretended this was her, for her. She was Eth and she was Hakka, giving each other this burning, fierce, needful thing. She was muscle and sweat, she was taker and taken. Her small, weak self, reached out, stretching towards believing it so much it filled her senses and became true, inside. The power, the smells – always so contradictory; sweet, corrupted, clean, dirty, reckless, careless, rich and living conspired to help her. She felt Hakka’s hand holding her into them. His permission, Eth’s agreement, Eth’s begging… Eth’s face— Her other hand was between her legs, feeling her clit as a cock, like Hakka’s, being him, taking Eth.
‘Come,’ Hakka commanded and Eth cried out. The sight of his ecstasy brought her own on her.
Torada looked into Hakka’s eyes, seeing him still in control, waiting, as she obeyed him too, shaking, helpless. Only when he was certain she and Eth were done did he look down at his lover and thrust himself hard and fast until he froze and then bent down slowly in a long shudder, face pushed into Eth’s thick, silky hair. His hand on hers released and she let them go, pulling the hand back to her and cradling its sore, agonised joints against herself. Eth smiled at her, turning his head and she put the fingers of her other hand against his lips, wet, and he licked them, eyes glazing briefly with the intensity of the reward. Her body was not like other women’s. She felt rather than heard Hakka grunt with amused recognition as he realised what Eth was doing. Eth would be hard all night now, and Hakka wouldn’t get much sleep.
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