‘Hmm. And there was me thinking I’d made an impression.’
‘But Egan did, several times. And Egan was a man of few words,’ she said. Behind me, William started to fuss for the breast.
‘He said Orrin was a fool for toying with you, for letting you live, said he would have killed you in three heartbeats.’
‘Well I was only fourteen,’ I said. ‘In the end I bested him in less than three heartbeats. In any case, I had a friend with me that day who would have roasted Orrin in his armour by way of a victory prize. So once again, even with hindsight, Orrin was the wisest man there.’
As the carriage rumbled on I took the view-ring out and used it with practised ease to zero in on the Tall Castle. Years of such watching had revealed little about my father’s plans save to tell me they hadn’t been written in letters six foot tall and left upon the roof. Now, I saw palls of smoke trailing down across the city. Even from heaven’s heights the black work of the fires could be seen, stamped across the Tall Castle, across the streets of Crath. It seemed the Dead King was burning my past just as the Builders planned to burn our future. If his dark flood turned into a tide the Builders would end us all before such magics tore the world open.
Closer study found black sails on the Sane, columns marching along both shores. I followed their progress. The Dead King’s legions had reached through Gelleth already. Forcing their pace night and day there existed a possibility that they might catch us before the gates of Vyene. Estimating the size of the horde proved difficult, strung out and loose along the banks as it was, tens of thousands perhaps. More might join with it along the way. Even so. Dead men against heavy horse and city walls? It seemed a rash move.
‘What do you see?’ Gomst asked as I made my count.
‘Trouble.’
The thought of the dead things marching, despoiling the garden lands of Ancrath — it put a thin blade between my ribs and let it twist. I wondered if even the graves at Perechaise had yielded their dead. I might not have stood to keep the Dead King’s horde from the Tall Castle but in a different time, beside the girl-who-waits-for-spring and the grave in which I buried Justice, I would have made such a stand.
I leaned back, my eye aching after two hours and more of staring through the ring. Miana slept, our child on her chest. I thought of my father, seated in his throne, iron diadem upon his head. The old bastard was dead? I didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t fit, no matter how I turned it. He had been mine to kill, mine to end. Fate had been drawing me to that moment all these years … I rubbed my sore eye, slumped forward, elbows on knees, chin on knuckles. Father couldn’t be dead. I set the matter aside, to chew upon when it seemed more palatable.
Across the carriage Bishop Gomst dozed, grey hair straying, mouth ajar. Osser Gant watched me though, silent and with a bright eye. Makin’s chancellor, brought for his advice, yet holding his tongue.
I thought then of Coddin, my chancellor rotting back in the Haunt, of Fexler Brews lost in his machines, both of them with their talk of setting the world to rights, Coddin wanting me to break the power of the hidden hands, Fexler’s ambition grander still, to turn some non-existent wheel and return us to how things were meant to be, to make the world once more as it was given to us.
Two Ancraths, the wise had said, two to undo all the magic, to turn Fexler’s wheel! A sour smile quirked my lips. They’d better pray, both of them, Coddin and Fexler, the dying man and the ghost, pray that prophecy meant nothing, for there would be just the one Ancrath in Vyene and he’d brought with him no clue as to how to repair a broken empire, let alone a broken reality.
More rode on this matter than the power and influence of a few sorcerers, more than the enchantments of Sageous’s peers, men like Corion and Luntar who played their games with lives. Fexler’s third way rested upon the restoration of what had been normality. Michael and his brotherhood saw flesh as a disease that could be burned out, thereby ceasing the rotation of that wheel, stopping the world from cracking open. Fexler alone had entertained larger thoughts: he alone had believed we might turn back what had been done and spare mankind from a second coming of the fire that he had once brought down upon us.
In truth I took my firstborn to the place where the Builders would start their fire. If Fexler proved as deluded as Michael had suggested — if he couldn’t change the nature of existence — Vyene would burn and new suns would rise on man’s last day.
We narrowed the distance to Vyene and the weather closed around us, late autumn chill, river fog refusing the sun, persistent rain, cold and sapping the spirits, making mud of the land. The countryside grew more dour with each mile that passed beneath our hooves. We found whole villages abandoned, reviving memories of Gottering and filling every treeline with threat. The guard discovered fresh graves disinterred, late crops flattened in the field, apples rotting on the bough.
Riders passed us, their horses blown and ragged, the men not much better. All of them bore tales of the Dead King’s forces, of their strike through Ancrath, their advance into Gelleth, and now the threat to Attar, cutting a dark wedge through empire along the path we had taken only days before.
It might be said that destruction and disaster have always dogged my heels, but never before had that curse been so manifest. I travelled to Vyene and hell followed in my wake.
We stopped that night in the town of Allenhaure and ate at table within a great beer hall that could hold close on three hundred of the Gilden Guard. In Allenhaure at least, on the very doorstep of the empire’s heartland, neither winter nor the Dead King’s blight had yet sunk their teeth. The locals brought huge haunches of roast meat on wooden platters, lamb in a crust of garlic, herb, and hazelnut, beef unadorned and bleeding. Beer too, blonde with a thick white head, in tankards built like barrels of wooden stays bound by hoops, and in glass steins for the high table. They seemed genuinely pleased to see us, a festival atmosphere throughout. I wondered though if it were merely that if they feted us the guard might choose to restock provisions at the next town.
The beer had a clean taste, sharp, and I drank too much of it, perhaps to dim the images from Chella’s carriage, playing again and again through my mind, making me feel at once both sullied and hungry for more. Late on in the evening I leaned across Miana and took our son from the crib at her side.
‘Don’t wake him, Jorg!’
‘Oh shush, I’m taking him for a walk. He’ll like it.’ To his credit William, still looking only half-human as new babies are wont to look, lay limp in sleep while I manhandled him to my chest, and seemed impervious to disturbance of any kind. A cold tremor ran through me as I remembered Degran lying in my hands, lifeless, a ragdoll. I bit down on the memory, refusing to let it cripple me each time I held my boy. The death burned out of my touch the day I broke the siege at the Haunt.
‘At least wrap him up warm, take the-’
‘Shush, woman.’ For such a tiny thing she held an endless supply of nagging. ‘Be thankful I’m not leaving him on a hillside like the Spartans.’
I carried him between rank upon rank of the Gilden Guard, all bent over their meat and beer, voices lifted in half a dozen songs. By the main doors, open to vent the stink and heat of the road-ripe hundreds within, I caught sight of Gorgoth, unmistakeable, just outside at the edge of the torchlight. I went out, William clutched to my chest.
‘Gorgoth.’ A name that feels good in the mouth.
‘King Jorg.’ He turned his cat’s eyes on me, his great head turning slowly on a tree-trunk neck. He had a gravitas about him, did Gorgoth, something leonine.
‘Of all the people I know.’ I moved to stand beside him and followed his gaze out into the night. ‘Of all of them, since the Nuban died — it’s your friendship, your respect, I wanted. And you’re the one not to give it. I didn’t want it because you didn’t give it — but I do want it.’ Perhaps the beer spoke for me, but it spoke true.
‘You’re drunk,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be holding a baby.’
‘It wasn’t a question.’
‘Answer it anyway,’ I said.
‘We can never be friends, Jorg. You have crimes on your soul, blood on your hands, that only God can forgive.’ His voice rolled away from us, deeper and darker than the night.
‘I know it.’ I lifted William closer to my face and breathed him in. ‘You and I know it. The rest of them, they somehow forget, convince themselves it can be swept away, misremembered. Only you and Katherine see the truth. And Makin, though it’s Makin he can’t forgive, not me.’
I passed William to Gorgoth, pressing him forward until the leucrota lifted one massive three-fingered hand to receive him. He stood very still, eyes wider than wide, staring at my son, almost lost in the width of his palm.
‘Men shun me — I have never held a baby,’ he said. ‘They think what corrupted me will pass to their children if I touch them.’
‘And will it?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
We stood, watching the rise and fall of a tiny chest.
‘You’re right not to be a friend to me,’ I said. ‘But will you be a friend to William, as you once were to Gog?’ The boy would need friends. Better men than me.
The slowest nod of that great head. ‘You taught me that. Somehow you taught me what Gog was worth.’ He lifted William close to his face. ‘I will protect him, Jorg of Ancrath. As if he were my own.’
41
Chella’s Story
‘There’s no room at the inn.’ Kai twisted a grin at her. Allenhaure is full. He climbed back into the carriage, slipping off muddy boots.
‘Full of?’
‘King Jorg’s escort,’ Kai said.
‘So have Axtis press on to the next town,’ Chella said.
‘It’s a long haul to Gauss and the guard are always treated well here. Rumbles of discontent I’m hearing, as if there’s real men under all that gilding and those stern expressions.’
‘Not my concern. Let’s be moving.’ Though as she spoke the words it seemed that perhaps it was her concern. She tasted it at first, a wrongness in the air. ‘Wait.’
Kai paused, a boot half-returned to his foot. ‘What?’
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes … ‘Just wait.’ She held up a hand.
Wrongness. A dry sharp sense of wrong, like grit behind her eyeballs. The temperature fell, or perhaps her body just thought it did for her breath didn’t steam.
‘Lichkin.’ Kai felt it too.
‘Hiding himself,’ she said. ‘Thantos.’
‘What does he want?’ Kai’s poise fell away when lichkin drew near. Keres had terrified him. Thantos was worse.
‘It’s a reminder,’ Chella said. Some part of her had been hoping the plan forgotten or changed, a large part, and growing larger as life reclaimed her. She cursed Jorg Ancrath and steeled herself to this new task.
‘Go into town, get a cart and have it loaded with ale casks. We’ll camp in the fields toward the river. The guard can have their revels.’
Kai sniffed. ‘Looks like rain.’
‘Have them build fires. They won’t notice the rain after long.’
‘Ale will do that for you.’ Kai nodded. He couldn’t manage a grin though, not with death stalking so close, scraping every nerve raw.
Chella reached into the purse on her dress-belt. ‘Take this.’ She spilled four heavy pieces of gold into his hand, Brettan bars.
‘What-’ He nudged the small vial of black glass lying amongst the gold in his palm. From the change in his face she could tell he understood.
‘Styx water. One drop per cask.’
‘What a thing it would be.’ Chella held the goblet before her, making a slow swirl of the ale, the foam all but gone, just islands in a dark and moonlit sea. ‘To fly.’
‘Yes.’ Kai stared into his own dark sea, his own foam scattered islands. Perhaps it reminded him of his drowned land.
A long silence. The soft rain made no sound. Far, in the distance, a muted cheer from Allenhaure, some celebration amongst Jorg’s guard.
‘I almost did.’ Kai set his silver goblet on the table between them. ‘Once.’
‘How can you almost fly?’ Chella shook her head.
‘How can you almost love?’ He looked up at the sky, starless and bible-black. ‘I stood on a lip of rock, held out over the Channel Sea, where the waves pound on white cliffs. And the wind there, it blows so cold and sure, takes the heat from you, wraps your bones. I leaned out into it, nothing but the wind to hold me, and those dark waves slapping and pounding way, way below. And it filled me, like I was made of glass, or ice, or air, and the only thing in my mind was the voice of that east wind, the voice of forever calling me.’
‘But?’
‘But I couldn’t let go. If I had flown I would have flown away from everything I knew. From me.’ He shook his head.
‘And what wouldn’t we give to fly away from being us right now?’ Chella flicked her goblet over and stood as the liquid spilled over the table. All across the field men of the guard lay sprawled as if in sleep, lying, some of them in their gold armour, in the muddy grass. Captain Axtis had ended on his back, half-out of his pavilion, sword in hand, eyes staring at the sky and full of rain. Out of nearly three hundred men only eleven hadn’t at least sipped the Allenhaure ale. The lichkin had found those men in the dark and played his games, first making them silent with the wet tearing of flesh.
‘Will Thantos be needing the others too?’ Kai pushed away the white arm of a camp-girl, sodden dress, hair dark with rain, face-down in the dirt. He levered himself from his chair and stepped over her to join Chella.
She nodded. ‘They’ll go to the woods and join the Dead King’s force when he arrives.’
Kai drew his cloak tight. A mist lay ankle-deep around them, rising out of nowhere as if it bled from the ground, white as milk.
‘It’s starting.’
The sense of wrongness that had scratched at her all evening, twisting likes worms beneath the skin, now crystallized into horror. When the dead return there’s a feeling of everything flowing the wrong way, as if hell itself were vomiting them out.
Axtis sat up first, before his men, before the dead whores, the boys with their serving plates and polish rags. He didn’t blink. The water ran from his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Wrong.
All around them men stood in their golden armour. The Styx water had left no mark upon them, save for the few who tumbled into the open fires of course. Styx water does its work without hurry, dulling senses, bringing sleep, paralysing the voice first, then the larger muscle groups. At the last the death it offers is an agony of tortured muscles fighting and failing. Chella had enough necromancy in her fingertips to know that they had not died easy. Their pain echoed in her.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Kai said. ‘It won’t take long before someone discovers something is wrong with them. And then all that talk of diplomacy is just noise. We’ll be fortunate to escape without being beheaded then burned. That’s what they do to our sort you know? That’s if you’re lucky. If not, it’s burning first, then behead what’s left.’
‘The Dead King has his reasons,’ Chella said.
‘All this to spread terror? It seems extravagant.’
Chella shrugged. Better Kai not know the Dead King’s reasons. She’d rather not know them herself. ‘We ride from here. In the saddle.’
‘What? Why?’ The rain fell faster, harder, just to over-score his point.
‘Well you can stay in the carriage if you want.’ Chella wiped the water from her face and spat. ‘But Thantos will be in there, and lichkin aren’t the best of travelling companions.’
42
Vyene is the greatest city on earth. I could be wrong of course. It might be that in the vastness of Ling, or beyond the Sahar at the heart of Cerana, or somewhere in the dusts of the Indus there lies a more fabulous work of men. But I doubt it. Th
e wealth of an empire has been spent in Vyene, year upon year, century upon century, exchanged for stone and skill.
‘Incredible.’ Makin took off his helm as though it might somehow hinder his ability to absorb the glories on every side. Rike and Kent said nothing, struck dumb. Marten kept close at my side, every bit the farmer once again, as if six years of war, of leading armies to victory, had slid from him, scared away by the majesty of our surroundings.
‘Lord Holland would be a peasant here,’ Makin said.
Few of the cities I had taken in the year following my conquest of Arrow held a single building to compare with the grand structures lining our approach to the palace. Here nobles of the old empire had built their summer homes, in all shapes and sizes, from confections in rose-marble to edifices in granite that scraped the clouds, all competing to impress the emperor, his court, and each other. My great grandfather had been such a noble, Duke of Ancrath, holding the lands in the name of the empire and at the steward’s pleasure. When the steward died and the empire fell into its pieces, Grandfather made his own crown, claimed Ancrath for himself, and called himself king.
Even in Vyene though, a nervousness ran through the streets. More than the excitement of Congression. The place held a tension, a drawn breath waiting release. Bonefires burned in alleyways and distant squares, corpses given to the flame in fear that something worse might take them. The crowds that watched our procession had a restlessness to them. A guardsman on a skittish horse lost his helm and laughter went up among the locals, but it rang too shrill, edged with hysteria.
The roads to the palace, and there are four, each lie broad enough that a man couldn’t throw a spear from the gates of the residences on one side to those on the other. Our column rode at the centre, fifteen abreast and thirty deep with the carriages in the midst and the wagons to the rear. The followers and hangers-on, including Onsa’s wheel-house packed with negotiable affection, had melted away in the outer reaches of the city. Captain Devers had sent out word to the effect that no undesirables should approach the Gilden Gate. I had to grin at that. I’m sure a wheel-house full of prostitutes would carry less sin through those gates than the Hundred on their best day.
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