Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  Latif had for some time been Salim’s main confidante. ‘It could just be bad luck, and you’ll carry the debate tomorrow. But if it was triggered by someone, then we’re in real danger. We have Hadishah magi protecting us – but can we trust them? Can we trust Rashid?’

  ‘Once Rashid was reviled as a part-afreet monster,’ Rashid reminded him, ‘and it was the people’s fear of magi that ensured he had to accept a secondary role to me. Has the world changed enough that the people would trust a mage as ruler?’

  Latif considered. ‘Our victory in the Crusade has made him popular – very popular. The status of magi with Ahmedhassan blood is ambiguous now. In the Kalistham, afreet bow down to the Prophet, and clever Scriptualists are using those passages to legitimise the gnosis. If they succeed in swaying opinion, he may feel confident enough to move against you.’

  ‘Ai, that is clear, but Rashid knows the Ordo Costruo are formidable, better than anyone. Yuros is beyond our reach, even if we did want war.’

  ‘But is Yuros the real target here?’ Latif asked. ‘Once Shihad is declared, the man given the leadership of it can declare other targets; all he must do is prove a link to the overall goal. Gatioch, Mirobez, even Lakh – they are more realistic targets than Yuros.’

  ‘They are – but what does Rashid want with war in the first place, Latif?’

  ‘War gave him his greatest glory, Salim. He wants more of it.’

  ‘But he’s never spoken openly in favour of Shihad,’ Salim observed.

  ‘All the better to surprise us by changing tack at a vital moment. Ishaq seems to be on our side, but Beyrami’s faction is large and dangerous. A split in the Faith would put everything at risk. Ishaq needs concord, not two giant factions at loggerheads. He might feel that a smaller, local Holy War might pull everyone back together.’

  Salim scowled. ‘That’s plausible. Our strength is that most common men are struggling to rebuild their lives and don’t want any kind of war. Our weakness is that we’ve been unable to help most of them in that rebuilding. But would a domestic war be enough to placate Beyrami?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Latif replied. ‘A Keshi might think of the Lakh as godless thieves, but he’ll still do business with a Lakh trader. War against the Lakh doesn’t speak to Keshi hearts. But mention Yuros and the hatred is visceral.’

  ‘Then what of Javon?’ Salim wondered. He was officially – though they’d never met – betrothed to a politically astute Javonesi noblewoman, daughter of the assassinated king. The marriage was delayed indefinitely, a ploy that left her as his ambassador in Javon, an arrangement that suited both parties. Thus far it had worked well.

  ‘Javon does have a significant Yurosi population, but their borders are guarded by the Ordo Costruo: it’d be a difficult war to prosecute.’ Latif scowled, then clicked his fingers. ‘The only other place with a significant Rondian enclave is Hebusalim herself—’

  ‘Not even Beyrami could sell that,’ Salim exclaimed. ‘And the Ordo Costruo are based there.’

  Latif sighed. ‘Ai, you’re right. We’re really none the wiser, are we?’

  ‘We’re not. So let’s assume the worst. I’ll force a decision from Ishaq tomorrow. And given the tensions here, I think it best if we split our household. I want you to take two others – you choose – and all the wives and children, and go to our summer palace in the hills.’

  ‘I’d prefer to be here—’

  ‘No, Latif, if something goes wrong, I want to know you at least are safe. Of all my brothers, you are the one best able to take over my role until my eldest comes of age. I need that of you.’

  His sultan had never before singled him out for such lavish praise. ‘As you command.’

  ‘Thank you, Latif. I’m blessed to have such a man as you behind me. Now, I believe I have an appointment with young Waqar Mubarak. He is intelligent and pleasant, you said?’

  ‘Is it wise to meet him at a time like this?’

  ‘We’d be fools to let the opportunity to meet privately with Sakita Mubarak slip by, and that requires an intermediary like Waqar.’

  ‘I’ve heard she’s a disagreeable know-it-all,’ Latif commented.

  ‘Perhaps, but she’s also a renowned mage – and perhaps Rashid’s blind spot. She could be vital in maintaining his allegiance.’ Salim laid a reassuring hand on Latif’s shoulder. ‘Make ready to leave. I’ve never felt so vulnerable in Sagostabad before.’

  The sultan left to meet with Waqar Mubarak while Latif returned to the main lounge where the other six impersonators were chattering like anxious birds. All were loyal, he knew that, but some had more courage than others. He chose Halaam and Faizal, two of the staunchest, and briefed them, then left for the zenana.

  As he strode through empty corridors towards the women’s quarters, he felt a subtle change in the air. It wasn’t a chill, more a creeping silence. The palace was a maze of long corridors and alcoves with seats and tables for courtiers to hold impromptu conversations. But as Latif paused at the head of one corridor, he thought he glimpsed someone in hooded robes vanishing into a barely lit alcove, and his unease crystallised. Every instinct said to back away. There were guardsmen at the major portals, but the closest was a hundred yards away and out of sight.

  It could be nothing. It should be nothing. But it could be everything they dreaded.

  He took a deep breath, then padded to the end of the corridor where the shrouded figure had vanished. There was no one, but his fear refused to subside. He crept to the next alcove, his heart in his mouth, and found an open door to a large throne-hall, one reserved for entertainments and dances. On the far side of the room, a grey-shrouded, masculine figure was standing in profile. He was wearing a strange mask of beaten copper that covered his forehead, eyes and nose but left the lower half of the face bare; it had a long beak, like a bird’s, a foot long with a sharp point. His jawline was bearded, with a flash of dark lips and bared teeth.

  In his left hand was a scimitar.

  12

  Dangerous Days

  Mage Children

  A mage-child gains the gnosis during puberty, but of course their manifest superiority is apparent well before then. We magi are as far above the common man as lions are above cattle.

  LADY SARAE ROUX, PALLAS 839

  Pallas, Rondelmar

  Aprafor 935

  ‘Let the Imperial Council come to order,’ Ril Endarion announced formally. He’d actually read the pile of papers in front of him, which would probably surprise the other counsellors. With Lyra confined, he was having to chair the council, as well as staying on top of military matters as Master-General. ‘Gentlemen, we’ve a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Of course,’ Edreu Gestatium replied, sipping Dhassan coffee. Calan Dubrayle gave no sign of having heard as he shuffled his own documents, while the grand prelate sniffed his own coffee with the expression of one who wishes it might somehow turn into mead. Dirklan Setallius, at the foot of the table, rested his chin on his hand; as always, a subtle air of menace hung about him.

  ‘Think of every matter on the agenda as a crime,’ Lyra had told Ril earlier that morning as they’d gone through the business of the day; she’d got that from Setallius. ‘Solve the crime and pass sentence on the guilty.’ She might be stuck in the Confinement Suite, thickening at the waist and suffering from morning sickness, but she was determined to stay abreast of council matters. If she’d had the temerity to overrule her iron-willed midwife Domara, she’d have been here, but Ril scarcely blamed her for avoiding that confrontation.

  Her confinement meant Ril also spent every night alone, despite the overt circling of certain ladies of court. He put that unwanted thought aside and turned to the first item of the day – the first crime: tax-farming. The treasurer opened the debate, bandying about words like ‘recovery’, ‘confidence’ and ‘surplus’, and of course Gestatium backed him up. Then Setallius countered with a catalogue of abuses by tax-farmers reported to the Crown, concluding that tax-farming was a fals
e economy, cutting costs, but in the end saving nothing.

  Dubrayle harrumphed, and provided tables of numbers. Setallius had tables too, but with vastly different conclusions. Wurther said smugly that his Church collected tithes, not taxes, and people competed to give the most. The other men glared him back to silence.

  Lyra had discussed the core issue with him: Dubrayle’s treasury received a steady but reduced upfront tax take, but the people hated it. ‘The empress leans towards a repeal of the tax-farming laws,’ Ril told them. ‘Under Constant, tax was collected directly.’

  Dubrayle looked tired and frustrated. ‘But we don’t have the resource any more—’

  ‘Lyra believes taxation must be done accurately and fairly, no matter the cost.’

  Dubrayle winced, but Gestatium leaned forward; he’d controlled tax collection before tax-farming was brought in. ‘Does the empress sanction rebuilding the imperocratic tax bureau?’ he asked, just as Lyra had predicted he would.

  ‘Drive a wedge between Gestatium and Dubrayle on this and suddenly we’ve got the majority required, enough to start a review process,’ Lyra had suggested. ‘Crime solved!’

  ‘I am authorised by the queen to add her vote to mine in this matter,’ Ril told them. ‘The motion is a full review, including rebuilding the tax bureau.’

  The motion passed, four votes to Dubrayle’s one – Setallius as an adviser couldn’t vote.

  Ril spent the rest of the morning solving other crimes, some of omission, some of deception. What stunned him most was the bare-faced cheek of his fellow councillors, usually Wurther or Dubrayle, both happy to propose a lengthy list of legal amendments, embedded amongst which were ‘errors’ that if not spotted would pervert the intent of the law – in their favour. Their attitude appeared to be that if the other councillors weren’t sharp enough to spot them, they deserved the consequences. Ril was tempted to punch them both.

  Evening was approaching before they reached the final two items. ‘The seasonal riverreek outbreak has come early, and threatens to be the worst ever,’ Setallius reported gravely. ‘Another dozen cases have been reported in Pallas-Nord and five in Emtori – that’s more than a hundred cases, with four deaths so far, and summer’s not yet here.’

  ‘Nasty business,’ Wurther remarked. ‘What are we doing about it?’

  ‘Normal procedure is to encourage infected people to stay at home,’ Setallius answered, ‘but the mage-healers want to create quarantine houses for the sick, to better contain it.’

  ‘They know their business,’ Gestatium remarked. ‘Most of the warehouse district is half-empty – house them there, perhaps?’

  That sounded a little excessive to Ril. ‘Riverreek is just a nasty cold, isn’t it?’

  ‘Spoken like a mage with superior immunities,’ Setallius drawled. ‘For the common burgher, riverreek can be a killer, and early onset is a bad sign.’

  They agreed to quarantining, and an enhanced healing presence, then turned to the last item: border security. ‘We have reports of fresh banditry across the Jusse and the Ortu,’ Ril said. The rivers were the northern and eastern borders of Argundy, Rondelmar’s biggest vassal-state – and most dangerous adversary.

  ‘Real bandits, or pretend ones?’ Setallius asked. ‘I suspect the latter.’

  ‘I believe they’re testing us,’ Ril said. ‘But why now?’

  The question went unanswered until Setallius said, ‘If I may be so bold: they sense weakness.’

  ‘Do they?’ Ril asked warily. ‘What kind of weaknesses?’

  ‘Money. Unity. Will.’ Setallius counted them on his fingers. ‘Take your pick. They know Rondelmar was weakened by the Crusade and our armies haven’t recovered. The vassal-states took horrific losses themselves, but they’ve never maintained as many legions as Rondelmar; their military strength is tied up in the noble Houses. They’re watching rebellions break out over the tax-farming – things are unstable, so they’re testing the limits.’

  ‘Do they think we aren’t willing to defend our borders?’

  Dubrayle looked up. ‘Are we? Wars cost money, far more than can be easily and quickly recouped. They’re bad for business.’ He then qualified that, adding, ‘Most business.’

  ‘They certainly seem to be bad for treasuries,’ Wurther chuckled. He and Dubrayle shared a pricklish but tolerant look, longstanding colleagues and rivals.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Edreu Gestatium said in his prim voice, ‘that we must make an example of someone. Remind the vassal-states that Rondian power is intact and that we’re willing to use it.’

  ‘How would you propose we do that?’ Setallius enquired acerbically. ‘Burn an Argundian border keep?’

  ‘If that’s what it’d take.’

  ‘For a man who’s never picked up a sword you’re swift to suggest others do,’ Ril grumbled. ‘We can’t just march across the Argundy border.’

  ‘Tell that to the tax-paying Rondian farmers whose cattle and crops are being stolen or destroyed,’ Dubrayle snapped.

  Was any man ever so passionate about tax? Ril wondered. ‘Then we find another way to impress the Argies,’ Ril suggested, improvising now. ‘Couldn’t we have a few draken fly around the Delphic Pinnacle? Or challenge them to a drinking competition?’ he added with a grin, then stopped, thunderstruck. ‘That’s it: we’ll host a tourney.’

  ‘A tourney?’ Gestatium echoed. ‘There’s a jousting tournament circuit already; it’s just amusement for rich young noblemen,’ he sniffed. ‘We don’t have the money for necessary projects, let alone games.’

  ‘Truth indeed,’ Dubrayle agreed. ‘Moving on, what if—?’

  ‘A tourney,’ Ril repeated. ‘Didn’t the Rimoni Emperors host games, with wild animals and swordfights and the like?’

  ‘A Rimoni Ludus,’ Wurther said with a chuckle. ‘Those were the days: gladiator displays, heretics against lions, chariot and horse races – they were mad, those Rimoni, but they knew how to put on a show. Panem et Ludus: Bread and Games: the twin pillars of their empire.’

  ‘They used to cost a thousand auros or more to put on,’ Gestatium put in. ‘I’ve seen the records. Back then that was enough to buy a province . . . which is why they did it, of course! Public officials were voted into office back then, and such spectacles gained votes.’

  ‘Thank Kore those days are gone,’ Dubrayle muttered. ‘Ridiculous waste. Now, moving—’

  ‘Wait,’ Setallius interrupted, surprising everyone, ‘I find merit in this idea.’

  They all stared. ‘Dirklan?’ Gestatium asked, worried he’d missed a jest.

  ‘Listen,’ Setallius said, ‘we’re trying to hold this empire together, but what do we actually do as an empire? We’ve been leaving our vassal-states and provinces to their own devices as long as the taxes flow. Garod Sacrecour is not the only one behaving as if Fauvion is his own kingdom – the Dukes of Canossi and Klief and the rest are doing the same. We need to bring them together and remind them that Pallas is the centre of the empire! A tourney could do just that: it will emphasise our continuing power. As Ril says: jousts, archery, pageantry, plays and entertainments: everything to bring people flocking in.’

  Dubrayle was looking thoughtful, but Gestatium whined, ‘Dirklan, the cost—’

  ‘—will be far less than the long-term benefits,’ the treasurer interjected, smoothly changing sides. ‘We’d need loans from the major banks, obviously, but if I can’t recover the outlay, I’m not doing my job properly. Meanwhile we demonstrate our prestige, and bring all of the vassal-state rulers together, under our thumbs.’

  They all looked at Ril again, appraising expressions on their faces. Trying to work out if I’m a lucky fool, or a secret genius, he guessed. ‘I do have my moments,’ he told them.

  ‘So what are the risks?’ Gestatium wondered.

  ‘That we bankrupt ourselves,’ Setallius answered. ‘That we provide a venue for the vassal-state lords to plot insurrection together. That we import rebellion from the provinces.’ He
glanced at Ril and added, ‘And that the Imperial and Corani knights perform abysmally in the tourney, thus reducing instead of enhancing our prestige.’

  ‘Pah,’ Ril replied. ‘We’ll set the rules to suit ourselves. As for the rest, there is no gain without risk.’ He rose to his feet, eager to get out into the fresh air and clear his head. ‘I, for one, intend to be the victor.’

  Maybe that will finally silence those who still doubt me.

  *

  Lyra found refuge in her one truly private place: the Winter Garden. She allowed a gardener in once a week, but for the most she allowed it to run wild. The garden was part of the small area where she could roam at will. There were only two entrances – Greengate, which was guarded, and the stairs from her balcony; though open to the skies, there were complex wards placed by past emperors and renewed by Setallius to prevent unwanted access from above.

  The garden wasn’t large, just a hundred yards long and barely thirty yards wide, and had been planted in what had been an old killing zone between the Bastion walls and one of the curtain walls that ringed the fortress. It faced south for the sunshine, and extended east – left – from the base of her stairs.

  That morning she was feeling languorous, and lonely. The roses were blooming beautifully, filling the air with their rich scent. She’d slipped down after breakfast, clad – scandalously un-clad, really – in a white silk nightdress, a fine woollen dressing gown and thin slippers. Being so indecorous didn’t trouble her – the garden could only be overlooked from her own private balcony, and no one else was permitted entry. The spring warmth seeped into her and sweat was dripping from her forehead and running from her neck and down into her cleavage. Four months into the pregnancy her belly was clearly swelling, as were her breasts, the skin tight and nipples tender. Since the morning sickness had eased off she’d noticed a return of appetite – and not just for food.

  ‘Why can’t my husband sleep with me?’ she’d asked Domara that morning. ‘I miss him.’

  The nun-healer, a Sister of Kore, had looked down her sharp nose and said sternly, ‘Physical congress is known to carry risk of miscarriage, my Queen. This is an attested fact.’ She’d coloured heavily, lowered her voice. ‘Any kind of . . . er . . . stimulation . . . carries risk.’