Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  Brylion turned to Elvero Salinas. ‘What about you, Canossi? Did fair little Emali surrender her virtue?’

  ‘Keep your lewd tongue inside your head, lest you lose it,’ Elvero replied coolly.

  ‘Big talk for someone who’s never won a last-day bout,’ Brylion sneered. ‘What of you, Incognito?’

  Takwyth’s blank helm turned, but he said nothing.

  Brylion sniggered as if he considered that a victory. ‘And as for you, Prince Ril – is that wench you chaperoned as well-used as all say?’

  Ril decided that Takwyth’s cold silence worked for him too – then the trumpets thundered, they all took the acclaim of the Royal Box, and he and Brylion nudged their mounts forward to contest the first bout. Brylion looked arrogantly secure, riding a fierce-looking gryphon, the rear torso and limbs of a lion grafted to a massively enlarged eagle. Its raptor beak was shrilling, its taloned fore-legs raking at the ground. Gryphons were notoriously hard to master, but this one had more bulk than Pearl, and as much speed in the dive. Conventional wisdom was that a pegasus would always be too lightweight against a gryphon.

  Velocity by weight by angle . . .

  After taking the applause, the two knights trotted away to their own ends to finalise their preparations. ‘I need water,’ Ril declared. He was already boiling in his steel casing on this vividly bright spring morning. Gryff gave him a pitcher and he drank deeply.

  ‘Too hot for you, Corani?’ someone jeered from the packed watchers.

  ‘What, is there a Fasterius in the crowd?’ Ril exclaimed. ‘Welcome, sir, and well met – tell me, does Brylion still fart as he spurs his mount? Is that the secret of his prowess?’

  The crowd – mostly Pallacian, and more inclined to support him – laughed. The Fasterius man got halfway through a rude gesture then recalled that he was talking to the Prince-Consort. ‘Sir Brylion is the greatest knight of Koredom,’ he bellowed instead.

  ‘He certainly has the worst breath in Koredom,’ Ril responded. ‘I can smell him from here – they say when he pisses, rivers turn rancid!’

  More laughter. Crowds were easy, if they were ninety-five per cent predisposed to like you. The Fasterius man, wary of the locals packed around him, said, ‘May Kore have mercy on you.’

  ‘Kore wears my colours,’ he retorted. ‘He loves me well!’

  Gryff and Larik were making last-second adjustments to his harness, getting the cinching right – he was damned if he’d be one of those jousters who tumbled out of the sky because his rig wasn’t fitted properly. Then Brylion’s squire trotted up with a bucket. ‘Good sir,’ the squire called, ‘my master sends this receptacle, if your stomach’s rebelling.’

  More laughter, edged by partisan hostility. Ril made a show of taking the bucket and pretending to piss in it. ‘In case your master’s thirsty,’ he shouted, playing to the gallery. There was more ribald laughter, and even the Fasterius squire smirked before running off.

  ‘Watch the way the gryphon moves,’ Larik warned, as he mounted. ‘They bob when they fly. Many a man misses the mark because they fail to account for it.’

  ‘But they’re slow,’ Gryff threw in. ‘You’ll have that advantage. Just aim true, lad.’

  They looked up at Ril earnestly and he felt a sudden fondness for them both. They might not be noble of spirit, or even of good character – there were times when they’d been the worst of influences – but they cared about him, and they’d stood by him when others hadn’t. He suddenly realised that they had a great deal of pride in him, too. ‘I’ll take him, lads. You’ll see.’

  They grinned and reached up to shake his hand, then the marshals signalled it was time to go. Ril lowered his visor, narrowing his world to this arena, this run, this opponent. There was time for five sharp breaths, then the ribbon rose and fell, Pearl cantered into the arena, wings spreading, picking up speed until she caught the breeze and they rose, the roar of the crowd falling away.

  Ril’s eyes fixed on the distant gryphon, five hundred yards away across the arena, as they circled, awaiting the signal to begin. Both hit their marks perfectly and the pennants dropped, the marshall blazed a red signal, Ril cried, ‘Hee-yah!’ and Pearl dived for the circles.

  Air ripped by them, deafening, and Pearl whinnied, flapping to increase their speed until he signalled for her to furl as they flashed through the approach circle. Brylion was powering towards him in rhythmic hops, that awkward flying gait Larik had noted. Ril lined up his lance-tip with the target on Brylion’s shoulder, correcting as the distance shrank to nothing.

  Crash!

  As always, the impact happened before he was ready. Brylion’s lance-tip grazed his target, while his own went wildly askew. He and Pearl were battered sideways and the pegasus shrieked in fright and unfurled her wings, almost ploughing into the nets – but then they were soaring again and the din of the crowd washed over them.

  He patted Pearl heartily, though Brylion had won that pass.

  Neither needed a new lance so they stayed aloft and climbed back to their approaches. The marshall’s voice, gnostically enhanced to carry across the fields, announced that Brylion had the points in that pass, and the arena below seethed with excitement. Ril put aside his annoyance at having been outmanoeuvred and reviewed the pass in his mind: He made his gryphon furl later than I did, and that dropped him two feet . . . I have to allow for that.

  A minute later, he was taking Pearl into their second pass and urging her to full speed, the air whistling by as they flashed through the approach circle, perfectly aligned. He tapped out a rapid dance on Pearl’s flanks, nudging her into a last-second shimmy that made her weave a tiny bit, almost imperceptible – unless you were the man flying straight at him, trying to aim a twenty-foot lance at a two-foot target.

  He also engaged combat-divination, which even other diviners would have called suicidal. Being able to see potential blows was a boon in a mêlée, but in a joust, the speed of impact meant the lines of force emanating from the foe’s lance altered so swiftly that nothing was gained – the information overload could even blind the diviner. But it wasn’t Brylion’s lance Ril was concerned with; it was trying to predict the exact place that his target would be – it turned out a gryphon’s flight was more predictable than a shifting lance-tip . . .

  They surged together, the potential points of impact narrowing as they converged in a blur he felt more than saw, lines of force twisting and swirling. The divination flashed images of death and victory over and over, and then it was all too late: the onrushing gryphon flapped, then furled, and Ril altered his aim to a space Brylion was even now dipping toward . . .

  Crunch!

  His lance splintered on Brylion’s target even as Brylion’s struck his own, making him spin. He gripped Pearl with clenched knees and kinesis as two straps snapped and the whole world whirled. Pearl’s wings spread, desperately seeking purchase in the light breeze, and he clawed at his reins and hauled: the ground – the crowd – were feet away and flinching from his passage.

  Then he was lifting above them again and the crowd screamed for joy. He looked backwards and saw a riderless gryphon clawing the air while the nets wrapped about a bulky, flailing knight.

  YES!

  Gryff was shouting above Larik’s wordless howl of victory.

  He took care on his return flight to screech low over his fallen foe. Eat your words, Fasterius, every one of those vile things you said . . . Then he landed to the acclaim of the crowds as ‘PRINCE OF THE SPEAR!’ resounded through the arena.

  He stopped before the Royal Box, oblivious to everything except his pale, brave wife: My only Regna d’Amore . . .

  Half an hour later, the Wronged Man and Elvero Canossi broke three lances on each other, but the third collision shattered Elvero’s collarbone and the Incognito was declared
the victor. The deciding bout would be the culmination of the Grand Tourney, the Ludus Imperium.

  Takky and me . . . it feels like Fate.

  18

  The Sardazam

  The Gnosis

  A new interpretation of the gnosis is required. The Rondian magi thought themselves appointed and empowered by their god to rule, but now I have come with magi of my own, and I do not bow to Kore but to Ahm. From whence then, comes this mighty gift?

  RASHID MUBARAK, EMIR OF HALLI’KUT, 931

  Sagostabad, Antiopia

  Thani (Aprafor) 935

  Waqar awoke to find his skull throbbing and soldiers everywhere, which was terrifying enough, but then the memory of why flooded his brain and he cried, ‘SALIM!’ He thrashed about, his kinesis tossing grown men aside like toys, shouting the sultan’s name, until someone quelled his gnosis with power of their own: a Hadishah man, he found out later. ‘It’s done, Prince Waqar,’ the hard-faced man kept shouting at him, ‘it’s too late – it’s done!’

  ‘What’s done?’ he begged, then he remembered that desperate call. ‘My mother—?’

  ‘She lives,’ the man replied, his voice odd, then someone gave Waqar something to drink, which he gulped down before realising what it was. His hearing faded, his vision blurred . . .

  *

  He woke again to find his friends around him, their faces pale and anxious. Tamir was biting his nails, Lukadin was pacing, and Baneet and Fatima were sitting on the bed beside him, waiting.

  ‘Here, let me,’ Fatima said, holding his temples and sending healing-gnosis tingling through her strong fingers, soothing away the pain. She kissed his forehead – there’d been a time when it was his lips, and he suddenly missed that – then went back to Baneet’s side.

  His head was clear enough to realise that he was in a healing suite and it was day-time. The air coming through the window was heavy with smoke and he could hear the low murmur of distant prayer from many throats. That didn’t augur well for the questions he had to ask.

  ‘Salim?’ he whispered.

  Lukadin’s face was anguished. ‘Dead. They’re all dead: his whole household.’

  They fell into appalled silence again.

  Dear Ahm, why is the world still turning? Why is the sun still aflame? Waqar’s eyes welled up with hot, stinging tears, and he let them fall, not ashamed to weep before his friends.

  Tamir took up the narrative, dispassionately relating what they’d seen as they responded to the cries of alarm that arose suddenly from all over the palace. ‘It’s possible one of the impersonators and two of the wives escaped,’ Tamir concluded, ‘but some rooms were gutted by fire, so it’s more likely their bones burned to ash.’

  ‘Ahm take them,’ Lukadin intoned.

  ‘What of my mother?’

  Fatima took his hand. ‘She’s been bitten by a snake – we don’t know what kind, and the healers are at a loss.’

  ‘If they save her, I’ll give them gold from my own hands,’ Waqar vowed. ‘I must see her—’

  ‘Next door,’ said Baneet, but Fatima, the most expert of them, was shaking her head.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. Her veins are all black beneath her skin, and her eyes are bleeding,’ she said. ‘It’s not like any snakebite I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘I must see her,’ Waqar repeated, then the door was thrown open and Attam and Xoredh prowled into the chamber, followed by half a dozen magi of their coterie. Waqar’s friends stood supportively around him as Xoredh wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  ‘Well,’ Xoredh sneered, ‘the weakling has awakened. How did the sultan die when you still drew breath?’

  ‘There was nothing anyone could do,’ Waqar retorted.

  ‘Nothing you could do,’ Xoredh returned, ‘but why did they spare you, I wonder?’

  That question was haunting Waqar; he feared to examine it too closely.

  ‘You would have done no better,’ Fatima snapped, unwisely, for Attam turned and slammed her against the wall. She looked like a child in his grasp.

  ‘Weak,’ he said, blowing in her face. ‘Weak like straw.’

  Then Baneet gripped Attam’s arm, a breach of the harbadab that could see him flogged, and the two giants eyed each other coldly. Attam was the taller, but not by much. Baneet’s usually gentle face was like granite.

  Xoredh separated them with a drawn dagger. ‘He’s not worth it, Attam. He’s just a breeding-house mule.’

  Attam wrenched free and shoved Baneet away, but he barely moved.

  Waqar climbed dizzily to his feet. ‘Leave us alone.’

  Xoredh kissed his dagger, then sheathed it. ‘Ai, let’s not keep little Waqar – not when Father wants to see him, to find out how he failed to protect the sultan. I’d not want to be in his shoes.’ He slapped Attam’s shoulder and leered at Fatima. ‘Come, I know a place where the girls aren’t so ugly.’ The two warrior-princes swaggered out and slammed the door behind them.

  Waqar groaned as he wondered again, Why was I spared? Once he was sure his cousins were well gone, he described all he’d seen – the masked assassins, their deadly skill, the way they knew the layout of the palace intimately, how they’d trapped him and Salim – and most of all, the way Heartface had merely incapacitated him when she could so easily have taken his life.

  ‘It’s as if they were playing with me,’ he concluded. ‘They were so far beyond my skills that I was never a threat – and you know me, you’ve sparred with me – I’m not that bad!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why they spared you?’ Lukadin said. ‘Perhaps they have their own honour code and won’t kill the unworthy?’

  ‘Flattering theory,’ Tamir replied, winking at Waqar, ‘but they had no compunction about killing dozens of guards and servants.’

  ‘Killers don’t have honour,’ Fatima said, her mind still on Attam. ‘They’re like animals.’

  ‘But Waqar’s a prince, he matters,’ Baneet put in, ‘and servants and soldiers don’t: not to people like that. Perhaps their targets – the people they were there to kill, not those who got in their way – were very specific.’

  ‘Ai,’ Tamir said, ‘you don’t just casually kill the nephew of Rashid Mubarak, especially if—’

  ‘If what?’ Waqar demanded.

  Tamir dropped his voice to a bare whisper. ‘Especially if Rashid arranged the attack.’

  They looked at each other silently, and Waqar thought, Let it not be so.

  ‘You said they spoke Rondian,’ Lukadin noted. ‘Surely they were Volsai from Yuros?’

  ‘Many Dhassan and Keshi speak Rondian – we do,’ Tamir pointed out. ‘What could be easier than speaking Rondian during the raid to muddy the waters?’

  ‘That’s possible,’ Waqar admitted. ‘Don’t forget that Mother was assailed too, perhaps by the same people. We can’t jump to conclusions, but we must keep our eyes and ears open.’

  They were churning over the possibilities while waiting for word on Sakita when a messenger summoned Waqar to the Sardazam’s suite. Though he was desperate to see his mother, Waqar dutifully followed the messenger and was taken straight past a press of waiting supplicants, into Rashid’s presence. His uncle sat before a massive wooden desk, writing with unhurried concentration. It was fully two minutes before he put the quill aside. His calmness in the wake of the calamity they’d been through was unbelievable. Waqar didn’t know whether to be reassured by it, or worried.

  ‘Nephew,’ Rashid said finally. ‘Sit. How do you fare?’

  ‘I’ve just woken,’ Waqar replied, sitting down. ‘I have a headache.’

  ‘Concussion,’ Rashid said. ‘Don’t take it lightly – I’ve known men to die of such blows. You should attend my physician when we’re finished.’ He leaned forward. ‘Describe what you saw.’

  Waqar threw all his concentration into recalling the conversation with Salim as accurately as he could, then described the attackers: ‘One was male, wearing a mask of a man in a steel helmet: he called himself “
Ironhelm”. The other was a woman, with a female mask.’

  ‘There were three attackers in all,’ Rashid said, ‘all wearing Lantric masks. I’ve had the survivors describe them to our artists.’ He pushed three sheets of paper across the desk, each containing the labelled sketch of a mask. He recognised Ironhelm and Heartface; the third was labelled ‘Beak’.

  ‘Why Lantric masks, Uncle?’

  ‘One of many things we don’t know,’ Rashid admitted. ‘They spared you, Nephew. Do you know why?’

  Waqar swallowed. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Rashid stood and began to pace, six steps one way, six back. ‘The city is in mourning, but there is also great anger – even the Ja’arathi are roused: they are saying that Beyrami arranged this to clear the path for war. The Shihadi refute that and blame the Ordo Costruo.’ He paused, looked down at Waqar. ‘Others blame me.’

  ‘But you weren’t involved,’ Waqar replied. He hadn’t meant it to sound like a question.

  Rashid’s eyes narrowed. ‘No, I was not involved. Salim was our lord and ruler. I have served him faithfully for my entire adult life. He and I were aligned on all major matters.’

  Including the Shihad? Waqar wondered silently.

  Rashid saw his doubts. ‘Nephew, I benefited either way, Shihad or no Shihad. I was truly neutral – and I had no desire to see Salim’s line broken.’

  ‘But who will rule us now?’ Waqar asked. ‘My friends told me the nurseries were . . . a bloodbath.’

  ‘They were. With one stroke, the Kabarakhi line is extinct. The seventeen Emirs of Kesh have been notified – most are already here. The Convocation will select a new sultan.’

  Waqar knew his history: only two dynasties had ever succeeded in unifying the thrones of Kesh: the prophet Aluq-Ahmed, and the Kabarakhis. Kesh could collapse into a dozen or more warring kingdoms if the Convocation didn’t unite around a strong ruler.

  Like you, Uncle . . . ‘What will happen?’

  ‘Unless a single emir emerges to command the allegiance of the rest, the kingdom will fragment again, which will destroy any chance of unity,’ Rashid replied.