Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  ‘Where’s Prince Waqar?’ she wondered. ‘He’s gone, and nobody knows where.’

  ‘“Nobody” includes me,’ Capolio admitted. ‘He left during the night and I don’t have spare hands to trace him.’ Being part of a fledgling spy network was vexing to him, though in truth he had far more resource than when just a mercenary. ‘I’ll keep my ear to the ground.’

  ‘Attam and Xoredh might know,’ she suggested.

  ‘Perhaps I should seduce one of them?’ Emilio wondered, winking at Capolio.

  ‘Attam’s a brute,’ Tarita told him. ‘I had a narrow escape from him once.’

  ‘I’m sure he says the same of you,’ Emilio replied. ‘Anyway, I was thinking more of Xoredh. He looks like a broadminded man, and he’s got a wicked swagger.’

  ‘You’re not going near either,’ Capolio said firmly. ‘They’re both dangerous. I think Rashid is grooming Xoredh to be his next spymaster.’

  ‘They’re both evil,’ Tarita agreed. ‘Stay away, Emilio. Don’t even joke about it.’

  Capolio raised his goblet. ‘To our newest recruit. You’ve done well, my girl. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’ve exceeded expectations. May your journey north bring further success.’

  She was gone before dawn, her skiff rising unseen over Sagostabad in the predawn sky, and by sunrise, she was far over the northern horizon.

  26

  A Vanishing Trail

  Theurgy

  Just as the more subtle and precise longsword replaced the broadsword as the weapon of choice among the Pallas courtiers, so Theurgy, with its ability to manipulate hearts and minds, is the preferred gnostic weapon in Pallas. The poisonous whisper is applauded there, while an honest act is scorned.

  AINAR BORODIUM, DUKE OF ARGUNDY, 926

  Imperial Bastion, Pallas

  Maicin 935

  Four days wasn’t long, but for Ril the days after the kidnapping of the Sacrecour children felt like a lifetime. Every morning he woke from bad dreams, haunted by pale ginger-haired children who were implacable and unstoppable daemons, ripping through walls and smashing down barriers as they prowled towards Lyra. Then, just when he thought himself safe, Lyra would transform into Jenet and cut his throat . . .

  He didn’t need a dream-reader to interpret those dreams.

  Then there was the suspense of waiting . . . But this morning, he awakened determined to do something. Leaving Lyra to the benevolent tyranny of her midwife, he took himself off to Valcet Square, thinking to work out his frustrations with some swordsmanship practise. The square was almost empty, which was unusual, but he’d assigned half the Corani mage-knights to Setallius as hunters, should there be strong leads for finding the missing children. Rumours were circulating like wildfire: that they’d been seen in Fauvion, Dupenium, Klief, Canossi, and all points besides.

  He and Gryfflon Joyce sparred for an hour or so, then, sweating and breathing heavily, they sauntered back to the armoury to return the practise blades and mail – only to find the armoury packed with twenty or more Corani, reciting prayers around a thick-stemmed candle.

  Ril glanced at Gryff. The prayers were for remembrance. He leaned against the wall to watch and wait. When the prayer finished, Sir Oryn Levis – the Lump – lumbered to the fore. ‘Morning, your Grace,’ he muttered uncertainly, glancing to his left for guidance, and when Ril followed his eyes, he saw a man wearing a chainmail coif that covered his head: Takwyth. Their eyes met, then Takwyth dropped the coif and turned, exposing his disfigured face.

  It was the first time Ril had encountered Takwyth since the tourney final and his dramatic recall to Corani service.

  ‘Your Grace,’ Takwyth said coldly. The Corani knights were all armed and armoured, and there were none of the smiles and friendliness Ril had become used to from these men over the past four years. It was as if all his efforts to win them over had never happened; even those he’d considered friends, like young Lero Falquist, were staring at him blankly.

  ‘Who were you remembering?’ Ril asked. ‘You could have used the Royal Chapel – you had only to ask.’

  ‘Ah . . . Sir Bruss Lamgren,’ Levis stammered, again looking to Takwyth, despite his own seniority.

  Ril stiffened. ‘Sir Bruss Lamgren kidnapped the Sacrecour children.’

  ‘Bruss Lamgren was one of ours,’ Takwyth replied. ‘We Corani acknowledge our dead.’

  ‘He was likely a traitor,’ Ril snapped.

  ‘That’s unproven,’ Takwyth countered. ‘It appears to us that he was duped by your good friend Lady Brunlye.’

  They stared at each other as Ril wondered how far he could push this. Gryff was visibly sweating still, but no longer from the sparring. Rulers had died because they lost the command of their knights. And I’m losing these men. There was a cold watchfulness in the air, a palpable sense that he was more than unwelcome.

  He wondered how secure Takwyth felt – but right now, it was twenty on two, and extracting himself felt much the better part of valour. Takwyth had done nothing wrong, nothing provable.

  Does a strong ruler wait for ‘provable’? he wondered.

  ‘I’m sure our investigations will bring clarity,’ was the best rejoinder he could find.

  Takwyth paused just long enough to relish his control of the moment, then said, ‘If there is anything I can do to assist your investigations, I’m eager to help. We all are.’

  I’m not going to enlist your aid when I half-suspect you’re involved, Ril thought, but he could hardly say that aloud, not to these men, so he acknowledged Takwyth with a nod and walked through the men to divest himself of his armour, forcing them by proximity to bow their heads and step aside. With studied courtliness, Takwyth marshalled the knights and took them away. It felt like mockery.

  ‘It’s wonderful to be so loved by my men,’ Ril sighed. In truth, he was quite disturbed – he’d spent five years trying to win these people around, but in five minutes Takwyth had them eating out of his hand.

  ‘They don’t know you as I do,’ Gryff chuckled, trying for levity. ‘If they did, they’d show far more outright hatred.’

  Squires helped them out of the armour and they took themselves off to the palace bath, a ground floor complex in the Rimoni style, with tepid running water. Then Gryff left to find his brother and Ril sought out Setallius for an update.

  Outside the spymaster’s office, Basia rose to meet him, her pencil-thin body clad in her usual tight leathers – most unladylike, and entirely in character. Her auburn hair had been freshly cropped and she moved with an awkward grace, the result of her legs being gnostic-artefacts from the knee down. He was a little surprised to find her – she was Lyra’s bodyguard and should be with the queen.

  ‘Where’s Dirk?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve just found out he’s in Dawnport, getting a report on the legion dispositions. Do you have half a day?’ she added, ‘or do you have important Master-General duties to attend to? Because I’ve got the afternoon off, and I’ve had an idea.’

  Ril grimaced. ‘Well, there’s probably weeks of paperwork piled up, but I find that if I leave it for long enough, someone takes it away again, so it can’t have been important in the first place. What’s this idea?’

  Basia threw him a grin and pulled a soft leather bag from her pouch. ‘Look what I’ve got.’ She tipped a handful of cracked and scorched jewels into her palm. ‘I’d forgotten I had these: remember I was asked to help Cordan tune his periapt? The boy has a three-second attention span and burned out a small fortune in periapt-gems. They’re worthless now, of course, but I’d not yet thrown them out.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ril said, ‘so what?’

  ‘Well, they’ll have a gnostic-trace preserved in the crystals – not much, but even a partly tuned periapt will take on a bit of the mage’s trace. I might be able to use them to find Cordan.’

  Ril brightened. ‘That’s fantastic – but why haven’t you told Setallius?’

  ‘I was about to, but he’s not here. You know how
no two magi are exactly alike, and even two people with exactly the same affinities can end up using those affinities in unique ways? For me, it was always periapts.’

  ‘I remember, after . . . you know, your legs . . . you used to lie on the bed for days on end, tuning and retuning stones, and amber and wooden carvings . . . in fact, anything you could get your hands on.’

  ‘There wasn’t much else I could do,’ Basia said, her eyes faraway, ‘and they helped make the hours just disappear – I needed them to disappear then. After I lost my legs I wanted to vanish myself.’

  They shared a look, then Ril asked, ‘So what do you need me for?’

  ‘Because apart from me, you spent the most time with those two loathsome piglets, so you might be able to pick up some of the slack if I run out of energy – we’ve always worked well together. And someone will need to lead me and keep me safe if it works, because I’ll be all but blind.’

  Ril grinned – it sounded much better than paperwork, and it might even work. ‘Makes sense – but I want some blades with us too, in case we end up in a bad place.’ He sent a mental summons to Gryff and Larik, and within half an hour they were all gathered in the rear courtyard from where the kidnappers had driven away.

  ‘This is the last known place Cordan stood,’ Basia told Ril and the Joyces, and quickly explained her theory to the brothers. They sipped from their hip-flasks and nodded as if they understood. The courtyard was empty but for two guards at the rear gates, who were staring at them curiously.

  Basia pulled out one of the cracked gems. ‘The theory is this: wherever a mage goes, he leaves a gossamer trail of his aura, like the tail of a shooting star. It’s too little to trace, normally, but a periapt contains a concentration of their aura, so if someone like me, who’s especially sensitive to the way periapts work, has their periapt, then they should be able to discern that residual aura trail: Cordan’s “comet tail”, so to speak.’

  ‘Let’s call it his “slime trail”,’ Ril suggested. ‘Like a snail.’

  Basia snorted. ‘Works for me. Now listen, this mightn’t work – it’s been four days, after all – so no teasing if I can’t do it. But I’ve done something similar before, I’m half-blooded, so I have the raw energy, and I’m good at this sort of thing. I can do it!’

  She sounded to Ril like she was trying to convince herself, so he put a hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek. ‘I know you can.’

  She shot him a glance full of memories of 909 and the well, so long ago. ‘See,’ she said, ‘that’s why I wanted you here.’

  ‘Aw, pooty,’ Larik drawled. ‘Let’s start a rumour—’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Basia snapped with surprising heat, then she raised the gem. ‘You won’t see much,’ she warned.

  Ril and the two knights waited while she worked. It took a minute to raise a faint glow in the cracked gem and still she didn’t move, her concentration total, eyes unfocused . . .

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed, then, ‘Come on!’

  Ril took her arm and she began to walk slowly towards the locked iron gates. The guards looked at Ril curiously, but when he gestured for them to open up, they did so with alacrity. Basia led them into the narrow lane that led to a busy thoroughfare, but to Ril’s surprise, she turned into a path barely wide enough for a carriage.

  ‘Why would they go that way?’ Ril asked.

  ‘Because the City Guard have a station at the mouth of that lane,’ Gryff speculated, pointing, ‘marking where jurisdiction changes between Bastion and City – they take it pretty seriously.’

  ‘Who knows about this alley, though?’

  ‘Us,’ Larik grinned, ‘and anyone who likes to live the low life.’

  ‘It’s not a big secret,’ Gryff added. ‘If you weren’t the high and mighty Prince-Consort these days, you’d know it like your own warts.’

  Basia tugged at Ril and teetered off down the rough track and into a maze of alleyways between the packed-in two- and three-storey buildings, all of them barely wide enough for any carriage.

  Ril’s main role in this slow, strange progress was to keep Basia from tripping on the cobbles or walking into the piles of refuse as they followed the dirty little lane winding southwards through the backstreets of Highgrange, far away from the big manor houses, through meaner dwellings tenanted by menial labourers clustered about the open sewer that took the effluent from the Bastion. Basia led them through a pair of squares that functioned as butcheries, the air rancid with decaying meat, where brawny men in leather aprons hacked at enormous haunches of cattle and skinny youths loaded offal into barrows. That was followed by an equally noisome tallow-market, then a fish-market round a dirty fountain stinking of rotting river-fish.

  ‘I reckon we’re heading for Crumbly Way,’ Larik commented.

  ‘How well do you know these streets?’ Ril asked, surprised.

  ‘We’ve been here five years and backstreets are our natural habitat,’ Gryff answered. ‘Old Crumbly’s the road folk used to take down to Kenside from here, before the Bastion was built and the new roads dug in. You can still use it, if you’ve a small, light carriage.’

  As the periapt burned out and Basia stopped and blinked, looking around, Larik said suddenly, ‘Lemme try something,’ and ran into a rough-looking tavern.

  He reappeared, grinning. ‘Success,’ he said. ‘I know that tavern; I’ve stood a good few rounds there. So I tossed some coin around and folk remembered a carriage came through that day, on account of it stood out: a two-horse lighter, no insignia, with lacquered dark-green panels. The horses were Ventians. The driver was a big fella, brown beard – and they reckon he had the riverreek.’

  Ril looked at Basia. ‘Another Reeker: Jenet and Lamgren also had it.’ None of them had any idea why this should be a recurring theme.

  Basia tuned another of Cordan’s discarded periapts, then led them blindly down a winding road following an ancient, very crumbly wall, while Larik ducked into shops he knew; he didn’t find anyone else who’d seen the carriage, but passing one sharp bend, he whooped softly, pulled out his dagger and prised some splinters of wood from the wall. Some were lacquered green. ‘Couldn’t take the turn,’ he guessed, pocketing the splinters carefully. ‘I can use these later on.’

  The next periapt got them all the way down Crumbly Way to the edge of Kenside before Basia sighed and tipped away the residue, powdery flakes of ash. ‘I love being right,’ she smirked. ‘I’ve got four left. We should tell Dirk what we’ve found.’

  ‘Later – there’s hours of daylight left,’ Ril replied. ‘Let’s keep going.’

  Basia relented, so they bought some bread to sustain them and wolfed it down, then she tuned the next periapt and led them through Kenside. The place reeked of dead fish and rotting wood and rats lurked in every dark corner, waiting for the night. The crowds were constant, the poor busy doing whatever kept them fed. Gulls scrapped for morsels, children ran amok and rivermen trawled for whores and grog. But four magi wasn’t a group anyone was going to take on.

  ‘What a shit-heap,’ Ril muttered.

  ‘That’s Kenside for you,’ Larik grunted. ‘I prefer Tockburn myself. Your Tockers are a better class of ruffian.’

  They reached a square of clamouring street-vendors, presided over by an ancient fountain featuring the mould-encrusted image of an old Rimoni water god. Rows of cooking stalls offered skewers of mostly unidentifiable roasted meats. The thick haze from the cooking-fires made it hard to breathe.

  ‘This is where Fisheart blends into Kenside,’ Gryff told them as Basia stumbled on round the fountain and into a road that curved down towards the river. ‘This is Scuppers Lane, takes you to the docks. Mage or no, keep a hand on your belt-pouch.’

  ‘Got it.’ Ril chucked a pair of coppers at a stall-girl and grabbed a skewer. ‘Mmm, roast pork,’ he murmured. ‘That’s what the day’s been missing.’

  ‘Roast rat, more like,’ Larik smirked. ‘An’ you overpaid her. Leave the buying to me.’


  Ril spat out the meat and scowled. ‘Sure, always happy to do that.’

  Scuppers Lane was redolent with the scents of roasted meat and roots, baked herb-bread and fresh piss. The shops were now mostly ironmongers, rope- and sail-makers, all servicing the riverboats. The air got colder as they headed towards the Bruin, and increasingly fishy. Most of the men they passed sported the distinctive pigtails, short jackets and narrow breeches of boatmen – everything tight so nothing got snagged on ropes – and they looked at the group with disdain, until Larik’s hand signals soothed them.

  ‘What’s all that about?’ Ril asked him.

  ‘Just the Handspeak the rivermen use. If you know a bit of it, folk here pretty much let you be. Picked it up years ago, from an old riverman who settled in Coraine.’

  They arrived in the middle of the docklands, where a sea of masts bobbed close by the wooden wharves. ‘The river’s running high,’ Ril noted.

  ‘Aye,’ Gryff said, ‘it’s been raining upstream – turns the Bruin dirty and the Aerflus fills up.’

  ‘I thought that was ’cause you took a huge dump this morning,’ Larik snickered. ‘We’re coming into the Sunsurge, lad,’ he went on to Ril. ‘Because of the Leviathan Bridge, the empire thinks mostly about the Moontide, but the Sunsurge is way more important to the waterfolk. Come winter it’s gonna pour and the lowlands’ll flood, then the snows will come and freeze your bloody tits off. You watch; they’ll be hauling the boats ashore on giant rollers pretty soon – that’s why all commerce grinds to a halt every Sunsurge. Two lean years, that’s what’s coming.’

  Ril had been in his twenties, chafing under Takwyth’s leadership in Coraine, during the last Sunsurge. ‘I do remember snowdrifts taller than horses in 922,’ he admitted. ‘Will it get so bad here?’

  ‘It’ll be bad, but the rivers never fully ice over, not like in the north,’ Gryff said. ‘Folk are soft here, not like home,’ he added wistfully. ‘The winters I’ve seen . . .’