by Phil Tucker
Iarenna's expression remained grave. "There is nothing to forgive. I take responsibility for my every action."
Audsley hesitated, then moved forward to take her arm with the utmost delicacy. "Come. Let's leave this city for more welcoming climes. Kethe? What's wrong?"
"I have news," she said. "Theletos just told me that the kragh are on the march. A new warlord has arisen and united them. They'll attack Abythos in a matter of weeks."
"I see," Audsley said in a small voice, and went very still as he internalized that information. "Oh, dear. Weeks?" He frowned and looked down, deep in thought. "I'll have to relay that to Iskra. She'll have to confer with the emperor. How is the Empire responding?"
Kethe laughed mirthlessly. "By abandoning the war in Ennoia and moving everybody to the Abythian walls. I'm to lead my Consecrated and Honor Guard to battle."
Audsley shuddered. "What rotten timing! Or perhaps not. Perhaps this is perfection itself. With every sword on the walls of Abythos, we can effect a bloodless coup. Perhaps." He frowned worriedly again, then sighed. "Iskra will know best."
Kethe nodded. "Please tell my mother I wanted to come home. I wanted to –" To hold her, be held, to cry, to weep. "I wanted to see her. But I can't. Not with this happening."
"I understand." Audsley reached out to take her hand, and at the last remembered himself and recoiled. "I'll tell her. She'll understand too."
"Goodbye, Aunt Iarenna." Kethe turned to her. Words seemed hopelessly inadequate, and she felt ashamed of her earlier anger. "Thank you for helping me, for everything you've done. I hope one day we'll have a chance to meet again, to talk. To introduce ourselves properly to each other."
Iarenna nodded gravely, her eyes liquid with sorrow and emotion. "I would like that. Good fortune, Makaria. May the Ascendant's blessings always be with you."
Kethe stepped back stiffly, a wild tempest of emotions arising within her. Denial, anger, fear, panic, horror – and over it all, a fierce determination. As she climbed into the palanquin, she thought she heard a soft strain of the White Gate's song, but when she focused on it, the voices faded away and were gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Iskra glided through her own wedding like a disinterested spectator, remote and untouchable, unimpressed by the gilding and the gold, the crowds and the declarations of love. Her body had been bathed and anointed, her robes wound about her frame, her hair styled and her lips painted. Her eyes were traced with kohl, her fingers and neck and arms adorned with bands of bronze shaped like serpents, their eyes gleaming like beads of blood.
There were no friends anywhere that she looked. No allies, no sources of comfort, no touchstones from her past. She was surrounded by strangers whose words she didn't understand, whose cries of passion she knew were feigned, who stared at her with cold eyes when they thought she wasn't looking.
The populace filled the streets with a clamor that rang false. Each time she passed before them, they frenzied and surged forward like a rising tide, only to be beat back by the guards that formed a cordon three deep. There was in the cries of the masses a note of hysteria, of despair, of adoration that had nothing to do with her person and everything to do with her persona. She gazed out at them through stony eyes and felt herself an eidolon, a construct, a false image that could only fail them, time and again, until they tore her down at some point in the inevitable future.
Food passed her lips, but she tasted nothing. Glazings and sauces, pickled flesh and candied fruits. Endless flutes of wine and fermented juices that failed to turn her head. She sipped and curtsied and bowed. She sat, back erect, and gazed out into the middle distance, seeing nothing but appearing to see it all. Her cheeks grew sore from holding her faint smile, and after a while she desisted in smiling at all. Her apparent severity seemed to enchant the people – the courtiers, the senators, the patricians, magistrates and Vothaks – all the more.
The wedding lasted three days. She would have wept over the waste had she not understood that this was another kind of sustenance for the city, the island, the people. She was becoming a symbol whose meaning was beyond her control, but whose value was intangible and priceless. For every loaf of bread and pomegranate that was wasted at her feast, a heart somewhere was lifted with hope that she might inject vitality, youth, and success into their failing empire.
Pledges of loyalty were declaimed without surcease, along with prayers for her prosperity, fecundity, wisdom, tolerance, temperance and long life. She was blessed in three days more than she had ever been in her whole life, and yet none of the good wishes gladdened her more than the sight of each sunset, bringing with it the knowledge that she had survived another day, had walked with some modicum of success a tightrope over a chasm of estrangement and peril.
She saw the emperor infrequently at first. He was regaled and praised by his own retinue, by generals and decorated soldiers and wise men and people she did not recognize. Occasionally they were seated together and carried aloft on portable thrones, displayed to the crowds, set down in churches devoted to long-dead medusas, asked to perform obscure ceremonies whose meaning escaped her. They donned crowns and doffed them. They poured libations on dust. At one point, she washed the feet of a beggar who couldn't stop staring at her breasts. She bowed before graven images, she chanted, and on her last night she was purified.
And all by strangers. At times, she almost forgot why she was doing this, who she was, the reason she had agreed to this madness. All that existed was who she was becoming. Empress. Mother of Agerastos. Royalty, imperial majesty, queen, sovereign, inhuman, august, the repository of hope and the wellspring of future successes.
The final day dawned, and she arose. She had slept but did not feel rested. Her eyes were dry, her soul was parched, her resolve had been tested to its limit. Today would see the consummation of the ceremonies, the conclusion to the rituals, and when the sun set, she would become empress in truth.
She didn't sleep alone, not any longer. Maids and handmaidens, some of them the highest nobility, moved like wraiths about her room, preparing, laying out her clothing and drawing her bath, ignoring her as if she were an ornate vase under their care.
She was being fitted for her morning gown when she heard voices raised outside her double doors. To her surprise she recognized Audsley's voice amongst them, brought to bay at last by the emperor's most formidable chamberlain, and with a gesture ordered her doors opened.
Her maids responded with shock, for she was only half-dressed, her breasts wrapped, her hips and thighs sheathed in muslin, only half of her dress sewed about her body. She cared not. Her body had been venerated to such an extent these past few days that it seemed no longer hers, an object she took neither pride nor shame in. Her expression brooked no denial, and so the doors were pulled open, and she saw Audsley and Iarenna without, the chamberlain angrily denying some claim but falling silent with shock and awe at the sight of her.
"Enter, Magister. Iarenna. Everybody else, leave." She didn't raise her voice, and a translator's quiet words were immediately obeyed. Maids streamed from her side like blood from a wound, and the chamberlain himself, massive and obdurate, backed down and bowed, baffled and perplexed as if vouchsafed a vision of the sun in the middle of the night.
Audsley stepped forward, and it spoke volumes that he did not blush and stammer at the sight of her bare limbs and torso. Iarenna, wan and exhausted, her eyes sunken and ringed with purple, moved as if in a dream, looking about Iskra's sumptuous royal quarters in disbelief.
Iskra was caught as if in a web by her half-finished dress, stitching trailing all around her, rolls of metallic cloth unspooling around her feet. As such, she did not move forward as she wished, but instead opened her arms wide and hugged her younger sister as she stepped trembling into her embrace, let her rest her head on Iskra's shoulder and weep tears that were brought on by exhaustion, both physical and emotional.
Iskra held her close, and when at last Iarenna pulled away, wiping at her eyes, she was g
laddened to see her a spark of light to her hollow gaze.
"Iskra," said Iarenna. "You look as if you're stepping out of a dream."
"No dream, this," she said, looking down at her body. "Mere stage play. I am but a prop in the emperor's last and greatest production. Sit. You look half starved. Please, eat some of the food before it is thrown to waste."
Iarenna moved tentatively over to a side table and took up a slice of fruit the name of which Iskra hadn't learned. Audsley was standing to one side, hands linked behind his back, his face grave.
"My lady," he said, "Kethe gave me grave news. She heard from Theletos himself that a new Ogri the Destroyer is rising in the land of the kragh. The Empire is pulling its armies and Virtues from the field and sending them to Abythos. The threat is very real, and they say he will attack within weeks."
Iskra nodded. "Asho told me as much but a few days ago. His sister Shaya is recruiting the Bythians to the kragh's cause. Your thoughts?"
Audsley frowned gravely, jutting out his lower lip, and rocked from the balls of his feet to his heels. "We are faced with a choice. If we withhold our attack and the Ascendant's forces rebuff this Destroyer, then their position will be unassailable for generations to come. They will return as heroes, loved by the people, and our hopes for reform will never be welcomed. If instead they are defeated, it then becomes a question of how much damage a loosened horde could do upon the people of the Empire before we could launch our own forces against them."
Iskra nodded. "And if we do not withhold our attack?"
Audsley sighed. "Then we take advantage of the Empire's moment of sacrifice and will be assured of a near-bloodless coup. We could take Aletheia while every eye is turned in consternation upon the walls of Abythos. Then, fail or succeed, we would be in a position of strength to fight either the returning Virtues or the forces of the kragh."
Iskra looked down at her arms. Threads of gold and silver glittered in patterns across her skin, precursors to the cloth that would soon be bound and sewed around her. A glittering net.
"There is a third way," said Iarenna. "We could join forces with the Empire against the kragh. We could send your Agerastians to the walls of Abythos to fight alongside the Virtues." She hesitated, then pressed on. "It would be a righteous thing to do."
"Righteousness." Iskra examined the word as if it were a jewel, turning it about in her mind. "I don't know what that means, if I ever did." She considered her sister's words. "Join forces. Heal the rift. The wayward cousin come back to the fold. We fight together, prove our worth in battle, and then are hailed as heroes alongside the Virtues. Peace and love flow in equal measure, and the reforms are spontaneously undertaken to ensure that such a rift will never appear again."
Iarenna dropped her gaze.
"Would that I could trust the leadership of the Empire more than I can trust myself," said Iskra. "Would that I could trust them to treat us as friends after they have used us. But I don't. Further, my husband-to-be would never agree to such a plan. He would never agree to send Agerastians to defend the Empire."
The ensuing silence was broken only by a knock on the door, then a second, and then the silence returned.
"We attack as planned," Iskra decided. "We effect as near a bloodless coup as we can manage, and pray that the Virtues are up to the task of defeating this warlord. If they are not, then the Agerastians will form a wall against which they will crash."
Iarenna replied, "If the Virtues and armies of Ennoia fail at the greatest castle in the Empire, what hope do you have of defending seven cities, each of which can be reached by the kragh through massive Solar Portals?"
"Agerastos is not mine to do with as I wish, dear sister." Iskra felt no anger, no rush of emotion in response to her sister's words. "I am going to wrestle mightily with my husband just to convince him to reform and not destroy. But to ask him to save the Empire? I fear that's impossible. He would rather bury a knife in my heart than accede to that request."
Iarenna trembled, then nodded. "Of course. I understand."
"I'm making progress with rooting out the evil in Aletheia," said Audsley. "I believe it centers upon the Fujiwara clan."
He then relayed his discoveries: the potions, the history, duplicity and manipulations that had taken place. Iskra nodded, not shocked or surprised, simply accepting that the shadows that lay across their world were deeper and darker than she had surmised.
"Very well. My husband intends to launch his invasion two weeks from now. He would attack sooner, but is limited by the supply of Gate Stone that is emerging from Mythgraefen and the weakened state of both his army and the Vothaks. They need time to recover, and so he waits. Two weeks, Audsley. Is that enough time?"
Audsley shrugged. "Who can say? But tomorrow I escort the Red Rowan widow to the Festival of Prosperity, which will be attended by the highest-ranking ministers. It's the perfect opportunity to learn more."
A powerful knock sounded on her door, and Iskra smiled at her sister and friend. "Duty calls. I must be wed. Iarenna, will you stay with me? I have no friends or family to witness the occasion."
"Of course," whispered Iarenna, moving forward to take Iskra's hands. "I'll stay by your side until they threaten me with swords."
Iskra's smile turned wry. "Those swords will soon be mine to command. You need never fear them."
Iarenna squeezed her hands, then turned to gaze at Audsley. "Must you go now?"
Iskra saw complex emotions flash through Audsley's gaze – surprise, sorrow, and longing – but then he bowed in a manner most mocking. "Duty calls. This most unworthy man must challenge the Ministers of Heaven with his soiled hands. Wish me luck."
Iskra stepped forward. Threads snapped, and sections of her dress gave way. She disregarded them even as she trailed ruin behind her. Audsley's eyes opened wide, and he stood frozen as Iskra moved before him and then knelt, slowly, with stately grace, and reached out and took his hands in hers.
"These hands could never be so soiled that I would not deign to kiss them." She pressed her lips to the back of one and then the other, then, holding them both, she looked up at Audsley. "Most courageous and noble and gentle man, never doubt your own worth. If your soul is alloyed with darkness today, I believe that tomorrow it will once again glow in a state both true and pure."
"I, ah, Iskra, thank you, but, ah –"
Tears brimmed in her eyes, though she knew not why. She rose to her feet and kissed his cheek, then turned to the doors.
"Enter!"
Her voice was clear and strong, and the doors swung open immediately, allowing the maids and servants and nobles to hurry back in, many of them crying out in panic at the sight of Iskra's ruined clothing. She allowed them to usher her back to her platform, and ignored them as they set about fixing the rents and tears.
She looked over their heads at Audsley, but he gazed not at her. Instead, he held Iarenna's gaze, and in his eyes was a promise that warmed Iskra's heart for the first time since the wedding ceremonies had begun. She closed her eyes and bid herself dig deep for patience for this one last stretch of ritual.
The day seemed interminable. She endured parades, processions, assemblies, feasts, gifts, and speeches without end. She grew numb and lost track of the hours, moving mechanically where she was bidden, until at last she found herself within the great temple to the medusa Thyrrasskia. There, she knelt on the cold stone and gazed up at the terrifying statue, studied those cruel and inhuman eyes, and vowed to never offer up a prayer to that monster.
She was crowned and repeated the ritual words, and only after that did she turn to truly gaze upon her husband-to-be. Frail, warped, barely able to stand for this final crucial segment of the ritual, Emperor Thansos II devoured her with his eyes even as his whole body trembled. They spoke Agerastian vows, and then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the cold ivory of his mask, a chaste kiss that made her skin crawl. The crowd that filled the temple to bursting erupted into applause, and when she leaned back she saw a
hunger in the emperor's eyes that belied his earlier disavowal of carnal desires.
They returned to the palace, feasted for three hours, and then at long last ascended to the privacy of the emperor's rooms. They were attended until the very last second by dozens of people, each striving to be the last to leave their side, but finally the great doors were pulled closed and they were alone, the emperor standing stooped and leaning heavily on an ebony cane, his massive bed arising behind him like a battleship, wide enough for a dozen men and women to rut without ever risking rolling over the edge.
A hundred candles were burning in glass bowls, and the air was touched with rich and overpowering perfumes. Dust and decay lay beneath their smell, however, and she knew its source stood before her, his body rotted and ruined by his quest for power, a quest that had devoured everything and everyone that had stood in his path.
"Iskra," he whispered. "My wife."
"Thansos," she said. "My husband."
They stood in silence, regarding each other. Iskra felt stupefied by the day's proceedings, barely aware of herself, and thought then, without reason, of Tiron: of his dark, savage eyes, the calluses on his palms, the strength that corded his arms. She gazed at the wizened emperor and forced herself to move forward, undoing the seams and knots that kept her dress affixed to her frame. Though she never smiled, neither did she weep, and this she clung to as a victory over the course of the next three hours.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Asho helped his father to the chair Kanna had pulled out for him. Zekko was pale, his brow damp with sweat, his breath coming in shallow pants, but when he looked up at Asho, there was a gleam of excitement there, of victory.
"Two speeches a night is too much," said Asho. "We can't push you this hard."
"Nonsense," said his father, adjusting his weight and levering his legs up onto a second chair. He began to knead them, working his broad thumbs into the knotted flesh. "This is living, boy. You want me to stay home while there is work to be done?"
