Raven s Strike

by Patricia Briggs

  Phoran had practiced this moment in the privacy of his own rooms. He had gone over the reasons for doing it this way with his closest advisors. Phoran had played out all the scenarios, and this one worked the best.

  “We have acted upon Our Own powers to grant pardon to all the young men known formerly as the Passerines of the Path. First because of their defense of Our Own Person, and second, so We could use their eyewitness accounts to bring to an end the era of the Secret Path, a clandestine group that has been plotting the destruction of the Empire from within.”

  He paused, giving the Septs a chance to whisper with their advisors and colleagues. Some of the Passerines were sons of the Septs, mostly third or fourth sons who had caused their families no end of misery. Surely some of the Septs were glad Phoran had taken on the task of making useful men of their miscreants.

  He’d offered each of the young men a place in the newly created Emperor’s Own, his own personal guard. Most of them had accepted. He wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not—they had been chosen by the Path, after all, as the most amoral and corruptible young nobles of their generation.

  “You have heard the testimony of these men, now Our Own, and also that of Avar, who is Sept of Leheigh and Our Own trusted counselor. We have also told you those things We observed Ourselves.”

  Phoran secretly loved speaking of himself in the first-person royal. It struck him as an absurd but utterly effective way to remind them all that he—however unsuited for the job they thought him—was emperor. He glanced casually at the Septs, who had been sitting in their seats off and on for the better part of a week and were doubtless looking forward to getting the whole business over with. Of course, they only thought they knew what was going to happen.

  “These testimonies,” Phoran continued, “were given to you to bring secret things out into the light where they might fade away and die, a threat no more. They were, moreover, given over for your judgment.” They waited now, he knew, for him to call for a verdict, a vote of guilt or innocence.

  He had practice in showmanship, Phoran thought, though most of the men sitting in their exalted seats would not have noticed the way he’d orchestrated his drunken revels, manipulating the attendees for his own jaded amusement.

  “But these, Our enemy, will find their justice from Us.” He gave the Septs no chance to murmur, but glanced down at the parchment that lay on his podium and began to read the long list of names aloud—merchants, guardsmen, generals, and minor nobles for the most part, but some few were royal servants. “These men all We find guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit murder—” and a dozen lesser charges that he recited with slow precision.

  “These men We sentence to hanging. This shall be forthwith accomplished in the main market square, five each day until all be dead.”

  He could have left this judgment to the Septs. Then all those deaths would be on their shoulders, not his. He had no doubt that the Septs would have found each of those men guilty.

  “But these are not the only men who stand accused.” And this next group, no doubt, would have escaped justice if it had depended upon the Council of Septs. “Bring forth the Septs who stand accused.”

  During this trial, he had succeeded in proving at least one emperor—Phoran’s own father—had been murdered. If he allowed the Council to set those murderers free, it would set a precedent he preferred to avoid.

  He set the parchment down upon his podium and waited as his guardsmen brought in the thirteen Septs he’d been able to bring to trial. There were others who should have stood trial, guilty men who were too powerful for the evidence he could have brought against them. He was careful to keep his eyes off those men—among them Gorrish, the Council head.

  The Septs came in, each man gagged and his hands bound behind his back. Each was escorted by two young men in green and grey, the colors of Phoran’s personal Sept, hastily resurrected for a uniform for the Emperor’s Own, a gold songbird in flight embroidered on the left shoulder.

  Phoran thought it was the prisoners’ gags that were responsible for the murmurs he heard echoing in the cavernous chamber. Gorrish, he saw, was not among those talking. A Sept’s honor was considered above the need for bindings. Practicality, however, would have excused the tied wrists—the gag was an insult. Phoran didn’t mean the insult, but he needed those men silenced to complete his task.

  The Emperor’s Own led their prisoners to the center of the floor, facing the ranks of seats where their peers watched them. Once they were in, Phoran stepped down from his podium and walked to the accused Septs.

  The murmurs in the room quieted as the Septs waited to see what Phoran had planned.

  “The Sept of Jenne,” Phoran said, standing in front of the accused and meeting his eye before stepping to the next. “Sept of Seal Hold.” There were thirteen of them in all. “Sept of Vertess.” Some of them were old men, men who had known Phoran’s father as he had not. Had known him and seen him assassinated as they’d assassinated also the uncle who had raised Phoran. Some of them were young men who had drunk his wine and eaten his food, thinking him a fat dupe—as he had been.

  One by one he named them all.

  This day, Phoran knew, he’d have to pay for the years he had allowed himself to be made into a fat capon. Phoran hoped the final cost of his sins would be something less than the price these men would pay for theirs.

  “Your hands are bound,” he said, “because this day you are powerless before Us. Your tongues are stilled because you have had the chance to defend yourselves and We no longer hear your words.”

  He turned to the rest of his Septs, letting his eyes roam the chamber. “We find these men, Septs all, guilty of murder and treason. We find this crime is more heinous than the crimes of lesser men, because the trust they betrayed was greater. We find their crimes dictate that the inheritance of their Septs will be Ours to do with as We choose.”

  That caused rustles among his audience. Oh, there had been emperors who had interfered with inheritances before—but not in the last two centuries, not even in cases of treason. He would allow most of the heirs to keep their Sept, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted all the Septs to remember the power of the Emperor and set aside the memory of the fool they had believed him to be. He had to make them understand, viscerally, that their power came from him, and not the other way around.

  “For their crimes We find that these former Septs shall be condemned to death.”

  There was, on the floor of the Council of Septs, a raised stone, where a statue of a rearing stallion, the symbol of the Empire resided. Phoran rather thought that most of the Septs had forgotten the raised stone had originally been something other than a base for the statue.

  He held out his hand and Toarsen, First Captain of the Emperor’s Own and former Passerine, stepped away from his honor guard position. Held at chest height and balanced upon his gloved hands was a rather large sword they’d tucked out of sight against the Emperor’s podium.

  It was not Phoran’s own sword. They’d had to go into the storeroom and sort through dozens of weapons until they’d found something suitable.

  Phoran took it from Toarsen and raised it, almost five feet of newly sharpened steel jutting out from a magnificently ornate two-handed grip. It was an awesome weapon—though not something he’d have cared to carry into a real battle against lighter, quicker blades.

  Phoran let them all look their fill. A few Septs frowned or sat up, but most of them looked bored. They were waiting for a speech, he knew. Rhetoric was a common occurrence—even if the sword was a little more extreme than the usual props.

  “We do not have a list of all the deaths these men are responsible for—though Our father and uncle are among them: emperor and regent to emperor. So We tell you instead the names of those who died fighting for Our life.” These names he had memorized long before he decided to use them here. A man, it seemed to him, ought to know the names of people who died for him. He gave them the names of fifteen
Passerines. Then ten men who’d belonged to Avar, the Sept of Leheigh, who had come to Phoran’s rescue. “And of the Clan of Rongier the Librarian—” Eight names, and it took most of the Septs all eight before they realized the names belonged to Travelers.

  Two of his counselors, Gerant and Avar, Septs both, had told him to leave those names off. Eliminating the “scourge” of Travelers had been a policy of the Council for generations. But those men had died for him also, and Phoran had decided their names should speak to the guilt of the accused.

  “The first person to fall that night gains no justice from this. Lady Myrceria of Telleridge, daughter of the former Sept of Telleridge, died under torture, which was conducted by her own father. She died to keep Our secrets so We could bring about the fall of the Path. I would that Telleridge could be here to answer for his crimes, but he died that day, and he died much too easily.”

  While he was speaking, two guards, chosen especially for the duty, removed the statue of the rearing horse from its place of honor and pulled off the embroidered covering beneath it to reveal the cold granite stone that lay beneath.

  Phoran nodded, and Jenne’s guards led him to the stone. They jerked him off his feet and held his shoulders down against the granite, his head hanging over the end, with the smoothness of three days spent practicing that move on each other in preparation for this moment.

  A Sept convicted of treachery had to shed his blood in the Council chambers. Traditionally the emperor would cut the Sept’s hand and let the blood fall. A beheading would follow, usually the same day, in a courtyard of the palace reserved for such things. But, there were exceptions to that tradition.

  With both hands, Phoran raised the old sword high over his head. The leather wrapping of the pommel kept his sweaty grip from slipping as he brought down that sword, a sword made for chopping rather than thrust and parry, and let it cleave all the way through Jenne’s neck.

  The whole thing had been accomplished so quickly, Phoran didn’t think that Jenne had even realized what was happening to him.

  Somebody shouted, not a protest, Phoran thought, but shock. When he turned to face them, the Council of Septs, he saw he finally had their complete attention.

  In the silence that followed, Phoran let them get their fill of looking at him holding that dark sword with blood splattered about him; let them burn the image in their hearts and minds to supersede the picture of the weakling they’d thought him.

  He kept his face impassive. It helped that this was not the first man he’d killed. No matter how much it felt like it, he told himself fiercely, this was not murder.

  The guards pulled the remains of their former charge aside and covered the body with rough, dark-colored sacking—no fine linens for these men. When the bloodstained stone was emptied, Phoran nodded to the next pair.

  After the first three, he found it was easier to keep down his gorge. He learned how to swing the blade so speed and the sword’s own weight did most of the work. He only had to make a second chop once, when the Sept of Seal Hold struggled a little too vigorously for his guards and put his shoulder in the way of the sword edge.

  While Phoran was waiting for a body to be moved, Toarsen brought up a clean, damp cloth and wiped the Emperor’s face clean of blood and sweat: and that, too, Phoran had carefully staged beforehand.

  He didn’t want the Septs to see a madman, crazed by blood; but an emperor who was willing to kill to protect his Empire, a man whose power was to be feared.

  At last the final body fell.

  “In the name of Phoran, he who is emperor, the sentence has been carried out. Let their bodies be burned and scattered to the four winds. Let no one sing their way to the tables of the gods. Let their names be forgotten.”

  Phoran was never certain who it was who said those words. It was supposed to have been him—he’d written it out himself—but he was beyond talking. He cleaned the sword on the clothing of the last man he killed, then returned the polished blade to Toarsen’s care.

  Looking neither left nor right Phoran exited the room. Kissel, his Second Captain of the Emperor’s Own, and Avar, the Sept of Leheigh, both kept a step behind him to serve as honor guard.

  As soon as he was in the hall, Phoran quickened his walk as much as he could and still maintain the illusion of imperial dignity. He was grateful that neither of the men accompanying him said a word.

  Once inside the privacy of his rooms, Phoran grabbed the basin he’d brought out for just that moment and vomited into it. When he was finished, he wiped his face with a cloth, then leaned against the nearest pillar and rested his forehead upon the cool stone. He wanted to be alone. Wanted to be anywhere but here.

  Avar handed him a cup of water.

  Phoran rinsed his mouth and spat in the basin.

  “You were right,” said Avar. “I was wrong. There isn’t a man who was in that chamber today who will forget what happened.”

  Phoran wanted to forget, but he supposed that Avar was right.

  There was a short, efficient knock on the door.

  “Come,” said Phoran, recognizing it.

  The Sept of Gerant came in, followed by Avar’s brother Toarsen. Toarsen still carried the sword, but it was sheathed and resting casually against his shoulder.

  It was probably stupid, thought Phoran, that of the four people he trusted completely, he knew only one of them well. An unwitting tool in the Path’s plan to ensure a weak emperor, Avar had been first Phoran’s guide and then his companion in debauchery. Avar had never quite reached the heights of corruption that Phoran had managed, though. Like a gold coin in the mud, there was something pure and shining about his friend that nothing could quite smudge.

  Until a month ago, Phoran had known Avar’s brother Toarsen and Toarsen’s best friend Kissel only to greet in the hall as they passed. Both of them were of poor repute—and from what he’d learned in the past month, their reputation for villainy was probably much less severe than they deserved.

  He also knew they were, both of them, absolutely trustworthy. They were his, given to him as a gift by Tieragan of Redern—or else he’d been given as a gift to them: Phoran wasn’t quite certain.

  The Sept of Gerant, though, was very definitely Tier’s gift. Gerant had come so seldom to Taela that Phoran wasn’t certain he’d ever even met the man before he’d come in answer to Phoran’s summons, a summons he’d written on Tier’s advice.

  Before Gerant arrived, Phoran had envisioned an aging Avar: big, charismatic, and physically gifted—especially after he’d done some reading about the victories Gerant had managed against the Fahlarn twenty years ago. But Gerant was no giant, no flashy hero.

  He was shorter than average, and looked a dozen years younger than he was. He dressed modestly and watched more than he talked. At first Phoran had thought him a stolid sort of man, true as good steel but the kind of person who had to think things through before he acted. And Phoran had been right—except Gerant thought faster than most. Phoran’s uncle would have liked Gerant, and Phoran knew of no greater compliment.

  “You played that well,” Gerant said.

  Phoran took a sip of water. “Just give me a dozen virgins to rape, and I could have completed the show.”

  “He’s never at his best after losing his breakfast,” commented Avar.

  “Good thing there weren’t another two or three,” continued Phoran. “Or I’d have had to start stabbing them rather than beheading them. Maybe I should have used an axe?”

  Avar walked over to a pitcher and poured ale into the five goblets that waited. “Some ale, gentlemen? You can’t make conversation with him when he’s like this.”

  “It’s hard,” said Gerant. “Much easier to kill the bastards when they’ve a sword at your gullet than to do it cold when they’re whimpering and shaking.”

  “I’d have done it for you,” said Toarsen. Some trick of arrangement had taken the same features that turned Avar into the epitome of male beauty and made Toarsen look like a merry
drinking companion—if you didn’t look into his eyes.

  Had Toarsen killed men who were bound and unable to fight back? Phoran didn’t ask; he didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Nasty business.” Kissel loosened the neck of his captain’s uniform and accepted a goblet. “I like killing them when they’re trying to kill you better,” Kissel continued, giving apparent answer to Phoran’s unasked question—though it was hard to tell: Kissel had a wicked sense of humor.

  Kissel was the second son of the Sept of Seal Hold. When Phoran offered to let Kissel stay away from the executions, Kissel had offered to restrain the Seal Hold while Phoran struck the blow—or strike the blow himself. He was not, it seemed, fond of his father.

  Taking a deep swallow, the big man relaxed into his usual seat. Somehow in the past few weeks, Phoran’s sitting room had been arranged into a council of war.

  “They’ll fear you now, Phoran,” said Gerant. “But they’ll respect you more.”

  “I was watching Gorrish,” said Toarsen. “Cold-blooded, that one. He wasn’t afraid or impressed by the show. If he’d been a wizard, I’ll wager our emperor would be lying in state now.”

  Avar nodded at his brother. “I know. I saw it, too. We’re going to have to do something about him.”

  “We needed to kill that one, too,” agreed Gerant, finding a small bench and taking a seat. There was a soft chair set out for his use, but, to Phoran’s private amusement, Gerant was more comfortable with humbler furniture. “It’s too bad there wasn’t enough evidence against him.”

  Phoran gave a sour grunt and exchanged the water cup for a goblet of ale. “He was too busy running the Council for Telleridge to make many appearances below. The Path’s servants knew, but I couldn’t expose them to the kind of things that happen to servants who bear witness against their betters.”

  He wandered casually over to his chair and plopped down with a leg thrown over one arm. The company was steadying him, giving himself something to think about other than the blood that spattered his clothing.