Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

“Because as much as His Highness would like Pavo’s head on a spear, he recognizes he can do nothing without proof. The Senate will tear the Palace down to dust if he moves against Pavo without proof. The Berioni have spit too many times in the face of rule of law. Once more and the Senate will have blood.”

  “I mean why Tasso? Why citizens, why the mines? Why you and Pavo? For a cut of the profit? If I’m going to die for it, I have the right to know. My men have the right to know. Alluin has the right to know.”

  The carriage had eased to a stop. They had not ridden long enough to be out of the city. He was not even sure they had come off the Hill. Two of the guardsmen opened the doors at the back of the carriage and took out Vigo’s body, holding him under his knees and arms. There was torchlight through the doorway. Torien caught a glimpse of a tall white marble wall and, beyond, the black silhouettes of cypress trees against a wide night sky. He recognized the wall and trees. They were at the southern edge of the Palace grounds on the hilltop. The street curved away back down the Hill. In the distance below, he could see the lights of the River Quarter and the silver thread of the river.

  Alvero stood up. He stood for a moment, looking down at Torien on the bench. “My driver has orders to take you to Vione. The slave will need a surgeon tonight if you want him to keep the arm.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “His Highness will send for you, when he remembers and can spare you the time. He will be glad to explain and to reward you for the service you have rendered him.”

  “Senator—”

  “He will be emperor before the year is out.” Alvero’s voice was like ashes. “He will be such an emperor as history remembers. You could do very well by him, Risto. He could make a name of you. He could make you great, if you wanted it. It will be on offer, and it will be your choice. I want you to understand it should not be an easy choice. With him there is always a cost.”

  Torien shook his head. “I want justice done in Tasso. I want Alluin’s life and the lives of my men. I have a name already.”

  Alvero was silent, looking at him, his face shadowed. “You’d have the throne,” he said, “if there were any justice in the world. Then again, I suppose you would not take it.” He smiled again, briefly. His shoulders were very straight. “Goodbye, Risto.”

  “Senator.” There was a tightness in him. “Alluin deserves to know it of you, not of the Prince.”

  Alvero paused in the doorway but did not look back. “It is the best I can do for him now—to be silent. You will understand. He will, in time. I ask that you do not tell him we spoke this night. You owe me that much for keeping you from the river.”

  He climbed down from the carriage in the torchlight. Torien watched him go. Two of Alvero’s guardsmen closed the doors after him and bolted them. The carriage started with a shudder and a lurch. Ædyn was still unconscious beside him on the bench. He was alone with his thoughts all the way to Vione.

  From the window, which faced east and which was left un-shuttered on the surgeon’s orders to let a breeze stir the still air of the room, he had a view of the high road, the eastward road past Gracha to Cesin, the spelt fields yellow for harvest on either side of the embankment, the oak woods turning to gold on the far brown hills.

  If he lifted himself carefully on his left elbow, he could see down onto the parade ground just below the fort walls, and he watched the musters at dawn and dusk, and the cavalry exercises and foot drills through the day, and sometimes he just lay and listened with his eyes closed to the instructors’ voices and the ring of metal and thud of wooden practice weapons carrying on the breeze through the window—listening to it as though it were a language, horse and sword and spear, knowing how to speak it and not being able. He thought he might go crazy with lying there and listening.

  He was to have a week in bed, on the surgeon’s orders, and no visitors. Absolutely he must rest. Ædyn was gone to the chapel of the Hospitallers. He had not seen the boy since the first morning, and he had not seen the priests at all. He’d had a letter from Jovan saying the boy was safe at the chapel and his arm healing well. He had been alone in this room three days. The surgeon came at first three times a day and now twice, once in the morning and once in the evening. A slave boy brought him the meals and swatted flies for him and brought him water when he asked and reading material when it was possible to get it past the surgeon.

  He read indiscriminately: scrolls of verse, and agricultural manuals, and veterinary guidebooks, and apologies on the moral obligations of the nobility, and studies of water disputes along the Nona, and histories of the development of the Imperial law codes out of ancient Vareno tribal customs. He read with some interest a treatise entitled “On the Administration of the Imperial Province of Cesin.” It was dedicated to the Emperor by Senator Lucho Marro, and it argued for the abolishment of the hereditary governorship of Cesin, which in effect created a new Cesino monarchy with only nominal ties to Varen and which would lead eventually to open rebellion instigated by the Risti: the governorship of Cesin is the last vestige of an antiquated system of nepotistic patronage whose continued existence undermines the integrity and stability of the modern Imperial project. He wondered if the Emperor had read it. After all, it had been the Berioni whose antiquated nepotistic patronage had put Cesin in the hands of the Risti, two hundred years ago. He wondered if his father had read it. His father would laugh, reading it. It was hard to lead a rebellion among people who wanted foremost to hang you as a blood traitor.

  In the heat and stillness of the late afternoon, the drills done and the fort quiet for the mess, he was dreaming fitfully of cavalry on the road to Modigne, his head full of hoof beats and the jingle of horse-harness. The surgeon was there inexplicably, saying he could wake him if necessary, and a strange new voice was saying it wasn’t necessary and he could wait, and the surgeon was saying he would bring a chair. It did not make much sense for there to be a chair. Torien drifted awake. The room was full of Guardsmen. The surgeon was coming in through the curtain with a chair from the officers’ mess. The surgeon put the chair down and bowed and went out again. One of the Guardsmen shut the curtain behind him. Their helmet crests were the tall indigo plumes of the Household Guard. Torien sat up slowly against the wall. Someone put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I promised I wouldn’t strain you.” It was the man who had been speaking with the surgeon. “Lie down, Risto, before you get me in trouble.”

  He was in his mid-twenties, bare-headed, athletically built, smoothly olive-skinned, with a straight, aristocratic nose and firm chin and wide, dimpled, smiling mouth and a high forehead. His tunic was indigo silk edged in gold. A sapphire sparkled on the head of his cloak pin, another on the pommel of the dagger at his hip. The seal ring on the forefinger of his right hand bore no inscription, only the Imperial sun blazing in its zenith over the flat gold face. None but the royal family wore sapphires, and none but those ascendant to the throne wore the plain sunburst seal.

  Torien shifted against the wall, trying to bow. The Prince’s fingers tightened on his shoulder. “No need for ceremony between us,” he said, “not here, anyway. That’s why I came. I want to talk straightly. I don’t often get the chance.” He let go Torien’s shoulder and reached up to unpin his cloak. One of his Guardsmen stepped up to his elbow. The Prince handed off his cloak and sat down in the chair. His dark almond eyes lingered for a moment on the dressing around Torien’s ribs. “I know you need your rest.”

  “I think I may die of rest.”

  The Prince smiled. “Yes, I’ve been told you are a man of action. Do you know who told me so?”

  Underneath the smile, there was a thin, cool edge to the words. Torien looked away. “No,” he said. He wondered if it sounded as much a lie to the Prince as it did to him.

  “Pavo’s words. I do think he admired you, if he never quite understood you. I think it truly astonished him when you refused his commission. It astonished a lot of people. Maris Pavo wasn’t
often refused.”

  “You don’t sound as if it astonished you.”

  “I’ll wager I understand you—better than he did, at least. If I’d been in his place, I’d have killed you before you ever took ship for Tasso. I’d have killed you out of Choiro. Knowing your qualities, he was a fool to let you live so long.” There was still a hint of a smile at the Prince’s mouth, but his eyes were unreadable. “I told you I came to talk straightly.”

  “Has he confessed?”

  “He confessed. There wasn’t any point in holding his tongue once Senna talked.”

  “No point but honor.”

  “At any rate, he didn’t hold his tongue.”

  “How many arrests?”

  “So far? Pavo and his staff, of course, and Senna. Certain of the command here at Vione.”

  “Who?”

  “Brada, Iolano, Montegne—”

  “Montegne?”

  “He has not been arrested yet. We’ve sent the orders after him to Modigne. He’ll be brought back here for sentencing, along with the senior command of the Modigne garrison. Also the governor and his staff.”

  “It was Montegne’s column?”

  “There are others. I won’t bore you with the names and numbers: the crews of the ships, the harbor officials. All of them bought on Pavo’s coin or Senna’s.”

  “It’ll be a year before you’ve brought them all to trial.”

  “In your opinion the wheels of Imperial justice turn too slowly?”

  Torien did not say anything.

  “Speak your mind, Risto,” the Prince said. “I’m interested to hear.”

  “I thought you knew my mind.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Guardsmen shift on his feet. The Prince laughed. “I asked for that, I suppose. Fair enough. I’ll tell you what I think you wanted to say, and you may tell me where I’m wrong.”

  “If you wish.”

  “Every delay compounds opportunity for the miscarriage of justice. It is frankly inexpedient to allow each of the accused his right to trial in Choiro. You hesitated to say it because you felt there was some risk in pointing out to me deficiencies in a legal tradition my forebears have upheld since the time of the tribes. Also in implicitly suggesting that my courts are open to corruption.”

  “Your father’s courts.”

  “My father will be dead at the first frost, and they will be my courts. We are speaking straightly.” The Prince’s voice was cool. “An adequate representation? Or have I missed something?”

  Torien did not say anything.

  “An adequate representation, then. And I’ve spared you incriminating yourself.”

  “Your Highness is merciful.”

  “Reasonable, at least, I like to think. Mercy is too easily manipulated. I share your concern for justice, Risto. I mean the Empire to know I will not tolerate corruption as my father has done. I mean the Empire to know my vengeance will be swift and uncompromising and impartial.”

  “Or you mean the Senate to know, because otherwise you fear for your throne.”

  The Prince smiled. “You think I lack conviction? There is twelvefold proof of my conviction hanging on the Traitors’ Wall.”

  Something twisted inside him. “Senna?”

  “All of them. Montegne and the rest will join them presently. If I cared only for the good will of the Senate, I would have had Senna quietly beheaded. Don’t tell me I lack conviction, Risto.”

  “Senna wasn’t guilty of treason. Nor Ceno. None of them but Pavo and possibly his officers—any who were complicit in the death of Nico Briule. None of the rest.”

  “Montegne had orders to eliminate your garrison at Tasso and testify before the Senate that it was the work of the tribes.”

  “Pavo’s orders. Montegne was coerced.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know Montegne. And I know Pavo. If Montegne took those orders, it was under coercion. He has a family.”

  “He took them, regardless. He might have refused. You would have refused, of course.” The Prince’s voice was very dry. “Tell me what you think was Senna’s crime.”

  “The same as Ceno’s. He was trafficking citizens into the salt mines, or he knew it was being done. It still doesn’t merit the Traitors’ Wall.”

  “Alvero Senna was worth seven million a year. Unless you think him the sort to be blinded to logic by petty greed, he had no reason to be involved in a trafficking ring. Anyway, the revenue was worthless, if you think about it. Any attempt to invest it would draw attention to the source. Why risk himself only to let the profits sit moldering?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Why does it matter what I think?”

  “You are too self-effacing,” the Prince said. “Too obviously self-effacing, I mean. You’ve already guessed. You just don’t want to admit I’ve won.”

  “It was a coup.”

  “In its infancy, yes. They didn’t yet have as much of the army in hand as they needed. You can pontificate as much as you want on the Senate floor—and Senna did, believe me—but when it comes down to it you’ve got to have the raw manpower to take and hold the Hill, and the coin to pay for it. Till the moment the blood runs, the coin must be untraceable. Slaves have brands and certificates of sale and a certain amount of economic importance. Kidnapped Modigno gutter rats are very easily made invisible.”

  “Did they know?”

  “Who?”

  “The raw manpower. The ones doing the actual work. Pavo wasn’t an idiot. They didn’t know what he intended. They wouldn’t have known until the blood was running.”

  “That is incidental, to my mind, and insufficient as an excuse. One has the responsibility to know the precise nature of one’s business contracts.”

  “So it’s treason for all of them.”

  “And the penalty for treason, irrespective of rank.”

  “Their families?”

  “Chæla Ceno will live. She gave me her father; I can hardly hold her complicit. Likewise your adjutant Alluin Senna. By virtue of his disinheritance, he is rendered legally immune to his family’s disgrace. As for the rest—no one will accuse me of jettisoning tradition, at least.”

  Torien did not say anything. Tradition meant death by the sword for every member of the traitor’s household over fifteen years old, branding and enslavement for the rest, the condemned made to watch while it was done.

  “It will take some time,” the Prince said. “Senna was shrewd enough to alert his household before coming forward to betray Pavo. The family had opportunity to flee. Senna would not give up their whereabouts either for pain or for the promise of a dignified death. But you can rest assured time will not blunt my resolve.” The Prince smiled at him, thinly. “Tell me again it was only because I feared for my throne.”

  He did not look in the Prince’s eyes. He looked away past the Prince’s right ear to the far side of the room, where the late-afternoon shadows were crawling up the wall. “Forgive me, Highness.”

  “I’m not toying with you, you know,” the Prince said. “Surprising as it may seem, I don’t particularly enjoy watching people grovel. I told you I am reasonable. I accept that you are on principle loyal to the Senate and frustrated with my father—with me, by extension. I hope I’m not fool enough to let it blind me to your quality or your use. I could make good use of you, Risto. I could make good use of a man who cares as much for justice as I do.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Also a man with no patience for politicking,” the Prince said, dryly. “I want you in Pavo’s place as High Commander of the Guard. My father will object, of course. You’re too young, too inexperienced, too provincial, too inclined to deed over word—too damnably plainspoken when you are inclined to word. For the sort of Guard he tried to cultivate, perhaps that’s true. For my part, these are the reasons I want you. I want a man who is uncomfortable in C
hoiro and who can make Choiro uncomfortable in turn. I want a man who will stand by my side and shake the Empire from complacency.”

  “I’ve most of a two-year term left in Tasso.”

  “The Senate can be prevailed upon to end your term early.”

  “Surely there’s someone better suited.”

  “You weren’t paying attention. I want you precisely because you are not suited. You see how very neatly I’ve answered any objection you can make. But I’ll humor you. Name me someone better suited.”

  He said, almost without thinking, “Salvo Briule.”

  “Of the Modigne barracks. Nico’s father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. I admit his name hadn’t crossed my mind, but I’m not particularly surprised it should have crossed yours. He shares your holy disdain for Choiro. He’s noble-born, you know—very distinguished family. He went and married an Epyrian farm girl. His father never quite recovered from the shock.”

  “He knows the Hill.”

  “He’s nearing retirement. He’s been a Guardsman sixteen years and a soldier before that. Another year and he’ll be off to his villa on Epyris to breed goats. You, on the other hand—I can have you at your prime.”

  “I refused Pavo’s commission. What made you think I would take yours?”

  “Pavo gave you a choice.”

  Torien was silent. The Prince laughed. He put a hand on Torien’s shoulder. “Don’t be a fool. It’s your choice. But I don’t want you to dismiss it out-of-hand. Think about it. Take all the time you need. When you do refuse me, I’ll expect a good reason.” He squeezed Torien’s shoulder and let it go. He stood up from the chair. The Guardsman stepped forward with the cloak. The Prince said, off-handedly, pulling the cloak around his shoulders, “There are other considerations, if you’re interested. Pavo’s estate at Inumæ falls to the Emperor to dispose of as he sees fit. It’s a fine place—good land, good vineyards. I’ve only to speak the word and it’s yours. Five hundred thousand stadia of Vareno land to your name. You won’t get a legacy like that from twenty years of army service.”