The Vacant Throne

by Joshua Palmatier

  “What did you tell him?” I growled. When the Steward didn’t immediately respond, I shook him, spat again, “What did you tell him!”

  “Everything,” Alonse rasped. “Everything I overheard at the estate.”

  “Did you warn Demasque of the raid?” Daeriun asked from behind me.

  Alonse nodded, and I involuntarily tightened my grip. The servant began to choke, his hands rising to grapple with my wrist.

  “Did you tell him about the throne?” I asked, in a voice soft enough so only Keven and Alonse would hear.

  Alonse couldn’t speak, but through his increasingly desperate struggle for breath, I saw the answer in his eyes.

  I released him, thrust him back toward Keven. But as soon as I let go, he collapsed to his hands and knees in the slick grime of the alley’s center, coughing hoarsely, barely enough strength in his arms to keep himself upright.

  I began to pace, thinking back to Haqtl standing in the throne room in Amenkor, seeing his placid face as he watched me kill the Ochean, recalling the hunger in his eyes when he’d seen the throne. And I remembered his cold fascination with the Fire inside of Erick after his capture on The Maiden, the visceral enjoyment he got out of torturing Erick afterward, his slow, twisted smile as he drove the poisoned spine into Erick’s chest.

  I caught Daeriun’s gaze. “He’s here, in the city. We have to find him.”

  “We’ve already tried!”

  “I know!”

  I spat a frustrated curse, thought of Sorrenti, of the throne, but he’d already tried to find them as well, thought of the Seekers, but they’d been searching since the moment Lord March had released them from the prison of the estate. And now the Seekers wouldn’t have anyone to track. Not with Demasque killing off his network of spies.

  Except he hadn’t killed off everyone yet.

  I stilled, my eyes settling on Alonse.

  He’d recovered enough to sit back on his heels, hands raised to massage his throat. He flinched when he caught my gaze.

  “Where’s Haqtl hiding?” I asked.

  Alonse shook his head. “I don’t know. I only met with Yvonne.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Beneath the river, I could tell he wasn’t lying. He was surrounded in total defeat, the river shimmering with fear, with weakness, with regret.

  “And where did you meet with Yvonne?”

  “Near the wharf, the northern side. A tavern in the back streets.”

  I reached down, grabbed Alonse by the arm and jerked him into a standing position. He didn’t resist, although anger flashed through his eyes, there and then gone.

  “Take us there,” I commanded.

  The carriage pulled up to the edge of a flagstone-paved street not far from the wharf. A light rain had begun to fall, casting halos around the few lanterns still lit for the Fete hanging on posts on the street corners.

  “That’s it,” Alonse said, motioning toward a sign hanging above the tavern’s door. A marshland bird was painted on the sign, a fish caught in its elongated beak. “The Wishful Catch.”

  After Keven had shoved him into the carriage, he’d managed to gather himself together, regaining some of the arrogance he’d exhibited since the first time I’d met him on the steps of the estates that had become our prison. The returning arrogance had faltered only once, when we’d halted to examine Yvonne’s body. Keven had made him come with us, had forced him to look at the body. She’d been left in an alley, just like the Squall’s captain, blood staining her bodice, the material ripped at the seams, her breasts exposed. Her head lay twisted at an odd angle. As we’d stood over her body, the Protectors who’d been left to guard her waiting silently on one side, it had started to rain, the blood that congealed on her forehead where the Skewed Throne had been cut starting to trickle down into her hair.

  Alonse hadn’t been able to watch, had turned away, hands gripped tightly before him.

  With a glance, I’d sent Keven back to the carriage with Alonse. I remained a moment longer.

  Daeriun had looked at me strangely, but I’d ignored him. Yvonne had had something I needed.

  Now, in the carriage outside the tavern, I stared at Alonse, at the harsh facade he’d pulled over the terror I could feel churning inside him. He’d made no move to escape on the way over here, had said nothing, responding mostly with grunts.

  But when he sat back in his seat and caught my gaze, he flinched.

  “When did you last meet with Yvonne?” I asked.

  He swallowed. “Yesterday.”

  I turned to Keven. “Hand him over to the Protectorate. We’re done with him.”

  He nodded, and when I reached for the door to the carriage and stepped out into the rain, I found Daeriun waiting.

  “Where’s Alonse?”

  “We won’t need him,” I said.

  Daeriun’s brow creased. “But I thought he was going to lead us.”

  I turned away. I’d already submerged myself beneath the river, had already scented the surrounding area. The rain tasted like iron, the sharpest scent, but beneath it I could sense the rest of the street. The grit on the stone, the smoke from the lanterns, the sweat from a hundred people. Old sweat and new. And the deeper I dove, the more the scents unfolded.

  I turned away from Daeriun, from his confusion.

  I was no longer connected to the Skewed Throne, no longer had its power behind me, its force. But I’d learned how to track someone using their scent alone while still on the Dredge, had used it to track Garrell Cart, and later, Alendor’s son, Cristoph.

  And then I’d killed them.

  But Garrell and Cristoph had been alive when I’d tracked them, their scents strong. I wasn’t certain I’d be able to find someone who was already dead. I wasn’t certain how long the scent would linger on the river.

  I dove beneath the rain, beneath the smoke. I could feel the river flowing around me, could sense the entire street, the layers of scent like cloth, the oldest smells lingering but fading. I drew the oldest scents close. Normally, I couldn’t distinguish between the scents, didn’t even bother to try, all of them merging into a flat stench, a miasma of everyone who had passed by recently, but I wasn’t searching at random. I needed Yvonne’s scent, a scent that I’d found kneeling over her body. Diluted by death, but still there, faint.

  Lilac and incense. Heady but still sharp.

  If you knew to look for it.

  I sucked in a breath through my nostrils, closed my eyes as I filtered through the rain, through the smoke . . . and caught it.

  Opening my eyes, I pointed. “There.”

  Daeriun frowned heavily. “How do you know?”

  “Because I can smell her.”

  Daeriun snorted, as if he thought I were joking, but he suddenly stilled at my expression.

  “She entered the tavern from that direction,” I said, pointing down the street, “and when she came out, she headed south, toward the wharf.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because her scent is stronger to the south. Newer. To the north, it’s fading.” I hesitated a moment, then added with emphasis. “Fast.”

  He straightened, shoulders back. The longer he stared at my face, the more nervous his own scent grew. But he took the hint and, still uncertain, barked orders to the Protectors who had emerged from his own carriage.

  Half of them swarmed the tavern. Daeriun, with the other half, turned toward me.

  “Lead the way, Mistress.”

  I ran, heard a few of the Protectors curse behind me as they tried to keep up, but I ignored them, focused on the scent, on the thread of lilac and incense, followed it down the street into the depths of the northern wharf, the buildings here closer together, the streets narrowing, beginning a gradual climb up the slope of the surrounding hills to the tops of the cliffs of the northern channel.

  When the scent turned abruptly toward the cliffs, I halted, hesitated.

  “What’s wrong?” Daeriun asked. His breath came in short gasps, but unlike
some of the Protectors he was barely winded.

  “I expected the scent to lead back to the brothel,” I said, glancing at the cross street where we’d stopped. One stretch led down to the wharf, the other up a steep slope. “But she came from the cliffs.”

  “Maybe she went to see Demasque. That’s where his estate is.”

  I shook my head. “Westen said she never went to his estate, at least not while the Seekers were following her.”

  “Shouldn’t he have seen her get killed? Weren’t they following her?”

  I shrugged, brow creasing in irritation at his gruff tone. “I haven’t spoken to him since she died. But the Seekers haven’t been following her all the time. And they certainly weren’t following the Squall’s captain. We thought he’d left. Recently, I’ve had them looking for the Chorl directly, searching buildings. Discreetly.”

  I turned toward the slope, began trudging uphill.

  Yvonne’s scent didn’t move in a straight line, zigzagging back and forth across the street, as if she were dodging people in the crowds. The pattern was strangely familiar, until I suddenly realized she’d been hunting marks as she moved, picking pockets or stealing from carts or unguarded bundles. But she never paused for long, her scent pooling the longest at the mouth of an alley. I could feel her watching the people, as I’d done a thousand times from an alley’s mouth on the Dredge, searching for opportunity.

  I smiled. Yvonne had been a thief. Gutterscum, just like me.

  But the smile faded as I recalled her mutilated face, her twisted neck, and broken body left in a back alley, hair matted with blood.

  As we moved farther up the hill, the buildings changed, shifted from the tightly packed, smaller taverns and warehouses along the wharf to wider streets with walled in courtyards and gated entrances. Small at first, nothing more than a patch of land between a wooden or metal gate and the main house. But the higher we ascended the wider the courtyards became, some open enough to contain gardens. The roofs shifted from wood shingles to red clay, patchy at first, some of the tiles missing. The grounds became better kept. The higher we went, the less Yvonne’s path meandered. There wouldn’t have been enough people for her to hunt effectively. The crowds would have been too thin, the few people traveling mainly servants on foot, with nothing worth stealing, or the rich speeding past in carriages or on carts.

  And then, the scent of lilac, of burned incense, began to tatter.

  I picked up speed, felt Daeriun note the change and grow tense beside me, the rest of the Protectors following suit. But no one spoke.

  I followed the scent as the thread thinned, dove deeper beneath the river until it grew stronger, tasted bile at the back of my throat, a sensation I hadn’t felt since I’d overextended myself using the throne with Eryn, since destroying the throne to kill the Ochean. But I shoved myself deeper, nausea digging into my stomach. The scent strengthened and I pushed on, my arms beginning to tremble with weakness, my legs with the strain of running so long, so hard—

  And then the scent—even submerged so far beneath the river it felt as if it would smother me—died.

  I looked up, the last faint wisps of lilac trembling and dissolving away. . . .

  And stared at a gate. A side entrance to a walled estate.

  Letting the river go, choking down the sick taste of bile, I reached for the gate’s handle and felt Daeriun’s hand drop onto my shoulder, halting me.

  “What?” I snapped, spinning toward him. “She came from here, from within these walls.”

  “We can’t go in there,” he said, his face a rigid mask. A general’s mask. But beneath the mask I could see anger, carefully controlled.

  “Why not?”

  The muscles in his jaw worked as he drew in a deep breath. To calm himself, to steady himself.

  Behind him, the other Protectors stood warily as well, not quite looking at me.

  Meeting my gaze, his words heavy with meaning, Daeriun said, “Because that’s Lady Vaiana Parmati’s estate.”

  “We knew Vaiana supported Lord Demasque,” Sorrenti said calmly. He stood at the window of my personal chambers, looked out at the rain that had become a downpour, the clouds thick enough that it looked like it was night outside, not midday on the fourth day of the Fete.

  Sorrenti turned from the window with a frown. “Are you certain that the Chorl are hidden there?”

  “No, I’m not certain,” I said irritably. I rubbed at my eyes, leaned my head back against the chair. Weariness enveloped me. I’d spent almost all of last night dealing with Daeriun and the bodies, then tracking Yvonne.

  Sorrenti didn’t take offense at the curt tone. Instead, he sighed, glanced toward Daeriun standing opposite me, toward William seated in the chair beside me and Erick standing near the door. Erick had replaced Keven as my personal guard when we’d returned to the estate. “Then let me see if I can verify that.”

  He moved to a vacant seat, sat down and closed his eyes.

  Within the space of a breath, his body grew rigid, back straightening, hands resting on the arms of the chair tightening on the wood. His face settled into a frown of concentration and his breathing slowed, as if he’d fallen asleep . . . but then it slowed further, to the point where he almost didn’t seem to be breathing at all.

  A silence settled over the room, no one daring to move. But when it became obvious that Sorrenti wouldn’t be returning anytime soon, Daeriun shuddered, looked toward me.

  "What’s he doing?”

  I caught his eyes, saw the wariness there, the suspicion and how uncomfortable that suspicion made him feel.

  “He’s using the throne,” I said. “The Stone Throne here in Venitte. He’s using the throne to see beyond Lady Parmati’s walls.”

  The general spat a curse, paced away from all of us, toward the window, spun back. “If so few people know of the throne,” he said, “how did Haqtl find out about it?”

  I almost shrugged, but William suddenly shifted forward in his seat. “I can answer that. I’d been wondering how Haqtl—how any of the Chorl—managed to get in touch with Demasque or Parmati or any of the Council members here in Venitte. But then yesterday, while conducting business with Bullick and a few other merchants on the wharf, searching for anything that might lead me to where Haqtl is hiding, I saw Tarrence.”

  He turned to me significantly. I frowned, the name somewhat familiar.

  And then I froze, felt fury seething upward inside me. I shifted forward on my seat. “Merchant Tarrence, from Marlett.”

  William nodded grimly. “He’d changed his appearance somewhat—shorn his hair short, wears a beard now, trimmed close. I almost didn’t recognize him.”

  I swore. “It always seems to come back to Alendor and the damn consortium.”

  “Even after his death,” Erick said from the door. I shot him a glance, but Daeriun had stepped forward.

  “Who is Tarrence? And who is Alendor?”

  “You don’t know?” William asked, confused, but then he sighed. “Of course you don’t know. None of the messengers we sent after Varis seized the throne made it to Venitte. And we’ve been concentrating on the Chorl threat since the moment we arrived.”

  I grimaced. “Which means that the merchant guild hasn’t been actively searching out the merchants that formed the consortium all this time, as we assumed.”

  “What,” General Daeriun said, voice tight, his patience worn thin, “consortium?”

  I stared at him a moment, uncertain where to begin. “Before I claimed the throne, Alendor, one of the merchants in Amenkor, began forming a consortium, using a few merchants from Amenkor and others scattered up and down the coast. Tarrence was the consortium’s connection in Marlett. They were attempting to take over all the trade in Amenkor, perhaps attempting to gain control of the Skewed Throne itself, but I . . . interfered.”

  “She kept them from eliminating the remaining merchants in Amenkor,” Erick said, in a low rumble. There was pride in his voice, even though he spoke quietl
y. “And then she mastered of the throne itself, so that they could not use the ruling Mistress and her insanity as a mask for their own actions.”

  “But,” Daeriun said pointedly.

  I forced myself to look away from Erick.

  “But,” I said, “by the time I’d taken the throne, Alendor and his consortium had fled Amenkor. We sent out warnings through the merchant guild, and I was assured by the merchants in Amenkor that if Alendor or any of his cohorts were found, they’d be punished.

  “It wasn’t until later that we learned Alendor had run to the Chorl. He, with the help of Baill, the captain of the palace guard in Amenkor, stole supplies from Amenkor during the winter and handed them over to the Chorl.”

  Daeriun watched me intently, brow furrowed in thought. Then he turned to William. “And you think that not only Alendor but his entire consortium turned to the Chorl, helped them.”

  William nodded. “If Tarrence is here, then he—or someone else in the consortium—probably initiated the contact between the Chorl and Demasque. Demasque controls the most significant trading fleet in Venitte. And he, like Vaiana Parmati has . . . ambitions.”

  “He’s greedy,” Daeriun said shortly, vehemently. “He’s been a thorn in Lord March’s side since Olivan Demasque—Artren’s father—died and Artren took over the business.” He looked at me. “That still doesn’t explain how Haqtl knew of the Stone Throne.” He glanced toward Sorrenti, still seated rigidly in the center of the room, barely breathing.

  “If Alendor’s consortium brought Haqtl into Venitte for a meeting—with Demasque or any of the Council—I think Haqtl would have felt the throne. He would have known it was here.” I paused a moment, then added, “I did.”

  Daeriun’s eyebrows rose. “Would all of the Chorl Servants know? Would the Chorl priests?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. If anyone with any amount of power could feel the throne, then it wouldn’t have remained such a well-kept secret for so long. I felt its presence through Sorrenti . . . and I think I only felt it then because I’d touched the Skewed Throne. I’m connected to both of the thrones somehow.” I paused, thinking back to the last time I’d Reached for Amenkor. When I’d returned, I’d recovered far too quickly, even taking into account the help of Marielle and the others using the links.