Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘It smacks of desperation,’ Aesonia said.

  Valentine pulled out the telescope and studied the barge. Yes, there were marines there alright, though the quarterdeck was suspiciously empty. They didn’t want to be exposed – but, even without Aesonia’s magic, the aether cannon he’d mounted on the defensive towers above the Gate Court would be enough to deal with an ancient wooden barge.

  The armed launches were almost at the watergate now, closing in on the Ulithi boat. Fire flared across the water, and the Ulithi captain heeled his boat round at an incredible angle, the flame whisking past his stern. He shot back, and Valentine smiled as the lead Salassa boat was engulfed, blazing figures leaping out into the water. The second attacker heeled round in a figure of eight, dodging another gout of flame and bringing its pulse-thrower to bear, but the Ulithi captain saw his chance, turned again, tightly, and headed straight for the Salassa boat at ramming speed.

  Thetis, that was good! The Salassans had no choice but to turn away, and a well-placed spurt of flame hit the end of the boat as it attempted to open the gap. Two boats down, and at three-to-one odds. They were equal now, though the last Salassa boat managed to duck behind the oncoming barge.

  Valentine looked through the telescope again back to the barge. Those marines hadn’t moved an inch.

  His mother was closing her eyes, mind descending into the trance she needed to draw on her power.

  ‘Mother, no!’ Valentine said. Aesonia’s eyes flew open.

  ‘You interrupted me!’ she said. She’d been furious ever since word came that Leonata had escaped, and the searchers still hadn’t sent word to say they’d recaptured her. How long could it take trained naval officers and tribesmen to capture a lone woman who didn’t even know the ground?

  ‘It’s a ruse,’ said Valentine, turning to Palladios, waiting behind him at the aether comm. ‘Send twenty legionaries to the water-gate. They’re to capture that barge, not sink it.’

  The question was whether the barge had simply been set on its course, or whether some brave soul had volunteered to steer it, knowing what would happen. He moved his telescope back along the barge’s wake – there! A slight bend in the wake, a course correction. There was someone on board.

  Palladios activated the comm.

  ‘And tell them to treat whoever’s steering it gently. He’s a brave man.’

  The last Salassa launch shot out from behind the stern of the barge, and the Ulithi boat, waiting in ambush, fired too far astern. The Salassans didn’t miss, and fire engulfed the last Ulithi launch, the crew racing to abandon ship. Most would survive, if they got into the water quickly enough. He hoped the launch captain made it; that man should be commanding a manta, not a launch.

  But if that was a diversion, where was the real attack? He couldn’t see any troops making their way around the waterfront, though if he’d been commanding them – and Petroz wasn’t bad – he’d have taken a higher road, away from the water and out of sight.

  Or a searay? Petroz would have had at least one in his bays, and it wouldn’t have been affected by the bombardment.

  The barge was still heading in at high speed; whoever was driving it was determined not to stop. The barge would smash most of the watergate and the boathouse, but those could be repaired.

  ‘Switch to the aether sensors,’ Valentine ordered. ‘Let’s see what there is underwater.’

  He’d neglected those sensors, which was a mistake.

  The searay was pulling to a stop, surfacing by the service watergate below South Court. Which was guarded, but not strongly enough to withstand an attack by thirty or forty marines.

  ‘Palladios, take the reserve units to South Court!’ Valentine ordered. ‘Stop them!’

  They gave Leonata a black robe, enough to conceal her hair and her blue robe, though it left one of Silvanos’s men looking slightly underdressed.

  No-one challenged her, though, as they made their way through the cellars, a grim-faced phalanx with Silvanos at their head, through to a corridor and an improvised gate.

  It was unguarded.

  ‘Where are the tribesmen?’ Silvanos said, as Plautius pushed the gate open, and they walked down the corridor into a small open space, once a courtyard, with storage cells on two sides and enormous barrels on the other, all closed with an enormous chain.

  There was no-one there.

  ‘Where are the guards?’ Plautius said.

  Silvanos gestured for silence. ‘Listen for breathing.’

  They fell silent, and Leonata tried to shut all her other senses out, listen for the sound of thirty or forty prisoners breathing, but there was nothing, only the men around her and shouts of alarm from some distant corridor.

  ‘Nothing,’ Silvanos said. Plautius put his notes down and examined the huge padlock at the end of the chain, apparently counting links.

  ‘Seven,’ he said. ‘I put it on six.’

  You can remember that? Leonata started to say, and then thought better of it.

  ‘Someone’s taken them,’ Silvanos said.

  ‘Maybe they just want us to think that,’ said one of the other men.

  ‘No, we’d have heard the breathing. Go and put your ear against one of the doors there, in the corridor.’

  The man obeyed, and came back a moment later, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘We could check.’

  ‘I think that’s exactly what they want us to do,’ Leonata said. ‘There’s probably an alarm rigged. Silvanos, where else could they be? This was your palace once.’

  ‘My father’s,’ he said absently, face dark at being outwitted. ‘Where could they have gone without us noticing? We’ve had people all over.’

  ‘Interrogation room?’ Plautius suggested.

  Leonata slipped round them, back to the entrance of the cell area, and looked round. Two locked doors – cupboards perhaps? Another, corridor, leading off into more of these vaulted storage cells. A door just inside the gate, behind the barrels. If none of Silvanos’s people had noticed, where . . .

  ‘Are there any stairs here?’ she called back. The voices died, and Plautius and Silvanos came out to join her, Silvanos frowning.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s another level, I saw when I came down – what if one of these doors led down to the third basement? This one here, for instance?’ She rapped on the door just inside the gate, and a hollow echo came back.

  One of the men, unbidden, stepped forward and pulled a set of lock picks from a pouch at his belt. The waited, tense, as he fiddled with the lock, and more shouts of alarm sounded from somewhere above, the noise of a great many feet passing overhead.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ said Silvanos. ‘Either someone’s got in, or there’s another prisoner on the loose.’

  Could Iolani have escaped from where Aesonia had put her, hanging out of a window? None of the clan representatives were important enough, not now – so perhaps someone had got in.

  The door clicked, and the man swung it open, revealing a wide flight of steps leading down.

  ‘You ought to have been one of us,’ Plautius commented.

  Leonata unfastened her borrowed robe and handed it back to its surprised-looking owner.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Why, gentlemen, I’m your prisoner,’ Leonata said. ‘There’ll be guards down here, after all. They won’t like you coming to take someone away, but they’ll be happy if you’re bringing them someone else.’

  She clasped her hands together behind her back, one still holding the knife. It would have been harder to conceal any other way, but then Aesonia did like tying people up, and the guards would be suspicious otherwise, poor things.

  ‘What are we waiting for?’ she said.

  ‘Demetrios, Ascanius, keep lookout,’ Silvanos ordered. ‘Shut the door and warn us if anyone else comes, then get out of the way. The rest of you, form into a prisoner escort.’

  They set off down the stairs, a long, long flight which doubled over on itself. Th
ere was moisture on the walls – on only one of the walls, Leonata realised a moment later, and the sound of dripping somewhere.

  ‘The Cistern,’ Silvanos breathed. ‘Of course. I thought this had been blocked up.’

  Then it turned again, and at the bottom, beyond another door, waited four tribesmen and a mage. They jumped to their feet as the party approached, but it was the mage who spoke. A man, unusually for Sarthes. Male mages tended to choose other orders, where they had more chance of rising to power and influence. The Sarthien Rite allowed only women into the Chapter.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’ve brought you another prisoner.’

  The mage looked past Silvanos, at Leonata. ‘The Empress took her daughter, not half an hour ago.’

  ‘I know,’ said Silvanos frostily. ‘And then she was called away, and the bungling fools you employed, because you didn’t bother to tell me about this place, let the daughter escape. So now we want the mother where we know she won’t escape.’

  ‘Impossible,’ the mage said. ‘And how did you find us?’

  Silvanos gave him a look more eloquent than words, and he retreated.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said. ‘I won’t object to another prisoner, it’s just so much work having to put the wards up and take them down again.’

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and they stood in silence. One of the tribesmen moved to open the heavy polyp-bound door. Its wood was damp. What was the Cistern? Surely they couldn’t have packed all those prisoners into a cistern?

  The mage opened his eyes again, and relaxed. ‘I’ll take her in there, I’m sure you understand.’

  Silvanos nodded. The tribesmen would see her hands weren’t bound, but they only needed a moment. Leonata shrugged, to push her sleeve a little further down.

  The door opened, the mage activated a light, and two of the tribesmen stood up and, thankfully, took her arms as the mage stepped out ahead of her on to a small landing.

  The Cistern was huge, a space perhaps the size of a small courtyard with a high roofs supported on two dozen or so pillars, a smaller version of the enormous cisterns underneath Triton. This one was smaller, but no less impressive even in the faint light from dim aether lamps high on the walls.

  And, bound to the pillars, up to their necks in water, hooded and alone with the dripping and the damp, were the prisoners. Water. Hence the mage, who could manipulate the water to keep the prisoners pinned in place.

  The tribesmen moved, one ahead and one behind, to usher her down the stairs and into the dark water, and then she heard the tribesmen behind her exclaim.

  ‘Now!’ she shouted, and stabbed awkwardly with the knife, backwards and upwards, hitting the tribesman behind her before she had a chance to react. The one in front whirled, letting go of her as his hand flew to his weapon, and with a strength born of desperation, Leonata kicked him in the small of the back, sending him slipping on the stairs, hurtling into the mage, the two of them tumbling down into the dark water.

  Her left hand, with the knife, was covered in blood, and the tribesman gave a horrible groan, agony showing on his face, and toppled off into the water with a splash. Behind her, she heard a cry, the sounds of a fight, a wet cough. Two of Silvanos’s men came out behind her, their eyes widening as they saw her standing alone. The tribesman and the mage were thrashing in the water – and, quite clearly, the tribesman couldn’t swim – but then Silvanos’s men pulled knives from their pockets, threw them with deadly accuracy, and the thrashing stopped.

  Leonata felt light-headed and sick at the same time, saw the tribesman she’d knifed sinking to the bottom, weighed down by his weapons and armour, heard an astonished cry from the prisoners.

  ‘Release them!’ Silvanos ordered.

  There was no time to wait. Leonata ran down after Silvanos’s men, out into the neck-deep water, to release the first prisoners. It seemed to take an eternity, wading through the green water, fumbling with her fingers at each pillar for the ropes to cut, but then she got to see the faces of the Ice Runners and the shipwrights when they pulled themselves loose and removed the hoods.

  If only Anthemia had been there.

  They had barely untied the last Ice Runners when she heard a frantic hammering on the door, and then the sound of armoured men coming down the stairs.

  The guards at the Ulithi service gate fell in a matter of seconds.

  ‘Where now?’ Petroz called, as the last defending legionary fell to an aether crossbow, and the attackers poured into the Palace. The searay’s hatch closed behind them and it whirled round to dive; no point leaving it exposed to a counter-attack. There were other ways out of the Palace.

  ‘The weapons,’ Raphael said. ‘This is the first cellar level, they’re on this floor. Under the far end of the Hall, I think.’

  He looked around, taking his bearings. Ahead, a big tunnel with rails led to the kitchens and the storage catacombs below South Court. They needed to go left – there, where a short flight of steps led down to another door, locked.

  They turned the hand cannon on it, and burst it open, and then the Salassan-led troops poured through, Raphael trying to balance his aether crossbow properly, firing off a round at point-blank range into the first legionary he saw, fighting alongside the others with a cold fury. He’d tried to avoid bloodshed, but any decency this war might have had had died in the ruins of Salassa Palace.

  ‘Scouts!’ Petroz said, and two men ran ahead, pushing doors open, looking into side tunnels. Raphael didn’t know the underground as well as he needed to, but they’d made so much noise, Valentine’s people must know they were here. There would be reinforcements on their way.

  The end of the tunnel was blocked, walled up long ago, so they were forced to turn right, away from the foundations of the Hall; and out under the Fountain Court, a tide of vengeance sweeping all before it, for now.

  He knew it wouldn’t last. Would Silvanos have found the prisoners, by now? Would they be making their way to the arsenal as well?

  ‘There they are!’ a voice shouted, ahead, and Raphael dived into a side tunnel as a hail of bolts scythed down the corridor. He fell heavily, skidding on the ground, jarring his ankle again. He’d bandaged it up on the searay, so it was giving him some support, but it wouldn’t hold for long.

  ‘Take them alive!’ a woman’s voice shouted. Aesonia! Why had she come herself? ‘I want them alive, you fools!’

  ‘I’m not risking my mens lives just so you can play with your prisoners,’ said another voice, and Raphael heard a ringing slap.

  ‘You will do as I say,’ said the Empress. ‘They have valuable information. And I wouldn’t ask you to risk your lives, I have a better way of doing this.’

  Magic. Raphael stumbled to his feet and ran after the others, as the advance faltered and changed course. They were going almost exactly in the wrong direction by now.

  Another door, and the last marines slammed it shut and threw everything available against it. Another of these odd hidden courtyards, a gallery floor this time. Raphael could hear fighting from somewhere close by, Salassans and Chirians who’d got cut off.

  ‘This is no good,’ Petroz said, breathing heavily, leaning back against a wall. ‘We don’t know the ground, and we can’t deal with magic.’

  ‘But while we’re doing this, their attention will be distracted from the prisoners,’ said Raphael.

  ‘You don’t know Silvanos has got to them yet,’ Petroz said, and Raphael froze, stared at the old man.

  ‘Silvanos? How did you know?’ Raphael hadn’t mentioned who the traitor was to anyone, and he’d told Odeinath and Bahram to leave that part out when they showed Petroz the recording.

  ‘Because Leonata told me who you were,’ Petroz said irritably. ‘Didn’t take much nous to work out Silvanos was the traitor, after that.’

  Then how had Leonata known? She’d remembered his reaction to the cold, in Orfeo’s, and guessed?

  ‘Pride, Raphael,’ Petroz
said, seeing his confusion. ‘Ruthelo acted as if he’d take on the gods themselves to get what he wanted. We hated him because we knew he’d probably win, and where would we be? In his shadow as long as he lived. You’re just the same.’

  And then, finally, Raphael realised what Petroz was saying, why Leonata had said the truth would destroy him, and dead Rainardo’s words at the ball finally made sense.

  You have Ruthelo’s ability, pride and ambition, and you wear them openly.

  His grandparents hadn’t been nameless victims of the Anarchy, they’d been its architects. The man beside him was his great-uncle. Raphael was Ruthelo Azrian’s grandson. At least he came by his pride honestly.

  Pride. Thetia had lived forty years with the legacy of Ruthelo’s pride, and of the hatred it had inspired in Aesonia.

  He felt an odd calm fall on him, almost a serenity.

  ‘Who does Aesonia hate most?’

  ‘Ruthelo,’ Petroz said. ‘And Claudia. She never forgave them.’

  That, he hadn’t expected. But the first part of his guess had been right. She still hated, after all these years.

  ‘She won’t be able to resist,’ Raphael said. ‘She thinks we’re all dead, and if one of us falls into her hands, she won’t be able to control herself. All she’ll think about is revenge.’

  ‘Raphael, don’t let her capture you. We need you as a guide. She’ll kill you.’

  ‘But she won’t, that’s the beauty of it.’ Thais had said as much, time and time again. ‘She doesn’t kill. Aesonia likes to own people, to crush them and make them into Dream Twisters. And I have Ruthelo’s pride, so in her eyes I’ll be more like him than any living soul, even Silvanos. After all these years, she’ll have an Azrian captive, and all she’ll be able to think about is humiliating me and breaking me. She’ll bring her mind-mages and her acolytes and her mages to watch, because she won’t be able to resist it.’

  ‘Valentine has more sense than to let revenge run away with him.’