Lord of Emperors (49 page)

"Do you have the key?" the Emperor snaps. The nearer man shakes his head. "She took it. My lord."

My lord.
Holiest Jad. He may yet live.

Tertius Daleinus twists suddenly and sidles forward against the tunnel wall to cross to his brother. Valerius lets him go. He is not a soldier, but this is his life now, and Aliana's, and a vision of a world, a legacy, in the shaping. He seizes the woman, Styliane, by the upper arm before she can move past him, and he takes his small knife in his other hand and puts it to her back. It has an edge that can scarcely break skin; they will not know that.

But Styliane, who does not struggle at all, who has not even tried to avoid his grip, looks at him even as he holds her, and the Emperor sees a triumph in her gaze, not far from madness: he thinks again of those women on the hill slopes of myth.

Hears her say with a frightening calm, "You are mistaken yet again if you believe my brother will refrain from burning you in order to save me. And equally mistaken in thinking that I care, so long as you burn as my father did. Go ahead, brother. End it."

Valerius is shaken to the core, struck dumb. Knows truth when he hears it; she is not dissembling.
End it.
In a sudden stillness of the soul he hears, then, a faint, far sound like a tolling bell struck once.

He had thought, had always believed, intelligence could overmaster hatred, given time, tutelage. It is not so, he sees now, too late. Aliana was right. Gesius was right. Styliane, brilliant as a diamond, might welcome power, and wield it with Leontes, but it is not her
need,
not the key to the woman. The key, beneath the ice of her, is fire.

The blind man, uncannily precise in where he aims the siphon, moves his gash of a mouth in what Valerius understands to be a smile. He says, "Such… a waste, alas. Such skin. Must I… dear sister? Then so be it."

And the Emperor understands that he
will
do it, sees an unholy, avid hunger in the gross face of the Calysian beside the maimed Daleinus, and with a sudden furious motion-awkward, for he is
not
a man of action- he snatches at the waist purse of the woman and pushes her forward hard so she stumbles and crashes into her blind brother and they both fall. No fire. Yet.

Backing up, he hears the two guards retreating behind him and understands that he has turned them, they are with him. He would pray now, but there is no time. At all.
'Move!"
he snaps. "Get the siphon!"

Both guards spring past him. Lysippus, never a coward, and having cast his dice with the Daleinoi here, goes for his sword. The Emperor, watching, backing up quickly now, fumbles in the cloth purse, finds a heavy key, knows it. Does pray then, in thanks. Styliane is already up, pulling at Lecanus.

The first Excubitor, upon them, levels his blade. Lysippus steps forward, slashes, is parried. Lecanus is still on his knees, mouthing wild, incoherent words. He reaches for the trigger of the flame.

And it is then, just then, even as he sees this, that the Emperor of Sarantium, Valerius II, Jad's beloved and most holy regent upon earth, thrice-exalted shepherd of his people, feels something white and searing and final plunge into him from behind as he backs towards the door, towards safety and the light. He falls, and falls, his mouth opening, no sound, the key in his hand.

It is not recorded by anyone, for it never is nor ever can be, whether he hears, as he dies, an implacable, vast, infinite voice saying to him and to him alone in that corridor under palaces and gardens and the City and the world,
'Uncrown, the Lord of Emperors awaits you now.

Nor is it known if dolphins come for his soul when it leaves, as it does leave then, unhoused, for its long journey. It
is
known, but only by one person in the god's world, that his last thought as a living man is of his wife, her name, and this is so because she hears it. And hearing-somehow hearing him-understands that he is going, going from her, is gone, that it is over, ended, done, after all, the brilliant dance that had begun long ago when he was Petrus and she was Aliana of the Blues and so young, and the afternoon sun is bright above her and all of them, in a cloudless springtime sky over Sarantium.

She cut off most of her hair in the small boat, being rowed back from the isle.

If she was wrong about what Daleinus's departure and the murdered guards meant, shorn hair could be covered, would grow back. She didn't think she was wrong, even then, on the water. There was a blackness in the world, under the bright sun, above the blue waves.

She had only Mariscus's knife with which to cut; it was difficult in the boat. She hacked raggedly, dropped tresses in the sea. Offerings. Her eyes were dry. When the hair was chopped she leaned over the side and used the salt water to scrub the cream and paint and scented oils from her face and blur the scent of her perfume. Her earrings and rings she put in a pocket of her robe (money would be needed). Then she took one of the rings back out and gave it to Mariscus, rowing her.

"You may have a choice to make," she said to him, "when we reach the harbour. You are forgiven, whatever you do. This is my thanks to you for this task, and for all that has gone before."

He swallowed hard. His hand shook as he took it from her. The ring was worth more than he could earn in a lifetime in the Imperial Guard.

She told him to discard his leather armour and Excubitor's over-tunic and sword. He did so. They went overboard. He had not spoken the whole of the way, rowing hard, sweating in the light, fear in his eyes. The ring went into his boot. The boots were expensive for a fisherman, but they would not be together long. She would have to hope no one noticed.

She used his knife again to cut off the lower portion of her robe, did it unevenly, tore it in places. People would see stains and rips, not the fineness of a fabric. She took off her leather sandals, tossed them, too, over the side. Looked at her bare feet: painted toenails. Decided they would be all right. Women of the street painted themselves, not just ladies of the court. She did immerse her hands in the water again, rubbing and roughening them. She pushed off the last of her rings, one she never removed, let it drop down through the sea. There were tales of sea people whose rulers had wed the sea in this way.

She was doing something else.

She spent the last of the journey back to harbour biting and chipping at her fingernails, smeared the torn robe with dirt and salt water from the bottom of the boat, and then her cheeks again. Her hands and complexion, left as they were, would give her away before anything else.

There were other small boats in the water around them by then so she had to be discreet. Fishermen, ferrymen, small craft carrying goods to and from Deapolis in and among the looming shapes of the fleet that was to sail west to war. The announcement planned for today, though none out here knew that. The Emperor in the Hippodrome kathisma after the last race, with all the great ones of the realm. She had timed her morning's outing on the water to be there in time, of course.

Not now. Now what she sensed ahead of her was an aura of death, an ending. She had said in the palace two years ago, when Sarantium was burning in the Victory Riot, that she would rather die in the vestments of Empire than flee and live any lesser life.

It had been true then. Now, something different was true. An even colder, harder truth. If they killed Petrus today, if the Daleinoi did this, she would live long enough herself to see them dead, somehow. After? After would take care of itself, as was needful. There were endings and there were endings.

She could not have known, even self-conscious and aware of her own appearance as she had always been, how she appeared in that moment to the soldier in the boat with her, rowing to Sarantium.

They approached a mooring, far down the slip, manoeuvring among the other jostling small boats. Obscenities and jests rang back and forth across the water. Mariscus was only just adequate to navigating his way in. They were loudly cursed, she swore back, crudely, in a voice she hadn't used for fifteen years, and made a caupona jest. Mariscus, sweating, looked quickly up at her and then bent back to his task. Someone in the other boat laughed aloud, back-oared and made way for them, then asked what she'd do in return.

Her reply made them whoop with laughter.

They docked. Mariscus leaped out, tied the boat. Aliana moved quickly, stepping out herself before he could offer a hand. She said, quickly and low, "If all is well you have earned more than you can dream of, and my thanks for a lifetime. If it is not well, I ask nothing more of you than what you have now done. Jad guard you, soldier."

He was blinking rapidly. She realized-with surprise-that he was fighting back tears. "They will learn nothing from me, my lady. But is there nothing more…?"

"Nothing more," she said briskly, and went away.

He meant what he said, and was a brave man, but of
course
they would learn what he knew if they were shrewd enough to find him and ask. Men had, sometimes, a touching belief in their ability to withstand professional questioning.

She walked up the long slip alone, barefoot, her adornments gone or hidden, her long robe torn into a short, stained tunic (still too fine for her station now, she would need another soon). One man stopped and stared at her and her heart lurched. Then he made a loud offer, and she relaxed.

"Not enough money and not enough man," said the Empress of Sarantium, looking the sailor up and down. She tossed her shorn, ragged hair, and turned away dismissively. "Find a donkey to hump for that price." His outraged protest was drowned in laughter.

She walked on through the thronged, noisy harbour, a silence within her so deep it echoed. She trudged up a narrow street. She didn't know it. So much had changed in fifteen years. Her feet hurt already. She hadn't walked barefoot in a long time.

She saw a small chapel and stopped. Was about to go in to try to order her thoughts, to pray, when-in that moment-she heard from within a known voice speaking her name.

She remained where she was, didn't look around. This was a voice from nowhere and everywhere, someone who was hers alone. Had been hers alone.

She felt an emptiness invade her like an army. She stood very still in that small, steep city street and amid the crowds and bustle, with no privacy at all, she bade a last farewell, by birth name not Imperial one, to the loved soul that was leaving, that was already gone from her and from the world.

She had wanted forbidden dolphins for her room. Had taken the mosaicist, Crispin, to see them this morning. Only this same morning. Petrus had… found them first. Or been found by them, and not as a mosaic on a wall. Was perhaps being carried, his soul, to wherever they carried souls on the way to Jad. She hoped they were kind, that the way was easy, that there had not been too much pain.

No one saw her weep. There were no tears to see. She was a whore in the City, with people to kill before they found and killed her.

She had no idea where to go.

In the tunnel, the two guards made the remarkably foolish mistake of looking back over their shoulders when the Emperor fell. This entire circumstance, the horror of it, had undermined all their training, unmoored them like ships torn from their anchors in a storm. They burned for the error. Died screaming, as the blind man found and pulled the trigger on the nozzle that released the liquid fire. Lecanus Daleinus was cursing, crying, high-pitched and incomprehensible, wailing as if demented in his own mortal agony, but he aimed the nozzle with uncanny accuracy past his sister and brother straight at the soldiers.

They were underground, far from life and the world. No one heard them screaming or the bubble and sizzle of melting flesh save for the three Daleinoi and the gross, avid man beside them, and the other one, standing behind the dead Emperor, sufficiently far away that he felt a wet surge of heat come down the tunnel and a bowel-gripping fear but was not even singed by that fire from long ago.

He became aware, as the heat died away and the screams and the wet moaning stopped, that they were looking at him. The Daleinoi, and the fat man he remembered very well and had not known was in the City. It… pained him that that could have happened without his knowing.

But there were greater sources of distress just now.

He cleared his throat, looked at the bloodied, sticky dagger in his hand. There had never been blood on it before, ever. He wore a blade for display, no more. He looked down at the dead man at his feet.

And Pertennius of Eubulus said then, feelingly, "This is terrible. So terrible. Everyone
agrees
it is wrong for an historian to intervene in the events he chronicles. He loses so much authority, you understand."

They stared at him. No one said anything at all. It was possible they were overwhelmed by the truth of what he'd said.

The blind one, Lecanus, was crying, making strangled, ugly sounds in his throat. He was still on his knees. There was a smell of meat in the tunnel. The soldiers. Pertennius was afraid he would be ill.

"How did you get in here?" It was Lysippus.

Styliane was looking at the Emperor. The dead man at Pertennius's feet. She had a hand on her weeping brother's shoulder, but she released him now, stepped past the two burned men and stopped, a little way down the tunnel, staring at her husband's secretary.

Pertennius wasn't at all sure he owed any answers to an exiled monster like the Calysian, but this did not seem the right context in which to explore that thought. He said, looking at the woman, his employer's wife, "The Strategos sent me to discover what was detaining the… the Emperor. There have come… have just come, tidings…»

He
never
stammered like this. He took a breath. "Tidings had just come that he thought the Emperor should know."

The Emperor was dead.