The City (73 page)

Bartellus took her by the arm and she thought he was going to stop her, but all he said was, ‘I can send no one with you.’

‘I’ll be better on my own,’ she reassured him, although it was not true. Evan handed her a long-bladed knife and she stuck it in the waist of her trousers, scarcely noticing him now. She took a deep breath.

‘Be quick,’ her father said. ‘The palace is collapsing. If you find him come back here if you can. The Keep is the oldest part of the building. It might be the safest.’

Em looked down at the hundreds of armoured warriors, and she thought the Hall of Emperors was the most perilous place she had ever been in, but she merely nodded, thinking only of her brother. If she found him and he was still alive, then she would decide what to do.

Bart clasped her to him for a moment. ‘Good luck, little soldier,’ he whispered, then he let her go and turned back to his troops.

Em ran up the corridor, glad to be doing something. Immediately she saw the stone stairs winding upwards. She ran up them, her hand on the knife in her waistband. At the top she followed the hallway, keeping the green marble wall to her right, as instructed. It was a long corridor, curving round. She crept along nervously, her eyes darting about, fearing more soldiers. She saw no one, although she could hear the distant sounds of battle, cries and shouts.

She paused, listening. Something was coming. Something terrifying. She felt her limbs suddenly begin to shake and her heart start panicking in her breast. She looked around but there was nowhere to hide, only blank walls stretching away in each direction. She moaned and her legs began to give way.

A young man, tall and fair, dressed in green, appeared around the curve of the corridor. He was younger than she and he looked, if anything, more scared. Em felt her fear drift away. Was this boy frightened of the unnamed thing too? She walked towards him and they passed each other, each sticking to one side of the corridor, eyeing each other uncertainly. Em considered speaking but the young man said nothing, only watched her. His eyes were dark as pitch, she saw. Then she was past and hurried on.

She passed one corridor on her right, and took the second. She found herself not in a corridor with a blue ceiling, but facing a pile of debris where part of the building had collapsed. It had happened recently, for dust hung thickly in the air. Emly could see the light of day streaming in above. She picked her way over the stones and masonry, peering ahead. Something moved under her foot and she stopped, listening to the sound of shifting stone and sifting dust. The air cleared a little and ahead of her she could see a gaping hole where the falling roof stones had shattered the floor and fallen right through. She crept up to it, placing her feet with care. Peering over the lip of the hole she could see that several floors beneath her had given way. Water, black and threatening, roiled far beneath.

She looked ahead. On the other side of the fall the corridor continued, and she could see the blue ceiling Indaro had spoken of. She had to go this way. There was a broken ledge clinging precariously to the wall. She could walk along it. It was quite wide. But as she made her decision a drunken pillar on the far side of the hole tottered and collapsed, bringing down with it more of the ceiling. She crouched, covering her head, fearing the rest of the roof would give way, and she heard the crash and splash as debris plummeted into the water.

As the dust subsided she stood and stepped forward, placing her feet carefully. She edged her way along the ledge, testing each footfall, finding small handholds in the stone wall beside her, hardly daring to breathe. She took one quick glance down into the hole, glimpsing pale bodies in the water. On firmer ground again she moved more
quickly, finally leaping from the ledge on to the marble floor of the corridor.

She hurried on, assessing each door she passed. Many were carved. She looked for the fountain Indaro had mentioned, but could not see it. She wondered if it was destroyed in the roof fall. Then she spotted it. She had been expecting a large fountain such as in a public square. But, of course, this was a small drinking fountain set in the wall, with three stone dolphins leaping over it. She looked around eagerly. There were several pairs of carved doors nearby. She ran to the first, pushing the doors, hearing the grate of dust and grit as they opened and peering around them.

‘Elija,’ she whispered. Then, louder, ‘Elija!’

It was a bedchamber, furniture covered with ghostly white cloths, dust lying thickly on the floor. Her voice echoed emptily. No one had entered there in years. She ran to the next room, then the next. She looked back along the corridor. The water fountain was nearly out of sight. What had Indaro said? The room was on the right? Which right? Her right? Em ran back to the fountain, then to a pair of carved doors set deep in a dark recess. She pushed them open. They moved silently.

Inside was a scene of frozen carnage and for a moment her heart seemed to judder to a halt. Bodies of armed men were strewn on the floor and on the blood-flecked furniture. The odours of blood and excrement were pungent in the air. Em put her hand to her mouth. She guessed she had found the right place, but could anyone still be alive in here?

‘Elija?’ she whispered.

There was a groan from her left, and she flinched as she saw an armoured arm move. Her breathing shallow, she forced her legs to take her there and found a dying warrior, half his head hacked to pulp but still alive, still moving. She backed away, then dragged her eyes from the suffering man.

‘Elija!’ she called.

Desperately her eyes searched the room. Most of the bodies were at one end. In that corner was an upturned table. She crept over to it, nervously stepping round corpses, unwilling to climb over them for fear one might come alive and grab her.

She peered over the edge of the table. In the corner was the figure of a man, unarmoured, tall yet thin and frail, lying with one arm
held in the other hand. His dark head was sunk on his breast. He did not look like a soldier. Was he dead or asleep? She edged round the table. She knelt down and peered at the smudged, dirty face. She saw nothing in it she recognized. She sighed and stood, looking around her, uncertain where to go next.

At the sound the man moved, as if shifting in his sleep. He clutched his arm and moaned quietly. Em’s heart leaped.

‘Elija?’ she asked hesitantly. She touched his good shoulder. ‘Elija?’

His eyes opened and there was a flash of fear in his face as he looked up at her, and in that moment she knew him. Joy flooded her and she knelt beside him, trying to take him in her arms, to hold him close to her, to comfort him.

‘Emly?’ He looked up at her, disbelief in his eyes. Then hesitant recognition became certainty, and her brother burst into tears.

The battlefield seemed to go on for ever. It was old, ancient, its thousands upon thousands of corpses just dry husks, dusty with age, their torment muted and softened by ages, by the wind and rain. There were no colours, for their blood had long since dried and blown away. Even the insects, the beetles and flies and their maggots, had taken their fill and departed. Centuries before.

The only sounds were the warm wind from the south soughing through a jutting ribcage, flapping an odd scrap of dried cloth, sifting sand sibilantly across corroding metal plate.

And footsteps, gritty on the parched ground.

Her boots had been old when she first set out. They wouldn’t last her much longer. She watched, head bowed, as each one came into view, then slipped away, left, right, left, right. Each toe had once boasted an embossed figure – a snake and a scorpion. Where had they gone? Then she remembered these weren’t her boots; they had belonged to some nameless woman, her carcass ripped by the weapons of men and then used by wild creatures for food and shelter. Only her boots remained intact, their surface scoured by sand. Indaro had wrestled them off, then knocked them out, treading on the huge centipede that wriggled from one of them. They fitted fairly well. She had walked a long way in them.

She was aware that someone was walking beside her. She feared it was Maccus Odarin and she turned her head away for she did not want to see him stumbling along on the rotten leg, did not want to see him die again.

‘Where are we going?’ her companion asked cheerfully.

With relief she realized it wasn’t Maccus, and she looked round.

‘Where are we going?’ Rubin asked. His hair was longer than she remembered and she was shocked to see there were grey streaks in the red. How old was he, eighteen, twenty? She was troubled that she couldn’t remember her brother’s age, couldn’t even remember if he was older or younger than her.

Now it was her father, Reeve, walking beside her. He was saying, ‘Vincerus, Sarkoy, Broglanh, Gaeta, Khan, and Kerr. Remember these names. They are your past and your future. They are your enemies.’

She had heard these words often as a child.

‘They all fear Sarkoy and Vincerus,’ her father went on, staring down, watching puffs of dust spurt up from the soil. ‘But only the Gaetas know the true power of the veil.’

She woke with a start. The dream took a while to drift away, then she thought she should probably get up. But time passed and still she found she was slumped on the floor. She pulled herself up to sit straighter against the wall. The wound in her side had stopped hurting. That’s either a very good or a very bad sign, she thought.

The battle had started again. She could hear the clash of swords and shields, the agonizing grunts of pain, the shouts of encouragement, exultation, and horror. She could smell fresh blood, and it was no longer hers. Men were milling around on the landing in front of her. She watched legs passing back and forth – legs clad in metal greaves and armoured kilts, legs in leather trousers, some in cotton or linen, some naked and hairy. She found herself counting them automatically, then stopped. It was not her job to count the toll. She wondered that there were no women among the warriors. She was the only one, it seemed. Then she remembered that the Nighthawks were previously a cavalry unit. The City had few women riders. They weren’t considered skilful enough to ride and fight at the same time. Only skilful enough to be butchered in the infantry lines.

She rubbed dirt from her eyes. Legs clad in silk, dark green silk, were walking towards her. The silk shimmered in the hectic torchlight, and she wanted to reach out and feel the weight of it, touch the sheen of something other than filthy cotton and wool.

The green-clad figure crouched down to speak to her and she recognized the youngster she had rescued from the wreckage of the emperor’s carriage. He was pale and fair. His eyebrows were gracefully arched above dark eyes. One eyelid seemed to droop a
little, giving him a lazy air. He was unarmed. He was no more than sixteen.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he asked her.

‘I helped you from the Immortal’s carriage,’ she replied, drawing back against the wall. The eyes were black and hot as pitch.

‘Did you know who I was then?’

‘No,’ she answered, rendered stiff by his sinister proximity. She no longer had a weapon with her. And she noticed for the first time that she stank like a week-old corpse. She looked around but the milling soldiers seemed oblivious of the newcomer.

He nodded. ‘Nevertheless, your intention was noble. So I will not kill you today. You are injured. Are you dying?’

‘No.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘you are probably not. You are Indaro Kerr Guillaume, and I really ought to kill you.’ He seemed undecided.

Indaro’s eyes flickered across the floor seeking a weapon. There was a discarded shield an arm’s length away. She could defend herself with it, kill him with it. He looked so delicate, his arms and legs thin and bony. But somehow she could not move, and he stood and walked away. She wanted to cry out a warning, but no one would hear her in the racket of battle. And he was just a boy. So she watched him gliding across the floor, weaving his way among the armed men, unnoticed by the warriors, as if invisible. He disappeared down the stairs.

Bartellus stood watching the battle from his vantage point on the high landing. The Nighthawks were attacking the Thousand with renewed fury. They were ferocious fighters, only recently returned from three years in the field, he’d been told. Bart remembered riding with the First Adamantine decades before …

‘General,’ Broglanh urged, ‘let me get in there.’ It was not the first time he’d asked. He was crackling with energy and Bart knew it was physically painful for the warrior to be doing nothing while men were fighting and dying paces away.

‘I need you with me,’ he grunted. He glanced at the warrior. ‘That’s an order.’

It was ironic. Evan Broglanh knew better than anyone that he was just a tired old man, the rags of the prisoner still sticking out from under his shiny armour. Broglanh had spent the last few weeks
protecting him, dragging him from one unsafe place to another, cheering him when he was desolate, forcing him to eat sometimes. He had been bodyguard, nursemaid and son to him. Now he was dutiful lieutenant and they both knew he would not shatter the fragile illusion of Shuskara’s authority by going against his orders. So Broglanh waited at his side, and fumed.

Bart watched the crystal doorway far below. It was hours now since Fell had disappeared. There was no reason to think he was still alive. There was no reason to think he wasn’t. All the general could do was to keep the Thousand occupied. He did the sums over and over in his head. Three centuries of the bodyguard were out of the City, thanks to Saroyan’s last act. Indaro had estimated that Gil Rayado’s army had disabled the better part of a century. There must be two hundred or more dead in this chamber. Some would have been lost in the flooding and the palace collapse. Whichever way you looked at it they were running out of men. So far none of the common soldiery had been drafted in to take the Nighthawks on. Why not? Did the emperor and the brothers not trust them? Bart had no idea.

A wave of weariness passed through him. He wanted very much to sit down. But he forced his knees to lock and his back to straighten and he looked on grimly as brave men died. The Nighthawks had battled their way down the staircase back to the point where Broglanh and Indaro had been when he first saw them. For the loss of forty or so of their number. Suddenly Bart was overwhelmed with the desire to wade down in among them and add his blade to the battle. He had done all he could do. It would be an honourable end. He hefted his sword and opened his mouth to speak to Broglanh.