The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (74 page)

'I heard about the altercation.  Heavy-handed, Savaad.  If you are found out...'

He would be decommissioned like any other failed specialist.  Another trip to the Palace, another journey into the depths.

A new 'life' as spare parts for the ahergriin.

I understand, sir
, he thought, because the mentalist would know any other answer for the lie it was.  He had already been compromised; he just had not yet been caught.

'Very well,'
said the colonel,
'keep at your task.  I will have my little tour and consider what comes next.'

With that, the thread of thought detached, and Rallant exhaled through his teeth.  The sound of booted feet surrounded him, but he dared not look up, for he could smell Linciard passing by with his troop of lancers.

Curse the man.  This would have been easy if only he was cruel.  Instead, those worried eyes and that hopeful smile had cut knowledge out of him, made him speak secrets.  Made him give himself away.  If his masters learned, he was done for.  And why?  Because some scruffy backwater log-hauler had been kind?

Had liked him?

It was ridiculous.  Just chemical.  He had dosed Linciard with enough for three or four thralls—not that it was an exact measure.  Natural resistance varied, and inoculation aided the speed at which the victim sweated it out.  But Rallant was strong for his kind.  In his early years, he'd made thralls by accident—and later, fresh from his disgrace at court, he had commanded a score of worshipers in the name of the White Flame.

It hadn't lasted.  Thralling bred obsession, which eventually grew uncontrollable.  He had created his share of stalkers over the years, and though he hadn't seen that manic light in Erolan's eyes, he knew it was just a matter of time before he broke the man and was left with a pet or a monster.

Escape me
, he thought.

If only he could take his own advice.

*****

Shadows watched the ride-out.  Shadows whispered their route.  Shadows upon shadows upon shadows passed the news until it stirred Enforcer Ardent from her rest.

Bleary-eyed, she extricated her lantern from the wall of hissing shadows and pulled her coat and crossbow from the chest.  They and the hammock were all that existed in this black sphere; Shadow agents traveled light, their pay and possessions accumulating on the Spindle while they pursued their tasks elsewhere.

Everything was matte black.  No accessories, otherwise the eiyets would steal them.  She tied her hair back, tested the crossbow and sent some of the shadows to wake her cohorts.  This would take a team.

But she had prepared.  Miscreants always returned to the scene of their crime.

*****

It was less than a quarter-mark's ride to the governor's manor.  The road from the Civic Plaza to Old Crown went sharply up the hill behind the garrison, giving Sarovy a brief glimpse into the training yard and the blocked-off alley that ran behind it.  Vrallek's hounds milled there among the crates that served as their housing, grey forms indistinguishable from afar.

Atop the hill, the wind kicked up, whipping cloaks and yanking at horses' manes.  The cobbles gave way to decorative glazed brick, with two strips of rougher brick running down the road as if to make paths for horses and wagons, but following those restricted the column to two narrow lines, which Sarovy could not allow.  On his horse Havoc, he rode up the glazed part alongside the colonel on the rough, the rest of the men behind them.

There were twenty-one lancers—Sergeant Linciard and the third and fourth sections of his platoon—plus the colonel on his borrowed Tasgard and three white-robes on scouts' Ten-Skys.  Sarovy was relieved to have their plethora of mage-lights along; he did not anticipate an attack, not in daylight, but he had come to equate those little lights with safety.

The clatter of hooves and claws resounded off tall privacy walls as they passed.  This was the rich heart of the city, and though like all Bahlaerans they built low—three stories at most—the owners had not spared their coin.  Mosaics covered every inch of wall with fantastical seascapes and verdant forests, eye-aching abstracts and glass cabochons; leering ceramic faces or animals stared from each corner.  Beyond the gates, winter-browned trees and sculpted gardens veiled the lower floors but could not hide painted tiles, balconies and walkways, wrought iron and copper and glass.  A single clear windowpane would cost a month's salary for a man like Sarovy, and seeing them in such vast array made him testy.

At times like this, surrounded by flash and sparkle, he missed Trivestes.  The cold, the heights, the unadorned stone.  The solitude.  Even the Garnet Mountain wars.  Rings and coins and political leverage could not save a man from the wild—as it should be.

But perhaps burning the governor's manor had been too much.

It stood at the end of the stately street like a rotted tooth.  All the wood paneling and tapestries, the fine furniture and cushions and clothes and paintings in there had burned well, leaving brick chimneys and the heavy stone side-walls all but free-standing among the smoking rubble of the rest.  The front had collapsed into the dooryard, strewing chunks of glazed brick and melted glass wildly among the blackened bushes and all the way to the open gate.

Charred tracks marred the entry, branching in all directions.  Spectators, scavengers?  Sarovy did not care.  Seeing it now in daylight, he felt petty, but done was done and Colonel Wreth seemed to approve.

“I would have liked to take this place as my command post,” he said as he drew his horse to a halt a stone's throw from the gate.  Sarovy signaled the rest of the column to come in line.  “But these other manors will do just as well.”

“You mean to evict the nobility, sir?”

The colonel scoffed, turning a cold eye to the gated manors to either side.  “Nobility?  These are fat merchants, captain.  Illane is a dirt-grubbing territory made up of laborers and parasites, possessing neither the steel to fight us nor the wit to obey.  It needs the whip—and a good culling, I should think.  After that, perhaps we can lure some proper nobility over to take command, but these jumped-up peasants deserve no more than a boot to the neck.”

Sarovy's brows arched.  That was more vitriol than he had expected—not that it didn't echo his own thoughts.  “And the occupants, sir?”

“To the Palace like the rest.”

“I fear we are overwhelming the Palace with our offerings.”

A smile twisted the old soldier's mouth, and he cast an odd, knowing look to Sarovy.  “The Palace can never be overwhelmed.  And it is nearly Midwinter.  What better time for a pilgrimage than to see the rebirth of the Light?”

“As you say, colonel.  Do you wish them cleared out today, tomorrow...?”

“The sooner the better.  I have wagons and men coming up from base-camp, and by now my elites should be crossing the portals.  I will need somewhere to put them.  These nearest two, for starters.  They look like fine pieces of property.”

Sarovy nodded and cued his earhook.  “Lieutenant Vrallek, Lieutenant Arlin.”

'Yessir.'

“A half-platoon each up to our position at Old Crown.  Dress for conflict.”

'Yessir.'

“Colonel, may I request two mages from your entourage to assist my men?”

“Leaving me with just one?” said the colonel, brows raised beneath the bill of his tri-crested helm.  “Your own are too dear?”

“Mine are engaged, sir.  My apologies.”

“Mm.  I suppose I can call in a few more, if the situation is so dangerous.”

“It has...escalated beyond expectations, yes.”

“Then let us do so.  Trade mages with them as we cross paths, and requisition more.”

Sarovy nodded and raised his hand to signal the lancers, and with a groan of horses and jingle of tack, they carefully turned about.  Wheeling Havoc, Sarovy started to lead the colonel and the mages through the center of the formation to retake its head.

*****

From her eiyenbridge, Ardent watched them turn.  Bad enough that they'd come on horseback, but now they were leaving without getting close enough to the gate.

“Pike it,” she said, and hissed a command to the eiyets on her shoulders.  The captain and another high officer were in the trap; she would spring it, and salve her conscience later.

As the eiyets vanished to their tasks, she readied her crossbow.  Just in case.

*****

As the lead horses passed him, Linciard heard a change in their hoof-falls—a peculiar hollowness in the bricks.

Then the road disappeared.

For a mere instant, he stared down into endless black, the cold dry breath of the Dark gusting up into his face like every nightmare in the world.

Then reality snapped back, and with it the road—chewed up and far too close.  He didn't realize he had been falling until it was there within arm's reach, and then he hit it and jolted from the saddle, tumbled, scraped along the toothy ground, feeling more than seeing other shapes falling around him.

Someone screamed.  An instant later, it was a chorus.

He raised his head, but what he saw made no sense.  There were horses on the ground—in the ground?—and men as well, up to thigh or waist or neck in the pavings.  Except the pavings had changed, like a huge maw had taken random bites from the bricks to expose underlying pipework and cistern courses or just solid rock.  Linciard lay in a series of shallow gouges next to a severed arm and shoulder, which teetered at the edge of a much larger hole that cut down into some kind of tunnel.  There was no sign of the rest of the man.

Incredulity made everything unreal.  He got a knee under himself, pushed up and looked toward where he had fallen.

Saw his horse laying in another huge gouge, sliced with butcher's precision from the base of the throat to mid-belly, its rear legs still kicking wildly but its opened chest pouring blood, its muzzle and nostrils red.  Its front legs were just gone.

A voice was shouting in the earhook but he couldn't make sense of it.  Rising, he found himself staring across a panorama of blood and frenzied horses as a tide of black shapes poured from the alleys like spilled ink.  Captain Sarovy and the colonel and the mages stood in the midst of the destruction, protected by panes of white light; underfoot, huge holes had opened like hungry mouths, obviously meant to swallow them.

He turned a complete circle, struggling to draw his sword with a hand gone fiery from pins-and-needles.  There was Corporal Kithwick, laying halved with his horse beneath him as if they had crashed sideways into a lake and been frozen there; Lancer Landene, wet-faced as he took his mercy-blade to a horse up to its ribs in the road; Lancer Tasarune, one of the Jernizen, struggling to keep his seat as his steed danced on its hind legs, both forelegs bloody to the middle joint.  Lancer Gant—or rather, Gant's head and shoulders, his slackening face full of confusion.

Lancer Karlen, crushed under his thrashing horse.  Lancer Tethrick with his own mercy-blade out, hesitating over someone Linciard could barely see—someone waving a bloody hand over the side of another downed and partially disappeared horse.

Corporal Vyslin crawling out from under his, white-faced, leaving a broad red streak in his wake.

A scream caught in Linciard's throat.  He started toward the corporal, then glimpsed black from the corner of his eye and turned just in time to catch a crossbow bolt across the left pauldron.  The next one glanced off his gauntlet as he guarded his face.

Then they were on him: three cultists with knives and bludgeons, their faces marked with black, and all he could do was beat at them with his fists and the hilt of his sword.  Too many, too close.  A knife scraped across the chainmailed gap between his torso plates, and a quick twist was all that saved him from the in-thrust, which sawed along his ribs but did not slip in.  He introduced someone's teeth to his elbow, felt a knife carve his chin, bashed that one's face with the phoenix crest on the brow of his helm.  Another blade carved a line along the outside of his armpit, dangerous territory.

A cavalry sword from on high cracked that assailant's forearm.  The cultist stumbled away, awkwardly pursued by one of the Jernizen—Linciard could not tell which—whose horse clawed and scrabbled across the ruined brickwork to give chase.  Linciard took the opportunity to kick the man he had headbutted down to the ground and throat him, then looked up.

Captain Sarovy was shouting something, waving his sword the way they had come.  The colonel and his mages were several yards away—fleeing!  Taking their lights with them!  Maybe ten horses were up, a few hobbling, some riderless; a handful of men on the ground scrambled to organize.

And a woman in black strode from the alley behind the captain, raising her crossbow with cold assurance.

He knew the warning left his mouth, but he did not hear it, still could not hear anything through the rushing in his ears.  Sarovy seemed to, though, and turned in the saddle, raising his sword-arm to guard.

The bolt flew.

The bolt
struck
.