The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (2 page)

We got into the boat, and it began pulling away. I turned back for one last look at the prison I would never see again and witnessed something most odd.

The warders were drawn up, on the fortress battlements or along the path to the dock, Domina Jelap at their head. All were at rigid salute.

For whom?

Certainly not the Guardians.

I refused to believe it was for me, the last vestige of Tenedos’s tyranny.

But I still got to my feet, braced myself against an oarsman, and returned their salute, clapping my hand against my shoulder.

Then I turned away to the waiting ship and what might lie ahead in Nicias.

I kept trying to catch the future’s drift as we sailed toward the Latane River and Nicias. I wasn’t chained nor closely guarded, which I took as a good sign, although where I could’ve gone save overboard to my death I couldn’t imagine. Catalca said if there was any attempt at rescue, he was under orders to kill me immediately.

I was given the first mate’s quarters, which were fairly spacious. I spent happy hours just staring out the port or on deck, glorying in being able to look for leagues without seeing stone walls.

The ship’s crew stayed well away from all of us and refused to be drawn into conversation.

The dagger Perak had given me was a nastily lethal item — a handspan long, about two inches wide at the hilt, both edges razor-sharp. Its hilt and pommel were the plainest of metal, the grip of a black hardwood. The weapon’s purpose was clear. I devised a hiding place for it — a thin cord knotted around my loins, the sheath hanging in front of my cock. I’d seen how men are always uncomfortable searching around someone’s genitals. I had to be a bit careful sitting down, for fear of being suddenly qualified for singing in upper registers instead of warfare, but I felt far better about everything, as a warrior always does when armed.

After four days we saw land, the low green jungled islets of the Delta, and I smelt the hot, tropic welcome of my homeland.

The coastal watch station at the end of the channel was unmanned, run-down, and the buoys marking the channel had gone unpainted. I saw few seagoing ships either coming up or going down channel, as well.

A day upriver we passed a manned heliograph station, and signals went back and forth, messaging our arrival to Nicias.

There was a scattering of fishing boats outside the channel, bringing up succulent green Delta crabs. One galley rowed alongside a boat and came back with a deckful, some of which were hoisted aboard to be steamed for our dinner.

The fishing boats were manned by young men, actually boys, a scattering of young women among them. Since I knew little of the Delta customs, I asked a seaman if this was customary, and if so, where did the menfolk work?

He stared at me as if I were a prime idiot, looked about to make sure he wasn’t being seen talking to the disgraced prisoner, and said, “Their menfolk’re fertilizer, in places like Maisir, Cambiaso, Kait … or’d you dis’member there was a war not so long ago?”

Chastened, I thanked him, went back to the rail. I noted the fishermen’s expressions were hardly friendly, and one spat as we passed. I chanced being called another fool by asking Huda what price crabs brought these days?

“Hells if’n I know,” he said. “You don’t think Guardians
pay,
now, do you?” It was, indeed, a foolish question. A man with a sword only pays when he, or his officers, is honorable.

• • •

I saw Nicias when we were some distance away, by the glow in the night sky as if it were on fire. The city is lit by jets of natural gas seeping from underground deposits, and legend has it the day the City of Lights falls into darkness, Numantia’s doom is at hand.

We anchored below the city that afternoon, so I guessed the Council had ordered me brought into Nicias under cover of darkness. Gods, what could they have to fear, I wondered. Wasn’t I the cursed first tribune, hated almost as much as the emperor? Or had things changed?

We raised anchor when the dogwatch came on, and sailed on, landing at Nicias’s docks near dawn. A mounted unit of Guardians was waiting, escorting four of the black, tiny-windowed ambulances Nicias’s warders used to transport prisoners.

“You’ll go in one,” Catalca said, “and if anyone’s waiting to lift you, they’ll not know which one.”

I marveled at the subtlety of his plan, wondered if he knew enough not to eat soup with a fork, and entered the indicated carriage.

I crouched at the tiny window as we clattered through the morning streets. The City of Lights had always bragged it never slept, but things had changed, for there were few abroad except the lamplighters extinguishing the gas jets, some few drunks, and early risers heading for their jobs. Even the drunks turned away when they saw the Guardians’ uniforms — Herne’s Harriers had exactly the reputation I thought.

Nicias was gray, tired, dirty, when once it’d been a flashing metropolis of light and color. The war … the occupation by Maisir … the looting of Numantia’s treasuries by King Bairan … and above all the grinding knowledge of utter defeat had changed this capital I loved so well.

Entire blocks looked abandoned, and once-prosperous districts were now slums.

We passed brick barracks I remembered well, once the home of the Golden Helms, the useless parade-ground force I’d once commanded. They were shabby, lawns unmowed, the whitewash on the tree trunks peeling, falling away, stone walks cracking. There were lines strung from windows holding drying laundry, some of it women’s dresses, then, a sign in front of the barracks, Maisir’s yellow superimposed on Numantia’s blue, a mailed fist over it, and a slogan:
GUARD WELL THE PEACE
.

I’d hardly expected Nicias to be as I left it, but the reality struck hard, and I turned away until the ambulance stopped. The door opened, and there were half a hundred Guardians, weapons ready. I got out, looked around.

“So this is to be my new prison?”

“It’s not necessarily a prison,” Catalca said. “Just a place where you’ll be secure until the lords finish with you.” He smiled, not pleasantly.

I smiled back, and was amused, not by Catalca, but by my new jail, one which I’d created for other purposes. It was the four-story tower with an interior keep I’d chosen for the Seer Tenedos’s safety, back during the Tovieti rising, and I’d also taken shelter there with my bride-to-be Marán. Later it became the emperor’s sorcerous retreat, where he called up the demons that encouraged him to begin the disastrous war with Maisir.

Again I noted the turning of a wheel …

I was escorted to my quarters on the top floor of the outer tower — the same ones the emperor had used. I was told there were three hundred Peace Guardians assigned to this tower, their sole duty to keep me imprisoned.

Here I was to wait until summoned.

• • •

Of course, Barthou and Scopas being who they were, I waited for two full weeks on this matter of “grave import.” But this was all to the good, for I was able to suborn one of my jailers, a pompous fool named Dubats, one of those who knows everything and must prove it constantly, and got a rough idea of events in Numantia.

The emperor, after rising from the dead, still unexplained as mummery or horrid fact, had left Palmeras for Hermonassa State, which cast off the Grand Council’s rule and vowed fealty to him. The two corps of Peace Guardians sent to deal with him changed sides and became the nucleus, such as it was, of his new army.

Tenedos, the warder told me, had moved south along the western coast of Numantia, gathering strength as he did. Ticao had been the second state to declare for him. Unsure of what I myself felt in a world of bad choices, I didn’t know if I was proud or ashamed that my home state of Cimabue remained loyal to the puppet government, as had its coastal neighbor of Darkot. But Bala Hissar, Khoh, and Gyantse had gone for Tenedos, as had, on our eastern borders, Bonvalet and Varan.

The government still held the center of Numantia, as well as the vital Latane River, the primary navigational route north and south.

Only Isfahan, directly south of the main province of Dara, wavered, and it’d been quickly pacified by Peace Guardians. Kallio, the other great state, which had risen first against the Rule of Ten, then continued its subversion against the emperor, naturally stood firm against him, as did Urey, which had been razed by first our own army in its retreat from Numantia, then, more savagely, by the oncoming Maisirians. The Ureyans wanted no more of war, on any side, in any shape.

The City of Lights had always been the first to overreact to any emergency, and so, the warder went on, they were planning barricades to hold back the emperor, plus which they worried that King Bairan would once more invade and this time destroy Numantia as he’d threatened, and of course demons would soon be sent by the arch-wizard Tenedos to turn Nicias into a wasteland.

This last was not unlikely, for Tenedos had planned on doing just that until I’d struck him down and destroyed the spell he was casting, before leading the last of the army’s cavalry in a mad charge against Bairan’s army as if I were a manifestation of Saionji herself.

But as yet, Dubats said, nothing much had really happened, other than rumors.

I asked about the Tovieti, the cult Tenedos and I had brought down once, only to see it arise in a different form, then vanish with our destruction. He’d heard nothing of the stranglers with the yellow cord, which was one bit of good news.

Knowing as much as anyone, there was nothing for me to do but wait … and spend hour after hour in muscle-wrenching exercise; for whatever was to come, I must be ready.

One other thing occupied my time. I’d originally found this tower for the emperor and made certain it was impossible for a Tovieti assassin to enter. Now I considered it from a very different perspective — how to get out. I’m afraid that I now thought little of my previous abilities, for I found three possible escape routes, two of which could also be used to enter the building. I’d gained new talents in Maisirian and Numantian prisons. It also helped that the Guardians’ commander was an orderly, scheduled man, so the guards were fed, marched, trained, and checked with the regularity of a metronome.

But my scheming was purely to keep my mind occupied, for where would I go once I got beyond the tower’s walls and guards? No one would shelter me, and I thought most would see my unfortunately quite memorable face and scream for the warders … or attack me with whatever weapons were at hand. If I had to die, I’d rather die by the clean ax blade or noose than be ripped apart by a mob.

Guards came early one morning, and once more I entered one of the ambulances and was taken to the Grand Palace, once the Rule of Ten’s, then, massively refurbished, made modern and luxurious, the emperor’s.

The carriage rattled across the moat into the central courtyard, then went to a rear entrance, and I was hustled inside to a small chamber, where once more I waited, four guards watching me nervously.

After a while, the door opened, and half a dozen other guards made sure I hadn’t massacred my captors. Scopas came in next, even fatter than he’d been the last time I’d seen him, which was … and it took some thinking back … more than ten years earlier. Scopas had been one of the first members of the Rule of Ten to support Tenedos and was considered the shrewdest of those incompetents. After the emperor’s coronation, he’d tried to weasel his way back into Tenedos’s graces, but without success.

Later, when we were fighting in Maisir, he’d led a revolt that failed, but managed to escape and hide before mounting a second, successful rising just before the defeat at Cambiaso.

Behind him came Barthou, formerly the Rule of Ten’s Speaker, in spite of his position, never considered terribly astute.

I bowed courteously. Scopas did the same, while Barthou, puzzling on what the proper response should be, made none.

“Damaste á Cimabue,” Scopas said, “we have brought you here to offer you life and a chance to rejoin Numantian society as a nobleman, with estates we shall grant you for a gracious living.”

“All we want,” Barthou put in, and I wondered if they’d rehearsed the put-and-take of their lines beforehand, “is for you to perform a task.”

“I wish I could say I was at your service,” I replied. “Technically, as your prisoner, I am. What do you wish me to do?”

“First,” Scopas said, “I have a question. Have you been approached by the traitor named Tenedos?”

“How could he do that?” I asked, amused. “Remember, you’ve had me imprisoned, sealed off from the world.”

“Magicians,” Barthou said, looking from side to side as if for ears to magically protrude from the walls, “have ways of doing things mortals like us cannot know of.”

“I’ll answer your question with the obvious: No one has approached me to do anything,” I said.

“We’re aware you swore an oath to the one who was once our emperor,” Scopas said. “And I’m also aware of your family motto,
We Hold True.
”

I was slightly impressed — I didn’t think the fat man was that aware. I nodded.

“Do you consider your oath still stands, considering the man called Tenedos still lives?”

I thought of various subtleties, decided I wasn’t capable of them.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “I was the one who struck Tenedos down, at Cambiaso, and possibly permitted the Maisirian victory. Doesn’t that render the continuance of my oath rather meaningless?”

Both Barthou and Scopas reacted in some amazement. There were but two mortals who knew what’d happened in his tent before Cambiaso. I’d said nothing, out of shame, and evidently Tenedos had done the same.

“That’s as may be,” Barthou said. “The question stands — are you still willing to serve the emperor?”

I shook my head. “I serve no one now,” I said. “As a prisoner, not even myself.”

“Would you wish to change that?” Scopas asked.

“We must stop the interloper Tenedos,” Barthou said, “and quickly. Or else the worst will happen.”

“What’s the worst?” I asked. “That Tenedos takes the throne once more … or that King Bairan comes back with his army, which I assume he would if the emperor returns?”