Sutler's Road, page 11
“As you continue to say. Would you prefer that I withdraw from the capital and leave you to your own devices? Perhaps you and your priests could take to the streets and convince the mob to disperse by the force of your oratory.”
This quieted the aging prelate, and he sat down. He pointed at the long line of nineteen portraits on the opposite wall. “Twenty of us in three centuries and ignoble ends for more of them than history had the stomach to record,” he said. “How many of them asked you to make them Hessier?”
“All of them.”
“So did you? What has my loyalty to you bought for me? I have studied the faces of your Hessier. I do not see a likeness to any of them.”
“Stand next to your portrait,” I said to Paij, and he complied.
Disand gasped and crossed to compare the Hessier and the man. It was not so easily done. The man had been old and ugly. Becoming Hessier heals and lightens the flesh, brightens the eyes, and removes all hair. Paij was beautiful.
When he finally recognized them as the same man, he was so taken that he wept and stroked Paij’s face. “We met once. Do you remember? I was nolumari upon your court, Grand Prelate. Do you remember me?”
Paij looked once at me, as if to ask permission to throw Disand onto the gardens far below. I shook my head no and said, “Tell him what you remember.”
“I remember that I was loyal and that Sikhek kept his promise.”
This answer pleased me, and Disand could not have been more affected. He crossed to me, got down on his knees, and said, “What do you need of me, Minister Sikhek? Shall I go speak to the crowds?”
“No. Leave the mob to me. I need you to get the full weight of the prelature behind the restoration of the College of Healers. The faith of the people will be best restored by the touch of the blue. All the other petty demands of the prelates who wait to see you should be discarded and their number bent to this task. Draft a new edict declaring the ten days after Tithe Day as those when the blue light will be provided freely to the citizens of the Kaaryon.”
“Yes. Yes! We will restore their faith in us. This I can do.”
I thanked him, kissed his hand, and went down. The stairwell was lined with Disand’s pikemen and functionaries. The waiting room and attached offices were lined with red hats vying for an audience. A good number of them were my loyal thralls. I said to them as I continued by, “Disand is in communion with our Lord Bayen in heaven and is not to be disturbed until he emerges with an edict in hand. I trust you will preserve the peace he requires.”
The north transept below and the attached Chapel of Ataouk Zovi were free of such petitioners. I found my Hessier gathered there. The Chapel was the first church to Bayen I’d helped the first Sten build. It was a grand structure in its own right, though fallen to disuse in the centuries since the Ataouk’s rule failed. I led my Hessier inside as I had done countless times before.
I stood before them and was at once on guard. Something was wrong with my Hessier. They sat upon the benches absent any focus. They were the picture of indolence, and I struggled to understand how any of them would risk such overt sluggishness in my presence. I would have suspected the influence of some magic, but the only touch of it upon them was the mercury within them that drew the Shadow.
I said to them, “Fourteen of you killed in one day and here you sit.”
They did not respond. I looked to Paij, but he looked rather dull himself.
Was it boredom, perhaps? I had seen it before, though never this pervasive. Hessier could slowly lose the desire to exist, and as it ebbed so did their obedience and attention to detail. The entire batch seemed intent on shorting me 50 years from the 200 I needed from them. The yield of mercury from my cinnabar mines was growing too thin to replace them at so quick a pace. The Vesteal blood left in my veins was growing thin as well. I needed to find a new supply of both. Problems for another day.
“What news of the city do you bring me?” I asked but received no reply. “Lord Vall has summoned me to the palace, and you know nothing of our attackers?”
Paij spoke for them, “One of them brought a report that it was a slave rebellion. Another heard that it was the work of renegade Hemari. Two others heard it was the work of Havishon heretics. The Hessier you sent to ambush Crispo’s Ashmari contact ended up naked in an alley with the same square hole in his skull.”
None of this rang true. Direct action had never been the way of the Ashmari. They did not go to war with you; they bought you. They were elder Hessier like myself. Strong and centuries old. Subtle was the word that best described their methods. There wasn’t anyone else who could have smashed their way—
The Vesteal.
It had to be them—them and that thirty-year man I’d sent to Enhedu with Prince Barok. An attack aimed at me and my church, as if the Edonian pennant still flew on all four coasts. I’d expected them to stay hidden and protected for another set of centuries. All that they needed to do was forget the secrets of the world and have children for me to harvest. I wanted to preserve them, not go to war with them.
My Hessier stare back at me like cattle in a pen. We were at risk of assaulted by the mob, and they were … sad? Yes. They had lost their faith and were taken by sadness—a dull and inhuman copy of the emotion, but just as debilitating.
I recalled how Minhost had reacted to being called weak before the eyes of the Shadow. It seemed a poor ploy to use on so many—but also without much risk. I invented a tale meant to terrify them.
I screamed as if struck, tossed aside my helmet, and grabbed at my ears. “The Shadow has spoken to me!” I yelled like a madman and ran through the room as if I was on fire. “The heretics of the East have wounded Him, and He calls upon us to see them put down! But here you are, asleep—guilty of allowing it to happen! He blames you for His wounds and the threat to His city!”
I leapt up onto the tall stone altar and pointed at them, spitting like a priest taken by visions, “The Shadow wakes, and He will take into the ice all those who have betrayed Him! You! You have betrayed Him!”
They rose, roaring, screaming that it was not they, that they were His loyal and vigilant servants. They each began to call upon the Shadow as savagely as Minhost had. The chapel was instantly dark and deliciously cold.
I gasped. The layered effort was like nothing I’d felt in a millennium. It was sublime, and my lie was suddenly true.
All light left the room, and He arrived—the Shadow himself, peering from the utter darkness with vision that stabbed the soul. He knew I had betrayed Him.
“We will end those who oppose you!” I wailed desperately with the rest. “We will see you freed! I swear it!”
The emotions were real. The fear, the love, the terror. So close to alive! We howled like beasts, wanting—craving! Crave. The verb slammed my mind like an iron mace, and my teeth rattled from the shock. With it came a compulsion I could not suppress. I drew into myself the power of the black mud and screamed the verse He demanded.
crave shadow
It stung the heart to sing it. Every trace of power in the room was consumed, and my Hessier looked like young men ready to go to war for love of country. Their pale skin was full of life, and they stood—their passions a swarm of falcons flung skyward, needing only the glimpse of prey.
The Shadow had His claws in me yet, and forced me to speak. “The Kingdoms beyond the sea have sent the Ashmari Hessier,” He made me say. “They have returned to kill …”
Do not confess! They will kill you!
I fought to pick my own words. I struggled deep, and took hold of the memory of my daughter dying in my arms. I stayed there, and changed the words he forced from my mouth.
“They have returned to kill … us. They believe that … we … have betrayed Him. They accuse… us … of His wounds.”
They leaned toward me, ready for murder and vengeance. I shook His grip at last, took hold of my tongue, and aimed the Shadow’s Hessier elsewhere.
“The Shadow has seen your loyalty. He sees your strength, and he knows the Ashmari are false. He tells me that they are moving now to turn the city against us. He calls on us to be swift. We move today, now, to take back control of the Kaaryon’s millions. Let it be known that the Ministry proclaims the heretics of the Havishon to be anathema and calls all men of faith to war against them. We will drive the Kaaryon to such a just and holy war that no man anywhere will hear the Ashmari. Our enemies will be exposed, and we will destroy them. Go. Bend the city to His will. You are righteous and can do no wrong.”
The air about them crackled, and they began to move. They organized themselves into groups without my direction, discussing the men in their control and where they could be found in the city. They checked each other’s weapons and armor, and by the time they started toward the exit, they were already practicing for the fight. Energies pushed back and forth as each attempted to secure time and space enough to sing a verse or strike a blow.
I felt the Shadow’s vengeful eyes upon me still, and he laughed.
I had convinced my Hessier to seize the world around them. They were each on their own now, and it would happen soon that none of them would ever obey me again.
No matter.
War was upon us, and it would consume them as it would the Ashmari. I held back a handful that were better with sword than magic and went up to watch the rest from a high balcony. The metal-clad column broke into groups and made their way out through different gates. None of them were ambushed. The crowds yelled and pushed with typical human ignorance and hostility, but their condition made their shallow repositories of human understanding easy to replace. In moments, my remade Hessier turned rebellious mobs into fervent haters of the eastern apostate. The throngs dispersed.
I waited through the morning, expecting to hear word of attacks upon my Hessier, but none arrived. The Ashmari’s effects wavered, and the city looked ready to be back about the business of a spring day and the driving dreams of a holy war.
Satisfied, I left Paij in charge of the Tanayon and made my way with my bodyguards to the palace. By the time I arrived, I was certain the city had taken to our more believable truth. Bessradi needed little encouragement to blame foreigners or to think itself a superior instrument of Bayen.
I passed through the high walls into the isolated opulence the Yentif claimed as a birthright. The vast mazes of low evergreen shrubs that had occupied the lawns during the winter were gone. Vall’s choice for the spring was avenues of triangular red and white bricks that framed man-sized wood carvings of animal forms: pine martin, badger, otter, lynx, and every other mammal known upon the earth. It was the life’s work of an entire village—a gift to their Exaltier that I had secretly commissioned.
It was an exalted place, and already I could hear Her whispers. A grand menagerie of the living species would have been far superior, but the Yentif would have had them staked to the walls of their sitting rooms in a matter of days.
I knew all the metals, materials, insects, reptiles, flowers, ferns, moss, and mushrooms. The animals and trees, they eluded me but not for much longer.
Not much longer now, Great lady, I prayed silently. Soon I will save you.
Her whispers rose for an instant but then fell again.
I considered sending my Hessier ahead so that I could walk the long rows, but abandoned this when I got a look at the crowd gathered upon the veranda above the teardrop forecastle of the palace. Vall had summoned every royal in the city, it seemed. It would be a hot day in the Bunda-Hith before I’d ever allow the likes of them to look down on me.
We made our way through the entrance hall enclosed by the forecastle and along the 215 stairs that swirled up the inside of the pink marble dome. A few masons were at work upon scaffolding there, trying and failing to replace the deep set iron sconces upon the hall’s thick column with ones made of solid gold.
The gathering upon the veranda above was equally pretentious—a pageant of fops and sycophants. As a political class they were the weakest I’d seen in three centuries, and so much so, that many showed no interest in paying their respects. I moved through the crowd, and one Yentif cousin went so far as to object when I continued to the front of the procession.
He was saved from being compelled to leap to his death when word arrived that Vall would receive us.
We crossed the high causeway between the forecastle and the palace and made our way down through hall after hall that served no other purpose than to display countless extravagances as casually as potted plants. The throne room beyond stood out as the one place in the palace that was not transformed each season. It was a white stone box with a simple riser across its back third. Lord Vall sat upon a low-backed throne of solid gold at the center of the riser. Behind him was the usual phalanx of battle-ready Hemari as well as a few prostrate figures I did not know.
Vall wore a knowing grin I was loathe to abide. Beneath the polished granite was a solid slab of silver that insulated the room from the touch of the Shadow and prevented magic. He traveled in carriages plated with it, wore clothes threaded with it, and a team of porters kept twenty heavy chests full of silver bars near his person at all times. This did little to protect the men around him from me.
I searched the room for my many thralls, but none seemed to be in attendance.
The royals filed in behind me and put their foreheads upon the floor, as did my Hessier. I took a knee.
Chancellor Parsatayn stepped through the wall of Hemari. He bowed to me and smiled. I considered charging him despite the 400 Hemari at his back.
An ambush was coming. It was time to leave.
“Rise, all,” Lord Vall said before pointing his finger at me. “Minister Sikhek, I called us together to hear your explanation of your failure. Why has Bayen forsaken you? The city demands to know.”
“He has forsaken us all,” I replied and said over the mewing objections that followed, “We have allowed the scourge of heresy to grow and fester in the East. Bayen has spoken to me. He calls upon the faithful to make war upon the apostate rulers of those lands and restore his church.”
I stabbed my finger at the Chancellor and asked the entire room, “Will you declare your allegiance to Bayen in this war?”
The crowd was swift. They yelled for Chancellor Parsatayn to declare himself.
Parsatayn’s strongest alliances were with the nobles and arilas of the East. His smile was gone.
He had no good counter. He and the Ashmari had forgotten the mob and its preference for war. The Kaaryon had been without one for a decade, which, for many, was ten years too long.
The man next to Parsatayn whispered something to him. The stranger was a pale-skinned southerner of no discernible quality, and I was ready to discount his presence until Bessradi’s second-most powerful man bowed his head in perfect supplication.
Ashmari.
They had penetrated the palace, and I had walked into a trap.
I turned toward the exit.
“Where are you going?” Vall demanded.
I did not stop walking. “I go to make war upon the apostate. Those loyal to Bayen will join me.”
The roused royalty cheered and followed me out. Vall stood, and with a gesture the Hemari started after us. They were too late coming. The crowd was too many and began pushing through the doors—all the while calling on the Hemari to join us.
The bluecoats’ orders, whatever they were, did not include the murder of royalty. We neared the entrance and the edge of the silver slab.
A great keening of magic shook the room as someone combined with terrible passion the Shadow and Earth. A smokeless heat lit the room as though a million reflections of the sun had been aimed upon a single point, and the forward edge of the crowd burst into flames. I stepped back from the center of this magic—a magic I did not know. The singer was somewhere beyond, but I could not spot him.
“Lord Vall, Bayen’s light has revealed our enemies,” Parsatayn said.
Vall did not need to be convinced. He stood and pointed at us. “The light of Bayen burns you! Kill them! Kill them all!”
The bluecoats were not sure who he meant. Some began to attack those who were on fire. Others set into the rest of the royalty, regardless of where they stood in the throne room, and a rare few tried their luck against the ring of ready Hessier that surrounded me.
The chaos was exquisite. The Shadow grew stronger as the blood and souls of men spilled free of their flimsy bodies. I got hold of his touch, despite the slab of silver, and aimed a song at the Ashmari Hessier standing beside the throne.
draw mercury
He faltered and stumbled toward the throne.
“Protect the Exaltier,” I ordered, and spent the last of the Shadow’s touch to encourage the bluecoats to this very natural action.
Those near him were upon the Ashmari instantly and hacked him to pieces. The gray spray of his dead blood set the bluecoats on their own course. They charged the throne with typical human devotion, scooped up their Exaltier, and bore him away to safety. I did not see what became of Parsatayn.
The royals left around the edges of the dwindling flames made good their escape, and I led my Hessier out after them. The halls beyond were filled with other, rougher-looking Hemari. They started toward us, but it was too late. I stepped free of the effects of the silver slab and pushed the Shadow’s will across them. There was little economy to a magic that would force them to murder each other—or any of a hundred similar methods for clearing a way through them. But it cost next to nothing to compel an army’s officers to do what they were already inclined to do. My quick instructions to the nine white-crested captains on scene were to get the endangered royalty to safety. Their booming voices turned the rest of the bluecoats to this better task, and en mass we moved up toward the causeway.
The Ashmari’s counter-attack was ignorant and betrayed again their weakness in direct action. They tried to make use of the magic I controlled to compel the Hemari to kill me. Fools. They know nothing of the subtleties of affecting groups of men. The singers managed only to reveal themselves. They were disguised as Yentif royals and walked along with the rest. They looked at each other, still trying a magic as hard as moving the moon.
