The Trials of Empire, page 21
“For fuck’s sake,” the Guardsman grunted as I was thrown at him. I yelped as I expected his sword to pierce my stomach, but instead he instinctively lowered it and moved to catch me.
“Helena, duck!” Vonvalt snapped at me. I went slack in the Guardsman’s arms and he stumbled forwards as I collapsed to the cobbles. What felt like piss splashed the back of my neck and shoulders, until I looked up and saw that Vonvalt had impaled the man through the neck. The Guard, eyes wide, was not even given a chance to gurgle as Vonvalt clasped a hand over his mouth and lowered him carefully to the floor.
“Here, help me get his things off,” Vonvalt said, beginning to tug at the breastplate straps.
I stood there, looking at Vonvalt. “You pushed me at him,” I said.
Vonvalt looked up, red-faced with exertion. “Yes. But I knew what I was doing.”
“He could have stabbed me.”
“Aye, but he did not, and that is what matters.”
Unhappy, I helped to strip the corpse and transfer the man’s garments and armour to Vonvalt. It took a long time. There were many buckles and clasps to fiddle with, and Vonvalt instructed me with fraying patience, both of us acutely conscious that the slain man’s fellow traitors would shortly come looking for him.
“How do I look?” Vonvalt asked once we were done.
I took a step back and examined him. Fortunately the bloodstaining was not too obvious thanks to the rich purple colour of the gambeson. “I think it is perfectly passable.”
“It’s a little tight,” Vonvalt grumbled, adjusting himself. “But the ruse need only survive a glance.”
“Where do you plan on taking us next?” I asked. I could not keep the sarcasm from my voice.
“We will still make for the Sauber,” he said. “We will head into the Imperial Palace the same way we escaped from it.”
“Through that tunnel?” I asked.
“Through that tunnel.”
“I would not even know where to look for it.”
“Well,” Vonvalt said, sheathing his sword, “I do. Now, pretend to be my prisoner.”
“First your whore, now your prisoner,” I muttered. “Whatever next?”
The most important thing to avoid was the manned barricade at the westernmost end of the Miran Bridge. We crept to the end of the alley, having concealed the corpse. There, Vonvalt peered around the side of the building to see a group of perhaps five or six Guardsmen, and evidence of further brutalities. We also saw a purple-cassocked Neman priest, who was speaking to the soldiers there in low tones.
“There is no sense in chancing our arm here,” Vonvalt said. “Let us attempt the bank of the river further south.”
We made our way through the city, this time back towards the Victory Gate. We heard the temple clocks ring the eighth bell, which must have heralded the end of the curfew, for people began to appear in the streets. Most avoided looking at us, though some chanced a furtive glance. Some people eyed me sympathetically, which confused me until I remembered that I was supposed to be Vonvalt’s prisoner.
Eventually we reached a part of the south-eastern closure that was largely given over to housing. Here, large blocks of apartments rose into the sky with commanding views of the Sun Gate and the southern Ebenen Plains. This region of housing was for the city’s wealthy merchant classes, not the tenement slums of the westernmost boundary between the Creus Gate and the Arena. This was the only part of the city we had seen so far that had no evidence of fighting; in fact, here, one would not know that anything had happened at all.
We picked our way down to the south where the embankment was low and a stretch of slimy, rocky mud preceded the river. We could be seen here, but further north the embankment rose up a good fifteen to twenty feet in some places, and if we hugged the stone wall we would be concealed from all but the most determined of searchers.
Still, as the city came alive and the sun rose higher in the sky, it seemed like an insane gamble, and although Vonvalt was keen to press on, even he came to realise it was folly.
“I think you are right,” he said, in an exceptionally rare concession. I could tell he was annoyed. “We are going to have to hide again and wait until darkness.”
“Excellent. So now we can sit in the mud and rocks all day and hope that no one thinks to look in our direction,” I snapped. My frustration was boiling over. I knew that sneaking into Sova was never going to be easy, but even so, we seemed to be going about it in rather a stupid fashion.
“Moving down the river under cover of darkness is not the same as moving through the streets. We are hidden here. Now come on.”
We clambered along the shingle until we found a natural alcove. It was damp and smelt of seaweed, but we could not be seen, and that was the important thing.
It was another long, tedious, and tense day. At several points we heard the shouting and clash of swords that indicated a melee, and the occasional scream which Vonvalt, with his practised Justice’s ear, reckoned was the sound of someone being burned alive. I wondered if anyone had found the dead Guardsman yet, and if a search party had been sent out to find us, but Vonvalt was not troubled.
“We were not seen during or after the slaying,” he said. “Even if they look, they will never find us. Sova is vast, and they do not know where we went.”
I took no comfort from his words, but he was right, in the end. By the time nightfall came around – an intolerably long time considering the late spring hours – I was tired, my muscles were aching and cramped, my lungs were full of damp, and I had shredded every nerve in my body.
But we were still alive, and we were still undetected.
Eventually, we struck out under cover of darkness. We picked our way carefully down the embankment, our legs up to the midcalf soaking wet from the cold, filthy waters of the Sauber. We slipped and slid constantly on the slime and mud, and my hands were badly cut and chafed from gripping all of the damp rocks and stones.
Sova was again dark and quiet. It was eerie, as though the whole city were a mausoleum. The Sova that I had known was an unrelenting carnival, an overwhelming mixture of sights, sounds and smells. Now it was as silent as the grave.
It was a long journey up the embankment. The tunnel entrance was to the west of the Philosopher’s Palace, and we had come into the city through the Victory Gate. We moved as quickly as we could in the circumstances, but in the end, it was not quick enough. Passing under the Creus Bridge, we were spotted by a patrol of traitor Guardsmen, who sent up a great hue and cry.
Now we ran. Abandoning all attempt at stealth, we fled up the bank of the Sauber. But instead of running across the slime-slick mud, which was causing us to remain stationary in spite of our frantic labours, we cut up some stone steps to the left and on to the road.
An insane fear gripped me. I knew that if we were caught we would be burned alive. Despite having not eaten anything for the best part of two days, a fresh burst of energy infused me. There is nothing quite like the fear of death to get you moving.
We were now on the Baden High-Way, a long way from the secret tunnel entrance to the palace, and sprinting with cold, mud-soaked feet. But ahead I could see more Imperial Guardsmen with white stars on their chests, more immolated corpses, more gibbets and gallows and street barricades. The whole of Sova was a deadly maze; we were like frantic rats trying to find the only safe route through.
“This way!” Vonvalt shouted, snatching my wrist and yanking me into the market. It was a wide, open, flagstoned place, and there were some permanent structures to conceal ourselves behind. But we continued to run, our breath ragged in our throats and our blood singing in our veins. Behind us, a large group of soldiers gave chase.
Now we cut into the unsocial trades district. I had never known a place of such hellish noise to be so silent. As we darted between foundries and iron smiths and metallurgists and armour makers, we saw the faces of frightened people peering out from windows and doorways. No one offered to help us.
I did not know where Vonvalt hoped to go. We would soon come up against the Estran Wall, and from there our options were limited: we could either head north to the Wolf Gate, or south, to be cut off again by the Sauber. Neither helped us.
In the event, it didn’t matter. Our pursuers were too fit and determined, and we were too weak and exhausted. Vonvalt took a wrong turn and we ended up running headlong into the curtain wall of Sova, out of time and out of options.
“Get behind me,” Vonvalt said, his short sword out in front of him.
“Shut up,” I snapped, my own sword out in front of me. I was so exhausted, physically and mentally, that I almost welcomed death – or I might have done, if I had not known what bleak eternity awaited me in the afterlife. Still, the prospect of being free of all of it, of all these intrigues and subterfuges and thoughts of war and violence and death, of necromancy and Entanglement and the Draedist arcana, of losing more friends, of watching more cities burn and people terrorised and murdered, imbued me with a weary fatalism. Just let it be over, I thought. Just let it all be done, one way or the other.
Our pursuers rounded the corner of the alley. Several of them had one-handed crossbows, to which we had no answer.
“Throw down your weapons!” the leading Guardsman said.
“We are not going to disarm ourselves just so that you can lead us away and burn us to death,” Vonvalt said as though they were stupid. The crossbows were raised and I let out an involuntary grunt as I waited for the quarrels to tear into me.
“Wait,” another Guardsman said, pushing her way to the front of the group. She approached us down the alley until she was standing about halfway between us and her comrades. She squinted at Vonvalt. “You are the Lord Prefect,” she said.
Vonvalt’s sword hand twitched. “Was,” he said. “The Emperor revoked my titles and sentenced me to death.” It was not what I thought he was going to say, though he had a good reason to frame it in such terms.
The Guardsman paused. “I thought you were dead,” she said uncertainly.
“Well, I am not.”
“Why are you here? What are you doing skulking about – and in that armour? Stole it, did you?”
I could tell that even in spite of the circumstances Vonvalt rankled at being spoken to so disrespectfully.
“I am here because here is all there is. I will not hide away in the countryside. I mean to set matters straight.”
“Set them straight how? Whose side are you on?”
“I am on my own side,” Vonvalt growled.
The woman considered matters for a moment. “Take him to see the senator,” she said eventually. “He can decide what to do with them.”
“Which senator?” Vonvalt asked.
“Senator Jansen,” the woman said. “Who else?”
Vonvalt managed to keep a straight face, but I could tell that he was very surprised.
“And if you even think about trying to escape,” the woman called over her shoulder, “we really will burn you.”
XV
New Enemies
“To be burned is often said to be the worst death. But even burning can be a good death. The worst death comes after learning that you have betrayed yourself and everything you hold dear for a lie. After that, the manner is irrelevant.”
ALLEGED TO BE THE FINAL WORDS OF OBENMATRIA JOZEFINA POKORNÝ
My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts as we were marched through the dark streets. We were taken west down the Creus Road all the way to the Temple of Nema, and then we turned south and made for the Temple of Savare. Here there were traitor Guardsmen in great abundance. We drew a huge amount of attention, and word spread quickly of the return and capture of the Lord Prefect.
The front of the Temple of Savare was scorched black where flames had licked its white marble frontage. There was debris everywhere, too; spent arrows, scraps of armour, a discarded sohle shield – the tell-tale spatter of rust red on the flagstones. The fight here had been chaotic and bloody.
The doors of the temple were pulled open and we were led inside. The last time I had been in the Temple of Savare we had interrupted an illegal séance. But instead of the horrors of the afterlife, we were now faced with the horrors of a very mortal rebellion. It seemed that whatever seeds of treachery Claver had planted in the capital, at some point in the recent past, they had sprouted and borne fruit.
The Flame of Savare still burned in its huge brazier, filling the vast, vaulted atrium with its heat. We were taken past it, to the ambulatory, and then up a narrow stone staircase to a wide, circular mezzanine overlooking the statue of Savare the God Father himself. Then we were led down several more corridors until we reached a grand set of chambers, which must once have been the offices of the temple’s obenpatria. The door was open, and we saw inside a well-lit and ostentatiously decorated space.
Sitting behind the desk was Senator Tymoteusz Jansen.
“Yes?” he asked, not taking his eyes from some papers on the desk in front of him.
“Sire, we have Sir Konrad Vonvalt and his… er, associate.”
The look of shock on Jansen’s face – a face long used to concealing such treacherous emotions – startled me with its intensity.
“Well,” Vonvalt said with venom. “I did not think anything could surprise me any more. This must be punishment for such hubris.”
I had never seen Jansen so lost for words. He was normally so quick with his repartee, always with a jibe or wry remark to hand. He was probably the most intelligent man I knew after Vonvalt, and to see him so wrong-footed was a not dissimilar experience to seeing Vonvalt wrong-footed – that is to say, it was a profoundly unsettling one.
Jansen was clad in the same coal-black armour of the Imperial Guard, with a cloak of rich purple draped from his shoulders, fastened there with two large wolf head brooches. Like the other traitors, a white star was daubed over his chest.
He looked to the Guards who had brought us to this place. “Thank you. You may leave us.”
The Guards shoved Vonvalt and I roughly down into a pair of chairs opposite the desk – doubly uncomfortable since my hands were bound behind my back – and left, pulling the door closed behind them.
“Why, Tymoteusz?” Vonvalt asked, calmer but still angry. “Nema, why?”
Jansen let out a long sigh. He reached for a flagon of wine and poured three gobletsful. He stood and walked over to where Vonvalt was sitting. “I am going to untie you,” he said. “Or would that be unwise?”
“Very,” Vonvalt growled, though Jansen did it anyway. When Vonvalt did not move except to rub his hands and wrists, Jansen moved over to untie me as well.
The moment my hands were free, I slapped him as hard as I could.
“Fuck!” Jansen said, staggering backwards until his buttocks collided with the table and jostled everything loose – all the little trinkets and ornaments and ink pots.
“You piece of shit,” I snarled. I stood to slap him again. This time, however, he caught me by the wrist and forced me back into the chair.
We all turned as the door was opened. A Guardsman stood there, concern etched across his features. “Is everything all right, sire?” he asked, taking in the scene uncertainly.
“Everything is fine, get out!” Jansen snapped. He had a red handprint on the side of his face. “And do not loiter outside my door!”
The Guardsman slouched off, and Jansen stalked around the desk and took his seat. He gestured to the wine.
“We do not want wine,” Vonvalt said, ignoring the goblets. “We have not eaten in two days, and have barely drunk.”
“I’ll have some water fetched,” Jansen said irritably.
There was a silence. So many questions, so many potential answers. It was impossible to know where to begin. All I could think about was how both Danai and Sir Anzo had warned us, albeit in vague terms, about Jansen.
“You have not answered my question,” Vonvalt asked eventually.
“No,” Jansen said. “I haven’t, have I?” He rubbed his cheek where I had slapped him. “Quite the arm on you, Helena.” I said nothing, just glowered. “Well, it is fair to say that a great deal has happened since you have been gone.” He leant forward and picked up a quill and dipped it into a pot of ink. He wrote something as he spoke. “Some weeks ago, the Emperor received a message – or rather, the Imperial Warden received a message. To hear tell of it, the Warden was contacted by shamans from the Spiritsraad, all the way down in the Kyarai. A visitation, whilst he slept. Can you imagine such a thing?”
Vonvalt said nothing. Jansen continued to write.
“Well, it set the hares running here, I can tell you that. The message warned that Bartholomew Claver and Margrave Vladimir von Geier had together turned Keraq rogue. That Claver had been training priests in the ways of the Draedist arcana, and that he planned to strike north and depose the Emperor. An extraordinary message, though Nema knows a common enough refrain from some quarters.” He looked at Vonvalt as he spoke the addendum. “And all at once, a great many things happened – a great many things which have been a rather long time in the offing.” He finished writing and set the quill down. “You are an intelligent man; no doubt you have deduced what has come to pass here.”
“A coup,” Vonvalt said through gritted teeth. “Orchestrated by Claver and his allies within the city, no doubt.”
Was this really it? Would Claver simply march into Sova unopposed as Vonvalt had feared? It had always seemed like such a far-fetched concern. After all, so few of the commonfolk in the capital – and indeed the wider Empire – stood to benefit from Claver’s ascendancy. Why was there not rioting in the streets? Yes, there were the Imperial Guard, but they couldn’t kill everyone. For all of our machinations and clever planning, it would all come to nothing if Sova was turned before our forces could arrive.
“Aye. A coup. But touched off prematurely. The message to the Imperial Warden – and I would be very interested to learn about precisely how it was delivered – caused no small measure of panic. Panic that was… encouraged, in some quarters. What should have been a fait accompli was very nearly strangled in the cradle.” There was something about his tone I could not quite put my finger on. Jansen leant back in his chair and spoke expansively. “The Mlyanars and the Savarans have taken about a third of the city, most of the ground west of the main channel of the Sauber. We persuaded about half of the Imperial Guard to join us, thanks to Milena Bartoš.”
