Heir Of Novron: The Riyria Revelations (29 page)

When he reached the fourth floor, he found a guard lying dead. Blood dripped down the marble steps in tiny rivers. Archibald drew his sword and continued to climb. On the fifth floor he discovered two more slain guards.

In the corridor ahead, Luis Guy was fighting another palace guard. Archibald had almost reached them when the sentinel delivered a quick thrust and the guard fell as dead as the others.

“Thank Maribor you’ve arrived!” Saldur’s voice echoed from Modina’s room as Guy entered the chamber. The regent sounded shaken. “We have to kill her. She’s been faking all this time and eavesdropping. She knows everything!”

“But the wedding?” Guy protested.

“
Forget the wedding!
Ethelred is dead. Kill her and we’ll tell everyone she is still sick. I will rule until we can find a replacement for Ethelred. We will announce that the new emperor married her in a private ceremony.”

“No one will believe that.”

“We don’t have a choice. Now kill her!”

Archibald peered in. Guy stood, sword in hand, with Saldur. Beyond them, near the window, was Modina in her red-stained nightdress. Presumably the blood belonged to Ethelred, who lay dead on the floor. Sunlight glinted off a shard of glass gripped tightly in the empress’s hands.

“How do I know you’re not going to just saddle
me
with both their murders?”

“Do
you
see another way out of this? If we let her live, we
are all dead men. Look around you. Look at the guards you just killed. Everyone believes she really
is
the empress. You
have
to kill her!”

Guy nodded and advanced on her.

Modina took a step back, still holding the shard out.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the Earl of Chadwick announced as he entered. “I hope this isn’t a private party. You see, I was growing bored. Waiting for this wedding is very dull.”

“Get out of here, Archie,” Saldur snapped. “We don’t have
time
for you.
Get out!
”

“Yes, I can see you’re very busy, aren’t you? You have to hurry up and kill the empress, but before you do… perhaps I can be of assistance. I would like to propose an alternative.”

“Such as?” Saldur asked.

“I’ve wanted to marry Modina for some time—and still do. Now that the old bugger’s dead”—he looked down at Ethelred’s body and offered a wry smile—“why not choose me? I’ll marry her and things can go on as planned, only with me on the throne instead of Ethelred. Nothing has to change. You could say I dueled him for the right of her hand. I won and she swooned for me.”

“We can’t let her leave the room. She’ll talk,” Saldur said.

Archibald considered this as he strolled around Saldur. He eyed the empress, who stood defiantly even though Guy’s sword was only a few feet away.

“Consider this. I’ll hold the point of a dagger hidden by my cloak at her ribs during the ceremony. She either does as we want or dies on the altar. If I kill her in front of all the crowned heads, neither of you will be held responsible. You can claim innocence of the whole affair. Her death will fall on me—that crazy lunatic
Archie
Ballentyne.”

Saldur thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No,
we can’t risk letting her out of this room. If she gets to people, she can take control. Too many are devoted to her. It has to end here. We’ll pick up the pieces afterward. Kill her, Guy.”

“Wait!” Archibald said quickly. “If she’s going to die—let me do it. I know it sounds strange, but if I can’t have her, I will take some satisfaction from denying her to anyone else.”

“You are a twisted little git, aren’t you, Ballentyne?” Guy said with a disgusted look.

Archibald moved closer. For each step he took forward, Modina took a step back, until she had no more room to retreat.

Archibald raised his sword, and while keeping his eyes focused on Modina, he plunged the blade toward Luis Guy. The sentinel did not see the attack coming, but Archibald’s ruse prevented an accurate strike. His thrust landed poorly. Instead of piercing Guy’s heart, the blade glanced off a rib and merely sliced through his side. Archibald quickly withdrew his blade, turned, and tried to strike again. Guy was faster.

The earl felt Guy’s blade enter his chest. The last thing Archibald Ballentyne saw before he died was Modina Novronian running past Saldur, slicing his arm as he unsuccessfully tried to stop her.

Royce’s head turned abruptly.

“What—” Hadrian began, but stopped when Royce held up a hand.

Getting to his feet in one fluid motion, Royce paused mid-stride on a single foot, listening. He waited a moment and then moved swiftly to the cell door, which admitted the light. He lay down and placed his ear to the crack at the bottom.

“What is it?” Hadrian asked.

“Fighting,” he replied at last.

“Fighting? Who?” Hadrian asked.

“I can’t hear the color of their uniforms.” Royce smirked. “Soldiers, though. I hear swords on armor.”

They all looked at the door. Soon Hadrian heard it too. Very faint at first, like the rustle of leaves in autumn, but then he picked out the sounds of steel on steel and the unmistakable cries of men in pain. Within the prison, new sounds rose—the main entrance opened, shouts rang out, and footsteps echoed down the hall.

Royce picked up the sword he had brought and held it out toward Hadrian.

He shook his head. “Give it to Breckton. I doubt I can even hold it.”

Royce nodded, handed the weapon to the knight, and raced down the hall with Alverstone drawn.

Breckton left Amilia’s side and moved to stand in front of them all. Hadrian knew whoever was coming would have to kill the knight to get by.

Hard heels and soles echoed off the stone. A man cried out in terror.

“By Mar!” Hadrian heard Royce say. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Where is she?” responded a young man’s voice. Hadrian recognized him but could not understand how he could possibly be there.

Torchlight filled the hall, growing brighter as footsteps hurried near. The group appeared first as dark silhouettes, the prisoners wincing at the brilliance. Hadrian raised an arm to shield his eyes.

“Alric? Mauvin?” Hadrian asked, stunned, then quickly added, “Breckton,
stop
! Don’t fight!”

The King of Melengar and his best friend were leading a
party of men into the dungeon. Renwick, Ibis Thinly, and several others Hadrian did not know crowded the stone corridor. When Alric Essendon saw the prisoners, he wavered and a sickened expression crossed his face.

“You two—go back.” Alric barked orders to his retinue. “Fetch stretchers.” He raced to his sister’s side. “Arista! Good Maribor, what have they done to you?” Over his shoulder he shouted, “Bring water! Bring bandages and more light!”

“You’re not looking too good, my friend,” Mauvin Pickering said, kneeling beside Hadrian. Mauvin was dressed in shimmering mail, his blood-spattered tabard bearing the crest of the Essendon falcon.

“They have indeed treated you poorly, sir,” Renwick agreed, looking distraught. He was also dressed in bloodstained mail, and his face and hair were thick with sweat.

“I don’t understand,” Royce said. “Last we heard, Drondil Fields was under siege and about to fall.”

“It was,” Mauvin replied. “Then the damndest thing happened. The flag of truce went up from the vanguard of the Northern Imperial Army. A rider advanced and asked permission to speak at the gates. He explained that new orders had arrived along with a personal message to King Alric. If that wasn’t strange enough, the personal guard of Empress Modina had delivered them.”

He nodded toward a palace guard who was providing water to Amilia. “His name is Gerald. Anyway, the message said that Regents Ethelred and Saldur were traitors, and they were keeping the empress a prisoner in her own palace. It also said the war against Melengar was their personal quest for power, and that their commander, Sir Breckton, was either dead by treachery or falsely imprisoned and awaiting execution.”

Hadrian started to speak, but Mauvin stopped him. “Wait… wait… it gets better. The orders commanded the acting leader
of the Northern Army to cease all aggression against Melengar, extend the empress’s sincerest apologies to King Alric, and return to Aquesta with all haste. The messenger went on to explain that Arista was scheduled for execution on Wintertide, and Empress Modina requested Alric to send whatever assistance he could spare.”

“What did Alric say?” Hadrian asked Mauvin, as the king was consumed with aiding his sister.

“Are you kidding? He figured it was a ploy. Some trick to get us to come out. We all thought so. Then Alric yells down, more as a joke than anything, ‘To prove you are telling the truth, lay down your weapons!’ We laughed real hard until the commander, a guy named Sir Tibin—who’s a decent enough fellow once you get to know him—did just that. We all stood on the parapet watching in disbelief as the Imperialists made this huge pile of spears, swords, and shields.

“That convinced Alric. He told them that not only would he send help, but he would personally lead the detachment. We rode day and night and expected to have a rough time breaching the city walls, but when we arrived, the gates were open. The people were rioting in the empress’s name and shouting for Ethelred’s and Saldur’s heads. We stormed the palace and found only token resistance—just some foot soldiers and a few seret.”

“Your sword has blood on it,” Hadrian noted, pointing to Mauvin’s blade.

“Yeah, funny that. I was determined never to draw it again, but when the fighting started, it just kind of came out by itself.”

“What about Modina?” Amilia asked. “Is she… is she…”

Gerald’s face was grave.

“What?” Amilia begged.

“There was an unfortunate incident in her bedroom this morning,” the guard said.

Tears rose in Amilia’s eyes. “Did she…”

“She killed Regent Ethelred.”

“She what?”

“She stabbed him with a piece of broken glass from her mirror. She escaped an attempt on her life and ran to the courtyard. She rallied the soldiers who were loyal to her. When we arrived, she was ordering her men about like a seasoned general. Her troops managed to open the palace gates for us. Along with the Melengarians and the Northern Army, we suppressed the remaining seret and the palace guards loyal to the regents.”

“Where is she now?” Amilia asked.

“She’s on her throne, accepting vows of allegiance from the monarchs, nobles, and knights—everyone that had come for the wedding.”

Men with stretchers appeared in the hall. Amilia turned to Sir Breckton. With tears in her eyes, she let out an awkward laugh and said, “You were right. She did save us.”

M
odina stood alone on the little hill just beyond the city. This was the first time she had been outside the palace gates in more than a year. Four men with pickaxes had worked the better part of three days, cutting through the frozen ground to make a hole deep enough for the grave. What had taken days to dig was filled in just minutes, leaving a dark mound on a field of white.

Her reunion with the world was bittersweet, because her first act was to bury a friend. The gravediggers tried to explain it was customary to wait until spring, but Modina insisted. She had to see him put to rest.

Seventeen soldiers waited at the base of the hill. Some trotted a perimeter on horseback, while others kept a watchful eye on her or the surrounding area. As she stood quietly in that bleak landscape, her robe shimmered and flapped in the wind like gossamer.

“You did this to me,” she accused the dirt mound before her.

Modina had not seen him since Dahlgren. She knew
of
him the way she knew about everything.

Saldur enjoyed the sound of his own voice, which made him an excellent tutor. The regent even talked to himself when
no one else was around. When he did not know something, he always summoned experts to the sanctity of his office, the one place he felt safe from prying ears. Most of the names and places had been meaningless at first, but with repetition, everything became clear. Modina learned of Androus Billet from Rhenydd, who had murdered King Urith, Queen Amiter, and their children. Androus succeeded where Percy Braga had failed when trying to seize control of Melengar. She learned how Monsignor Merton, though loyal to the church, was becoming a liability because he was a true believer. She heard that the regents could not decide if King Roswort of Dunmore’s biggest asset was his cowardice or his greed. She learned the names of Cornelius and Cosmos DeLur, men the regents saw as genuine threats unless properly controlled. Their influence on trade was crucial to maintaining imperial stability.

In the beginning Modina heard without listening as the words just flowed past. Over time, their constant presence filtered through the fog, settling like silt upon her mind. The day
his
name floated by was the first time she actually paid attention to what was being said.

The regents were toasting him for their success. Initially, Modina thought he was in Saldur’s study, sharing a glass of spirits with them, but eventually it became apparent they were mocking him. His efforts were instrumental to their rise, but he would not share in the rewards. They spoke of him as a mad lunatic who had served his purpose. Instead of executing him, he had been locked in the secret prison—that oubliette for refuse they wanted to forget.

He died alone in the darkness. The doctors said it was due to starvation, but Modina knew better. She was intimately familiar with the demons that visited prisoners trapped in that darkness: regret, hopelessness, and most of all, fear. She knew
how the fiends worked—entering in silence, filling a void, and growing until the soul was pushed out, until nothing remained. Like an old tree, the trunk could continue to stand while the core rotted away, but when all strength was gone, the first breeze would snap the spirit.

She knelt down and felt the gritty texture of a cold clump of dirt in her hand. Her father had loved the soil. He would break it up with his huge leathery fingers and smell it. He even tasted it. Field and farm had been his whole world, but they would not be hers.

“I know you meant well,” she said. “I know you believed. You thought you were standing up for me, protecting me, saving me. In some ways, you succeeded. You might have saved my life, but you did not save
me
. What fate might we have had if you hadn’t championed my cause? If you hadn’t become a martyr? If we stayed in Dahlgren, you could have found us a new home. The Bothwicks would have raised me as their own daughter. I would have carried wounds, but perhaps I would have known happiness again. Eventually. I could have been the wife of a farmer. I would have spun wool, pulled weeds, cooked turnips, raised children. I would have been strong for my family. I would have fought against wolves and thieves. Neighbors would say,
She got that strength from the hardships of her youth
. I could have lived a small, quiet life. But you changed all that. I’m not an innocent maid anymore. You hardened and hammered me into a new thing. I know too much. I’ve seen too much. And now I’ve killed.”

Modina paused and glanced up at the sky. There were only a few clouds on the field of blue, the kind of clear blue seen only on a crisp winter day.

“Perhaps the two paths really aren’t so different. Ethelred was just a wolf who walked like a man, and the empire is my family now.”

Placing a hand on the grave, she softly said, “I forgive you.” Then Modina stood and walked away, leaving behind the mound with the marker bearing the name Deacon Tomas.

The candles had burned down to nubs and still they were not through the list. Amilia’s eyes drooped and she fought the urge to lay her head down on the desk. She sat wrapped in a blanket with part of it made into a hood.

“Should we stop here and come back to it tomorrow?” she asked hopefully.

The empress shook her head. She was wearing the robe Mince had given her. Amilia had not seen her wear anything else since Modina had taken control of the empire. Other than on the night of the hawking feast, the empress had never donned the crown or mantle of her office. “I want to get through this last set tonight. I can’t afford to have these positions left vacant. Isn’t that right, Nimbus?”

“It would be best to settle on the remaining prefects, at least. If I may speak plainly, Your Eminence, you relieved over one-third of all office holders. If new ones are not appointed soon, the resulting void might give warlords an opportunity to exert authority and fracture the empire.”

“How many do we still have to go?” Modina asked.

Nimbus shuffled through parchments. “Ah, there are still forty-two vacant positions.”

“Too many. We have to finish this.”

“If only you hadn’t removed
so
many,” Amilia said in a tired voice.

Since taking power, Modina had worked tirelessly and demanded the same of her aides. The change in her was amazing. The once quiet, shy waif, who had sat before a window
each day, had transformed into an empress, commanding and strong. She organized meetings of state, judged the accused, appointed new officials, and even demanded that Nimbus teach her letters and history.

Amilia admired her but regretted Modina’s dedication. With so much required of her, Amilia had only a few moments each day to spend with Sir Breckton. The secretary found herself strangely nostalgic for the hours they had spent imprisoned together.

Each day the empress, Nimbus, and Amilia met in Saldur’s old office. Modina insisted on working there because it contained numerous charts, maps, and scrolls. These imperial records were meticulously organized and provided details on all aspects of the kingdom. Not being able to read, Modina had to rely on Nimbus and Amilia to sift through the documents and find answers to her questions. Nimbus was a greater help than Amilia, but still Modina insisted on her presence.

“I just wish I could remove some of the nobles as well,” Modina said. “There are several kings and dukes that are as bad as Saldur. Saldur got King Armand of Alburn his throne through the assassination of King Reinhold, and I hate that he is rewarded for such treachery. Are you certain I can’t remove him?”

Nimbus cringed. “
Technically
you can. As empress and the descendant of Novron, you are semidivine and your authority is absolute to all those who call Maribor god. However, such notions are fine in
theory
, but you must function based on
reality
. A ruler’s power comes from the support and loyalty of her nobles. Offend enough of them and not only will they not obey you, they will almost certainly raise armies against you. Unless you are prepared to govern by the strength of Maribor’s will alone, I suggest we keep the ruling nobles, if not happy, at least content.”

Nimbus shifted in his seat. “A number of Ethelred and Saldur supporters are most likely preparing for a coup. Given the current situation, however, I am certain they are puzzled how best to proceed. For over a year the regents actively promoted you as empress and a goddess—supreme and infallible. Now that you actually wield power, it will take some creative manipulation to convince others to act against you. Finding allies won’t be easy, but they have some advantages. For instance, you are inexperienced and they expect you to make mistakes, which they will hope to exploit. The key is to avoid making any.”

Modina thought for a moment and then asked, “So although I am all powerful, I have to obey the nobles?”

“No, you merely have to keep them from wanting to get rid of you. You can do this in two ways. Keep them placated by providing things they want, such as wealth, power, and prestige. Or make the idea of opposing you more distasteful than bowing to you. Personally, I suggest doing both. Feed their egos and coffers, but build your base around loyal leaders. Men like Alric of Melengar would be a good start. He’s proven himself to be trustworthy, and you’ve already won his gratitude by saving his kingdom. Bolster his position by providing income through preferential trade agreements. Grow that seed of an alienated monarchy into an economic, political, and military ally. With powerful supporters, the nobles will not be so quick to attack you.”

“But Melengar isn’t even in the empire.”

“All the better. Those inside the empire will compete for power amongst themselves. Everyone on the ladder wants to be on a higher rung. Because Alric isn’t part of that ladder, no one will feel slighted when he receives preferential status. If you were to act similarly with a noble within the empire, you will generate resentment of that favoritism. You can proclaim
aid to Melengar as
prudent foreign affairs
. By endorsing Alric, you’ll be building a supporter who won’t be easily assailable. And one who will be more grateful than those who consider it their due.”

“But won’t this be expensive? Where will I get the funds? The people are already suffering under a heavy tax,” the empress said.

“I would suggest meeting with the DeLurs. They generally operate outside
official
channels, but offering them legitimacy can provide mutual benefit. Given recent events with the Ba Ran Ghazel in Delgos, Cornelius DeLur in particular should be most receptive to a proposal of imperial protection.”

“I’ve been thinking about Cornelius DeLur quite a bit lately. Do you think I should appoint him as trade secretary?”

Nimbus smiled, started to speak, paused, and then eventually said, “I think that might be a little too much like placing a drunk in charge of a tavern, but you’re thinking along the proper lines. Perhaps a better choice might be to appoint Cornelius DeLur Prefect of Colnora. Until recently, Colnora was a merchant-run city, so recognizing this officially would go a long way toward good relations with merchants in general and the DeLurs in particular. Best of all, it won’t cost you anything.”

“I like the idea of Cornelius as prefect,” Modina said, and turned to Amilia. “Please summon him for an audience. We can present the idea and see what he says.” The empress returned her attention to Nimbus. “Is there anything else I need to be looking into at present?”

“I suggest creating sanctioned imperial representatives, trained here in Aquesta, to travel and relay instructions. They can be your eyes and ears to check up on local administrators. You might consider drawing these representatives from the monasteries. Monks are usually educated, used to living in
poverty, and will be especially devoted because of your Novronian lineage. Religious fervor can often be more powerful than wealth, which will keep your agents bribe-resistant. Oh, one other thing, be certain to avoid appointing anyone to a province who is from that area, and be sure to rotate them often. This will prevent them from becoming too familiar with those they administer.”