The Darkness that Comes Before (33 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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“Ah, yes,” Xerius said in a dismissive manner. “A most unfortunate incident. Calmemunis and Tharschilka have been inciting more than just their own men. But I assure you, the matter has been concluded.”
“What do you mean, ‘concluded’?” For the first time in his life, Conphas cared nothing what his uncle thought of his tone.
“Tomorrow,” Xerius declared with the voice of decree, “you and your grandmother will accompany me upriver to observe the transport of my latest monument. I know, Nephew, that you’ve a restless nature, that you’re a student of decisive action, but you must be patient. This isn’t Kiyuth, and we’re not the Scylvendi . . . Things are not as they appear, Conphas.”
Conphas was dumbstruck.
“This isn’t Kiyuth, and we’re not the Scylvendi.”
What was that supposed to mean?
As though the matter were utterly closed, Xerius continued: “Is this the general you speak so highly of? Martemus, is it? I’m so very pleased he’s here. I couldn’t ferry enough of your men into the city to fill the Campus, so I was forced to use my Eothic Guard and several hundred of the City Watch.”
Though stunned, Conphas replied without hesitation, “And dress them as my . . . as army regulars?”
“Of course. The ceremony is as much for them as for you, no?”
His heart thundering, Conphas knelt and kissed his uncle’s knee.
 
Harmony . . . So sweet. This was what Ikurei Xerius III thought he groped for.
Cememketri, the Grandmaster of his Imperial Saik, had assured him that the circle was the purest of geometrical forms, the one most conducive to the mending of the spirit. One must not live one’s life, he had said, in lines. But it was with circles of string that one made knots, and it was with circles of suspicion that one made intrigue. The very shape of harmony was cursed!
“How long must we wait, Xerius?” his mother asked from behind, her voice throaty with age and irritation.
The sun is hot, isn’t it, bitch-mother?
“Soon,” he said to the river.
From the prow of his great galley, Xerius stared across the brown waters of the River Phayus. Behind him sat his mother, the Empress Istriya, and his nephew, Conphas, flush from his astounding destruction of the Scylvendi tribes at Kiyuth. Ostensibly he had invited them to witness the transport of his latest monument from the basalt quarries of Osbeus downriver to Momemn. But as always there were further purposes behind any gathering of the Imperial Family. They would, he knew, scoff at his monument—his mother openly, his nephew silently. But they would not—
could not
—dismiss the announcement he would shortly make. The mere mention of the Holy War would be enough to command their respect.
For a time, anyway.
Ever since they’d left the stone quays in Momemn, his mother had been fawning over her grandson. “I burned over two hundred golden votives for you,” she was saying, “one for each day you were in the field. And I offered thirty-eight dogs to the Gilgaöli priesthood, to be slaughtered in your—”
“She even furnished them with a lion,” Xerius called over his shoulder. “The albino that Pisathulas purchased from that insufferable Kutnarmi trader, wasn’t it, Mother?”
Though he could not see her, he could feel her eyes bore into his back. “That was to be a
surprise,
Xerius,” she said with acidic sweetness. “Or did you forget?”
“I apologize, Mother. I quite—”
“I had the hide prepared,” she said to Conphas, as though Xerius had not spoken. “A suitable gift for the Lion of Kiyuth, no?” She chuckled at her own conspiratorial wit.
Xerius clenched the mahogany rail tight.
“A
lion!
” Conphas exclaimed. “And an albino, no less! Small wonder the God favoured me, Grandmother.”
“A bribe,” she replied dismissively. “I was desperate to have you back in one piece. Mad with desperation. But now you’ve told me how you defeated the brutes, I feel foolish. Trying to bribe the Gods to look after one of their own! The Empire has never seen the likes of you, my dear, sweet Conphas. Never!”
“Whatever wisdom I possess, Grandmother, I owe to you.”
Istriya nearly giggled. Flattery, especially from Conphas, had always been her favourite narcotic. “I was a rather harsh tutor, now that I recall.”
“The harshest.”
“But you were
tardy
all the time, Conphas. Waiting always brings out the worst in me. I could claw eyes out.”
Xerius gritted his teeth.
She knows I listen! She baits me
.
Conphas was laughing. “I’m afraid I discovered the pleasures of women at an atrociously young age, Grandmother. I had other tutors to attend.”
Istriya was sly—even flirtatious. The whorish crone. “Lessons drawn from the same book, I imagine.”
“It all comes to fucking, doesn’t it?”
Their laughter drowned out the whooshing chorus of the galley’s oars. Xerius stifled a scream.
“And now with the
Holy War,
my dear Conphas! You’ll be more, far more than the greatest Exalt-General in our history!”
What is she trying to do?
Istriya had always goaded him, but never had she pressed her banter so close to sedition. She knew Conphas’s victory over the Scylvendi had transformed him from a tool into a threat. Especially after the farce at the Forum the previous day. Xerius needed only to glimpse at his nephew’s face to know that Skeaös had been right. There
had
been murder in Conphas’s eyes. If not for the Holy War, Xerius would have ordered him cut down on the spot.
Istriya had been there. She knew all this, and yet she pushed further and further. Was she . . .
Was she trying to get Conphas killed?
Conphas was obviously discomfited. “My men would call that counting the dead before blood is drawn, Grandmother.”
But was he
truly
uneasy? Could it be an act? Something concocted by the two of them to throw him off their scent? He peered down the length of the galley, searching for Skeaös. He found him with Arithmeas, summoned him with a look of fury but then cursed himself. What need had he of that old fool? His mother played games. She always played games.
Ignore them.
Skeaös scuttled to his side—the man walked like a crab—but Xerius ignored him. Drawing long, even breaths, he studied the river traffic instead. With sluggish grace, riverboats eased by one another, most of them heavy with wares. He saw the carcasses of swine and cattle, urns of oil and casks of wine; he saw wheat, corn, quarried stone, and even what he decided must be a troop of dancers, all ploughing across the river’s broad back toward Momemn. It was good that he stood upon the Phayus. It was the great rope from which the vast nets of the Nansurium spread. Trade and the industry of men, all sanctioned by his image.
The gold they bear in their hands,
he thought,
bears my face.
He peered into the sky. His eyes settled upon a gull mysteriously suspended in the heart of a distant thunderhead. For a moment he thought he could feel harmony’s brush, forget the nattering of his mother and nephew behind him.
Then the galley lurched and shuddered to a halt. Xerius teetered over the prow for a moment, caught himself. He pushed himself upright, looked wildly for the galley captain among the small herd of functionaries amidships. He heard shouts muffled by the timber, then the snapping of whips. Images came to him unbidden. Of cramped and wood-dark spaces. Rotten teeth clenched in agony. Sweat and stinging pain.
“What happened?” Xerius heard his mother ask.
“Sandbar, Grandmother,” Conphas said in explanation. “Yet another delay, it would seem.” His tone was clenched in impatience—a liberty of expression he would not have dared a few months earlier, but still minor compared with the previous day’s outrage.
Cries resonated through the tiled deck. The oars made hash of the surrounding waters, but to no effect. With an expression that already begged for mercy, the captain approached and acknowledged that they’d run aground. Xerius berated the fool, all the while sensing his mother’s scrutiny. When he glanced at her, he saw eyes far too shrewd to belong to a mother watching her son. At her side, Conphas lolled on his divan, smirking as though he watched a fixed cockfight.
Unnerved by their scrutiny, Xerius waved away the captain’s plaintive explanations. “Why should the rowers reap what you’ve sown?” he cried. Disgusted by the man’s infantile blubbering, he turned his back on him, ordered his bodyguards to drag him below. The man’s subsequent howling simply fanned his anger. Why could so few men stomach the consequences of their actions?
“A judgement,” his mother said dryly, “worthy of the Latter Prophet.”
“We’ll wait here,” Xerius snapped to no one in particular.
After a moment, the whips and cries subsided. The oars fell silent. There was a rare moment of quiet on the deck. A dog’s baying echoed across the waters. Children chased one another along the south bank, ducking between peppertrees, squealing. But there was another sound.
“Can you hear them?” Conphas asked.
“Yes, I can,” Istriya replied, craning her neck to look upriver.
Xerius could also hear it: a faint chorus of shouts across the water. Squinting, he peered into the distance, where the Phayus bent and folded between dark slopes, searching for some visible sign of the barge bearing his new monument. He saw none.
“Perhaps,” Skeaös whispered in his ear, “we should await your latest glory from the galley’s aft, God-of-Men.”
He started to rebuke the Prime Counsel for interrupting him with nonsense, then hesitated. “Continue,” he muttered, studying the old man. Skeaös’s face often reminded him of a shrivelled apple dimpled by two shiny black eyes. He looked like an ancient infant.
“From here, God-of-Men, your divine memorial will be revealed in increments, allowing your mother and nephew . . .” His expression was pained.
Xerius grimaced, looked askance at his mother. “No one dares taunt the Emperor, Skeaös.”
“Of course, God-of-Men. Certainly. But if we wait aft, your obelisk will be exposed in one magnificent rush as the barge passes us.”
“I
had
considered that . . .”
“But certainly.”
Xerius turned to the Empress and the Exalt-General. “Come, Mother,” he said, “let us retire from the sun. Some shade will flatter you.”
Istriya scowled at the insult but seemed visibly relieved otherwise. The sun was high in the sky and hot for the season. She rose with stiff grace and reluctantly took her son’s proffered hand. Conphas rolled to his feet after her, followed them. Formations of perfumed slaves and functionaries scattered from their path. With Skeaös waiting at a discreet distance, the three paused at tables bedecked with delicacies. Xerius was heartened when his mother complimented his kitchen slaves. Praising his servants had always been her way of repenting earlier indiscretions—her apology. Perhaps, Xerius thought, she would be indulgent with him today.
Finally they settled in the canopied rear of the galley, lounging on Nilnameshi settees. Skeaös stood on Xerius’s right, his accustomed position. Xerius found his presence comforting: like over-strong wine, his family had to be watered down.
“And how is my half-sister?” Conphas asked him. Jnan had commenced.
“A satisfactory wife.”
“And yet her womb remains closed,” Istriya remarked.
“I have my heir,” Xerius replied casually, knowing full well that the old crone celebrated his impotence. The strong seed forces the womb. She had called him weak.
Istriya’s dark eyes flashed. “Yes . . . An heir without an inheritance.”
Such directness! Perhaps age had at last caught up with immortal Istriya. Perhaps time was the only poison she could not avoid.
“Take care, Mother.” Perhaps—and the thought filled Xerius with shrill glee—she would shortly die. Damnable old bitch.
Conphas interceded. “I think Grandmother refers to the Men of the Tusk, divine Uncle . . . I received word just this morning that they’ve raided and sacked Jarutha. We’re past riots and Shrial petitions, Uncle. We’re on the brink of open warfare.”

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