The Last Mortal Bond (16 page)

“I understood the risks,” she said, turning to confront the other members of the council, “when I rode my horse into the city alone.”

“Evidently not,” Ziav Moss cut in. The Kreshkan touched his cheek with a fingertip as though to remind her of her wounds. The gesture was gentle, understated. From another man it might even have been deferential, but Moss was not built for deference. The man came from one of the oldest families in the empire; he was all dark, oiled hair and urbanity. His words were soft, but pillows were soft, too, and Adare had read of rulers being suffocated in their sleep with them.

“I
accepted
the risk,” she said. “After all your slander, it was necessary for the people to see me alone and unarmed, coming back to this city not as a conqueror with a hundred guardsmen at my back, but as an emperor walking among her people.”

“Looks like they didn't like what they saw.”

Adare rounded on the newest speaker, a salt-haired, sun-browned woman well into her sixth decade.

Randi Helti. Of course. The boat lady. Aside from Kegellen, Helti had the only self-made fortune in the room, and no reverence for royalty.

“The crucial thing, Captain Helti, is not the liking, but the fucking
seeing
.” Adare gestured to the ceiling high above their heads, huge windows set into it like gems, glass gold with the afternoon light. She swept a hand over the catwalks, the chairs, the grand, ridiculous map, all the way to the huge bloodwood doors through which she had entered. Those had swung shut again as silently as they had opened. “You think you can do all your work from this room?” She turned to confront the others. “You think you can sit in your impeccably crafted chairs and rule an
empire
?”

“You dare…,” Bouree sputtered, leaning forward in his seat until Moss waved him down.

“We have ruled this
republic,
” the Kreshkan said mildly, “for nearly a year now. And we will continue to do so. The only question is whether or not your … theatrics will prove useful to the task.” He frowned, as though genuinely disappointed. “I suspect not. You've been out there, scuttling all over the north, rubbing elbows with your precious people, and what has it gained you? Hmm?”

Adare stared. “What has it gained me?” Her pulse pounded in her temple. Blood was running down her face again. “What has it fucking
gained
me?”

“Do you intend to answer the question,” Moss asked, brows raised, “or would you prefer to simply repeat it with foul language added for flavor?”

“What it has gained,” Adare snarled, “is our survival. Mine. Yours. All Annur's.”

“While we all appreciate your enthusiasm, surely that is overstating the case. While the common soldier may respond to this type of hyperbole, it is not necessary here. The men and women of this council are learned and worldly. You need not rant, nor throw your hands about in this ludicrous manner, nor overstate the situation to the north.”

Adare clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “I am not overstating it,” she hissed. “The situation to the north is nothing short of desperate. Long Fist is killing people. He is cooking them. He is taking them apart piece by piece and making sculptures from those pieces. And then there's Balendin, a Kettral-trained leach. He grows more powerful every day, and he's every bit as vicious as the man he obeys.”

Most of the faces around the table had closed—tight lips, narrowed eyes, clenched jaws. They didn't like hearing the truth, and they certainly didn't like being lectured about it. Kaden was watching her intently, hands flat and still on the table before him. She couldn't read his face, but he looked as though he wanted to tell her something, to warn her, but it was too late for that. The moment for conciliation, if it had existed at all, was past.

Another emperor would have found a way to avoid this situation. Her father would never have screamed at the council, would never have shoved their faces so directly in their failures. Kaden seemed cut from the same cloth—calm, deliberative, measured. Another emperor would have seen a way to make peace with the council, but then again, there
were
no other fucking emperors. Sanlitun was dead, and Kaden was … whatever he was—cowardly, or complacent, or gelded. She wasn't doing the greatest job, but at least she was trying to
do
her 'Kent-kissing job.

“We have received the reports,” Bouree was saying. He seized a long pole from the table before him, gesturing with it toward the north of the map, toward the hundreds of small lakes obscured between the tiny pines. “You need not lecture us about your … difficulties.”

“My difficulties?” Adare spat. “
My
difficulties? If you plan to rule all Annur, if you plan to pass laws and enact policy as our treaty stipulates, you might want to start thinking about events beyond the walls of this very beautiful chamber as
your
problems, too.”

Moss raised a hand, calling for calm as though he were the only adult in a room of petulant toddlers.

“A semantic slip, young lady.”

“Your Radiance,”
she growled.

He pursed his lips, as though the very thought of the words was sour.

“If you intend to heal the breach,” she went on, “as you claim. If you intend to abide by the treaty we have both signed, then I am the Emperor, Annur's Emperor, and
your
Emperor, and you will address me properly.”

“I've always found that those most insistent on their titles,” Moss replied, “are those least deserving of them.” He shook his head, an understated performance of urbane regret.

A few seats away, Kegellen smiled. “I couldn't agree more,” she said brightly. “I suggest we all relinquish our titles, emperors and aristocrats alike. At once, if possible.” She raised a hand, fluttering it in the air. “I make the motion.”

People shifted uncomfortably. This was a group, after all, who relied on their names and titles for life and livelihood, for the privileges and prerogatives they had enjoyed from childhood, from birth. It was one thing to challenge Adare's imperial claim; another to see the foundation of their own positions suddenly vulnerable to assault.

Moss frowned. “We will, of course, adhere to the forms of the treaty. Your Radiance. But to return to the matter at hand, I believe my Channarian colleague was simply observing that all these dire tidings that you present with such … shrillness are already known to us.”

“We have read the reports,” Bouree bellowed again. “Every day.”

Adare stared at them, looking from face to face. Many were nodding. One man with a square head and a crooked nose was gesturing to a sheaf of papers spread out before him, as though the mere existence of those papers would prove his commitment to Annur. Moss had steepled his fingers before his face, watching from behind them. Kaden's blazing eyes never left Adare. She considered going toward him, for a moment, then turned the other way, circling the table slowly.

“Perhaps the reports have failed to convey the necessary gravity,” she said, managing to lower her voice for the first time. She kept walking. People twisted in their chairs as she passed behind them, trying to keep her in view.
As though they think I'm going to stab them one by one, when they're not looking,
she thought grimly. And they didn't even know about Valyn.

“Perhaps,” she went on, “the elegant phrases of your reports lack the
urgency
required by the situation.” The gashes to her face burned. The scar laid into her skin by the lightning burned. The blood covering her face scalded. “Perhaps you are confused about the nature of your nation, about the scope of your commitment. Perhaps you don't understand the price of failure.”

She was approaching Bouraa Bouree now. His face was screwed into a scowl.

“You presume too much,” he snapped. “We convene here every day, all day, in the governance of the republic.” He waved his long pole at the map below. Even that pole was a work of fine craftsmanship, rings of precious metal laid into the polished shaft. The length of wood with its inlaid gold and silver was worth a farmstead, worth what a large, hardworking family might earn in ten years. All to point out places on a map. Bouree gestured with it vaguely to the borders of the empire. “While you've been pleasuring your general up in the north, we have been
ruling
Annur.”

Adare ignored the gibe. “How can you rule Annur,” she asked quietly, “when you don't even understand it?”

“And what,” asked Ziav Moss from across the width of the table, voice languid, almost bored, “would you have us understand? Your Radiance?”

She glanced over at him, then turned back to Bouree, seized the long pole in both hands, then wrenched it from the Channarian's grasp. He shouted, tried to rise to his feet, to take it back, but she was already twisting away, swinging it in a broad, vicious arc overhead.

“This.”

The wood connected with one of the huge globes overhead, shattering the glass. She didn't wince as the shards crashed down around her. A few more slices to her face would hardly make anything worse. Lamp oil spilled over the catwalk, acrid and glistening, slicking the planks and pouring over onto the land below. She took two steps forward and shattered another globe.

“This,” she said again. “And this…”
Smash
. “And this…”
Smash, smash, smash.

People were on their feet, shouting their objections, waving their hands or wringing them pointlessly. Probably no different from what they did when their precious reports rolled in. A scarred, bearded man tried to take the pole from her. Adare broke it over his head, knocking him half over the railing. She continued swinging the jagged end, breaking the glass lamps over and over and over until she came to one, finally, that was lit.

“What I want you to understand…” She was screaming now. She didn't care. “What I want you to fucking understand, you 'Kent-kissing assholes, is that this…” She stabbed the shattered pole at the perfect landscape laid out below. You almost couldn't even see the oil slicking the rivers, dousing the trees. “This is not Annur. It has nothing to do with what is going on out there. Nothing to do with what is happening in your republic right fucking now.”

“All right.” Kaden's voice. Still calm, but carrying. “All right, Adare.”

She extended the pole out toward the lamp, almost gently this time. It took only a moment for the oil-soaked wood to catch. She held it before her like a torch, watching the fire twist, writhe.

“No,” she said, turning to face her brother, speaking more quietly now, channeling his calm. “It is not all right. That is what I'm trying to tell you.”

She threw the burning brand over the catwalk railing.

There was a great whoosh of wind, like the last, terrible breath of the earth, then the flame.

Everywhere, the flame.

 

10

A full night, and a day, and part of another night had passed by the time Gwenna finally hauled herself out of the surf onto the slick stones. When she tried to stand, her legs wobbled beneath her, dropping her back into lapping waves where she sat for a moment before reaching out to grab Talal's wrist, dragging him up onto the rock.

“That was … harder than I expected,” the leach groaned, sinking to his knees.

Gwenna could only nod.

Hook and Qarsh had crept above the horizon sometime around noon. Gwenna's Wing, however, slowed by the barrels of supplies and their own weariness, didn't make land until almost midnight. Gwenna had inwardly debated going for Qarsh, but Hook was closer, and besides, they needed a little time to get their feet back under them before going toe-to-toe with whoever was flying the birds. The west coast of Hook provided as safe a landing place as any, and so she'd aimed for a miserable little stretch of rocky shingle wedged between high cliffs. If she remembered the spot correctly, no one was likely to be there in the middle of the night.

“We need a perimeter,” Annick said.

The sniper shook her head to clear the water from her short hair, then stood unsteadily, managed half a dozen steps, then collapsed onto the stones. It was a good reminder that, despite appearances, Annick wasn't invincible. She needed food and rest just the same as anyone else—she just refused to admit it.

“Forget the perimeter,” Gwenna said.

“We're vulnerable without a proper perimeter.”

Gwenna snorted, then lay back on the uneven rocks. “You can't even stand, Annick. None of us can. Let's just concentrate on getting the barrels up the beach while not drowning. It would be a shame to swim all this way just to pass out in the surf.”

Overhead, the clouds had finally cleared. Gwenna could pick out constellations—the Jade Peaks, the Smith, the Serpent—stars so bright they might have been on fire. She shouldn't have been glad for the starlight. The Kettral worshipped Hull for a reason—his dark cloak covered their approaches and retreats—but after two nights swimming, floating between the bottomless dark of the ocean and the endless overturned hull of the cloudy sky above, it was a relief to lie on the hard rocks, to look up at the hard stars.

The water lapping around her legs was warm enough that she could have fallen asleep right there, halfway between the land and the sea. There was, however, that whole drowning thing to worry about, and Annick was already trying to drag the barrels up out of the surf by herself. Each one weighed almost as much as the sniper, and she was struggling, rope over her shoulder, straining forward as though leaning into the wind. Gwenna groaned, hauled herself to her feet, staggered over to the barrel, put her shoulder to the wood, and shoved. The small stones shifted beneath her feet, but she refused to stop until the thing was clear of the waves, up the shingle, then tucked beneath the overhanging limestone cliffs. The second barrel was even heavier, but the work put a little life back into Gwenna's legs, and by the time they had all the gear stowed beneath the cliff, she was starting to think she might actually survive the night after all.