kind of panicked regret joined the terrors flushing through her. Was he deciding where to cast his lots? Would he abandon her? Betray her? Curses spooled through her thoughts. Her foolishness. Fate. The ability of men to so easily slip the leash of feminine comprehension.
'Sweet Seju!' she heard herself cry. ' Kelmomas! My boy, Imhailas!'
Suddenly a different horn cawed high above the roaring in her ears, one that she knew from innumerable drills-knew so well that it almost seemed a word shouted across the world. Rally! Guardsmen, Rally!
Then Imhailas was kneeling on the stone before her. 'Your Glory!' he said, his voice cast low. 'The Imperial Precincts are under attack. What would you have your slave do?'
And at last, reason was returned to her. To act in ignorance was to flail as though falling. Knowledge. They needed to discover what Maithanet was doing and to pray the palace could resist him.
'Keep his Empress safe,' she said.
Anasurimbor Kelmomas would never quite understand how he knew. Funny, the way the senses range places the soul cannot follow.
He was playing in his room- pretending to play would be more accurate, since he was far more lost in his plots and fancies than in the crude toys he was supposed to be amused by-when something simply called him out to his balcony onto the Sacral Enclosure…
Where it seemed he could smell whatever it was. His nurse called out after him. He ignored her. He peered about, saw the guardsmen milling as they always milled, the slaves trotting to and fro…
Everything and everyone in their place.
Something bigger had been thrown out of joint, he realized. He turned to gaze down the line of balconies to his right, saw his older sister, Theliopa, wearing a crazed gown with coins hanging heavy from every hem, standing like a bird leaning into the breeze, her senses pricked to the same something he could neither hear nor see.
The sycamores loomed before and above them, each leaf a little whistling kite, forming mops that dipped and murmured in the sunlight. Nothing… He could hear nothing.
Of all his siblings, only Theliopa commanded any fondness in his heart. Kelmomas had never bothered to ponder why this might be. She ignored him for the most part and typically spoke to him only on Mother's behalf. He certainly feared her the least. And despite the time she spent with Mother, he envied her not at all.
She had never seemed quite real, his sister.
Kelmomas gazed at her chipped-porcelain profile, debating whether he should call out to her. He had opened his ears so wide that her gown fairly crashed with sound when she whirled to face him.
'Run-run,' she said without any alarm whatsoever. 'Find some-some place to hide.'
He did not move. He rarely took anything Thelli said seriously, such was his fondness for her. Then he heard it, the first faint shouts breaching the low roar of the sycamores.
The ring and clatter of arms…
'What happens?' he cried, but she had already vanished.
Uncle Holy, the secret voice whispered as he stood witless. He has returned.
Shrial horns continued signalling one another, but, ominously, they heard no more calls from the Eothic Guard aside from the first, single cry. The city seemed deceptively normal, apart from the roofs, which had become packed with onlookers. Traffic filed through the alleys and streets with greater haste, certainly. Momemnites milled here and there, exchanging fears and guesses between eastward glances. But no one panicked-at least not yet. If anything, the city waited, as if it were nothing more than a vast cart, sitting idle while the yoke was bound to a new mule.
For the first time, and with more than a little terror, Esmenet understood the slipperiness of power, the ease with which substitutions could be made, so long as the structure remained intact. When people kissed your knee, it was so easy to think you were the principle that moved them and not the position you happened to occupy. But glancing from face to face-some aged, some poxed, some tender-she realized that she could, if she wished, throw aside her veil, that she had no need whatsoever to disguise herself, simply because she, Esmenet, the Sumni harlot who had lived a life crazed with tumult and detail, literally did not exist for them.
What did it matter, the person hidden behind the palanquin's screens, so long as the bearers were fed?
There was doom in these thoughts, so she shied from them.
The crowds grew, as did the agitation and turmoil. The closer they came to the palace, the more complicated their passage became. Most people fought their way eastward, frantic to escape whatever was happening behind them. Others, the curious and those who, like Esmenet, had kin in the vicinity of the palace, battled their way eastward.
Twice Imhailas stopped to ask aimless Columnaries what happened, and twice he was rebuffed.
No one knew.
Even still, hope wormed ever higher into her throat as they raced, dodged, and shoved. She found herself thinking of her Pillarian and Eothic Guardsmen, how competent, how numerous, and how loyal they seemed. For years she had dwelt among them, thoughtlessly demanding the security they provided but never really appreciating them-until now. They were handpicked, chosen from across the Middle-North for their prowess and fanaticism. They had spent the greater portion of their lives preparing for occasions such as this, she reminded herself. If anything, they lived for just such an eventuality.
They would defend the Imperial Precincts, secure the palace. They would keep her children safe!
Breathless, she imagined them bristling along the walls, arrayed about the gates, glorious in their crimson- and-gold regalia. She saw old Vem-Mithriti standing high upon some parapet, his stooped shoulders pulled back with outrage and indignation, raining down sorcerous destruction. She saw old Ngarau waddling in walrus-armed panic, barking out commands. And her boy-her beautiful boy! — frightened, yet too young not to be exhilarated, not to think this some kind of glorious game.
Yes! The Gods would not heap this calamity upon her. She had paid their bloodthirsty wages!
The World would rally…
But the smoke climbed ever higher as they raced through the ever more raucous streets, until she felt she stared up into a tree for craning her neck. The faces of those fleeing became ever more sealed, more intent. The roaring-shouts from the crowded rooftops, from the seething streets-seemed to grow louder and louder.
'The Palace burns!' one old crone cried immediately next to her. 'The Empress-Whore is dead! Dead! '
And in the crash of hope into dismay, she remembered: the Gods hunted her and her children.
The White-Luck had turned against them.
At last they pressed their way free of the slotted streets onto the Processional with its broad views.
Were it not for Imhailas and his strength, the mobs would have defeated her, prevented her from seeing the catastrophe with her own eyes. He pulled her by the wrists, cursing and shoving, and she followed with the pendulum limbs of a doll. Then suddenly they were clear, panting, among the crowd's forward ranks.
A cohort of unmounted Shrial Knights guarded the bridges crossing the Rat Canal-as much to police the mob, it seemed, as to ward against any attempt to retake the Imperial Precincts. The fortifications rising beyond were deserted. She glimpsed pockets of battle here and there across the climbing jumble of structure that composed the Andiamine Heights: distant figures vying, their swords catching the sun. Smoke poured in liquid ribbons from the Allosium Forum. Three other plumes climbed from places unseen beyond the palace.
Imhailas need not say anything. The battle was over. The New Empire had been overthrown in the space of an afternoon.
Planning, she realized. An assault this effective required meticulous planning…
Time.
The Empress of the Three Seas stood breathless, an errant hand held to her veil, gazing at the loss of everything she had known for the past twenty years. The theft of her power. The destruction of her home. The captivity of her children. The overturning of her world.
Fool…
A thought like a cold draft in a crypt.
Such a fool!
Vying against Anasurimbor Maithanet. Crossing swords with a Dunyain-who knew the folly of this better than she?
