A wave crashed through the Andiamine Heights, swirling into the corridors, rising ever higher, foaming blood. It battered down doors. It threw itself howling into braced mobs of Eothic Guardsmen. It clutched welling wounds, grunting and crying out. It slumped dying in the corners of raucous rooms.
Slipping through hollow walls, the young Prince-Imperial tracked its grim progress. He watched men hacking and grappling, murdering in the name of symbol and colour. He saw flames leap from ornament to ornament. He watched astounded slaves beaten-and, in one instance, raped. And it seemed a miracle that he could be alone while witnessing such heroism and atrocity.
Never had the end of the world been so much fun.
He knew full well what he witnessed-a coup, nearly flawless in its execution. The fall of the Andiamine Heights. He knew that his Uncle would rule the Empire ere the day was done and that his mother would either be a captive or a fugitive…
If he did not think of the unthinkable consequence-that she would be executed — it was because he knew he was responsible, and nothing he authored could lead to anything so disastrous.
He had made this happen-there was a clenching glee to this thought, an elation that at times barked as a laugh from his lungs, such was its intensity. And it seemed the Palace itself became his model, the replica he had decided to break and burn. Uncle Holy, for all his danger, was but one more tool…
He was the God here. The Four-Horned Brother.
Wires of smoke coiled beneath the vaults, hazed the gilded corridors. Slaves and costumed functionaries fled. Armoured men rallied, charged, and grappled, as colourful as new toys: the gold on white surcoats of the Shrial Knights, the crimson of the Eothic Guard, the gold on green of the Pillarians. He watched a company of these latter defend the antechambers to the Audience Hall. Time and again they broke the Knights of the Tusk who assailed them, killing so many they began using their bodies as improvised barricades. Only when the Inchausti, the bodyguard of the Holy Shriah himself, assaulted them were the fanatics finally overcome.
Their willingness to die left Kelmomas breathless. For him, he realized. They sacrificed themselves for him and his family…
The fools.
He glimpsed or watched a dozen such melees moving down the Heights, isolated pockets of violence, the Palace's defenders always outnumbered, always fighting to the desperate last. He listened to the curses and catcalls they traded, the Shrial Knights beseeching their foes to surrender, to yield the 'Mad Whore,' the Pillarians and guardsmen promising doom and damnation for their foe's treachery.
Exploring the Palace's lower tracts, below the rising tide of battle, he saw rooms and corridors strewn with dead, and he witnessed the savagery that so often leaps into the void of power overthrown. He watched one of his mother's Apparati, an Ainoni named Minachasis, rape and strangle a slave-girl-assuming the crime would be attributed to the invaders, the astonished boy supposed.
And then there were the looters, Shrial Knights-pairs usually-who found themselves happily separated from their companies, ranging halls they believed already cleared. Kelmomas found one solitary fool rummaging through a room in the Apparatory, rending the mattress, rifling the wardrobe, hacking open a small chest and kicking the baubles he found in disgust.
The room was windowless, so the boy peered through a ventilation grill tucked high in a corner. He watched with fascination, realizing that he witnessed avarice in its purest, most impatient form. It almost seemed a mummer's act, as if a starving ape had been dressed in Shrial regalia, then sent scavenging for the amusement of unseen patrons.
Even before he realized his intent, Kelmomas began snuffling audibly-weeping the way a frightened little boy might. The Knight of the Tusk fairly jumped clear out of his hauberk and surcoat, such was his surprise. He whirled from side to side. Several heartbeats passed before he mastered his alarm and listened-before he realized it was a child that he heard-someone harmless. A leering smile cracked his beard.
'Shush,' he drawled, scanning the high corners, for he had realized the sound came from above. The Prince- Imperial continued weeping, making the sounds of a derelict child. His face ached for the manic ferocity of his grin.
The sounds hooked the man's gaze. He kicked a chair to the corner. Mounted it.
'Moh-moh-mommeeee!' the boy sobbed, hitching his voice into a high whine.
The man's face loomed before the iron fretting, darkened by its own shadow. His breath reeked of cheap liquor…
The crawlspace was so cramped that Kelmomas bungled his strike, driving his skewer through the man's pupil rather than his tear duct. Strange sensation that-like popping the skin of a grape. The man's face clenched about the intrusion, a fist without fingers. He toppled, fell flat on his back, where he jerked in a strange parody of a fool's caper.
Like a beetle flicked onto his back.
Look at him! the secret voice chortled.
'Yes!' Kelmomas cackled. He even clapped his hands, such was his raw delight.
Afterward, when night fell and silence hardened the acrid air, he toured the labyrinth of small battlefields, taking care lest he track bloody footprints across the expansive floors. He had thought he would find glory wandering among the dead, but all he witnessed were its dregs. Nothing remained of the desperation, the shouts and cries of mortal struggle. There was no distinguishing the heroic from the craven. The dead were dead, utterly helpless and invulnerable. The more he counted them, the more they seemed to laugh.
Eventually he stood marooned, silence pricking his ears.
'Mommy?' he finally dared call. The dead did not so much as twitch.
At long last his face-cracking grin faded…
And a weeper's grimace rose to take its place.
There had been a heartbeat, upon awakening, when nothing seemed amiss, where she need only blink and stretch and groan her morning groan to summon her body-slaves and their soothing ministrations. A heartbeat…
But horror, true horror, dwells in the body as much as the soul. She needed only to raise her arms to recall the madness of the previous day. The pinioned breath. The curious mismatch between motion and effort, as if her sinews had become sand, her bones lead. The seashell roar.
Lying prostrate across a narrow cot, the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas plummeted and plummeted, clutching at thoughts too sharp with fingers too cold. Fumbling with knives…
The palace lost.
Her husband betrayed.
Kelmomas…
Sweet little Kelmomas!
She tried curling into a ball, tried weeping, but tears and sobs seemed things too heavy to be moved, so frail had her innards become. A crazed, floating restlessness inhabited her instead, where the most she could do was throw her limbs, flop them this way and that, like things, dead things, continually in the way of themselves. But even this effort defeated her, so she lay motionless, thrashed within, as if she were a greased worm, writhing against appendages too slippery to hold.
'Please…' a girlish voice whispered. 'Your Glory…'
Esmenet opened her eyes, blinking. Even though she had yet to weep, she could fell the itch of swollen lids.
Naree knelt next to the cot, her large eyes round with fear, her luxurious hair hanging in sheets about her plump cheeks. The far window shone white over her shoulder, gleamed across the yellow-painted walls. 'I n-need you to stay h-here,' the girl said, tears spilling down her cheeks. She was terrified, Esmenet realized-as she should be. Imhailas had delivered a burden she could not bear. 'Just-just stay here, yes? Keep your face… your face to the wall.'
Without a word the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas turned from the girl, toward the cracked paint and plaster. What else was there to do?
Watches passed, and she did not move, not until the need to make water overpowered her. Only her listening roamed…
