‘But?’
‘But I couldn’t let go. If I had flown I would have flown away from everything I knew. From me.’ He shook his head.
‘And what wouldn’t we give to fly away from being us right now?’ Chella flicked her goblet over and stood as the liquid spilled over the table. All across the field men of the guard lay sprawled as if in sleep, lying, some of them in their gold armour, in the muddy grass. Captain Axtis had ended on his back, half-out of his pavilion, sword in hand, eyes staring at the sky and full of rain. Out of nearly three hundred men only eleven hadn’t at least sipped the Allenhaure ale. The lichkin had found those men in the dark and played his games, first making them silent with the wet tearing of flesh.
‘Will Thantos be needing the others too?’ Kai pushed away the white arm of a camp-girl, sodden dress, hair dark with rain, face-down in the dirt. He levered himself from his chair and stepped over her to join Chella.
She nodded. ‘They’ll go to the woods and join the Dead King’s force when he arrives.’
Kai drew his cloak tight. A mist lay ankle-deep around them, rising out of nowhere as if it bled from the ground, white as milk.
‘It’s starting.’
The sense of wrongness that had scratched at her all evening, twisting likes worms beneath the skin, now crystallized into horror. When the dead return there’s a feeling of everything flowing the wrong way, as if hell itself were vomiting them out.
Axtis sat up first, before his men, before the dead whores, the boys with their serving plates and polish rags. He didn’t blink. The water ran from his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Wrong.
All around them men stood in their golden armour. The Styx water had left no mark upon them, save for the few who tumbled into the open fires of course. Styx water does its work without hurry, dulling senses, bringing sleep, paralysing the voice first, then the larger muscle groups. At the last the death it offers is an agony of tortured muscles fighting and failing. Chella had enough necromancy in her fingertips to know that they had not died easy. Their pain echoed in her.
‘I still don’t understand,’ Kai said. ‘It won’t take long before someone discovers something is wrong with them. And then all that talk of diplomacy is just noise. We’ll be fortunate to escape without being beheaded then burned. That’s what they do to our sort you know? That’s if you’re lucky. If not, it’s burning first, then behead what’s left.’
‘The Dead King has his reasons,’ Chella said.
‘All this to spread terror? It seems extravagant.’
Chella shrugged. Better Kai not know the Dead King’s reasons. She’d rather not know them herself. ‘We ride from here. In the saddle.’
‘What? Why?’ The rain fell faster, harder, just to over-score his point.
‘Well you can stay in the carriage if you want.’ Chella wiped the water from her face and spat. ‘But Thantos will be in there, and lichkin aren’t the best of travelling companions.’
42
Vyene is the greatest city on earth. I could be wrong of course. It might be that in the vastness of Ling, or beyond the Sahar at the heart of Cerana, or somewhere in the dusts of the Indus there lies a more fabulous work of men. But I doubt it. The wealth of an empire has been spent in Vyene, year upon year, century upon century, exchanged for stone and skill.
‘Incredible.’ Makin took off his helm as though it might somehow hinder his ability to absorb the glories on every side. Rike and Kent said nothing, struck dumb. Marten kept close at my side, every bit the farmer once again, as if six years of war, of leading armies to victory, had slid from him, scared away by the majesty of our surroundings.
‘Lord Holland would be a peasant here,’ Makin said.
Few of the cities I had taken in the year following my conquest of Arrow held a single building to compare with the grand structures lining our approach to the palace. Here nobles of the old empire had built their summer homes, in all shapes and sizes, from confections in rose-marble to edifices in granite that scraped the clouds, all competing to impress the emperor, his court, and each other. My great grandfather had been such a noble, Duke of Ancrath, holding the lands in the name of the empire and at the steward’s pleasure. When the steward died and the empire fell into its pieces, Grandfather made his own crown, claimed Ancrath for himself, and called himself king.
Even in Vyene though, a nervousness ran through the streets. More than the excitement of Congression. The place held a tension, a drawn breath waiting release. Bonefires burned in alleyways and distant squares, corpses given to the flame in fear that something worse might take them. The crowds that watched our procession had a restlessness to them. A guardsman on a skittish horse lost his helm and laughter went up among the locals, but it rang too shrill, edged with hysteria.
The roads to the palace, and there are four, each lie broad enough that a man couldn’t throw a spear from the gates of the residences on one side to those on the other. Our column rode at the centre, fifteen abreast and thirty deep with the carriages in the midst and the wagons to the rear. The followers and hangers-on, including Onsa’s wheel-house packed with negotiable affection, had melted away in the outer reaches of the city. Captain Devers had sent out word to the effect that no undesirables should approach the Gilden Gate. I had to grin at that. I’m sure a wheel-house full of prostitutes would carry less sin through those gates than the
