Taproot nodded. He started to go but I caught his wrist. ‘Oh and Doctor, there may be a rumour circulating to the effect that the Pope has been killed. Be sure to say I had nothing to do with it. And if there isn’t such a rumour – start one.’
Taproot raised both brows at that, but nodded again and went on his way.
‘Jorg!’ Lord Commander Hemmet surged through the Hundred as if they were sheep and he the shepherd. ‘Jorg Ancrath!’ Behind him the Custodian hurried in his wake, lips scarred and pressed tight. The story had it that he had emerged tongue-less from his centuries’ sleep. My guess is that when the Lord Commander finally unpicked the tangle of old-speech he found himself not liking what the Custodian had to say.
‘Lord Commander,’ I said. He had a face like thunder, suppressed energies sparking off him.
‘Jorg!’ He clasped both hands to my shoulders. Once upon a time he would have got a face full of my forehead for such a move, but life at court had taken that edge off. ‘Jorg!’ he repeated my name again as if somehow not believing it, and drew me close, so our bowed heads all but met, voice lowered. ‘You killed the Pope? You really did it?’
‘I damn well hope so,’ I said. ‘If she lived through that she’s made of sterner stuff than I am.’
A gale of laughter broke from him, drawing stares all across the hall. Then forcing himself to whisper, ‘You really did it? You really did it! Damn me. Damn me but that took some stones.’
I shrugged. ‘Killing old women is easy. But if I don’t walk out of Congression as emperor then I may only live a short while in which to regret the decision. There were, however, no witnesses other than my people and the Gilden Guard, and these are dangerous times. Even a Pope may meet a terrible end on the road these days.’ When you need something covered up in Vyene it’s good to have the Lord Commander’s favour.
Hemmet grinned, a fierce thing. ‘Yes.’ Then a frown. ‘More dangerous than ever I had thought. The dead are at our gates. Through them, even.’ He let me go. ‘It’s not a matter to trouble Congression though. Their numbers are too few to reach the palace. We’ll be riding them down within the hour.’
And with that he was gone, the Custodian trailing after him like a whipped cur.
49
Chella’s Story
The towns and villages along the Danoob grew close together as Chella’s column approached Vyene. Soon they would join into one unbroken sprawl, washing up against the walls of the imperial city.
‘Stop!’
It irked that she had to shout her commands but the necromancy still festering in her had retreated too far for the dead to respond directly to her desire.
The cavalry came to an untidy halt. The horses didn’t take well to dead riders, even if they were the same riders they had carried on the previous night and for weeks before that. Some had refused, screaming and bucking when their dead owners tried to reclaim them. Chella had thought to cut their throats, but Kai convinced her to turn the animals free and send the spare riders back to join the Dead King’s advance.
‘Why have we stopped?’ Kai leaned in toward her, guiding his horse with both knees.
‘I need to ask Thantos a question,’ she said.
There’s a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It’s not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey. Chella looked up from her depths in sudden epiphany. Such moments had punctuated her life, her half-life, drawn out over a hundred years and more. Not once had they given her more than brief pause. Not once had she stepped back.
‘Come,’ she told him, a touch of tenderness in her voice. It should have been enough to set him running.
They went together. Kai not wanting to, but pushing down his fear.
Chella set her hand to the carriage door. The metal handle made her skin dry, made it old. She pulled it open.
‘Now?’ she asked, speaking into the empty horror of the carriage.
And by way of answer a grey contagion flowed out. Kai screamed as it wrapped him. For an instant Chella glimpsed the lichkin, its slim bones insinuating themselves into Kai’s flesh, through clothing, past armour. It took a while. Too long. Ages. Kai’s choking screams drowned out all other sounds, his flesh writhing to accommodate its new occupant, until finally his jaw snapped shut and left her ears ringing.
Thantos turned Kai’s head to look at Chella, bones grating. He didn’t speak. The lichkin stood beyond words. Nothing that interested them could fit within such mean packages.
‘He’ll last. He’s strong,’ Chella said.
Thantos climbed back into the carriage. Even drugged, the team drawing the carriage were skittish. Two had died and been replaced. There was no possibility that a horse would bear him to the palace, not even now he was clothed in flesh.
‘Can you hear me in there, Kai?’ Something in the eyes said he might be listening now that his screams were silent screams. ‘Did you never wonder that we came with five votes but only two delegates? Could not the Dead King spare three more necromancers, or cleaner men bound to his cause? We came in a pair. One host, and one to guard the host, ready to move against him if he should anticipate his fate.’ Secrets are best kept behind a single pair of lips.
Thantos reached out and closed the door, an awkward motion within his stolen flesh.
‘But you never did anticipate.’ Chella spoke the
