‘You can feel it, can you not, my lords? It doesn’t take the taint that the Gilden Gate keeps out for you to sense what approaches. It has festered in your kingdoms. The dead rising, the old laws being undone, magics spilling and spreading like contagion. Certainty has left us: the days smell of wrong.
‘Do this now. Do it as one. For the man upon this throne will have to face what comes. And if there is no emperor there will be no one to stand against the tide. And tell me, in your heart of hearts, do you truly want to be that man?’
‘Melodrama! How can you listen to this?’ Czar Moljon, perhaps emboldened by his pain. ‘Besides, no vote will be cast for two days yet.’
‘Taproot.’ I waved him forward.
‘The Congression must vote on its final day in a private ballot, but any candidate may force an early and open vote at any time, on the understanding that failure to win such a vote disbars them from future office.’ Taproot’s hands made as to close a weighty tome, though he spoke from memory.
‘Vote!’ I said and the lights came up.
‘The vote of Morrow for my grandson.’ My grandfather’s voice rang out clear.
‘And the holdings of Alba.’ My uncle beside him.
The women at the Gilden Gate drew away, a hurried motion.
‘I stand with Jorg of Renar.’ Ibn Fayed raised his fist and the four Moorish warriors beside him followed his motion.
‘Wennith for Jorg.’ Miana’s father.
‘And the north!’ Sindri, somewhere behind me. ‘Maladon, Charland, Hagenfast.’
‘We stand with the burned king.’ White-haired twins, jarls from the ice-wastes in black furs and steel.
Gilden Guard appeared at the gate, a crowd of them. They advanced, and as each man passed through he collapsed, boneless. The clatter made the Hundred turn.
Perhaps half a dozen guards lay motionless on our side of the gate having made it no more than a yard or so within. Scores more stood almost as still, filling the antechamber beyond.
We all felt him approach. How could you not?
‘Conaught for Jorg.’
‘Kennick for Jorg.’
My advisors cast their allotted votes, from Arrow to Orlanth. Others followed, a sense of urgency on them now, as if we each heard his footsteps beneath the announcing.
And there he stood, framed in the Gilden Gate, a creature that wore Kai Summerson’s skin and bones. I hoped Katherine had run and run fast.
‘Hello.’ He smiled. Both the word and the smile unnatural things, dragged from somewhere a man would never want to look.
The Dead King approached the Gilden Gate, hands raised, palms out. It seemed he encountered a sheet of glass, for he stopped, fingers flat against the obstruction. He craned Kai’s neck to one side, peering at us all as though we were rats in a trap.
‘A clever gate,’ he said. ‘But it’s only made of wood.’
He stepped back and his dead guards approached with poleaxes to destroy the frame of the gate within the arch.
‘Red March for Jorg.’ A stout grey woman bearing the vote for the Queen of Red’s hereditary seat.
‘The Thurtans for Jorg.’ The man buried in a horsehair robe, an iron crown on his brow.
And more, and still more.
‘How do we stand, Taproot?’ I asked.
‘Thirty-seven out of the forty required.’
Pieces of the Gilden Gate fell splintered to the ground. The Dead King’s presence reached in and men fell to their knees in despair. Even now more than half the votes held back, bound by years of prejudice and wrangling, Congression was a marketplace, to actually put an emperor on the throne, to end their own supremacy in those hundred kingdoms … many would rather die. But there are good deaths and there are bad deaths. The Dead King offered only the worse kind.
‘Attar for Jorg.’
‘Conquence for Jorg.’ Hemmet’s brother, giving away the Lord Commander’s supremacy in Vyene.
The remains of the gate fell in.
‘Scorron for Jorg.’ A stern old man, watching me with dislike.
I returned to the throne.
‘Men of empire does Congression find me worthy?’
The ‘aye’ that rang around the hall held more of desperation than enthusiasm, but it was sufficient. I sat emperor in Vyene, Lord of the Hundred – the Broken Empire remade.
Taproot came to my side, bowing close as the Dead King entered through the Gilden Arch, his troops behind him.
‘Well done,’ I said to Taproot. ‘I didn’t think we were anywhere near thirty-seven when I asked.’
‘Numbers never lie, my emperor.’ Taproot shook his head. ‘Only men.’
The Hundred fell back before the Dead King, no man prepared to hold his ground.
‘It does seem to have been a hollow victory, my emperor. Was it so important that you be confirmed to the throne before we all die?’
‘We’ll find out, shall we?’ I stood once more, glad to be out of that seat. ‘I don’t suppose you can seal the arch, Fexler?’
No response, just the continued flow of dead men into the throne room. The archway had always had the look of a later addition, something cut by masons with more poetry in their fingers.
The Dead King approached the dais, somehow a dark figure despite the sky-blue of Summerson’s cloak. Behind him a golden wedge of the emperor’s guard. My guard – Chella in their midst. And I stood my ground, upon the dais, before the throne, with the Hundred aligned behind me in their own wedge. Gorgoth joined me on the dais at my left shoulder, Makin at my right, Kent behind him, Marten behind Gorgoth, not a weapon between them. Sindri mounted the first step, Uncle Robert taking the same place on the far side. The guard who had watched over our Congression, a dozen men in total, stood with the Hundred, all save one who’d contrived to break his neck in the confusion and donate his sword to Rike.
I spared a glance for the men at my shoulders. I’d called
