Bookworm III (10 page)

And the statue wasn’t
of
Light Spinner, it
was
Light Spinner.

She stepped forward, drawn by a compulsion she didn’t recognise, until she was touching the stone. Normally, there would have been a shimmer of magic around any transfigured object, human or animal. But the statue had only the faintest glimmerings of magic, suggesting that the spell hadn’t just petrified Light Spinner, it had locked her so firmly in place that even her thoughts had shut down completely. Perhaps it was a mercy, Elaine knew. Being an object, even for a few brief moments, could be terrifying.

Deferens caught her shoulder, his touch making her want to cringe away. “Impressed?”

Elaine pulled herself free of him. “What have you done to her?”

“Merely taken what was mine,” Deferens said. “And now ... will you swear to me?”

“No,” Elaine said.

“I could
order
you to swear to me,” Deferens leered.

“I don’t think it would work,” Elaine said. Oaths didn’t take unless they were sworn willingly, although there were plenty of ways the line between willing and unwilling could be fudged by an unscrupulous sorcerer. “And besides, as you say, your spell would leave me helpless anyway.”

Deferens gave her a puzzled look. For the first time, she thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

“And you would sooner be broken completely than swear to me?” he asked. “You have very strange priorities.”

“Go to the hells,” Elaine said.

She braced herself, expecting torture or drugs, anything that could break her will and allow the spell to do its work. Instead, Deferens merely laughed.

“I could kill you,” he said.

“I doubt it,” Elaine said. Taunting him might get her killed, but that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, not really. She knew she couldn’t hold out for long if they brought out the thumbscrews. “You wouldn’t get the knowledge in my mind if you blew me into little pieces, would you? You need to keep me alive.”

“And I can promise you humiliation after humiliation when the spell completes its work,” Deferens hissed, angrily. “Can you imagine how you could be used when I wasn’t tapping your brains?”

Elaine wondered how hard he’d had to bite back a killing spell. If half the rumours Daria had dug up, while she was laying bets on the outcome of the competition to choose the next Grand Sorcerer, were true, Deferens had never taken any cheek from anyone ... unless, of course, he’d needed them. He had a certain charm, Light Spinner had once admitted, that was surprisingly disarming. But not when he held all the cards.

“Better make sure you don’t accidentally kill me,” Elaine taunted. “Where would you be then?”

Deferens glowered down at her, then pointed a finger at the wall. “Stand there ... no,
kneel
there,” he ordered. “And watch as I consolidate my power.”

Elaine obeyed, helplessly. He was trying to rub in just how helpless she was and, she had to admit, it was working. Her body did as it was told, while her mind was under siege. The longer she stayed awake, the weaker she’d be and, eventually, she would fall. She was mildly surprised he hadn’t knocked her out, but he probably had no idea what would happen if she was forced to sleep. Very little was actually known about the long-term effects of the spell because it normally worked at lightning speed.

She turned as she reached the wall and knelt, then watched grimly as Charity rose to her feet and headed towards the door. Deferens himself sat on the Throne, drawing strength from the power shimmering through the Palace’s wards, and waited. Moments later, the first of the city councillors stepped through the door and stared at Deferens. His comrades followed him into the Throne Room, their faces slack with shock.

They never expected to deal with a real Emperor
, Elaine thought.
None of us saw this coming.

She gritted her teeth as the councillors chattered amongst themselves, then walked slowly towards the Throne and prostrated themselves before it, following protocol that had gone out of fashion when the last Emperor had died. They – or rather their predecessors – had made a deal with the Grand Sorcerers; they would continue to run the city, while respecting the Grand Sorcerer’s authority. As the Grand Sorcerers hadn’t wanted the hassle of running the Golden City, they’d agreed to the deal. But now ... who knew what an Emperor would want to do? And one so magically powerful?

“You may rise,” Deferens said. “Do you respect my right as Emperor?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Council Leader said, quickly. It would have been suicide to say anything else. “You have taken for yourself the Golden Throne. As such, we are honour-bound to recognise your lineage.”

“Then I thank you,” Deferens said. There was no hint of irony in his tone. “Your positions are confirmed, my councillors, and will remain in your families, as long as you obey. Should you not obey, your families will be banished from the Golden City and exiled to far-flung islands.”

A fate worse than death
, Elaine thought, sardonically.

She sighed, inwardly. It was, for them. The Golden City was their home – and the centre of power for the entire Empire. To leave the cramped city, confined by the mountains, would mean abandoning the power their families had built up over the generations. Even if they proved to be big fish outside the city, almost anywhere else within the Empire, they would still be small fry compared to those who remained in the Golden City. No wonder Johan’s father had spent so much money on moving into the city, after Kane had killed so many of the city’s previous residents. It was his one shot at propelling his family right into the very highest levels of power.

And it would have succeeded too,
Elaine thought,
if he’d treated Johan a little better
.

Her knees were aching by the time the last of the supplicants had entered the Throne Room, pledged his loyalty – there didn’t seem to be any women among them – and retreated back into the antechamber. She distracted herself by setting up new defences, even though she knew it was just a matter of time before she lost control – and herself.

“You can take her back to her quarters,” Deferens ordered Charity, gesturing with one hand towards Elaine. “And make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid, like trying to kill herself.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Charity said.

Elaine swore, mentally, as Charity beckoned her forward. Suicide was wrong, but the thought had crossed her mind as a last resort. How far had she fallen, she wondered, if she was praying for someone
not
to order her to preserve her own life?

“Come with me,” Charity said.

Helplessly, Elaine obeyed.

Chapter Eight

Charity had met the Head Librarian twice; once, when she’d asked her father to give her a little help with her studies and once, again, when Johan’s strange powers had emerged from wherever they’d been hiding. She had never really understood why the Grand Sorceress had given Elaine No-Kin the job, although she supposed as a Privy Councillor there must be more to her than there seemed. But the position would have ideally suited someone from one of the Great Houses ...

Now, the Head Librarian was following her like a dog following her master, shaking with the force of the internal struggle in her mind. Charity shuddered in sympathy; the oaths she’d sworn to the Emperor nagged at her mind, but at least they weren’t infesting her thoughts and warping them into helpless servitude. She still had freedom of thought, even a considerable amount of true freedom, as long as she didn’t disobey or defy the Emperor. The Head Librarian would be nothing more than a puppet in a scant few hours.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, “but resistance was futile.”

“He’s mad – worse than mad,” the Head Librarian said. Her voice sounded harsh, broken. “What were you thinking when you pledged yourself to him?”

“I was thinking that I wanted to survive,” Charity snapped back at her. Intentionally or not, Johan had robbed her of her confidence. “He would have killed me as easily as he killed the Grand Sorceress.”

“It might have been better if you had been killed,” the Head Librarian said. “He’s a monster.”

Charity nodded in bitter agreement. She’d watched Emperor Vlad – her thoughts wouldn’t allow her to call him anything else – ever since she’d sworn her oaths and she’d seen hints of the monster he was, lurking below the surface. He’d brought soldiers to the Golden City, given orders for them to clear the streets using whatever methods were necessary ... and humiliated a pair of female Inquisitors. It was madness, but he’d done it anyway. She’d been left with the uneasy thought that she’d sworn endless loyalty and obedience to a madman.

“I had no choice,” she said.

“There’s always a choice,” the Head Librarian said.

“Shut up,” Charity hissed. The Head Librarian’s mouth closed with an audible
snap
. “I don’t have to listen to your ... to your condescension!”

She cursed her father and both of her oldest brothers under her breath. Why couldn’t her father have given her proper training? By all the gods, why hadn’t he disowned Jamal after the third or fourth complaint about his behaviour and declared
her
the Prime Heir instead? She could have had months, perhaps years, to learn how to handle the family magic and the skills of being a Family Head, rather than having to improvise when the world blew up in her face. Now ... now, to all intents and purposes, House Conidian no longer existed as anything other than an adjunct to the Emperor. Her younger siblings would have no choice but to follow her lead.

It was better than having her mind slowly worn down, she told herself. But only by degree.

They reached the holding chamber and opened the door, revealing a surprisingly luxurious room. Charity sighed, recalling how some of the bad boys of High Society were placed under house arrest rather than being held in the Watchtower, then motioned for the Head Librarian to walk into the chamber. She obeyed, her muscles moving oddly as the spell gripped her mind tighter and tighter. Charity watched as she reached the centre of the room and stopped, dead. The spell would hold her there until it had completed its task ...

“You may move freely, as long as you do not leave this apartment,” Charity said, feeling another flicker of sympathy. Who would have thought that such a mousy little girl could hold out against such a spell? Or show the nerve to defy the Emperor on his throne? “What does the Emperor want with you?”

“He wants power,” the Head Librarian said. “And I can give him power.”

“But you can’t resist forever,” Charity said. The Emperor had gloated that the spell his Inquisitors had orders to use would eventually burn through the strongest mental defences, no matter how much magic the victim had to burn. “The spell will leave you a vegetable. Why not give him what he wants?”

“That’s your oaths talking,” the Head Librarian pointed out, snidely. “It isn’t enough for him to claim your obedience, Charity. He wants you to be his mindless supporter too.”

Charity felt a hot flush of anger. What did the Head Librarian, a girl of no family, know about the obligations that bound her to the Emperor? Or what she’d had to do to hold the family together, now her father and oldest brother were effectively dead? The vultures had been gathering, pecking at the corpse, when she’d gone to the Imperial Palace. There had been no choice, but to ally herself with the Emperor. The family needed a powerful protector.

“Shut up,” she snapped, again.

Charity fought hard to keep a grip on her anger. She could issue any orders she liked, she knew, and the Head Librarian would obey. The spell would see to her obedience. But she knew, too, that Johan had turned so violently against his family because they’d mistreated him, when they thought they could. There was no point in humiliating the girl facing her, not now. She would belong to the Emperor soon enough.

“Stay here,” she said. “Do not leave this room.”

She turned and marched out of the door, then banged it closed behind her. There were a handful of bolts on the door – the only thing that marked it as a prison – and she slammed them shut with every sense of satisfaction. The Head Librarian would remain bound until her defences were completely gone, whereupon she would be helpless. She would never have the ability to think for herself again.

Good
, Charity thought, vindictively.

A pair of guards appeared at the end of the corridor and she waved them forward. “Guard this door,” she ordered, when they eyed her suspiciously. They weren’t guardsmen from the Golden City, but part of the force the Emperor had brought with him from his homeland. “No one is to enter or leave without the Emperor’s permission.”

They looked surprised that she was issuing orders – in their homeland, women were never permitted to issue orders to men – but they did as they were told. Charity nodded to herself, then hurried back down the corridor, heading towards the Throne Room. A small army of enslaved workmen were already at work, taking down the portraits of various sorcerers of renown and replacing them with ancient paintings of past Emperors, all over a thousand years old and worth more than a house in the Golden City. She paused as she caught sight of one of them and smiled as she realised just how closely Emperor Vlad resembled his long-gone ancestor. Perhaps, if the paintings had been placed in a gallery and made open to the public, someone would have remarked on it a long time ago.

She hurried past the workmen and into the Throne Room, where a small line of suppliants were bowing before the Emperor. Most of them were tradesmen, responsible for binding the Empire together into a coherent entity; the remainder were magicians who ran their own businesses, rather than working directly for the Grand Sorceress or one of the Great Houses. Jamal had always sneered at them, but their father had pointed out that the businessmen often had specialities and freedoms that the Great Houses couldn’t afford to overlook. Her brother had not been impressed.

“Lady Charity,” the Emperor said. He looked down at the suppliants. “You may all wait in the antechamber.”

None of the suppliants looked very happy, but they knew better than to argue. Anyone who wanted to disagree with the Emperor only had to look at the statue of Light Spinner to change their mind, or have it changed for them by one of their companions. The Emperor was likely to be even less patient with dissent than the Grand Sorcerers, who had often considered it a wasted week if they couldn’t kill or humiliate one person personally. Even Light Spinner had had to make a few examples of idiots willing to question her in the early days of her reign.