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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

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BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before

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Bowing slightly at the waist and holding out his hand for a soldier’s shake, Conphas said, “In the name of Ikurei Xerius III, the Emperor of Nansur, I welcome you, Prince Nersei Proyas, to our shores, and to the Holy War.”

Your shores . . . Would that it were your Holy War as well.

Proyas neither bowed nor took the proffered hand.

Rather than displaying shock or insult, Conphas’s eyes became at once ironic and appraising.

“I fear,” he continued easily, “that recent events have made it difficult for us to trust each other.”

“Where is Gotian?” Proyas asked.

“The Grandmaster of the Shrial Knights awaits you on the escarpment. He does not like sand in his boots.”

“And you?”

“I was wise enough to wear sandals.”

There was laughter at this—enough to make Proyas grind his teeth.

When Proyas said nothing, Conphas continued: “Calmemunis, I understand, was your man. It isn’t surprising that you should seek to blame others rather than your own. But let me assure you, the Palatine of Kanampurea perished of his own folly.”

“Of that, Exalt-General, I have no doubt.”

“Then you will accept the Emperor’s invitation to join him on the Andiamine Heights?”

“To speak of his Indenture, no doubt.”

“Among other matters.”

“I would speak with Gotian first.”

“So be it, my Prince. But perhaps I might save you some wasted breath and tell you what the Grandmaster will say. Gotian will tell you that the Most Holy Shriah holds
your
man, Calmemunis, solely responsible for the disaster on the Plains of Mengedda. And he’ll tell you that the Shriah has been deeply moved by this disaster, and that he now seriously ponders the Emperor’s single, and eminently justified, demand. And it is, I assure you,
justified
. On the ancestor lists of every family of means in the Empire, you’ll find the names of dozens who have died warring for the very lands that the Holy War would reconquer.”

“That may be, Ikurei, but it is we who lay down our lives this time.”

“The Emperor understands and appreciates this, which is why he has offered to grant
title
to the lost provinces—under the auspices of the Empire, of course.”

“It is not enough.”

“No, I suppose it’s never enough, is it? I admit, my Prince, that we find ourselves in a most curious predicament. Unlike you, the House Ikurei is not known for its piety, and now that we’re at last defending a just cause, we find ourselves impugned for our past deeds. But the scandal of the arguer has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of his arguments. Is this not what Ajencis himself tells us? I urge you, Prince, to see past our flaws and scrutinize our demand in the sweet light of reason.”

“And if reason tells me otherwise?”

“Why then you have the example of Calmemunis to live by, don’t you? As much as it might pain you to admit, the Holy War
needs
us.”

Once again, Proyas made no reply.

Conphas continued with a heavy-lidded smile: “So you see, Nersei Proyas, both reason and circumstance are on our side.”

When Proyas still refused to reply, the Exalt-General bowed, then turned with casual disdain. Followed by his shimmering retinue, he receded across the beach. The breakers clamoured with renewed fury, and the wind whipped a fine spray across Proyas and his men. It was chill.

Proyas did his best to conceal his shaking hands. In the battle
for
the Holy War, a skirmish had just been fought, and Ikurei Conphas had bested him before his own—with ease, no less! All his troubles so far, Proyas knew, would be but gnats compared with the Exalt-General and his thrice-damned uncle.

“Come, Xinemus,” he said absently, “we must ensure the fleet disembarks in good order.”

“There’s one other thing, my Prince . . . Something I forgot to mention.”

Proyas sighed deeply, was troubled by the audible tremor that passed through it. “What is it now, Zin?”

“Drusas Achamian is here.”

Achamian sat alone by the fire, waiting for Xinemus’s return. Save for a handful of slaves and passing Men of the Tusk, the camp about him was abandoned. The Marshal’s men were still on the beaches, Achamian knew, helping their Prince and their kinsmen disembark. The sense of surrounding canvas hollows troubled him. Dark and empty tents. Cold firepits.

This was what it would be like, he realized, if the Marshal and his men were destroyed on the battlefield. Abandoned belongings. Places where words and looks had once warmed the air. Absence.

Achamian shuddered.

The first few days after joining Xinemus and the Holy War, Achamian had busied himself with matters concerning the Scarlet Spires. He placed a series of Wards about his tent, discreetly, so as not to offend Inrithi sensibilities. He found a local man to show him the way to the villa where the Scarlet Schoolmen were sequestered. He made maps, lists of names. He even hired three adolescent brothers, the children of a non-hereditary Shigeki slave owned by a Tydonni thane, to watch the track leading to the villa to report on significant comings and goings. There was little else for him to do. His single attempt to ingratiate himself with the local magnate the Spires had contracted to provision them had been a disaster. When Achamian persisted, the man had literally tried to stab him with a spoon—not out of any sense of loyalty to the Spires, but out of terror.

The Nansur, it seemed, were learning quickly: for the Scarlet Schoolmen, any cause for suspicion, be it a bead of sweat or familiarity with a stranger, was tantamount to betrayal. And no one betrayed the Scarlet Spires.

But all these tasks were little more than routine. The entire time, Achamian would think,
After this, Inrau. I’ll tend to you after this . . .

Then “after” came. There was no one to question. No one to watch. No one, save Maithanet, to even suspect.

There was nothing to do but wait.

Of course, according to the reports he sent his Mandate handlers in Atyersus, he was aggressively pursuing this hint or that innuendo. But that was simply part of the pantomime all of them, even zealots like Nautzera, played. They were like starving men dining on grass. When one starved, why not cultivate the illusion of digestion?

But this time the illusion sickened rather than soothed. The reason seemed obvious enough: Inrau. By falling into the hole that was the Consult, Inrau had made it too deep to be papered over.

So Achamian began hunting for ways to deaden his heart or at the very least to crowd some of the recriminations from his thoughts.
When Proyas comes,
he would tell his dead student.
I’ll tend to you when Proyas comes
.

He took to heavy drink: unwatered wine mostly; some anpoi when Xinemus was in a particularly good mood; and
yursa,
a dreadful liquor the Galeoth made from rotten potatoes. He smoked poppy oil and hashish, but he abandoned the former after the boundary between the trances and the Dreams collapsed.

He began rereading the few classics Xinemus had brought with him. He laughed over Ajencis’s Third and Fourth
Analytics,
realizing for the first time the subtlety of the philosopher’s sense of humour. He frowned at the lyrics of Protathis, finding them overwrought even though they had seemed to speak his soul’s own tongue twenty years earlier. And he started, as he had many times,
The Sagas,
only to set them aside after a few hours. Either their florid inaccuracies made him furious to the point of huffing breath and shaking hands, or their truths made him weep. It was a lesson, it seemed, that he must relearn every few years: seeing the Apocalypse made it impossible to read accounts of it.

Some days, when he was too restless to read, he ranged through the encampment, into warrens and down byways so segregated from the greater Holy War that Norsirai openly called him a “pick” because of his skin. Once five Tydonni chased him from their petty fief with knives, hollering slurs and accusations. Other days he wandered through Momemn’s mud-brick canyons, to different agoras, to the ancient temple-complex of Cmiral, and once, to the gates of the Imperial Precincts. Inevitably he found himself in the company of whores, even though he never remembered setting out to find them. He forgot faces, ignored names. He revelled in the heave of grunting bodies, in the greasiness of skin wiping unwashed skin. Then he wandered home, emptied of everything but his seed.

He would try very hard not to think of Esmi.

Ordinarily, Xinemus returned in the evening, and they made time for a few moves in their running game of benjuka. Then they sat by the Marshal’s fire, passed a sharp bowl of a drink that the Conriyans called
perrapta
and insisted cleansed the palate for dinner, but that Achamian thought made everything taste like fish. Then they dined on whatever Xinemus’s slaves could scrounge. Some nights they would be joined by the Marshal’s officers, usually Dinchases, Zenkappa, and Iryssas, and their time would consist of ribald jokes and irreverent gossip. Other nights, it would be just the two of them, and they would speak of deeper and more painful things. Occasionally, like this night, Achamian found himself alone.

Word of the Conriyan fleet had arrived before dawn. Xinemus had left shortly after to prepare for the Crown Prince’s arrival. His temper had been short because he dreaded, Achamian had no doubt, informing Proyas of Calmemunis and the Vulgar Holy War. When Achamian had suggested the possibility of accompanying him to meet Proyas, Xinemus had simply stared at him incredulously and barked, “He’s going to hang me as it is!”

Before departing, however, he rode up to the morning fire and promised Achamian he would let Proyas know of his presence and of his need.

The day had been long with hope and dread.

Proyas was Maithanet’s friend and confidant. If anyone could coax information from the Holy Shriah, it would be him. And why shouldn’t he? So much of what he was, of what made others refer to him as the Sun Prince, was due to his old tutor—to Drusas Achamian.

Don’t worry, Inrau . . . He owes me.

Then the sun fell without word from Xinemus. Doubt took hold, as did drink. Fear hollowed his unspoken declarations, so he filled them with anger and spite.

I made him! Made him what he is! He wouldn’t dare!

He repented these harsh thoughts and began to reminisce. He remembered Proyas as a boy, weeping, cradling his arm, running through the gloom of the walnut grove, through lances of sunlight. “Climb into books, you fool!” he had shouted. “Their branches never break.” He remembered coming upon Inrau unawares in the scriptorium, watching him draw, in the bored fashion of juvenile boys, a row of phalluses across an unspoiled sheet. “Practising your letters, hmm?”

“My sons,” he muttered to the fire. “My beautiful sons.”

Finally he heard horsemen filing down the dark lanes. He saw Xinemus heading a small party of Conriyan knights. The Marshal dismounted in the shadows then strode to the firelight, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes had the weary look of a man with one last difficult task.

“He’ll not see you.”

“He must be incredibly busy,” Achamian blurted, “and exhausted! What a fool I was. Perhaps tomorrow . . .”

Xinemus sighed heavily. “No, Akka. He will not see you.”