The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (101 page)

“Sorry.  Had to get out of there,” said Vyslin.  In a loose tunic and undershorts, black hair a mess, eyes fervid, he looked like Linciard remembered from their old trysts, and it hurt.  “Stormfollower, hoi.  Haven't seen you since the ride.  I'm told you brought me in.”

“Ah, I was one of the few with a capable horse, sir.  Just doing my job.”  Stormfollower looked edgy, and Linciard caught him glancing up the corridor toward the assembly hall.  Worried his Jernizen brethren would catch him in close proximity to an officer they had always derided?  Plus another one who—

Shit, he was right at the door, he must have heard—

Oh who am I kidding.  I've spent the better part of three days at his bedside and everyone probably knows anyway.  I'm no good with secrets.

“Well...thanks,” said Vyslin, and started to swing forward, but in the close quarters his stump clipped a crutch and he gave a gasp and sagged.  Linciard caught him around the middle before he could fall, slinging him upright, and saw Stormfollower blanch in discomfort.

“You should go back to bed,” he told Vyslin, ignoring the Jernizen.  “You're not ready.”

“Shut up, just...stop.  Even if it kills me, it'll be better than this.  All right?  I don't want your pity.”

“I'm not—“

“I don't want it!”  Wrenching free, Vyslin balanced precariously on one foot and one crutch before fumbling the other under his arm, then glared a hole through Stormfollower until the young man got out of his way.  With a wrathful sound of effort, he surged forward on his crutches and got halfway up the hall, wobbled, caught himself, then kept going.

Linciard ground his teeth so hard he thought they might crack. 
I won't go after him.  I won't.  I won't.

“Sir?”

“
What?
” he shouted in Stormfollower's face.

The young man leaned back, brows beetled over hazel eyes, then said, “Just curious...  Why would it kill him?  Isn't he going to serve your Light?”

That was not the question he had been expecting, but it was still difficult to keep from redecorating the wall with Stormfollower's face.  Linciard took a deep breath, then another, then a third after the other two failed to make him calm.  That one didn't work either, but he was already sick of this—sick of everything—so he just spat, “Piking idiot, him and all the rest.”

“Uh, sir?”

“It—“  He thought to bite his tongue, but then realized it hardly mattered.  They were surrounded by specialists.  “It changes people.  The Palace.  All the so-called 'blessed', they used to be human like us, but now they're...”  He waved vaguely, unsure how to explain it.

“Corrupted, sir,” Stormfollower supplied.

“No, no.  Don't say that.  Never say that to them.  But they're—”

“A lot about your empire is corrupt though, isn't it, sir?” Stormfollower continued.  “The fellows and I, we don't get why your folk seem so surprised by it.”

“What?”

“Well...  When we fought you on the border, we knew something was weird.  We had a lot of mentalists and they said you didn't use any, but you all still moved in sync.  I guess it was the lagalainas' doing, and don't get me wrong, they're some fascinating women.  But watching it from the outside, it was like a horde of bugs coming to devour us, not caring what happened to them personally.  Creepy.”

Linciard eyed him.  He had always known that Stormfollower and the other Jernizen were defectors from their land's army, but it had not registered until now that they might have clashed directly.  “Why are you even here, Stormfollower?”

The young man shrugged.  “We're not at war anymore, and you need soldiers, so why not?  There's nothing for me at home—no girl, no family support.  I'm the sixteenth son, y'know?  I figured I'd come here, get some pay, find an Imperial girl.  Someone who could actually be mine.”

“What, and live here?  Become a citizen of this 'creepy' place?”

“Better than eating boot soup.  Or being eaten.  Whole border is bandit territory now, all the fellows who got let go from the army, and let me tell you, it's not pretty.  Turning traitor's the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“If it's so bad there, I'd expect more of you here.”

“Heh.  Maybe the rest of 'em would come if they could suck in their pride.  Me, I know pride won't feed me.  You eastern shi—  Folk may be piking degenerates but at least you pay.  Jernizan won't change.  Better to eat among the dogs than starve among the rich, I say.”

“Degenerates, eh?”

“Look, I think it's piking disgusting, the two of you.  But you're a fair commander so I got no complaints.”

Linciard considered Stormfollower, not sure how to feel.  His people rarely spoke so bluntly, preferring to let their scorn fester behind closed doors.  Though the Jernizens' hostility toward himself and Vyslin angered him, he supposed that with it visible, it could be dealt with.

Were this the Gold Army, whips would have cracked.  But he didn't want to be that kind of leader, and this seemed like progress.

“I appreciate that,” he said finally.  “But you'd best watch your mouth when you talk about officers, Stormfollower.  Not everyone is as forgiving as me.”

The young man scoffed, but then sobered under Linciard's hard stare.  “I mean, I respect you, sir,” he said.  “We all do.  You kept the whole Shadow thing quiet—“

Linciard had almost forgotten about that.  His anger leapt immediately to the fore, but he checked it; Captain Sarovy had not told him to break any heads over it, and though he hated the Shadow now with an abominable fury, he still had his mission.  “Don't talk about it,” he hissed.  “It nearly ate both of us up.”

“But it didn't.  It—“

“They're not our friends, Stormfollower.  If we could have gotten something out of it, then fine, but it's all gone sour now.  Don't think they'll play nice with you just because you're not a real Imperial.  Neither was Tycaid.”

Stormfollower winced at the mention of his fellow Jernizen, swallowed up by the same blackness that had crippled Vyslin.  “We think he's still alive in there,” he said in an undertone.  “Y'know, like the Shadow Cult nabbed him to pull suspicion off of us.”

“Or he's dead and you're deluding yourself.  Which is more likely: that you're valuable, or expendable?”

Stormfollower's face clenched, and Linciard regretted his words.  Of course he felt expendable.  “Look, if they whisper to you, I want to hear it,” he said in a softer tone.  “This isn't about money anymore.  We're marked for death.”

“Maybe you are,” Stormfollower spat, but there was fear in his eyes.  He stalked away.

Alone at last, Linciard took a moment to breathe.  His head ached.  The faint background noise from the earhook—more mental than physical—made it difficult to concentrate, especially with Scryer Mako's own nervous tension underlying the connection.

Though the company had seen no new assaults, Colonel Wreth's half-brigade had already weathered several.  They had also cleared out most of the merchant families in Old Crown to use the estates as barracks, with smaller bases in the outlying guardhouses.  The city militia had been disbanded and Blaze handed its policing duties.

Linciard had nightmares of going out on patrol, and the actual patrols felt no different.  There was no security, just five-man teams against the hostile city, with the sergeants' earhooks traded out to team leaders at each shift because there were too few to go around.  Half the time, communication sounded like it was underwater because Mako was too taxed to stay alert, and Wreth and Cortine kept poaching from the company as if trying to make it collapse.

Linciard had never been on a ship before, but now he knew what it felt like to sink.

Mustering his will, he strode up the corridor to the assembly hall, where the portal to the Palace had just been opened.  Through its shimmering surface, he glimpsed the luminous walls, and his heart hurt with the knowledge that they were not only alive but hungry.  They chewed men up and spat out puppets, and Blaze Company had been sending victims through for weeks.

And there was Vyslin, crutching through the portal without a backward glance.

And there was Rallant on the stairs, watching him, gorgeous and dangerous and troubling.  A bad habit to fall back on.

He was tempted to yield to Rallant's beckoning finger—to go derive some relief in whatever way possible.  But with Captain Sarovy's new strangeness and the company's precarious position, he did not have that luxury.  So he smiled for Rallant's benefit, then turned away.  There were orders to go over, horses to check on, soldiers to police.

He was second-in-command, and he meant to act like it.

*****

“Are you sure this is wise, captain?” said Lancer Serinel.  “Without even telling anyone?”

Captain Sarovy did not answer, and after a moment's silence, Serinel heaved up into his own saddle.  Sarovy tapped his heels against Havoc's flanks, and he and his two bodyguards rode out from the garrison stables into the bleak light.

It had been drizzling all day, and the gutters ran like little rivers as they picked their way down the great hill of the city-center.  Sarovy's earhook tingled, its faint white noise occasionally broken by status reports he barely registered.  He wore it at all times now, for he did not need to sleep—though this did not keep him from feeling weary.

His gaze skittered along the façades as they crossed from the Civic Wedge district into Upper Hook.  The higher ground of Old Crown loomed above them, dropping shadows of garden walls and outbuildings upon the craftsmen's shops and homes below, the manors themselves hidden from view.  This area was coveted for its proximity to the trade-road that wiggled parallel to the river, but even here the doors were closed, shutters pulled tight.

It was not the weather.  For all its wintry glow, the day was tepid, the rain cool, and it lent the city an uncommon freshness.  Nor was it Sarovy's presence, he thought.  He and his two bodyguards, Serinel and Garrenson, could hardly be considered imposing after the swift devastation wrought upon the company three days ago.  After that travesty, he expected to be pelted with rocks, not hidden from.

But there were other men on the road, in livery as red as Sarovy's but with the sword-beheading-serpent blazon of Colonel Wreth's Seething Brigade.  Sarovy had worn that once, back in his old company.  Wearing only the sunburst of Blaze had been a strange transition.

Now it drew sneers from the Seethers they passed.  Wreth's men moved on foot in bands of ten, oilcloaks and wide-brimmed hats shielding them from the elements, hands on sword-hilts as their point-men banged on every door.  Sarovy had observed them before.  One man would have a paint-pot, one a logbook, and they would take census of anyone who answered and mark the walls of those who did not.  In the next few days, half a platoon would arrive with wagons and axes to haul away anything useful from the 'abandoned' houses and destroy the rest.

They had already gone through most of Lower Hook and Riverwatch, the districts closest to the trade-road gates—prosperous but ill-protected.  With at least two thousand of his men in the city, Wreth seemed disinclined to pay for their upkeep, which meant plunder.

Firming his jaw, Sarovy looked straight ahead as he caught the sound of door-hinges and a querulous old voice.  He had no authority to intercede.

“Starting to feel like Fellen here,” Garrenson muttered under his breath.

That was a grim comparison, but so far untrue.  Fellen had fallen victim to a haggard, hungry, unruly Crimson Army being set upon the city by commanders who thought that would cow it.  And it did—but once loosed from the rein, the horde of slave-soldiers and ex-mercenaries and Imperial rejects had proven impossible to bring back to heel.  The riots had lasted weeks, with mentalists—and probably lagalaina and senvraka—the only reason the city did not burn.

Sarovy had been there in the chaos: one of Captain Terrant's many lieutenants, struggling to control his horse and his platoon while civilians, slaves and soldiers clashed with bricks and bottles, swords and spears.  He had gained a commendation by killing a mutinous fellow lieutenant before the man could murder Terrant for banning their company from the looting.  He still remembered pulling his mercy-blade free of the man's armpit, red to the hilt, and the look of shock on both his captain's and comrades' faces.

But that memory was blending with others now.  Other acts of betrayal, other executions.

Other faces in the mirror.

Men, women.  Several children.  He had been trying to count them, and to sketch them when they rose to the fore, but one face flowed into another until all that came from his quill was a distorted tangle of eyes and lips and teeth.

Apparently he was a sarisigi en-dalur, a body-mimic, like the thing that had tried to eat Specialist Weshker.  Logically, then, these other faces were its victims, the people it had eaten before him.  The Maker's message had indicated that he was not the original creature—that he had somehow overpowered it with the aid of the eagle Senket—and that he had a voice given by his winged-light pendant, and a shred of sanity because of his soul.

But that did not make the faces go away, or the intrusive memories.  Or the new, strange feeling that he could change himself at any time.