Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades (28 page)

“I know you’re worried,” he had said to her the night before as they met over cups of
ta
in the Iris Pavilion to discuss the trial.

“You’re a soldier,” she replied bluntly, “not a legal scholar.”

He nodded. “And one thing I’ve learned as a soldier is when to listen to the people I command. I’ve been over this thing a dozen times with Jesser and that finicky bastard, Yuel. What in ’Shael’s name is his job, anyway?”

“Chronicler of Justice. It’s the highest legal post in the empire.”

“Well, he’s been going at me hammer and tongs for days now. I can repeat my speech to the Sitters forward and backwards, could probably translate it into Urghul if you wanted. I didn’t realize my first days as regent would be spent drilling like a grass-green recruit.”

It should have been a comfort. Annur knew no finer legal minds than Jesser and Yuel, and the case against Uinian appeared relatively straightforward—an Emperor murdered in the heart of the Temple of Light during a secret meeting with the Chief Priest. If Ran il Tornja had the good sense to follow their counsel to the letter, she would see Uinian divested of his office, blinded, and put to death before the sun set.

Before il Tornja settled into his own wooden seat, he knelt respectfully to the Unhewn Throne looming in the shadows behind him. The throne would remain vacant until Kaden’s return, but even empty it drew eyes and hushed voices, as though it were a sleeping and dangerous beast. It was older than the hall that had been built around it, older than the Dawn Palace itself, older than memory, a mass of black stone jutting from the bedrock, thrice the height of the tallest man. Near the very top, eons of wind and weather had carved a seat perfectly fitted to the human form. The rock itself afforded no simple way to reach that seat, and one of Adare’s forebears had commissioned a gilded staircase to aid the Emperor in his ascent. Before the staircase, however, if the writings of Ussleton the Bald were to be believed, before Emperors, before Annur itself, the primitive tribes of the Neck had once chosen their chiefs through a bloody melee, hundreds of men struggling to climb the stone and ensconce themselves while cutting down their foes with bright bronze blades. In the flickering torchlight Adare could see red beneath the lapidary black, a reminder of the generations of blood that had seeped into the indifferent stone.

If il Tornja was intimidated, he didn’t show it. After paying his respect, he turned to cast an eye over the assembled crowd—hundreds of ministers and bureaucrats, curious merchants and aristocrats come to see justice served and one of the city’s mighty brought low—then sat in his own wooden chair before waving a hand to silence the tolling of the gongs.

“We gather,” he began, his voice carrying through the hall, “to find truth. In this we call upon the gods, and most especially Astar’ren, Mother of Order, and Intarra, whose divine light illuminates the darkest shadows, to guide us and gird our strength.” The formula was rote, the opening to every judicial proceeding from the Waist to the Bend, but il Tornja delivered it clearly and forcefully.

He has the voice of a battlefield commander,
Adare realized, hope swelling inside her for the first time. The man seemed, if not precisely regal, then capable and confident, equal to the day’s work. She allowed herself to skip past the present for a moment, to consider the future. The conviction and execution of the Chief Priest would throw the Temple of Light into disarray. Not only would she have revenge for her father’s death, she could use the chaos to see the rival order gutted and brought low.
Not that we’ll eliminate them, of course. The people need their religion, but those legions will have to go—

“Uinian,” il Tornja continued, cutting into her thoughts, “fourth of that name, Chief Priest of Intarra, Keeper of the Temple of Light, stands accused before this assembly on two counts: Treason in the Highest Degree and Murder of a Government Official, both capital offenses. As regent, I will present the facts as they are known, while Uinian himself will speak in his defense. The Seven Sitters, guided by their own reason and the illumination of the gods, will speak to the man’s guilt or innocence.”

He turned to Uinian. “Do you have questions at this time?”

Uinian smiled a thin-lipped smile. “None. You may proceed.”

Adare bit nervously at the corner of her lip. It was hardly the priest’s position to tell the governing magistrate when he could or could not proceed.

Il Tornja, for his part, simply shrugged. If he was unsettled or put out by Uinian’s posture, he didn’t show it.

“You may choose your Sitters.”

This, too, was standard. Dozens of panels of Seven waited in chambers below, each sealed with a number. Uinian, now, would choose any number from one to twenty, and the Sitters associated with that number would be summoned to the room to judge him.

Only, he did not speak a number. Instead, his tongue flicking between his lips, he glanced over at Adare, then up into the shadowy space of the rafters.

“As this trial has already shown,” he said, his voice quieter than the regent’s, but sly, snaking throughout the hall, “men and women are much given to folly. I will not be judged by them.”

For the first time, il Tornja frowned and Adare’s stomach clenched.

“If he will not be judged,” Adare began, half-rising to her feet, “then let us send for the headsman at once. Annur is nothing if not an empire of
law.
It is this law that separates us from the savages offering blood sacrifice in the jungles and on the steppe. If this so-called priest would flaunt that law, let us be done with him.”

Hundreds of eyes turned to her. Il Tornja, too, met her gaze, raising a placating hand and nodding that he already understood the nature of her objection. Adare let the words trail off, retaking her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. The ministers flanking the regent looked on like buzzards in their black robes. The men had no sympathy for Uinian, but they had not stopped looking for weakness in Adare, either.
It is no slight to you,
Baxter Pane had argued, staring at her with those rheumy eyes of his,
but women are not suited to the Ministry. They are too … fickle, too easily transported by their emotions.

Adare swallowed a curse.
And here I am, allowing myself to be transported by my emotions.

The priest paused, allowing the sudden buzz that had attended her outburst to subside, clearly enjoying the confusion of the crowd and Adare’s own discomfort. Her father had tried to teach her to control her emotions, but it was a skill for which she had little talent.

“If you refuse the trial—,” il Tornja began, but Uinian cut him off.

“I do not refuse the trial. I refuse
this
trial. The Chief Priest of Intarra, the chosen of the goddess on earth, is not subject to the petty minds and manifest error of men and women.” He spread his arms wide, as though inviting all assembled to consider the very contents of his soul. “I refuse the judgment of the Seven Sitters and call instead upon the goddess herself to render her verdict. I demand, as is my ancient right, Trial by Flame.”

Adare half rose to her feet once more.

Around her, the hall exploded into shouts and exclamations, dozens of arguments and questions kindled like fire. She had known, from the look on his face, that Uinian hoped to subvert the trial in some way, and yet this … The Trial by Flame
was
every citizen’s prerogative, had been ever since Anlatun the Pious walked into his brother’s funeral pyre to prove his innocence and emerged unscathed to take the Unhewn Throne. The fire had not burned him, Anlatun insisted, because Intarra herself had decreed his innocence. In the years that followed, there had been a spate of criminals demanding Intarra’s justice. Without exception, they had burned. Screamed and burned. The Trial by Flame quickly lost its appeal, fading from practice and memory until it existed only as a scribal note in manuals of jurisprudence.

Until now.

“Let the goddess judge,” Uinian continued, pitching his defiant voice to carry over the turmoil of the crowd. “Let the goddess judge,” he said again, raising a hand to draw all eyes to himself. “The Lady of Light and Goddess of Fire.
My
goddess.”

Adare drove her fingernails into her palms, but she refused to speak again, turning her gaze instead toward il Tornja to see how he would meet this new challenge.

The
kenarang
had risen to his feet, looking half-prepared to draw the long sword at his side. Instead, he gestured once to the slave at the gong, and in moments the deep reverberation silenced the chamber. With the crowd stilled, the regent reseated himself, then looked over to where Jesser and Yuel sat—one tall, one short, both skeletal in their ministerial robes, arguing heatedly but inaudibly, gesturing in the air with their ink-stained hands. The two debated a moment more; then Yuel rose to murmur something in il Tornja’s ear. He listened, nodded impatiently, then waved the man away.

“Well, this should cut down considerably on the time,” he announced at last, his voice too jocular for Adare’s comfort. “There will be no Seven Sitters, no reading of the facts, no disputation by the accused. Instead, according to the law, the Chief Priest will thrust his bare arm into the flame up to the elbow for fifty strikes of the gong. If his flesh remains unburned through all this time, it will be decreed that Intarra, who watches over all Annur, has judged him free of guilt. He will walk free.

“If,” he continued, a vulpine smile on his face, “the flesh or the hair upon the flesh singes or burns—” He shrugged. “—then the whole body will be consecrated to Intarra’s sacred flame and fire.”

He turned to Uinian. “You understand this, priest?”

Uinian smiled his own smile. “Better, perhaps, than any assembled here.”

“It seems, then, that we will need a flame. This brazier,” he continued, indicating a metal grate large enough to roast a goat, “should do the job nicely.”

“No,” Uinian replied, raising his chin.

You got your ’Shael-spawned Trial by Flame,
Adare thought angrily.
You don’t get to pick the brazier.
Blood hammered in her ears, but she kept her face still and refused to speak.

Il Tornja raised an eyebrow. “No?” Clearly he was unaccustomed to hearing the word.

“I will not be tested over some petty flame like a common criminal. I am the Chief Priest of Intarra, her officer here in this benighted world, and I will be tested in a manner and location worthy of my sacred trust.”

Adare held her breath.

“I will be tested,” Uinian continued, eyeing Adare, “in the Temple of Light.”

She was on her feet again without realizing it. “No,” she said, turning to il Tornja and the assembled ministers. “Absolutely not. This vermin has the right to due process under Annurian Law, which unfortunately includes this antiquated sideshow, but he does not dictate his terms. He has
armed men
in the Temple, if you don’t recall. He has practically an army!”

Uinian smiled at Adare. “A sideshow? I would make a sacred appeal to the goddess you profess to worship, and you term it a
sideshow
?”

“It’s a ruse,” Adare snapped. “A trick. You can’t survive the flame, and you know it.”

“Then there is no harm in allowing me the Trial,” Uinian replied. He turned to the assembled crowd, extending his arms. “All here are welcome. All who walk beneath the light of Intarra, all who see by her flames and cook by her fires, all who love beneath her lambent moon, all those who work the earth or ply the waves beneath her noonday sun. Come. Come! I have nothing to hide before my fellow men or my goddess. Watch as I allow the Flame to test me, and judge for yourselves who is pure in heart and truthful, and who is filled with deceit.”

That sealed it. With a few words, the priest had appealed above the court, above the throne itself, directly to the religious sentiments of the people. Not every citizen of Annur was a devoted follower of Intarra, of course—other gods had their temples and clergy, some quite wealthy and popular—but the people of the city were pious enough to allow the man his test. Sanlitun had been a well-liked Emperor, and many no doubt wished to see Uinian burn, but they would give him his time and place. Il Tornja could refuse, but the thing had already gone too far. For the regent to balk now would bring accusations of tyranny and impiety both, accusations the Unhewn Throne could ill afford during a delicate transition of power. The priest wasn’t offering a defense, he was making an
attack,
a more subtle attack than that which had killed her father, but one aimed at the heart of the entire Malkeenian line.

He knew it all along,
Adare thought, sick to her stomach.
I should have stabbed him in his cell as he slept.
She scrambled to think of some third course, some alternative to this parade down the Godsway in the sight of all Annur.
Father would have seen a way
.… But her father had not seen a way. Uinian had lied to Sanlitun, tricked him, and murdered him, and now he seemed prepared to do the same to Adare. She wanted to scream, but screaming would do no good.
Think,
she spat at herself, but thought failed her. All she could do was follow and watch, as in a nightmare.

*   *   *

No structure in the city stood far enough from Intarra’s Spear to escape the sight of the impossible monolith, but Uinian IV’s predecessors had been shrewd enough to move the locus of religious power outside the Dawn Palace, distancing themselves from the imperial family and consolidating their hold on the ecclesiastical rule of the city. The Temple of Light, a soaring structure of stone and colored glass, stood halfway down the Godsway, close enough to the center of Annur for easy commerce with the Palace, but not so close that it fell under the shadow of those looming red walls.

Unlike the Spear, the Temple of Light was clearly a human creation, but
what
a creation. Tiers of arches, one above the other, climbed toward the sky, each filled with a huge window. Adare knew something of the glass trade. A single one of those panes cost more than a year’s salary for a thriving merchant—not including the price of cutting and transportation—and there were
thousands
of them, so many that it seemed as though the temple were more glass than stone, a massive, glittering, multifaceted gem humbling the edifices surrounding it.