Unholy War (4 page)

Heward was desperate to understand what had happened to Nasette, and he spent years researching. According to the story, he read every written account of the lives of the Souldrinkers – but no one could explain Nasette’s transformation, for there were no records of Dokken and magi ever lying together, and Souldrinkers were becoming increasingly rare as the constant purges took their toll. At last Heward concluded that any female mage who fornicated with a Dokken would be infected by their curse, for there was no other explanation for what had happened to Nasette.

Over the years, the story became a popular cautionary tale for mage-children, and with each retelling the truth became increasingly shrouded in myth.

Elena watched Kazim sleep and fearfully wondered where legend ended and fact began.

*

Kazim woke to find Elena’s eyes on him. Her functionally short blonde hair was matted from sleep and she looked pale and bleary, sad-eyed in the dawn. Her nose and cheeks were dotted with freckles and her skin was wind- and sun-chafed. His fingers itched to stroke her skin, to soothe it gently and draw her close, to kiss her chapped lips …

She is my Cause now. She is my shihad. She took me in when my brother Hadishah abandoned me. She taught me when she could have killed me. She trusted me even when she found out what I did and what I am. I am assassin and Souldrinker and I owe her everything: above the holy war, above my family, above Ramita. Elena is my Cause.

‘Ella.’ He felt his whole face smile. He freed his arms from the blankets, pulled her against him, nuzzled her neck. All he wanted was to …

‘Kazim,’ she said, her voice strange enough to make him pause. ‘We have to talk.’

He stopped, slapped by a premonition that life was yet again going to take away the thing he wanted most.

Her voice sounded regretful, even bitter. ‘Kazim, I want there to be only honesty between us.’

He nodded slowly, carefully. ‘Of course?’

She held him close and told him a tale of a girl called Nasette who became a Souldrinker, like him.

He tried to pretend he understood.

The axes fell and the heads rolled, bouncing wetly on the stones. Octa Dorobon’s henchmen looked bewildered by this aberrant behaviour.
We are magi!
, their heads cried.
We are the rulers of Urte! We cannot die!
Then in seconds their flesh rotted away, leaving their chattering skulls bleaching in the sand.

Cera Nesti woke, heart pounding, tangled in sweaty sheets.

A dream – it’s only a dream.

But yesterday it had been real: violently, vividly real, and it had been her own life at stake. The dim room harboured too many shadows so she emerged from the bedclothes and wrenched open the curtains. The sun was rising over the mist-shrouded city: Brochena in winter, wrapped in a morass of fog and wood-smoke. But the light calmed her. She fell into a chair, wrapped her arms about herself and tried to slow her heart.

It was still impossible to grasp all that had happened: the mesmerising eyes of a Lantric witch ensorcelling her; sending her to Gurvon Gyle’s chambers though she loathed him. Octa Dorobon bursting in. A dungeon cell, rank with damp filth, a forced confession, the taunts of the guards.

Mudskin whore …

Octa had seized the initiative from Gyle, tried to entrap him and wrest back control over her son Francis, the king. It had been a brutal and clumsy attempt to smash over the house of cards Gyle had built.

You’ll beg to die …

And just as abruptly: the counter-strike. Octa was dead and Gyle free. King Francis was blinking dazedly as he emerged from the shadow of his tyrant mother, flushed with new power and completely blind to the fact that all he had was Gyle’s to take away. His sister Olivia was simpering beside him, eyes on Gyle and no one else, while Gyle himself, relishing his new control over the court, was as calmly confident and sardonically vicious as ever.

Cera found herself enthroned again, alongside her fellow-queen Portia, her secret, illicit lover. All she wanted was to hold Portia close and block out the world, but they’d been made to watch the execution of Octa’s henchmen and then sit through a banquet where Francis Dorobon had cavorted as if some great victory had been won. His imbecilic self-obsession left her breathless.

She pulled on a gown and went to the balcony, enjoyed the faint heat of the coppery sun. The Godsingers were wailing their summons to prayer as the city awoke, most probably unaware of the coup that had taken place within Brochena Palace – outwardly at least, the Dorobon flag still flew and their soldiers still manned the gates and walls. City-folk had more immediate worries – how to find food and work in a land in turmoil.

Where do I stand now?
On the face of it, little had changed, but Octa’s death now gave Gyle an almost free hand. His counter-coup was in Francis’ name, but anyone with any brain could see it was entirely for his own benefit. The Dorobon magi, knights and soldiers, outnumbered by Gyle’s mercenaries, were confused and anxious. Their seizure of Javon was unravelling and the kingdom was rumbling like a volcano set to explode. She’d heard them talking in the banquet hall, wondering aloud if it would still be safe for the next wave of Dorobon settlers due to arrive – which included the soldiers’ families.

What am I to do? I was regent here. My little brother is the rightful king but I don’t even know where he is now. We’re trapped and helpless.

Then she thought about that.

I am a Nesti. I refuse to be helpless.

So she stared out over the city, studying the movements of the tiny shapes below, and made her plans.

*

The pitiless sunlight burned away Francis Dorobon’s illusions of safety, shafts of unbearable brightness piercing the uncovered windows and slapping him awake.

The last thing he remembered after the banquet was swaying down the corridors with Craith Margham and Jedyk Luman, belting out ‘Let the Bells Ring’, an anthem about the fall of Rimoni. He’d been intending great feats of amatory congress with both of his Noorie wives, but the celebratory wines had struck him low. It had begun with a foul bilious surge as his stomach rebelled, followed by a horribly liquid spell of farting. With his belly cramping painfully, he collapsed to the stone floor and crawled to the privy while Craith and Jedyk, oblivious, sang on. While he had his head down a privy, vomiting uncontrollably, they were tunelessly bellowing the old favourites – ‘Death to Tyrants’ and ‘Light the Gold Lantern’. The chorus of the latter, ‘We are free now, free forever’, echoed inside his skull as he struggled upright, rolled off the bed and crawled to a copper basin. It was half-filled with Kore knew what, but he didn’t care; he dry-retched until he could think again, then knelt and peed into the basin. Gagging on the stench, he crawled back to the bed, pulled a sheet from it and wrapped himself in it, then sat in the corner, shaking uncontrollably.

It wasn’t for several minutes that he realised that he was crying.

Mother is dead.

Last night he’d been jubilant, elated: the tyrant bitch who’d dominated his every waking moment, dragging him wherever she wanted as if the umbilical cord had never been severed, was gone. Let the bells ring! He, Francis Dorobon, was now truly the king, the uncontested ruler at last, free to do whatever he wanted.

Except he wasn’t free at all.

Somewhere beneath the haze of the celebration he’d already begun to realise that he’d merely exchanged one master for another, like a horse whose rider is slain by bandits, but finds himself the bandit chief’s new steed. It had began to dawn on him as he’d looked down the banquet table and seen Sir Roland Heale, his swordmaster. The look on Heale’s weathered face, of pity and contempt when every other face around him was filled with jubilation, had stung him. Then he looked around and began to recognise the calculating hunger in the eyes of Gurvon Gyle’s adherents. He caught measured looks between Endus Rykjard’s mercenary magi, as if they were already weighing up the Dorobon men and had found them wanting. He saw the cold eyes of his two queens, who were ignoring him and instead leaning together and whispering to each other. Even his sister Olivia, who should have been sharing his joy, was fawning upon Gyle as if this was
his
moment. And Gyle himself, cool and composed in Imperial purple, was suddenly frightening, like a glimpse of fang in a fox’s mouth.

They all think I’m a buffoon.

He’d wanted to shout at them, to proclaim his victory:
The Tyrant is Dead! I am free! Let the bells ring!

Instead, as if his subconscious had admitted the truth his conscious mind dared not confront, he’d reached down blindly, seized a goblet, drained it, and pitched himself into the middle of his carousing friends, desperate to cling to his fleeting moment of joy and too scared to look beyond it again.

But it was morning now and he had a kingdom to rule, even if his head was pounding and his stomach muscles were aching. He dragged himself to his feet and found the water pitcher. He guzzled water until he’d washed away the vile taste, then emptied the rest over his head.

Then he rang for service.

It was Sir Roland Heale who opened the door. ‘So you’re awake at last,’ he noted, then added, ‘Sire,’ with the faintest echo of irony.

‘Sir Roland,’ Francis croaked.
He’s always been honest with me. Even when I didn’t want honesty.
Perhaps he needed that right now. ‘What are you doing here?’

The old swordsman looked about the room, sniffed and took an involuntary step backwards. ‘Kore’s Blood, boy! What are you doing to yourself?’

‘She’s dead,’ Francis muttered, half-apologetic, half-defiant. ‘You don’t know what she was like.’

‘I know exactly what she was like. But everything she ever did was for House Dorobon, and if she thought it right to move against Gurvon Gyle, then it was right.’ Heale scowled. ‘You’ve got the second Dorobon legion arriving in three months, lad, along with thirty thousand immigrants. They have uprooted their lives and are even now marching across the Leviathan Bridge to follow you – the Dorobon family – into the East. My own family is in that column. You must secure the kingdom for them. Francis, give me leave to move against Gurvon Gyle.’

Heale should have been head of the Dorobon knights, Francis knew that, but he’d been passed over again and again; he harboured grudges against most of Octa’s coterie. But now he was undoubtedly the most senior surviving knight, both in age and experience. By rights he should at last be made knight-commander.

But I promised Craith Margham that position
. Craith was his best friend, his companion for most of his childhood. He couldn’t promote another above him, not when they shared so close a bond.
If I give Sir Roland this, we’re declaring war on Gurvon Gyle. Look how that turned out for Mother …

‘No, Sir Roland,’ he said at last. ‘The situation is too delicate.’

‘But your Majesty,’ he protested, ‘Gyle is weak at the moment – we may never have another chance—’

‘Gurvon Gyle is the legally appointed Legate, the representative of Emperor Constant himself!’ Francis cried. ‘My mother was wrong to order his arrest and execution, and she has paid the price – the emperor will be furious at her perfidy! What happens if he withdraws his support of our family?’

‘Octa would not have moved without Mater-Imperia’s consent,’ Heale retorted. ‘Francis, please—’

‘There was no consent,’ Francis countered. ‘I saw nothing.’

‘Mater-Imperia wouldn’t have committed it to paper, but you can be sure it was given. Octa would not have acted without it.’

‘Then there is no proof.’ Francis hauled on a shirt. His stomach growled and he had to steady himself against another bout of dizziness.
Kore, I need a drink.
‘I refuse to sanction an act of treachery against the Imperial Legate.’

Heale bowed with ill grace.
Like the rural bumpkin he is
, Francis thought as his pride reasserted itself.
How dare he come in and judge me for having celebrated too much?
To drink was manly – it showed one had vitality and virility, both attributes Heale had clearly lost. ‘Leave me, Sir Roland. I must ready myself for the new day.’

The old knight bowed stiffly, failing to conceal his disappointment.

*

At midday Gurvon Gyle gathered those he could trust in a side-room adjacent to the Imperial suite. He was still wiping sleep from his eyes, but most of the court were still abed; the palace would not come alive until mid-afternoon after such a night. He studied the gathering: just five people, including himself. Endus Rykjard was nibbling on bread dipped in oil. Beside him, gigantic Mara Secordin was gorging on ham and apples. Rutt Sordell, sitting beside her, inhabited the body of a pure-blood Dorobon mage named Guy Lassaigne, one of Francis’ friends. His control was still imperfect; he was having trouble speaking and moving naturally, but that would come quickly. Beside him was ‘Symone’, the current guise of the shapeshifter Coin. The adoration on Symone’s face whenever he spoke was causing him some discomfort, especially as Endus didn’t know the shapeshifter’s true nature; the mercenary was giving them both decidedly odd looks.

The tiny gathering represented most of his resources in the kingdom of Javon, something he wasn’t at all comfortable with. Elena Anborn’s treachery had cost him most of his best agents here. He had dozens more, but they were scattered far and wide throughout Yuros, all carrying out essential missions. It meant he was dependent on Endus – he trusted the mercenary captain as much as anyone, but it still left him feeling profoundly uneasy. Octa’s unexpected strike had left them having to show their hand too early, well before he was ready.

‘If the emperor decides to come down on Octa’s side, they’ll dismiss you as legate, Gurvon,’ Endus was saying. ‘If he does, we’ve no choice: it’s war against the Dorobon.’