Stands a Shadow (16 page)

Ché could see one now, a bow of vibrant colours like a second archway, and beyond it, tinged by its hues, the sprawl of the city around the banks of the harbour, with imperial ships already at anchor there. He shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted up to the top of the Oreos. He could make out tiny figures up there, white-robed priests gathered along a railing, taking in the sights of the cityport from its high elevation.

Ché would have studied the scene for longer, but his eyes just then caught movement up on the foredeck. It was Romano’s catamite, Topo, striding over to the general and the woman in his lap to exchange a flurry of heated words.

Topo whirled away and stamped towards the steps.

With a final glance cast at the approaching Oreos, Ché pushed himself from the rail. He tracked the youth as he returned alone to Romano’s cabin, red-faced and shoving past the guards at the door. Ché waited a few moments longer to ensure that no one was joining him, then set about delivering his message.

He entered Romano’s chambers silently via the rear balcony, while everyone overhead, including the guards, stood on the landward side taking in the sights of the harbour.

In the cabin, with the sounds of splashing water coming from the bathroom, Ché murdered a bodyguard with the slash of a knife across his throat.

He stepped back from the mess as the man collapsed onto the rug.

‘Hello?’ came a voice from the bathroom beyond.

Ché stood still for some moments while the man gargled blood at his feet. He listened until he heard the gentle splash of water once more from the other side of the door. With a garrotte dangling from one hand, he pushed the bathroom door slightly ajar. Steam escaped around his shaven head.

He looked in to see the man lying in the wooden bathtub, muttering to himself with his eyes squeezed shut. Ché slipped inside, and stopped behind his head as he gripped the garrotte in both fists. He gazed down on Romano’s young lover. There were fresh scars over his pale, lean body; scabbed bruises the size of bite marks.

Ché observed the great bronze pot of a water-heater sitting on the stove at the foot of the tub, and knew what he must do.

The young man jerked, and snapped his eyes open as Ché looped the garrotte around his neck and pulled hard on the cork handles.

Brown eyes, Ché noted, near popping out of their sockets; and there, within the glassy pupils, a shadow, Ché himself looming large. The youth snorted and wheezed for air, his face bulging. His hands scrabbled at the garrotte around his throat. His legs flailed in the water spilling in waves over the side to splash around Ché’s sandalled feet. The Diplomat maintained his steady pressure. He thought of nothing as he performed the act, though he felt, strangely, a rising sense of anger.

At last, Topo stopped floundering and lay limp in the settling water. Ché maintained pressure for a few moments more, then released the garrotte with a gasp.

Panting, he kicked open the door of the stove beneath the heater and tossed in a log from the wooden bin that sat next to it, then after that as many more as would fit. Then he unlatched the lid of the pot to expose the warming water within. Quickly, he hauled the body out of the bath, with his hands slipping on its slick skin. Ché was strong enough for all his modest height; still, it was an effort to lift the dead weight of Topo into the great pot, to make it fit as the displaced water rose up around it, so he could replace and refas-ten the lid.

By the time he was finished the flames of the stove were starting to roar. He imagined the smoke tumbling out of the chimney far above his head; hoped it wouldn’t draw Romano’s early return. He stepped from the bathroom and listened for the sounds of footfalls.

Behind him, the bronze water-heater made a sudden popping sound. Ché stopped.

Another thump sounded from within it.

He’s still alive in there
.

Ché hesitated, at once caught in a moment of self-doubt. He glanced back through the doorway, struggling with an impulse to rush inside and unlatch the lid and haul the lad out from there.

He fought it down. He’d spent too long at this already.

Ché strode across the main cabin while a faint scream pursued him to the open window. It shook him to hear it; his hands trembled as he clambered out onto the balcony, cursing himself for his own carelessness.

From the bathroom, the scream grew in pitch until it was consumed by the piercing shriek of steam that suddenly blasted through a whistle.

In the early evening chaos of the Chir harbour, Ché waited in line before the thronged gantry, impatient to be off the ship so that he could sample some of the attractions of the ancient cityport.

On the other side of the gantry, the dockside was awash with slaves manhandling fresh supplies onto the waiting ships, and a host of newly arrived immigrants from elsewhere in the empire, drawn to the island’s sudden land rush now that it was conveniently deserted. Through them all, in stamping columns, the grim, orderly troops of the Sixth Army marched aboard the transports in preparation for the dawn departure, when the newly combined army and fleet of the Expeditionary Force would set sail for Khos.

He was first aware of trouble when he heard the distinct sound of shouting up towards the quarterdeck. He turned instinctively towards Sasheen’s quarters, saw that the Matriarch’s door was lying open, her honour guard nowhere to be seen.

Ché swore under his breath, then bounded for the steps and the open doorway. He passed the two twins, Guan and Swan, standing at the top of the stairway with their expressions wholly neutral.

Inside, the guards were struggling with a group of priests who were trying desperately to protect General Romano. The man raved beyond reason, his spit flying towards the Holy Matriarch, who sat in a chair flanked by her two personal bodyguards, watching his fury with a self-satisfied smile. Ché’s eyes widened as he saw a flash of a blade in the young general’s hand. A priest shouted and tried to grasp it. Beyond them, bizarrely, the severed head of Lucian sat balanced on a table, watching it all with an expression of manic glee.

Footsteps sounded behind him as Archgeneral Sparus marched into the room. He took in Ché and the rest of the scene in a single unhurried glance from his eye.

‘I’ll kill you for this,’ Romano was screaming. ‘I said nothing I wouldn’t say to your face! Your son was a coward – and you, you are the—’ one of his fellow priests hissed and clamped a hand over his mouth. Romano heaved to be free of it while another priest did the same, two hands over his mouth.

Ché stepped aside as the guards forced the struggling group backwards out of the room. Archgeneral Sparus stared at Romano without expression as he was dragged outside, then closed the door behind them.

Clumps and curses on the steps outside. Silence settling.

‘He does not mean what he says,’ pleaded an elderly priest on his knees before the Matriarch. ‘He is intoxicated, and distraught at his loss. He’s lost his mind for a while, that’s all.’

Sasheen flashed her eyes at caretaker Heelas.

‘Out,’ Heelas said to the kneeling priest, and lifted him with a tug of his robe to shove him outside after his master.

A wet snort came from the severed head on the table. Lucian was trying to laugh.

‘And you,’ Heelas snapped as he crossed the room. ‘Back in your jar, little man.’ Heelas lifted the head in both hands and let it settle back amongst the Royal Milk.

Moments passed without anyone saying a word. They looked to Sasheen, who no longer smiled, but instead glared at the door through which Romano had just departed. Her eyes flickered to Ché. She nodded, gracefully; looked to the rest of the priests still gathered in the cabin. ‘I have reason enough, as witnessed by all here, to execute him now and be justified in doing so.’

‘Matriarch,’ Sool said, bending close to her. ‘He will soon calm himself and see his position. That will be the end of it, if you let it end here. He will understand the message given to him. He will submit.’

‘It’s civil war otherwise,’ added Archgeneral Sparus. ‘In Q’os, once his family found out, and here, in the fleet, if his men caught wind of it. A third of the Expeditionary Force could turn against us.’

Sasheen’s fingernails scratched along the ends of the armrests.

‘I will not forget those words,’ she said harshly. ‘I will never forget what he said to me, about my own son, to my face.’

In the absolute blackness the rats fussed around him. Ash ignored the creatures, his ears keen for any sounds above. Every set of footsteps overhead was a story untold to him.

It was his twenty-first day in this reeking bilge, at least by his own rough reckoning. Hours previously, he’d heard the thunderous racket of the anchor being dropped and felt the shudder of it through the timbers of the hull. At once, he’d experienced a sudden urge to climb out of his hole and make his way through the ship to the uppermost deck, so that he could see where it was the fleet had anchored; see too if he could leave the ship for good.

He’d mastered the desire though. He knew he should wait until the silence of the crew heralded nightfall before he stole outside and chanced a proper look.

In the deep hours of the night, when all was indeed silent above him, Ash decided it was finally safe enough to make his move. Fully clothed and with his sword in his hand, he left the bilge as quietly as he could, and carefully made his way up through the bowels of the ship.

The weatherdeck was the most dangerous place for him to be, and Ash crouched low as he finally made his way onto it, checking the positions of the sailors on night-duty to fore and aft. He sucked down a lungful of air and almost groaned aloud from the freshness of it. Clouds blocked most of the stars overhead, but a dim light glimmered off the masts and the furled sails.

He looked about him, blinking at the lights of a cityport that shone through the masts of the fleet. When he turned to seaward, his eyes widened to take in the awesome arch that stood with feet on either side of the harbour opening, and the clouds of barely visible mist at play beneath it.

The Oreos, Ash instantly recognized, and knew they were in Chir, in Lagos, island of the dead.

It was Khos, then. There was no other reason for the invasion fleet to be this far west, not unless they planned to wage a reckless war against the Alhazii and risk losing their supplies of blackpow-der. No, they were stopping here for supplies or men, before continuing onwards to Nico’s homeland; the boy’s mother and his people.

Ash hung his head, and for a long time he didn’t move.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Old Country

The ship was pitching through heavy weather again.

Bilge water swamped his legs as it washed from one side to the other, causing the rats to scurry over him as the hull creaked and banged in distress.

Ash lay in the darkness beyond time and place. In his mind, words formed as though they were being spoken aloud.

He was having a conversation with his dead apprentice.

I don’t understand
, Nico insisted.
You told me once how the R shun don’t believe in personal revenge. That it goes against their code
.

Yes Nico. I did
.

Yet here you are
.

Yet here I am
.

So you are no longer R shun then
?

He shied away from answering. He hardly wished to dwell on it just then.

You can’t bring me back, you know
, said Nico.
Even if you kill her, I’ll still be gone
.

‘I know that, boy,’ Ash replied aloud to the black echoing space, scattering the rats from him.

Nico fell silent for a time. Ash rocked with the violent motions of the ship, bracing himself with his hands and feet, trying to calm himself.

Tell me, master Ash
, came Nico’s voice again.
What was it that you did before you became R shun
?

What I did
?

Yes
.

I was a soldier. A revolutionary
.

You never wanted to follow a different path? A farmer, perhaps? A drunken owner of a country inn
?

Of course
, Ash replied.

Which one
?

I am tired, Nico. You ask many too questions
.

Only because I know so little about you
.

A sudden sharp tilt of the ship pressed Ash against the hull, though he barely noticed it. He spat brine, wiped his face dry, glared back into the darkness.

Before I was a soldier I raised hunting dogs for a time. We lived in our cot
tage, my wife and son. I tried to be a good husband, a good father, that is all
.

And were you
?

Ash snorted.
Hardly. I made a better soldier than I ever did a husband and father. I was good at killing. And getting others killed
.’

You’re too hard on yourself. I knew you to be much more than a killer. Your heart is kind
.