Authors: Col Buchanan
‘A flag, flying from the citadel.’
‘What kind of flag.’
Ché squinted. The light was good today, the sky a clear blue. He felt a jolt of shock pass through him.
‘I thought you said she was dead,’ Ash remarked drily.
Ché glanced down to see if Curl was listening. He bit his lip, adjusted his footing beneath him on the beams as he pondered for a moment.
‘It could be a ruse of some kind,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps they don’t wish to announce her death just yet. Or perhaps she’s dying even now.’ He shook his head.
The R
ō
shun grunted. His gaze remained fixed on the distant flag on top of the citadel: white in colour, a black raven upon it, flapping in the wind like a challenge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Prisoners of War
The pit was ten feet deep and covered by a screen of wooden bars. Looking up from its filthy earthen floor, the sky was a circle of brilliance that held aloft the occasional bird, tilting its wings in a wind they couldn’t feel. The men craned their necks to watch that circle. There was nothing else for them to see down there, save for each other; sad battered reminders of where they were, and how they suffered.
It was their third day of captivity. Each wore a grubby one-piece suit of yellow finely woven cotton, with buttoned flaps they could release when they needed to relieve themselves. They were shackled hand and foot. All of them bore bruises, cuts, internal injuries.
Bull had just spat a mouthful of water onto the floor, and was staring at a rotten tooth he had just plucked from his jaw.
‘Here,’ he whispered, and passed the skin of water to his old comrade in arms.
Bahn failed to respond at first. He was staring at the opposite wall of earth and far beyond it, his face a filthy smear but for his reddened eyes, and the purplish swelling of his cheek where a gash had inflamed the skin. He had a hand resting on his outstretched leg, and it was trembling badly. His other hand was pressed against his growling stomach. They were all underfed and hungry.
Bahn had complained of not being able to hear in his right ear, so Bull nudged him, and the man turned his head slowly, and looked at the waterskin, then looked at Bull. He returned to staring through the wall.
Weakness rode through Bull like nausea. He tossed the water-skin to the staff sergeant, Chilanos, instead, who refused to speak either, only offered a flicker of gratitude with his eyes. The next man along took it from him when he was done with it. This tepid water was all they had by way of luxury; they each sipped it like fine wine.
For three days now, the small group had been deprived in every way that mattered. They weren’t permitted to talk, though they did so anyway, surreptitiously, when boredom finally dulled the edges of their fears. Neither were they left alone to sleep. Their guards would drop small stones on those who had their eyes closed. At night, men would come to urinate on them as they huddled down in exhaustion.
For a while, Bull had searched amongst the soldiers that often stood above them, trying to spot the giant tribesman who had saved him. He wanted to shout up at him, ‘
Look – look what you saved me for
!’ but there was sign of the man, and he knew he must have died of his wounds.
Every so often, a squad of imperial hard-men would descend on a ladder into the pit, and would chose one of them seemingly on a whim, and would lay into him with their wooden staves. At first they had tried to protest these actions. But each time they did so they were beaten just as brutally, until even Bull could take no more of it, and it made more sense for them to simply sit there, and listen.
Humour was what Bull used in the bleakest of times to help them through it; when one of them was crawling across the floor after a beating; when one of them was standing over the bucket pissing blood.
After three days of this the world had begun to take on a strange sheen of transparency, as though Bull could poke his fingers through into something other and unreal. The smell of the pit had become unbearable, for they shared a single bucket to relieve themselves, and it was only emptied every morning. Bull handled it better than the other men. He was, after all, long inured to the privations of captivity. In a tangible way he became their rock in a storm-tossed sea.
Even now, as a rattle over their heads made Bull squint up at the dark crisscrossing of wood across the pit, dirty faces turned towards him for assurance.
The guards were untying the door to the pit. They flung it open and dropped the ladder down.
He would make a fight of it this time, he decided, if they chose him for a hiding.
Four soldiers climbed down with their heavy staves and studied the men blinking up at them from the floor. The oldest saw Bahn staring at the wall. He pointed his stick at him. ‘Up!’ he snapped.
Bahn paid him no heed.
The other soldiers grabbed Bahn and forced him to his feet, his shackles rattling. With his eyes blinking rapidly, they shoved a sack over his head and tugged him towards the ladder.
Bull struggled to his own two feet, sliding his back up against the earth wall. ‘Where are you taking him?’ he rasped.
‘No talking!’ shouted the older soldier, and he lashed into Bull with his stave. Bull grabbed him with his shackled hands, managed to strike his face with his forehead. He was content enough with that, seeing the blood flowing, and he rode the rest of it through in his usual manner as they lashed out at him, Bull listening to the thud of the blows, refusing to go down as though it somehow mattered, as though he was back in his pit-fighting days, forced against the wall without even a decent defence left to him.
He did go down, though, eventually. He fell to the ground and bared his bloody grin at them, while they bundled Bahn up the ladder, the man making no effort himself as he was manhandled through the opening like a sack of potatoes.
Chilanos opened his mouth and began to sing as they closed and locked the pit after them. It was
The Song of the Forgotten
, the familiar words loud and stirring in the depths of the pit.
Bull scrabbled up onto his knees with his shackles clinking. ‘Tell them what they want!’ he shouted. ‘You hear me, Bahn? Tell them anything they ask you!’
Sparus was an unhappy man as he descended the spiral steps that wound down through the rock of the island upon which the citadel stood.
Creed had escaped, there was no doubting that now. The Princi-pari of Tume had said as much, taunting him with the news even as the Michinè lay dying of his wounds.
And now this latest news, that the Matriarch’s condition was worsening.
Sparus could feel it all begin to unravel around him, this crazyfool invasion inspired by the plans of his predecessor Mokabi. Even the fall of Tume meant little to him in terms of success. Unless they pushed hard for Bar-Khos now, it could still turn disastrously wrong for them – for him.
More than ever, he wished he had refused the command of this expedition. All those years on dusty foreign campaigns, climbing the slippery rungs of promotion to achieve what he had once thought impossible, the position of Archgeneral of Mann. And now this chancy mess that was the invasion of Khos, with the reputation of a lifetime staked on its outcome. How would he be remembered in the records and the history books if it all went wrong here?
It made him rage just to think of it.
Deep beneath the citadel, the Sunken Palace was a complex of large chambers, brightly illuminated by crystal lanterns hanging from countless candelabra. It was walled on the outer edges by great sweeping windows of thick glass, where Sasheen’s honour guards stood at attention. Past them shimmered the clear waters of the lake, shadowed by the overhanging weed-raft of the city, where fans of light spilled through the open canals. From any window, shoals of distant fish could be seen darting in and out of the daylight. Bubbles rose up from the gloomy lake bottom, some bursting on the surface above, others rolling and bobbing along the underside of the lakeweed itself.
‘Ah, Archgeneral. A word with you, if you please.’ It was Klint, coming to stand before him.
‘What is it, physician?’ he asked the man, without patience.
Klint beckoned him to an empty chamber, a lounge with reclining seats and old portraits on the walls. The man licked his lips and looked around to see if anyone was listening.
In a hurried hush: ‘I believe the Holy Matriarch has been poisoned.’
‘Poisoned? How?’
‘Her wound. I believe the shot was coated in a toxin.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘You can smell it in the wound, if you have the nose for these things. And her symptoms – at first I thought it was blood poisoning. Now,’ he shook his head, ‘I can see it’s more than that. It looks like black-foot spore.’
Sparus closed his eye for a long moment.
So here it is
, he thought.
The disaster you’ve been waiting to happen
.
‘I didn’t think the Khosians used such things,’ he said, and smelled the man’s sickly perfume as Klint drew closer.
‘They don’t. Only the Élash produces such toxins. And only our Diplomats make use of them.’
Archgeneral Sparus narrowed his eye and studied the man carefully. ‘You’re suggesting one of our own people did this to her?’
A precise shrug. ‘I’m a physician, nothing more. I can only report my findings.’
Sparus rubbed the bridge of his nose with his grimy fingers. It didn’t make sense to him.
‘Can you save her?’
The physician looked at his feet. ‘It’s hard to say. I’m treating her with Royal Milk, but the Milk itself . . . Our only supply of it is in that jar with Lucian’s head, and she is tetchy about me using it.’
‘Never mind that fool Lucian. Use as much of it as you need to. You have my authority on that.’
‘Thank you. But even so. The Milk is old, used up, not much good for anything more than preservation. We need a fresh supply, and even then . . . Black-foot you see, it’s used by Diplomats because Royal Milk has such little effect on it.
King’s Worry
, they call it.’
Sparus felt patronized by the physician’s assumption of his ignorance. He contained his frustration, though, focusing on the problem at hand.
‘What if you had a fresh supply of Milk?’
Klint shook his head sadly. ‘I suppose we could dispatch a skyship to Zanzahar, or Bairat. But I doubt there’s time for that. She’s failing fast now.’
‘Have you told her any of this?’
‘No. For now I think it’s best that she remains rested.’
‘Physician. If she’s dying, she should know of it.’
‘Yes. But perhaps it’s best if we do not tell her how.’
He assented to that, seeing the sense of it.
‘I need to see her.’
‘Yes, of course. You’ll need to follow some precautions, however.’
Klint led him towards the Royal Chamber. They passed the priestess Sool, the woman looking lost here in the depths of the rock. In the anteroom, the physician offered Sparus a silk mask to tie around his mouth and nose. It smelled of mint, and something much harsher than that.
‘Is it contagious?’ asked Sparus from behind the mask.
‘It’s known to be. Especially when it has taken hold. With such things it’s always best to be cautious.’ The man gave him a pair of sheep-gut mittens to wear.
In the main sleeping chamber, Sasheen lay on the bed with the sheets crumpled over her shivering body, lit by nothing more than the blue flickering light of the lake beyond the curving window. She was feverish and panting quickly. Sweat glistened on her face, which was inflamed like her arms and hands. A smell of bile hung strong in the air.
‘Matriarch,’ said Sparus as he stopped by her bed.
Sasheen blinked, confused for a moment. She focused on him weakly. ‘Sparus,’ she rasped, and tried to move, but gave up after a single effort. ‘I’m told I should not touch anyone. For fear I might catch something in my weakened condition.’
Sparus hesitated, then placed his hand on top of her own. Her skin felt hot against the sheep-gut that encased his own. It held a vague tint of blueness to it, as did her lips. The dressings on her neck were stained with patches of yellow.
The doctor busied himself around her. With gloved hands he checked her pulse and inspected the lesions on her body. When he lifted the bedsheets fully back, Sparus could see the blackness of her feet.
Dearest Passion
, he thought in surprise, realizing then how far gone she really was.
‘What have you to report, General?’
He cleared his throat from behind the mask. ‘We’re still encountering some pockets of resistance in the south-west of the city. We should have them cleared out presently.’
‘And Romano?’
‘He complains he has not been allowed to enter the city yet with his men.’
‘Does he now?’ she breathed, and even in her condition he could see the rise of her anger. She gasped a few times, drawing the breath she needed to fuel it. ‘Let him complain. I will not risk allowing him into Tume with his men. He knows I am vulnerable. I would only be inviting a coup.’