Lord of Emperors (50 page)

"How did you get in?" Styliane this time, same question. Her expression was odd. Unfocused. Looking at him, but not really. She didn't like him. Pertennius knew that. She didn't like anyone, though, so it hadn't much mattered.

He cleared his throat again, smoothed the front of his tunic. "I have, happen to have some keys? That… open locks."

"Of course you do," said Styliane quietly. He knew her irony well, the bite of it, but there was something bloodless, perfunctory about her tone this time. She was looking down again, at the dead man. Untidily sprawled. Blood on the mosaic stones.

"There were no guards," explained Pertennius, though they hadn't asked. "No one in the corridor outside. There… should have been. I thought"

"You thought something might be happening and you wanted to see it." Lysippus. The distinctive, clipped tones. He smiled, the folds of his face shifting. "Well, you did see, didn't you? What now, historian?"

Historian. There was blood on his blade. Mockery in the Calysian's tone. Smell of meat. The woman looked at him again, waiting.

And Pertennius of Eubulus, gazing back at her, not at Lysippus, did the simplest thing. He knelt, very near the body of the anointed Emperor he'd loathed and had killed, and, setting his dagger down, he said softly, "My lady, what is it you wish me to tell the Strategos?"

She let out a breath. To the secretary, watching her narrowly, she seemed to have become hollowed out, a figure without force or intensity. It… interested him.

She didn't even answer. Her brother did, lifting his hideous face. "I killed him," Lecanus Daleinus said. "By myself. My younger brother and sister… came and… killed me for it. So virtuous! Report it so… secretary. Record it." The whistle in his voice became more pronounced than ever. "Record it… during the reign… of the Emperor Leontes and his glorious Empress… and of the Daleinus… children… who will follow!"

A moment passed, another. And then Pertennius smiled. He understood, and it was all as it
should
be. At last. The Trakesian peasant was dead. The whore was or would be. The Empire was turning back-finally- to a proper place.

"I shall," he said. "Believe me, I shall."

"Lecanus?" It was Lysippus again. "You promised! You did promise me." There was desire in his voice, unmistakable, the tone raw with need.

"The Trakesian first, then me," said Lecanus Daleinus.

"Of course," said Lysippus, eagerly. "Of course, Lecanus." He was bowing and jerking, Pertennius saw, the gross body moving with urgency, hunger, like spasms of faith or desire.

"Holy Jad! I'm leaving," said Tertius, hastily. His sister moved aside as the youngest Daleinus went hurriedly back along the tunnel, almost running. She didn't follow, turning instead to look at her ruined brother, and at the Calysian, who was breathing rapidly, his mouth open. She bent down and said something then, softly, to Lecanus. Pertennius didn't hear what it was. He hated that. The brother made no reply.

Pertennius lingered long enough to see the blind man extend the nozzle and trigger and observe how the Calysian trembled as he untied Daleinus's maimed hands from them. Then he felt a sickness coming. He reclaimed and sheathed his knife and then he, too, went quickly back towards the door he had unlocked. He didn't look back.

He wasn't going to record this, anyhow. It had never
happened,
wasn't a part of history, he didn't need to watch, he told himself. Only the things written down mattered.

Somewhere men were racing horses, ploughing fields, children were playing, or crying, or labouring at hard tasks in the world. Ships were sailing. It was raining, snowing, sand blew in a desert, food and drink were being taken, jests made, oaths uttered, in piety or rage. Money changed hands. A woman cried a name behind shutters. Prayers were spoken in chapels and forests and before sacred, guarded flames. A dolphin leaped in the blue sea. A man laid tesserae upon a wall. A pitcher broke on a well rim, a servant knew she would be beaten for it.

Men were losing and winning at dice, at love, at war. Cheiromancers prepared tablets that besought yearning or fertility or extravagant wealth. Or death for someone desperately hated for longer than one could ever say.

Pertennius of Eubulus, leaving the tunnel, felt another rush of wet, distant heat, but heard no scream this time.

He came out into the lower part of the Attenine Palace again, below ground. A wide staircase led up, the corridor ran both ways to other hallways, other stairs. No guards. No one at all. Tertius Daleinus had already run upstairs. Somewhere. A trivial, meaningless man, Pertennius thought. Not a thought to be written now, of course, or not in any… public document.

He took a breath, smoothed his tunic, and prepared to go up, outside, and back across the gardens, and then down in the other palace to tell Leontes what had happened.

It proved unnecessary, that walk.

He heard a clatter of sound from above and looked up, just as, from behind him in the tunnel, there came a muffled, distant cry, and a last blast of heat came down, all the way to the hallway where he stood alone.

He didn't look back. He looked up. Leontes descended the stairs, moving briskly as he always did, soldiers behind him, as there always were.

"Pertennius! What in the god's holy name is keeping you, man? Where's the Emperor? Why is the door…
where are the guards?

Pertennius swallowed hard. Smoothed his tunic. "My lord," he said, "something terrible has happened."

"What? In there?" The Strategos stopped.

"My lord, do not go in. It is… terrible." Which was nothing but truth.

And generated the predictable response. Leontes glanced at his guards. "Wait here." The golden-haired leader of the Sarantine armies went into the tunnel.

So, of course, Pertennius had to go back in. This might never be recorded, either, but it was impossible for a chronicler not to be present for what would happen now. He closed the door carefully behind him.

Leontes moved quickly. By the time Pertennius had retraced his steps down the tunnel and come to the curve again, the Strategos was on his knees beside the blackened body of his Emperor.

There was a span of time wherein no one moved. Then Leontes reached to the clasp at his throat, undid it, swept off his dark blue cloak and laid it gently over the body of the dead man. He looked up.

Pertennius was behind him, couldn't see his expression. The smell of burnt flesh was very bad. Ahead of them, motionless, stood the other two living people in this place. Pertennius stayed where he was, at the curve of the tunnel, half hidden against the wall.

He saw the Strategos stand. Saw Styliane facing him, her head high. Beside her, Lysippus the Calysian seemed to become aware that he was still holding the nozzle of the fire device. He let it fall. His face was strange now, too. There were three dead bodies beside him, all charred and black. The two guards. And Lecanus Daleinus, who had first burned all those years ago, with his father.

Leontes said nothing. Very slowly he moved forward. Stood before his wife and the Calysian.

"What are you doing here?" he said. To Lysippus.

Styliane was as ice, as marble. Pertennius saw the Calysian looking at the Strategos as though unsure where he'd come from." What does it look like?" he said. A memorable voice. "I'm admiring the floor mosaics."

Leontes, commander of the armies of Sarantium, was a different sort of man than the dead Emperor behind him. He drew his sword. A gesture repeated more times than could ever be numbered. Without speaking again he drove the blade through flesh and into the heart of the man standing beside his wife.

Lysippus never even moved, had no chance to defend himself. Pertennius, coming forward a step, unable to hold back, saw the astonishment in the Calysian's eyes before the blade was pulled out, hard, and he fell, thunderously.

The echoes of that took time to die away. Amid a stench of meat and the bodies of five dead men now, a husband and a wife faced each other underground and Pertennius shivered, watching them.

"Why did you do that?" said Styliane Daleina.

The slap took her across the face, a soldier's blow. Her head snapped to one side.

"Be brief, and precise," said her husband. "Who did this?"

Styliane didn't even bring a hand up to touch her cheek. She looked at her husband. She had been ready to be burned alive, the secretary remembered, only moments ago. There was no fear in her, not the least hint of it.

"My brother," she said. "Lecanus. He has taken his revenge for our father. He sent word to me this morning that he was coming here. Had obviously bribed his guards on the island, and through them the Excubitors at the doors here."

"And you came?"

"Of course I came. Too late to stop it. The Emperor was dead, and the two soldiers. And the Calysian had already killed Lecanus."

The lies, so effortless, so necessary. The words that might make this work, for all of them.

She said, "My brother is dead."

"Rot his evil soul," said her husband flatly. "What was the Calysian doing here?"

"A good question to ask him," Styliane said. The left side of her face was red where he'd hit her. "We might have an answer had someone not blundered in waving a sword."

"Careful, wife. I still have the sword. You are a Daleinus, and by your own statement your family has just murdered our holy Emperor."

"Yes, husband," she said. "They have. Will you kill me now, my dear?"

Leontes was silent. Looked back, for the first time. Saw Pertennius watching. His expression did not change. He turned to his wife again. "We are on the very eve of war. Today. It was to be announced today. And now there are tidings that the Bassanids are across the border in the north, breaking the peace. And the Emperor is dead. We have no Emperor, Styliane."

Styliane Daleina smiled then. Pertennius saw it. A woman so beautiful it could stop your breath. "We will," she said. "We will very soon. My lord."

And she knelt, exquisite and golden among the blackened bodies of the dead, before her husband.

Pertennius stepped away from the wall and went forward a few steps and did the same, falling to both knees, lowering his head to the floor. There was a long silence in the tunnel.

"Pertennius," said Leontes, at length, "there is much to be done. The Senate will have to be called into session. Go to the kathisma in the Hippodrome. Immediately. Tell Bonosus to come back here with you. Do
not
tell him why but make it clear he must come."

"Yes, my lord."

Styliane looked at him. She was still on her knees. "Do you understand? Tell no one what has happened here, or about the Bassanid attack. We
must
have order in the City tonight, to control this."

"Yes, my lady."

Leontes looked at her. "The army is here. It will not be the same as… the last time there was no heir."

His wife looked back at him, and then at her brother, beside her on the ground.

"No," she said, "Not the same." And then she said it again, "Not the same."

Pertennius saw the Strategos reach out then and help her to rise. His hand went to her bruised cheek, gently this time. She did not move, but her eyes were on his. They were so golden, the two of them, Pertennius thought, so tall. His heart was swelling.

He stood and turned and went. He had orders to obey.

He entirely forgot there was blood on his dagger, neglected to clean it all that day, but no one paid any attention to him so it didn't matter.

He was so seldom noticed; an historian, a recorder of events, hovering and grey, present everywhere, but not ever someone who ever played any kind of
role
in events.

Going up the stairs swiftly, then hurrying through the palace towards an upper staircase and the enclosed walkway that led to the rear of the kathisma, he was already casting his mind after phrasings, a way to begin. The proper tone of detachment and reflection at the outset of a chronicle was so important.
Even the most perfunctory study of past events teaches that Jad's just retribution for the godless and evil may be long in coming but…

He stopped abruptly, forcing one of the eunuchs in a corridor to sidestep him quickly. He was wondering where the whore was. She was unlikely-surely-to be in the kathisma, though
that
would have been something to observe. Was she still in her bath in the other palace, naked and slippery with a soldier? He smoothed his tunic. Styliane would deal with her, he thought.

We must have order in the City tonight,
she had said.

He knew what she meant. How could he not? The last death of an Emperor without a named heir had been Apius's, and in the violence that followed that-in the Hippodrome and the streets and even the Imperial Senate chamber-an ignorant Trakesian peasant had been lifted on a shield, acclaimed by the rabble, robed in porphyry. Order was hugely important now, and calm among the eighty thousand in the Hippodrome.

It crossed his mind that if all went as it should, by the end of this day his own status might rise a great deal. He thought of another woman, then, and smoothed his tunic again.

He was very happy, a rare, almost an unprecedented state for him, as he carried enormous, world-shaking tidings to the kathisma, with blood on the blade in his belt.

The sun was high above the City, past its peak, going down, but that day-and night-had a long way yet to go in Sarantium.

In the tunnel, among the dead, two golden figures stood looking at each other in silence, and then walked slowly out and up the wide stairs, not touching, but side by side.

On the stones behind them, on the mosaic stones under a blue cloak, lay Valerius of Sarantium, the second of that name. His body. What was left of it. His soul was gone, to dolphins, to the god, to wherever souls go.