Queen of Fire

They took us to the harbour-master’s station, a sturdy building equipped with a few cells for sundry smugglers or excessively boisterous sailors. Thanks to the excitable port official a crowd had begun to form on the wharf by the time the soldiers closed in around us. “If I am liable to arrest,” I said to the sergeant, “I have a right to hear the charge.”

“Quiet!” he snapped, face flushing as he eyed the gathering throng on the quayside. “It’ll be all I can do to get you clear of here without this lot stringing you from the nearest mast.”

I could hear them now, despite the thickness of the walls that surrounded us, a classic baying mob. The words “Hang the traitor!” and “Avenge the Hope!” seemed to be the most salient amongst their chants.

“‘It is only in the Alpiran Empire that the rule of law is truly respected,’” Fornella quoted in a faintly bitter voice. As ever her memory for my writing was aggravatingly accurate. “‘Justice being applied equally regardless of station. All, from the meanest, most beggared subject to the Emperor himself, can expect equal treatment before the law.’”

She paced back and forth, prowling the cell and wincing at the occasional upsurge in the mob’s fury. “What can you have done to arouse such ire, my lord?” she asked, her tone more than a trifle sarcastic. “Perhaps offended the Empress in some way?”

“You didn’t have to stay,” I pointed out.

She sighed and sat down next to me on the mean wooden bench, tracing a hand through her hair and issuing a groan of annoyance at the grey tresses coming away in her fingers. “Where else is there for me to go?”

I watched her hold the hair up to the light from the small window, thinking they resembled tarnished threads of copper and making a mental note to write the observation down later, should I be afforded the opportunity. “Is this what happens?” I asked. “When you are denied the blood of the Gifted?”

“To the best of my knowledge no other recipient of the Ally’s blessing has undergone this particular trial. Some have been killed of course, assassinated or fallen in war, such is the nature of Volarian politics. But, once blessed, none have tried to exist without feeding.”

She opened her hand and let the hair fall to the floor, pausing a moment to flex her fingers in the shaft of sunlight, a faint smile on her lips. “Strangely, I find I don’t miss it at all. Mortality, as it transpires, has its compensations.”

A clattering of locks and the tramp of boots told of a visitor. I rose to regard the tall figure coming to a halt on the other side of the bars, an imposing fellow with handsome if somewhat weathered features and close-cropped hair that now had more white in it than grey. “Hevren,” I said, taking note of his uniform and the star embossed onto the centre of his breastplate, the crest of a Cohort Commander. “Promoted at last, I see.”

“Lord Verniers.” His tone was neutral, though his eyes betrayed a deep caution as they tracked from me to Fornella. “Who is she?”

“Fornella Av Entril Av Tokrev,” she said, getting to her feet. “Late of the Volarian Empire and now ambassadress on behalf of Queen Lyrna of the Unified Realm.”

Hevren returned his gaze to me. “Named a traitor and now you appear in company with a Volarian. I must say, my lord, I do begin to question your vaunted wisdom.”

Named a traitor . . . For all its falsehood the accusation still stung. All I have given, all the years of service, and this is my reward. “Might I know who has slandered me so?”

A spasm of anger flashed across his face and he stepped closer. “You are named traitor by Empress Emeren herself,” he grated. “And I therefore advise you to exercise great care over every word you speak.”

There was a time I would have retreated from such a man; these brutes always did make me excessively nervous. But it seemed constant exposure to their kind had dispelled much of my former timidity. They were just men after all, men who could kill, as could I. “The particulars of the charge?” I asked, meeting his gaze.

My absence of fear seemed to give him pause, his anger fading as he moved back. “All in due course, as dictated by law.” He paused, regarding me with grim reluctance. We had never harboured any affection for one another but there had always been a mutual respect of sorts, however grudgingly offered. “All you had to do was watch him die, Verniers,” he said. “Would it have been so hard?”

• • •

It’s said the Merchant Kings of the Far West possess palaces so vast they resemble cities, sprawling over many acres and housing innumerable servants. However, greatness is not measured only by size but also wealth, and I have never been able to conceive of any building that could outshine the Alpiran Imperial Palace in sheer architectural opulence. It stood atop a tall hill, its steep slopes rising from the broad waters of the Tamerin River, crowned with a building born of a time when modesty and restraint were not chief among Alpiran virtues. It was essentially a great six-pointed star of a building, the wings extending from a circular centre topped with a dome, and it was the dome, of course, that captured Fornella’s immediate attention.

“Do your Emperors like to blind their people?” she enquired, shielding her eyes. The midday sun was high overhead and the dome blazed bright enough to conceal its shape. I had always thought it best viewed at sunset, when the orange glow would play over the silver surface like a candle-flame, flickering towards extinction as night fell. Sometimes Seliesen and I would ride out beyond the walls, watching the spectacle from a hilltop. He said he had a poem in mind which might do justice to the sight, but if he wrote it, I never knew.

Hevren had brought two full companies of cavalry to escort us from the docks, though they proved only just adequate to prevent the gathering mob from making good their screaming threats. It was not the threats that pained me though, it was the faces I saw as we rode along the narrow channel Hevren’s men forced through the throng. Face after face contorted in hate, men, women, children. Whatever lies had been voiced against me had clearly gained near-universal acceptance. I knew then that, regardless of what transpired here, my home was now lost to me. It wasn’t just that these people would never accept me, more that I would never forgive their gullibility. A phrase Al Sorna had once spoken came back to me as we cleared the crowd and made for the palace at the trot. He had been quoting Janus at the time, relating the tale of his king’s machinations in the prelude to invasion: Give them the right lie and they’ll believe it.

Hevren veered from the road to the main gate as we neared the palace, leading us to the north-facing wall and a much-less-ornate entrance: the Soldier’s Gate, reserved for guards, servants and the occasional Imperial prisoner. I had rarely ventured to this end of the palace and was struck by the absence of formality, or the clean orderliness that ensured a life of untroubled ease for the honoured members of court. This was all bustling workshops and stables shrouded by a haze rich in the mingled odour of food and dung. Before my journeyings I might have wrinkled my nose at such a place, but now it stirred no more than a vague unpleasantness; my senses had been assailed by far worse in the course of the preceding year.

We were greeted by a man I recalled from Al Sorna’s trial, a beefy fellow in plain black clothing, bearing a set of chains in his meaty fists. Seeing little point in protest I climbed down from the saddle and proffered my wrists, expecting some growled threats from the gaoler as he snapped the manacles in place. Instead he greeted me with a deep bow and an expression of grave respect.

“My lord, long have I wanted to speak to you in person . . .” He trailed off, raising the chains with an embarrassed wince. “But not like this.”

“Leave it, Raulen,” Hevren told the gaoler.

“But he’s to be taken directly to the Empress, Honoured Commander.”

“The security of the Empress is my concern. I’ll convey Lord Verniers to the cells in due course.”

The interior of the palace is easily navigable thanks to its straightforward construction; all corridors lead to the centre where the Emperor, or rather Empress, holds court. However, the inordinate length of those corridors does leave ample time for contemplation or awkward conversation. “I was wondering,” I ventured to Hevren. “Regarding Emperor Aluran’s passing . . .”

“He was near eighty years old and grew more frail every day,” Hevren stated in a clipped tone. “There is no mystery or suspicion to be probed, my lord.”

“And his final testament?” It was tradition for the incumbent Emperor, once the impending end of his reign had become apparent, to compose a testament, praising those who had served him in life and offering guidance to their successor.

“Your legacy was generous,” Hevren said. “Lands on the northern coast, an annual pension, plus several rare volumes from the Imperial library. Whether you’ll be permitted to keep it . . .”

“I have no interest in my legacy,” I said. “Only in his guidance for the Empress.”

Hevren walked in silence for a time, his visage becoming notably more grim as we neared the entrance to the Imperial courtroom, great mahogany doors near twenty feet high. “It consisted of just one sentence,” he said. “‘Forsake all luxury.’”