Chapter Two The Sinister Minister
CHAPTER TWO
The Sinister Minister
When the handsome new minstrel became the sensation of the court, a gathering of his eager admirers was held to discuss his songs and stories.
“In all these romantic tales,” the prime minister asked, “why are the king and his knights not giving any thought to the governance of the country?”
“That’s less a question, more a nasty statement about how you would prefer the story to go,” replied Merel the minstrel. “By all means, write your own.”
It was agreed by everyone that the prime minister had no appreciation for art.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
A mask shone before the shadows on the throne, golden and grave, a dark jewel shining in the forehead where once a hollow was carved.
This was the royal mask, worn in humility to show that the kings knew the Emperor was coming and the throne was not theirs to keep.
The prime minister had seen the mask of the kings-in-waiting countless times, when the young king or his father before him held court.
Tonight, Pio watched the mask raised by a bloodstained claw, held in front of the Emperor’s face in a parody of the familiar regal manner. The young king’s head was still warm in Pio’s hands.
The golden visage lowered to reveal the dark countenance beneath, with its terrible smile.
“And the mask falls,” announced the beast slouched upon the throne.
He laid the mask carelessly aside.
“If you doubt my imperial claim,” continued the awful Emperor, “shall I further demonstrate my powers of command over the dead?”
Pio coughed. “That won’t be necessary, Your Imperial Highness.”
Being the power behind the throne was usually an ideal position. It meant you could hide behind the throne. When matters went awry, it was simple to brush off disappointed courtiers with “So sorry, ultimately His Majesty guides us all.”
This approach failed if the throne was usurped. The approach utterly collapsed if the usurper on the throne could puppet the undead to slaughter half the court.
The creature’s footsteps had painted a trail of fresh gore across the throne room.
Memory offered visions of countless nobles cut down before Pio’s eyes, gentleborn ladies screaming as their flesh tore with their silk gowns, ministers whose speeches he had listened to for years gurgling on their own blood.
Fear whispered Pio could be next. He didn’t know why he still lived.
Andras Pio, Prime Minister of Eyam, shut away emotion to concentrate on the matter at hand.
This was better than a rioting mob. This wasn’t an overthrow of the government, only a change in monarch. Monarchs changed all the time. The king is dead, long live the Emperor! The system endured. Order endured. Andras Pio believed in order.
Andras permitted himself a single dismayed sigh, and wondered what to do with his king’s head. He looked around for a servant. Naturally, the ministers had come to the throne room accompanied by every possible palace guard.
Andras himself had selected a guard based on youth and strength. Said strong-looking youth was backing away, hand flying to his mouth. Why was it impossible to find reliable help? Everybody was upset, this was an upsetting situation, but forsaking one’s duty would not aid matters.
Nobles and servants receded like the tide from the horror of the Emperor’s gaze, leaving Pio stranded. Save for the only one remaining by his side.
Commander General Nemeth was the sole person not to retreat. Through countless victories in war, he had never learned the habit. Pio’s old adversary, which in politics was as close as anyone ever got to a friend.
“Please hold this, Commander. Treat the royal remains with all due reverence.” Pio placed the head in Nemeth’s hands. To his credit, the grizzled veteran of many battlefields barely flinched.
Wiping congealed blood from his palms onto his favourite herigaut, which was fortunately – depending on how you looked at the matter – already covered in blood from the night’s excesses, Pio raised his voice.
“May I be the first to say: Long live the Emperor!”
“Thanks,” said their apparent Emperor in his lamentably ill-bred accent. “I think I’m immortal, as the son of the gods and ruler of the skies. Exciting for us to find out together.”
“You are undying,” declared the woman enthroned beside him.
“You’re the Once and Forever Emperor.” Her dark eyes flashed over the ministers, and her voice echoed like a voice from the abyss.
“Did I not say the Emperor’s time was nigh?
It was so incredibly nigh. The king stood before me, but who walked through the golden doors with me, and stood at my side?
Believe my prophecy. This is the young god you prayed for, the prince reborn, the Emperor foretold.
Do not doubt, this is the hero of the story. ”
A fitting end to a terrible night. If it wasn’t Lady Rahela Domitia.
The other ministers looked stricken by the dread tones of prophecy.
Considering the currently indisputable fact that the Emperor prophesied for eight generations had finally come, Andras supposed he couldn’t dismiss the lady as a complete charlatan, but he felt the mouthpiece of the gods should be accurate. Think before you prophesy, woman!
He never expected the Emperor to come in his lifetime.
Indeed, while it was only right for a minister to be suitably religious, Andras had often thought it would be pleasant if the dread ravine, the starveling ghouls and the enchanted objects surrounding them were some sort of natural phenomena that ultimately meant very little.
Seeing a man’s crowned shadow fill the sky, as the dead rose in droves and slaughtered his fellow nobles and the foreign invaders of their city alike, had put paid to any wistful atheist aspirations.
Andras Pio considered his mind a vast cabinet with many drawers.
Some drawers contained intelligence he referred to frequently.
Some drawers he kept locked, as the intelligence within could be of no possible use.
This was a busy night for the second type of drawer.
Andras put “divine prophecies” in another compartment he didn’t feel equipped to deal with at present.
Do not think about the scarlet skies, do not think about the ghouls, do not think about the head.
The realm. Think of the realm.
“Lady Rahela,” said Pio slowly. “What a surprise to see you here. Considering how last we met.”
Earlier he had attempted to send the young woman to her chambers. Shortly after that he tried to arrest her, and witnessed her committing regicide.
Rahela cackled. “How the turn tables, am I right?”
Prophets always were mad.
The Emperor, lounging insouciantly upon the throne in a manner the king never had, remarked: “Lady Rahela has done me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage.”
Truly it needed only this for the horrors to be complete. The last thing the present circumstances required was a mad queen.
“Ah.” Pio heard his own voice go hollow, like a sad little animal crying alone in a cave. “Congratulations.”
So the young man was infatuated. That was a problem, but a reasonable problem, a problem Andras could deal with.
King Octavian had become infatuated with women in the past too.
In fact, King Octavian had once been infatuated with this very woman.
Such was the way of monarchs: many women found power irresistible, and many powerful men enjoyed women finding them irresistible.
Pio had heard sex was all about power. He felt people who said that should consider trying actual power.
He fancied a clever older woman once, long ago. She rightly dismissed him as a young fool. Soon, Pio grew old and clever enough himself to judge fools in love.
King Octavian’s infatuation with Lady Rahela had waned with time. Of course, then this frenzied soothsayer harlot had pushed Octavian off the battlements of his own castle. Now the king was missing his head, and Lady Rahela’s diaphanously clad buttocks rested upon the queen’s throne.
The madwoman had got everything she wanted.
Yet Pio couldn’t help noticing how wild she was about the eyes.
You didn’t climb the court ladder without being able to read people.
He had never done more than skim Lady Rahela, finding her a shallow and predictable tale.
It was suddenly imperative Pio be able to read her in depth and with accuracy.
“Thanks for the congratulations, Prime Minister,” purred the Harlot of the Tower. “We’re very happy.”
She didn’t seem very happy. The lady was in a panic. The kind of panic people got into when their plans went dramatically awry.
Pio smiled thinly. “May you long remain in your current state of bliss.”
The Emperor and the Harlot both bared their teeth, like a pair of wolves who led a pack and found themselves unamused.
For his part, Andras was irritated that subtly needling comments would apparently now be noticed and resented.
If monarchs must be mad, could they not also do him the favour of being stupid?
Also no fool, Andras had noted that earlier when Lady Rahela referred to him as the hero of the story, the Emperor briefly wore the shocked unhappy expression of a cat fallen into a bath.
Her flattery was failing to convince. On some level their new Emperor knew Lady Rahela wasn’t pleased by the prospect of marrying him.
Perhaps the infatuation would not last long.
Lady Rahela started to rise. “On that happy note, let’s call it a night—”
The Emperor reached out a hand, clad in the enchanted regal gauntlets, to touch hers. Pio was long accustomed to the regalia, but somehow on these new hands, the metal claws were inescapable. The lady went as still as the dead should be.
Several facts became clear. Lady Rahela was scared. Lady Rahela was desperate to get away. Pio strongly suspected she had a specific destination in mind.
“There’s another matter I want to discuss.”