Chapter Two The Sinister Minister #3
All save Lady Rahela. She did not cower.
She laid a hand over the Emperor’s. She wore enchanted gauntlets which would bring her the strength and skill of ten warriors.
Compared to the imperial gauntlets, hers seemed flimsy silver baubles.
Pio wondered what on earth the woman was doing. She couldn’t hope to fight the Emperor.
She said, “You have power over sky and abyss. I have power over you.”
Briefly Pio believed Rahela meant the power of love. Looking at the Emperor’s livid malevolent face, he thought Lady Rahela must be far more unhinged than he had supposed.
Then the Beauty Dipped In Blood murmured to the Emperor, “I command you not to kill that boy.”
The court watched as a red line of magic, thin as a whip and bright as lightning, snaked over the Emperor’s gauntlet and stayed his hand. The Emperor strained, once. The line held. Shock rippled through the crowd.
For Pio, it was shock and awe. Apparently this woman had seen the future, and seized her chance. By some underhand means, Lady Rahela had tricked the Commander of the Living and the Dead into swearing the unbreakable oath of blood and gold.
The Emperor grinned like a skull. “How clever you are, my lady.”
For a blazing moment, Pio thought the Emperor would kill her before she could command him not to.
Then the Emperor shrugged, leaning back against the throne’s wings. “Fine. I won’t kill him.”
“Promise?”
“I seldom lie.” An edge, sharp as the blood-red edge on the blade that cut his throat, emerged in the Emperor’s voice. “Unlike some. Do I have your word you will be with me on the morrow, my lady?”
Rahela forced a tinkling laugh. “Is it possible to escape? Can you imagine a place where you would not find me?”
Her falseness made the Emperor smile. “Even beyond imagination, I would find you.”
The shadow of claws fell against the windows and seemed to slash away stars. The Emperor waved a hand, permitting his lady to depart. For now.
She of snow and flame walked, head held high, down the throne room lined by the watching dead. Pio counted her impressively firm steps. If she reached the throne room doors, if the Emperor let her go, perhaps they might get out of this room alive.
Enchanted metal crashed against stone. Andras’s nerves screamed at seeing a broken face upon the ground.
Until Pio recognized the crowned mask of kings, dashed to pieces against the golden mosaic floor of the throne room.
The shining mosaics depicted the Great Goddess leaving this world, but blood and wreckage now covered all brightness.
The son of gods stood over the kneeling guard. His face was the abyss.
“Remember this. The time of kings is over. The time of gods and monsters has come. I will not be lied to. I will not be betrayed. I’m not the god you prayed for. I’m the god you deserve.”
He stood from his throne, his shadow flung from the throne’s foot to the doors. Pio’s nerve broke, and he fled.
So did what remained of the royal court.
All the king’s men and ministers shoved and scrambled in a terrified, undignified rush to escape the throne room. No sooner had the last man stumbled over the threshold than the ten-foot-tall doors closed, as final as a tomb, leaving the helpless boy trapped alone with the divine monster.
Panting in the centre of the fleeing crowd, Lady Rahela caught Pio’s expression. “He won’t kill him. He can’t.” Her whisper seemed meant to reassure.
How naive. Andras shook his head.
“There are ways to make a man wish for death.”
Dread crept too late over the girl’s face, but she didn’t go back in. Her gaze fixed on a window, where the sky drew its first faint pencil-line of grey under this long black and crimson night.
“I appreciate your help,” she told Pio. She started walking fast.
The lady wanted allies. Good to know.
Nemeth spat on Rahela’s red-trimmed skirts as she whisked by. “Woman! You are the calamity that will fell a god to earth and set a kingdom burning.”
“Sincerely, thank you for making me sound so cool.”
Lady Rahela passed hastily on. The rest of the ministers concentrated their attention on the throne room doors, but Pio watched as Rahela picked up her blood-edged skirts and ran.
He wouldn’t have been surprised to see her racing for the harbour or the mountains, but she truly appeared to be headed for the Tower of Maidens, where she and all the ladies-in-waiting slept.
Pio grasped the arm of the captain of the guards, who he bribed often, and recently enough to be sure the fellow was reliable.
“Two things. Religion is once more in fashion at court. Send word to the Divine Order that they must assemble and head to the capital forthwith. By then, I will have located Lord Marius, if he lives.”
Great God, let him live. Lord Marius, the White Knight, the late king’s best friend, the Last Hope.
Lord Marius Valerius’s ancestral lineage was a history of unconquerable warriors, which in times of peace meant a line of deranged spree-killers.
Lord Marius himself had taken vows of pacifism, chastity and dedication to the cold scholarship of the Ivory Tower.
The common folk regarded him as incorruptible.
They would follow where Lord Marius led.
So, by ancient tradition, would the Divine Order.
With the enemy at their gates and the Emperor on the throne, the people of Eyam needed someone to rely on.
The captain nodded so swiftly Pio suspected he only wanted somebody to tell him what to do, and would have obeyed without any bribe at all. “And the other command, my lord?”
Pio pointed to the Maidens’ Tower, its turret wearing a coronet of fading stars.
“Set a guard to watch Lady Rahela. Send word to my niece in the tower to stalk her steps. We must understand the relationship between her and the Emperor. We must know whether there are limits on the oath the Emperor took, or if her power over him has no limit. Rahela is the key to controlling him. Above all else, she cannot be allowed to escape.”