Chapter Forty-Five Minister to Ills
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Minister to Ills
“Persuade me to evil,” the Emperor addressed his prime minister. “I grow bored by affairs of state.”
“It’s no fun when you ask me to do it,” Pio told him.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
The Emperor sat alone above them all at the dying of the day, on his throne of jewels and gilded bone, holding court.
Lord Ernac coughed. “Sire. Do I have the honour of your full attention?”
“Mmm? I order you immediately executed for your crimes.”
Their dark overlord swept the court with his fiendish red gaze, daring one of them to object. Temptation hung before Pio like a fruit: he saw the shining opportunity to let someone else die, so the divine wrath wouldn’t fall on him.
But he was Prime Minister, chosen to lead the assembly, to act as intermediary between ministers and monarch. Pio cleared his throat. “Your Imperial Highness?”
The Emperor laughed. “Only joking.”
Relief almost knocked Pio off his feet, and Lord Ernac darted away immediately. The dark mutter of the court rose like shadow at noon. How many fits of caprice would the court endure before they turned against him as a tyrant?
Would it matter? Nobody could stand against a god.
The place beside Pio where the commander general should stand was starkly empty. Nemeth was still abed with fever in Pio’s quarters, his youngest son by his bedside. He kept asking for Fabianus and the girls.
Pio supposed he could give Nemeth Fabianus’s heart.
He had no idea what to do with the heart. He had no idea what to do with his Emperor, who had been ominously quiet since the message from the Ice King arrived.
“Tagar has our princess. Tagar has Rahela Domitia. What do you have?”
Pio watched the Emperor’s gauntlets tap against the gilded arms of the throne. Each tap made Pio’s nerves scream with something like horror.
He felt a slight tug on his ministerial robes.
Ninell had reached out and taken a pinch of the blue silk, to hold and console herself as she used to hold her dolly when she was small.
She’d been very quiet of late. Pio sent her a small, reassuring smile, telling Ninell silently that there was nothing to fear while her uncle was by.
Fortunately, being a politician, he was an excellent liar.
No wonder sweet Ninell was in a state. It wasn’t only the Nemeths’ fate.
The Queen’s Trials had ended in disaster, with a funeral to be held instead of a wedding.
Lady Glacia was slain, Lady Rahela flown, and the Emperor’s mood was dark indeed.
The throne room felt more and more like that moment in childhood when you were sitting about a campfire telling tales of ghosts and demons, then you realized the fire was dying and the wind rising, and all tales on the cusp of coming true.
Lady Dian Domitia, dressed head to foot in jet and rubies, observed the scene before them with a measuring eye and a slight smile. Her daughter nowhere to be found, her granddaughter in the arms of the enemy, yet her composure never left her. She was a wonderful woman.
Pio kept telling himself that soon the Emperor’s wounded heart would be healed by the love of a true queen. Specifically, Ninell. A clever queen would restore peace to the nation, equanimity to the monarch, and no doubt shower her family with honours. All would be well. It would.
Pio said, “May I suggest, Your Imperial Majesty, that this is for the best? Forgive me, but Lady Rahela is deranged.”
The Emperor raised a brow. “You’re making me miss her more.”
“I do not jest,” Pio insisted. “Sire, she’s a black widow with a black heart. With my own eyes, I saw her push the late King Octavian off the battlements of the Palace-on-the-Edge to his doom.”
Unbelievably, the Emperor started to laugh.
“Sire, I fear I don’t understand.” He feared he would never understand his ruler’s bizarre sense of humour.
“Once I kill the Ice King,” declared the Emperor, “the wedding is back on.”
Then the Emperor’s laughter cut off abruptly. Pio stared around, trying to see why.
The tall windows of the throne room bled red light. This was not unusual. If these had been the windows on the other side of the chamber, the side that looked out onto the dread ravine.
But they were the wrong windows. Red light was spilling in from the wrong side.
Pio was absolutely sick to the teeth of living through world-changing events. Could they not go a single week without cataclysmic disaster? Just one week!
Pio hoped it was a trick of the light, until the Emperor drew his sword.
Usually the blade had a lambent glow. Now it blazed as though the steel remembered fire.
The words “Longing for Revenge” were reflected and magnified, scarlet script on gold.
Written in fire, across the ten-foot-tall golden doors of the throne room.
“Fire on the mountain,” the Emperor murmured. “I saw this before.”
Pio said, “When, Your Majesty?”
“In a dream,” answered his monarch slowly, as if in another dream.
“What does it mean, sire?”
“The god is coming.” In answer to the stir of bewilderment, the Emperor arched an eyebrow. “The Great God,” he clarified. “The one you call my father.”
Bewildered mutterings descended into a hum of excitement and hope. He will be wise, he will be just, he will save us. The Great God.
The Emperor rose from his throne. His movements had become extremely deliberate and purposeful, as though he were an arrow flying to its target.
Pio licked his lips. “What will you do, sire?”
“Oh, I intend to welcome him.”
The young god stormed from the throne room with his sword blazing in his hand.
Who could stand against a god? Pio thought dazedly. Nobody but a god.
“Quick, Andras,” purred Lady Dian, adding “Forgive me for the familiarity, Prime Minister. Let us go at once and secure a good view.”
She was right. They needed to know what was happening. He put his arm around Ninell, keeping her safe by his side, and led the way.
Onto the battlements of the high palace walls rushed ministers and courtiers, as if to the grand balconies over the abyss on a feast day. It seemed the world had become the abyss, teeming with the dead, with danger and the divine. All mortals could do was witness these great and terrible days.
Smoke veiled the moon, as if that luminous white eye would not wish to see the events that transpired below.
Pio did not wish to see, either.
He had spent his life scheming and climbing towards power, but it was earthly power he’d wanted, not this. Yet still, this felt like the natural consequence of all he had worked towards. As if he had climbed a mountain, then found himself foolishly amazed by the view.
To have the secret knowledge that the highest in the land could stoop so low. Their prophesied Emperor, foolish dead young King Octavian, the late King Septimus. Those above crushed those below, simply for the crime of being below. Everyone powerful thought they were all-powerful.
With the clarity provided by divinity, which magnified all things so you were forced to see them for what they were, Pio realized he had never expected rulers to be good.
He’d accepted the rise to power would be ugly and hard, told himself what mattered was ascending one step and then another. Focused on getting as close as he possibly could to the top, he had climbed by mistake into the obliterating sun.
Having known the son, Pio found himself possessed by a sick, dizzying vertigo at the thought of beholding the father. He didn’t want to be in this place, living through these times.
Yet here he was, and all he could do was wait for the clash of gods below.