Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The threat to sack the city arrived the following week.
The letter was delivered by an imperial courier who looked, when Verna's gate guards brought him to the courtyard, like a man who had been given a task he hated and was doing his professional best to conceal it.
He handed over the document with a stiff formality and rode away before she had finished reading it.
The letter informed the nine houses, in the formal language of imperial decree, that if the funding was not restored within ten days, the emperor would direct his garrison to begin confiscating property in the lower districts of Castine, starting with the market quarter, as compensation for the economic damage caused by the houses' treasonous withdrawal of support.
The property confiscations would continue until the funding was restored or there was nothing left to confiscate.
She handed Kalen the letter. "He's threatening the people of the city. Starting in the lower districts. The people who have little and can protect themselves the least. He’s effectively holding them to ransom if we don’t comply."
"What will you do?"
"Send a copy of this letter with one of my own," Verna said.
"Some of them will want to restore the funding immediately.
The ones with business interests in the city, and the ones whose tenants depend on the Castine markets.
Carlton will hold as will Thom, but three or four of the others I'm less certain about. "
She wrote to all nine within the hour. She urged them to hold, not restore the funding. He can’t sack his own city without destroying the last of his legitimacy. This is a bluff.
She sent the riders and then sat at her desk and stared at the wall and hoped very much that she was right.
The responses came back over two days, and some weren’t what she had hoped for.
Six houses confirmed they would hold. Two were wavering, their letters full of the careful language of people who wanted to do the right thing and were frightened of the consequences.
The ninth house, Lord Mirran's, wrote a letter that was essentially a politely phrased question about whether Verna was absolutely certain this was a bluff, because he had a great deal of property in the market quarter.
Verna wrote back to each wavering house personally, longer letters, making the case as clearly as she could.
If he sacks the city, he loses the city. And an emperor who has lost his capital has lost everything. He knows this. We need to know it too.
She was not entirely sure she believed it herself, which made it more difficult to write.
On the third day after the threat, nothing happened in the market quarter.
On the fourth day, nothing.
On the fifth, it was reported that patrols moved through the lower districts in greater numbers than usual, though as yet they hadn’t made a move on the people.
On the sixth day, a delegation of Castine merchants sent a letter to the palace requesting an audience with the emperor to discuss the economic situation. Verna read this as a sign that the city's commercial class was frightened, but not yet willing to place the blame where it belonged.
On the seventh day, a letter arrived she hadn’t been expecting.
It came with the morning post, tucked between a supplier's invoice and a letter from Thom about the state of his winter vines.
It was so unremarkable in its appearance that Verna nearly set it aside without opening it.
It was written on plain paper and had a plain seal she didn't recognise— a small stylised flower pressed into the wax that she had never seen before.
The handwriting on the front was small and neat.
When she opened it, it was short, only half a page. No formal hello, no political language or careful phrasing.
Lady Verna.
You don’t know my handwriting because I’ve never written to you. I was advised when I came to the palace as a young woman that letters could be intercepted, so I took the advice seriously and rarely wrote to anyone.
I am writing to you now because what I intend to say is something I am willing for anyone to read.
I have documents, thirty years of them, collected and kept in a safe place.
Decisions made in closed rooms, orders given that do not appear in any official record.
Things done in the name of the empire that the people don’t know were done in their name.
People slaughtered and enslaved so the emperor can have their land.
I want you to have them.
My conditions are simple. When this is over, I want to leave and be given safe passage.
I also ask for clemency for my daughter, Fatima.
She is as much a political pawn as myself.
I wish to go to somewhere quiet and never again be required to fold my hands in my lap and look at anything I do not choose to see.
I believe you can arrange this.
I hope you will.
Lysandra.
Verna gaped at the words. The empress was not only deserting her husband; she intended to bury him.
This changed everything. If the entire Empire deserted Borgine, he would have no choice but to abdicate.
Kalen was on the lower terrace with Dulcie when Verna found her, sitting on the stone wall with the bear beside her, both of them looking out at the winter sea.
The relationship between Kalen and the bear had happened gradually over the weeks, two disposed souls far from their homeland who shared the same life now.
Verna handed Kalen the letter without speaking.
Kalen read it twice, which told Verna what a game changer it was. "She’s been documenting him for thirty years. Extraordinary."
Verna sat on the wall beside her. "I’d say she was forced into the marriage and has been waiting for this moment."
Kalen looked at the letter again. "She says she believes you can arrange her leaving."
"I can," Verna said. "Wherever she wants to go."
"She doesn't say what's in the documents."
"No," Verna replied. "But it doesn't matter. Whatever's in them, the existence of them is enough. If Borgine knows she has thirty years of material on him and given it to us, the last thing propping up his position collapses. He can't govern if he’s proved a criminal."
Kalen was quiet. Dulcie moved beside her and the wall vibrated faintly with the weight of her.
"How does she intend to get the documents out?" Kalen said.
"She'll have thought about that," Verna said. "She's been planning this for thirty years."
She had. When Verna wrote back that afternoon, accepting the arrangement and asked how the documents would be transferred, the response came the following morning.
Lysandra had a woman, a laundress, who moved between the palace and the city twice a week and who had been, for the past decade, the most reliable person in Lysandra's quiet life.
The laundress would bring the documents out in three batches over the following week, in linen baskets that the palace guards had stopped checking years ago.
The first batch arrived at a safe house in Castine, an address Lysandra specified, on a Wednesday. Carlton's man collected it and rode to the estate by nightfall.
Verna sat at her desk until nearly midnight reading through it.
By the time she set the last page down, she understood why Lysandra had been so careful for thirty years, and why she had waited for exactly this moment.
There was enough in the first batch alone to end Borgine's reign three times over.
She wrote to Carlton and the others with two words: Read this.
Carlton’s response was immediate. How soon can we move?
The second batch arrived four days later and the third the day after that.
By the time the third batch was in Verna's hands, the mood of the nine house heads had changed. They were unanimous and less patient. Even Lord Mirran, who had been anxious about his market property, wrote a letter that was the shortest he had sent since this had begun. Tell me when and I’ll be there.
Verna wrote to Lysandra a last time. It begins. Can you manage the next two days safely?
The response came the following morning: I have been managing this palace for thirty years. Two more days is nothing.
The delegation that arrived at the palace twelve days after Lysandra's first letter was not an army.
It was nine house heads, their senior advisers and guards, arriving at the palace gates in their carriages with their house seals visible and no weapons drawn.
Verna was at the front of it in the same blue silk gown she had worn in the arena, and the wreath entwined in her hair.
Kalen and four Abrensian guards rode beside her carriage.
The palace gates were flung wide open when they approached. A contingent of Imperial soldiers was in the courtyard, standing quietly as they dismounted from the carriages.
The herald with his iron-tipped rod was waiting in the entrance hall. He looked at Verna when she came through the door with an expression that was the closest thing to relief she had seen on a palace official's face since this began.
"Lady Verna," he said. "The emperor will receive you. Follow me."
When the heavy doors opened a few moments later, they walked through them.
Verna had been in this room many times, for state occasions and formal audiences, and as a child when her grandfather was emperor. She remembered thinking it was the largest and grandest place, but it seemed smaller today.
Borgine was on the throne, dressed formally in his full imperial uniform, the chain of office around his neck, and the crown he rarely wore on his head.
He had deliberately made himself into a picture of authority, which told her that he was desperate for a good outcome.
On his left sat Olag, broad and impatient looking, a man who dealt with problems by force.
On his right, Bain, still and watchful, less certain after his run-in with her.
Verna walked the full length of the throne room with the nine house heads behind her and Kalen at her shoulder, and stopped at the appropriate distance from the dais and looked at Borgine.
He eyed her with the smile of a man who believed he was receiving a delegation that had come to concede.
"Lady Verna," he said warmly, spreading his hands in the gesture of a man welcoming people back into the fold. "And heads of the great houses." He looked along the row with satisfaction. " I had begun to think this business would drag on considerably longer than was good for anyone."
Verna said nothing and waited.
"The terms for restoration are straightforward," Borgine continued, settling back in the throne.
"Full reinstatement of the house contributions at the previous rate, effective immediately, with the arrears from the period of interruption to be settled within the month.
In return, the declaration of war is rescinded and we say no more about it. "
He said it with the confidence of a man who sent soldiers to burn estates and sack the lower city and genuinely believed that he could smooth it over.
"That isn't why we're here," she said after a pause.
Borgine's pleasant expression remained in place. "I beg your pardon?"
"We're not here to discuss the restoration of funding," Verna said.
"We're here for something else." She reached into the document case she carried and produced the first of Lysandra's packages.
She set it on the table used for the formal record of proceedings.
Then the second and the third. She placed them in a row and smoothed the top of each one and stepped back.
"What we have here," she said, "is thirty years of documentation. Decisions made by you in closed rooms that haven’t any official record.
Orders given in the empire's name that were never disclosed to the people.
Villages in the border territories destroyed for their land.
People enslaved and sold through the auction houses to fund campaigns that the imperial treasury could not sustain through legitimate means.
" She looked at him steadily. "Correspondence, records, dates and names.
Thirty years of it, collected carefully by someone with access to this palace and the patience to wait for the right moment. "
The warmth had gone out of Borgine's face entirely. "Where did you get those," he asked curtly.
"That name isn’t going to be disclosed. I'll leave it at that."
His eyes moved to the packages, then wagged his fingers at the scribe at the table. "Bring them to me."
The scribe carried the top documents to Borgine who took them and read. A florid flush started at his jaw and moved upward to his cheeks. "This proves nothing," he snapped.
"There are several hundred more," Verna said. "Taken together they establish a pattern of conduct that no emperor has the legal authority to engage in under the
founding charters of the Empire. Which gives the houses the right, under those same charters, to demand remedy."
"Demand remedy?"
"Yes," she replied. "We are seeking a peaceful transfer of power.
You are no longer fit to sit on the throne.
The appointment of a council of the nine houses to govern the empire collectively while a more permanent arrangement is determined.
" She kept her voice completely level. "We are asking for this to be done lawfully and without further damage to the empire or its people. "
The throne room held its breath.
Then Borgine stood up.