Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
He studied Verna and the nine house heads, then gazed down at the incriminating packages on the table.
Raising himself to his full height, he shouted, "Traitors, every one of you. You stand in my throne room, in my palace, and you present me with this shit. Thirty years I’ve held this empire together while the houses sat on their estates and counted their money.
You benefited from every road and every trade route and every border campaign that kept your comfortable lives comfortable. You bought slaves to work our land."
He pointed at Carlton. "Your family. Two hundred years of imperial service and this is what it produces." He pointed at Hardy, at Stellan, at Mirran, as he moved along the row. "And you. And you. Every one of you. I made you. My family made you. And now you bring me this."
With a sweep of his hand, he knocked the document packages onto the floor.
"A council," he said. "Bah! You expect to replace the imperial throne with nine houses who cannot agree on what to eat for breakfast." His voice rose.
The three officials along the walls had the expressions of people trying to become part of the stonework.
"Do you have any idea what holds this empire together?
Do any of you? It isn't committees or councils.
It isn't nine men and a woman sitting around a table deciding by vote. It’s the authority of a strong, decisive emperor. "
"What we condemn," Carlton said in a steady voice, "is the abuse of that authority. There is a difference."
"There is none!" Borgine roared. "My authority is all powerful. You cannot have it by half measures. You can’t govern an empire with a council.
" He turned to Verna. "And you. I have watched you build your little network on your little coast and buy women from auction halls while you play at politics.
I have let it go on because you are blood and I chose to be magnanimous.
" His voice dropped suddenly, which was worse. "My patience is finished."
"So is your treasury," Thom said, from the back of the group.
When Borgine couldn't immediately locate the voice, it enraged him further. "Olag," he called out.
When Olag stood up, Kalen moved one step forward.
Olag looked at her with the confidence of a man who had beaten twelve men in an arena. "You think to fight me, slave?" He pulled out a knife. "I will gut you where you stand and feed your innards to my dogs."
Borgine waved a hand. "Stand down, Olag. You will have your chance shortly. Now, the lot of you get out of my throne room."
"No," Verna said. "We're not leaving or restoring the funding. Nor are we withdrawing the evidence. Things aren’t going back to the way they were.
" She kept her voice level though it took an effort.
"We’re asking you, My Lord, one more time, to consider our option.
Because the alternative to a peaceful transfer of power is not a negotiation.
It is what comes after talks fail. And I don't think you want that. "
She paused then said bluntly. "By the authority of the Great Seal of the Empire, I hereby declare your rule null and void for your crimes committed against the people of the Empire. Nor can your sons rule in your place. The Members of the Great Houses will govern until a new emperor is appointed."
Borgine glared at her, his chest heaving. He opened his mouth and spat out, "Have you gone completely flaming mad, Verna? You haven’t the authority to do that."
She gave him a half-smile. "If you had bothered to read the constitution of the Great Seal, you would find that the citizens have the right to depose a corrupt ruler. We have enough proof to take that action."
Borgine studied her for a long moment with an expression of hatred.
Then he clapped his hands and everything happened at once.
The purple hangings on the wall behind the throne billowed outward as soldiers came through them, twelve on each side, guards in full armour, with swords drawn. They spread in a line behind the emperor
Then the doors slammed, the sound boomed through the throne room like a drumbeat.
They quickly turned at the noise. Verna saw Carlton's hand go to his hip where his sword would have been if they had come armed.
They had come in good faith with no weapons drawn, and the door to the antechamber where their guards were waiting, was now closed and barred.
She returned her gaze to Borgine.
He had settled back into the throne with the smug expression of a man who had laid the winning hand on the table. The intense anger was gone; in its place the face of a man who governed by fear and knew exactly what he was doing.
"Here we are," he said, almost pleasantly. "Now we can have a proper conversation."
He looked along the row of house heads with the slow satisfaction of a man taking inventory of something he owns.
"Your guards are in the antechamber," he said. "Mine are here." He let that sit before continuing, "You came into my palace, into my throne room, with your documents and your accusations, but you forgot one very basic thing." He leaned forward slightly in the throne. "This is still my palace."
Silence fell over the throne room.
"Here is what is going to happen," he said.
"My scribe will prepare a document here and now, which each of you will sign.
The document will reinstate the house contributions at the full rate, with arrears, and will withdraw all your accusations pertaining to those documents.
" He pointed to the paper scattered on the floor.
"And in return, I won’t charge you with sedition, which carries a sentence that would make your sons' discomfort in the arena look like a pleasant afternoon. "
He looked at Verna.
"Including you," he said. "Blood or not."
The house heads were very still. Verna could feel the panic of people who had walked in here believing they held all the power and were now standing at sword point in a locked room.
She stared back at Borgine. "You wouldn't dare," she said.
He gave a macabre grin. "Wouldn't I."
"Nine house heads imprisoned for sedition," she said. "The people will rise against you."
"They will do what I tell them."
"Rubbish," Verna said. "You lost the people in the arena when you put those boys on the sand. And when you sent soldiers to the estates and threatened the market quarter." She held his gaze. "You have been losing it for years and you are the only person in this empire who hasn't noticed."
Borgine stood up from the throne. He came down the dais steps slowly until he was ten feet from her. "I should have dealt with you years ago. The way I dealt with your mother."
Verna narrowed her eyes. "What did you do to my mother?"
Borgine eyed her with dislike. "She had the same problem you have," he said. "She was becoming nosy."
The ring on her finger blazed. Verna didn't think about it. She opened the door into her mind to let the power out. When she raised both hands, the air behind Borgine moved.
It started as a pressure, and then it became a sound, low and building, and then the purple hangings behind the throne went horizontal as a wind came through the throne room. Soon it became a full-blown gale that roared directly at the soldiers behind the dais.
The ones closest to the hangings went back hard, stumbling over each other, swords clattering on the stone floor. One man slid three feet before catching himself on the leg of a chair. The ones further back managed to stay upright, but then they too crashed against the wall.
She turned back to Borgine.
He had retreated to his throne and was gripping the arm. Verna dropped the wind. The soldiers were out cold along the back wall.
Verna walked toward Borgine, the ring on her finger was so bright she could see the light of it reflected on his purple tunic.
She thought about her mother, who had laughed loudly and sworn occasionally and had a genuine gift for the management of land.
Who had stopped laughing entirely and thrown herself over the cliff.
But it would seem now she had been pushed.
Borgine watched her come; for the first time he looked afraid.
She stopped in front of him and said softly, "Tell me why you killed my mother."
He stared at her for a long moment, with the expression of a man who had made a decision in the past and had never once considered that he might have to answer for it years later.
"Your mother," he said, "was a problem."
"Why?"
He shrugged as though there was no longer any reason to pretend.
"She was cleverer than your father, which wasn't difficult.
He had no backbone or ambition, and as long as she stayed quiet that was fine.
Women like her, the clever ones who understand how power works, they're manageable as long as they stay in the background. " He paused. "She didn’t."
"What did she do?" Verna asked.
"She started asking questions," Borgine said.
"About the eastern campaigns. About where the money was going and what the campaigns were actually for.
Why the border settlements needed to be absorbed so aggressively, when trade agreements would have achieved the same thing at a fraction of the cost and without the bodies. "
He said it with the irritation of a man describing a persistent minor problem.
"She was writing letters. To house heads, to merchants, to people in the outer settlements.
Building relationships and asking questions.
Your father couldn't stop her and didn't particularly try. I tried talking to her but she didn’t listen. "
"So, you killed her," Verna said, trying to keep her temper under control.
"I solved a problem," he replied. "The way I have always solved problems. Efficiently and without sentiment."
The ring on Verna's finger was very hot now, but she held the power where it was. "When she went over the cliff, everyone thought she’d jumped."
"They thought what they were meant to think," Borgine said.
"Your father drank himself to death two years later out of guilt for not seeing it, which I hadn't planned but found convenient.
And you inherited the estate and continued to be a manageable nuisance for twenty years.
" He gazed at her with something that was almost curiosity.
"I underestimated you; I'll admit that. I thought you were your father's daughter. It turns out you're entirely hers."
Verna felt the power in her blood rise to meet the grief and the fury.
And then Olag moved.
He came from the right side of the dais, fast and low, with the knife in his hand. He lunged at Kalen. She quickly repositioned herself to meet the onslaught. Olag covered the distance with surprising speed for a big man and she met him halfway.
Kalen drove forward, inside the reach of the knife arm.
In the arena there had been rules and the knowledge that going down wasn't death.
This was none of that. It was two people who knew how to hurt each other, and doing it in a throne room with the wind screaming around them and scattered documents flying.
It was fast and brutal.
He got the knife across her left arm before she stripped it from him, leaving a line of bright red across the leather she was wearing.
She didn't stop. She drove her elbow into his face with a force that snapped his head back.
As he stumbled sideways, she was on him, not with the control of the Trials, but with something more violent than that.
A fighter who had been trained to kill and had finally been given a reason.
Then came the sound of another struggle, and Verna glanced around to see Thom with both arms around Bain's chest from behind. Bain's heels dragged on the floor as Thom hauled him backward with the dogged immovable grip.
She snapped her attention back to Olag and Kalen.
Olag wildly slashed at her with the knife.
With one fluid movement, she sidestepped, grasped his wrist, twisted it, and drove it into his stomach.
When she dropped his hand, the knife was buried to the hilt above the navel.
Then she pulled it out and plunged it into his chest.
Olag dropped like a stone to the floor.
From the sound of it, Verna knew he was never going to get up again.
Borgine looked down, and something cracked open in his face, neither political or calculated, but simply a father looking at his dying son on the floor of his throne room.
"Olag," he whispered.
Then he hissed, a sound that had nothing of the emperor in it. He shot forward, moving faster than Verna expected from a man his age and size, and his hands were at her throat before she had fully registered that he was coming.
His grip was very strong.
The chain of office swung between them and she could feel the metal of it cold against her chin.
As his thumbs pressed, she thought very clearly without panic, about what she needed to do.
She brought her right hand up between his arms and she pressed her finger flat against the centre of his chest, and she let the door in her mind open all the way.
Power went from her finger into his chest, one enormous blast.
Borgine's hands dropped from her throat. He stepped backward and clutched his chest. He sat down heavily on the steps of the dais, then slid sideways.
Carlton ran forward, and knelt beside him. He pressed his fingers against Borgine's throat, while everyone waited in silence.
Carlton stayed on his knees for a long moment, then stood up.
He eyed Verna across the length of the throne room, at the nine house heads, at the soldiers slumped along the walls. He straightened his coat. "The emperor is dead."
Bain, still held by Thom, looked down at his father on the steps of the dais, and an expression of grief settled on his face.
Kalen appeared at her shoulder. She had a cut on her left arm that had soaked through the leather and was bleeding freely but she was standing straight. She gazed down at Borgine on the steps, and then at the ring on Verna's finger which was still glowing faintly.
Carlton said in an awed voice, "How did you do that, Verna?"
She gave him a weary smile. "I really don’t quite know, John. It comes from my mother’s ring." She didn’t say any more. Let them think she had a magical ring because the alternative was much scarier. She was a Wending Witch, whatever that was.
"We have to figure out what we do now," she said quietly.
Carlton nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "We do."