19 Violentia Nervus Potestas
It was no hard thing to run a country.
Power sparked in the air as he strode through the Tetrarchy’s Entrance and into the Aequitas. The low hum announced his arrival even before he took the marble steps to the dais and seated himself.
Fifty-eight Guildmasters swiveled to face him from opulent seating boxes. Blood leeched from their faces. Wines Guild. Kadra let his gaze wander along the group until he found its Guildmaster. Etilia stared straight ahead as though avoiding his eyes would save her. A vain hope.
Some of them were undoubtedly Coerced. Others wouldn’t have required Coercion. His brother’s current ventures must be extremely profitable to allow him to move about the city with impunity.
The Elsarian Order once again marred the Aequitas’s stage. Verentia led the pack of indistinguishable priests fanning out behind her. Glee spilled from her like mist. Ioratius and the other Guildmasters seemed mildly perturbed at the sight. He wasn’t.
Dalvia’s spill of blond hair was noticeably absent from the crowd of blue-robed priests. That, too, didn’t surprise him. She wouldn’t have volunteered to be Examined before the Aequitas when she knew as well as he did that Anek or Harion would catch her in a lie.
Which meant that the Elsarian Order had sought a gathering for a farce. Cassandane was too eager for allies to see it, but the Order was not here to play her game. And today, he would not be of aid. The game mattered little to him when Sarai waited in a city of death.
His hands contracted into fists. The agony in his spine never worse. Sparks hissed around his seat, leaving scorch marks in their wake.
Halfway through her preliminaries, Cassandane stuttered with a wary glance at him.
When she resumed speaking, it was at a significantly faster clip.
“This will be a hurried assembly due to recent, distressing news from the north that Petitor Sarai may be… injured. While we still search for a means to end the beetle plague, we can confirm that it spread by means of whitesleep sacks found in a den.” She winced when the assembled Guildmasters rose in a wave to blame the north.
“Understand that we’re still investigating the cause and blaming the north is premature. The Tetrarchy isn’t targeting anyone.”
On the contrary, he had every intention of doing so. Fissures ran through the arms of his seat with every flex of his fingers. Cassandane had never spoken faster.
“Why her?” Gaius had asked, days after Kadra had invited Sarai to live with him. “Beg your pardon, Tetrarch Kadra, but no one understands it. She hates you, and there are… fairer women,” he had muttered awkwardly.
A faint smile had risen to Kadra’s lips. “Your vision has been better, Gaius. She’s the best Petitor Edessa has had in decades. And she sees right through me.” A note of wonder had seeped into his voice, and understanding had flitted across his right-hand man’s face.
Men like him weren’t meant to be known or loved. Clevsin had beaten that in early. Everything he had learned of the world since had proven that true. Madman, savior, tyrant, hero. Magus Supreme. Legends people had made of him. They took what they wanted to see and avoided the rest.
Then, she had glanced up at her Robing, known him as a monster, and still defied him. Laid him open, and he had craved more. Knew how little he cared about taking a life and still rested her beating heart over his every night. Only part of her shared his madness, but she had embraced him whole.
“You’ve had a night,” she would say wryly when he came to her covered in blood, but would smile up at him, clear-eyed and guileless, and he had waited for another night to tell her that she knew who he was but not who he had been. He would not accept that he was out of time.
“Kadra, I could use some aid,” Cassandane hissed under her breath.
The crowd had begun spitting a jumble of familiar accusations and demands. Why the plague persisted, and when Sarai could return with answers.
His mouth curved in a humorless smile. “I would bring her here to tell you myself. Yet, it seems that we’re assembling, because the Elsarian Order is convinced that my Petitor is a servant to Death.
They forced her to this stage under similar pretenses by citing Ruin.
Now, they speak of Death. I wonder how many more of the gods she will have to go through. ”
Quiet sliced through the amphitheater at the pronouncement. He returned his gaze to the Order, many of whom avoided it. Verentia evidently thought differently. Triumph glinted in her eyes. Bloodlust made his fingers twitch.
“Well?” he asked, smooth and low.
Verentia drew herself to full height. “We, the Inquisitors for the Elsar, and head of Ur Dinyé’s chapter for the Elsarian Order, are here to inform you, Tetrarchy, that your reign is ended.”
Bewilderment settled over the Aequitas. To his right, Cassandane looked winded. “Inquisitor—”
“During our monarchical age, where the king made imprudent choices that led the nation’s folk on the path to Ruin, the Clans and the Order would step in to supplant unworthy leadership in favor of clearer minds.
” Verentia wore a malicious shade of elation and a hunger she couldn’t mask as she stared at Cassandane’s seat.
“Clanlady Dalvia helpfully brought us the text of laws that governed our land prior to the Corpus Juris Totus, as the latter curiously, apparently purposefully, doesn’t provide for such an event as impeaching all of you at once.
” She laughed at Cassandane’s pale features.
“I would have brought a petition to the land’s highest court, but I’m already there. ”
So, this was your move, Noceo. Kadra smiled coldly. He had warned Cassandane.
A loud, false sound left her throat that could have been a laugh but sounded significantly more pitiful. “This is an unamusing joke, Inquisitor.”
Verentia’s brows rose. “Your Petitor would have informed you if it was.”
Anek, nervously standing behind Cassandane’s seat, gripped it for their life. Features tight, they shook their head at Cassandane’s terrified glance. Harion seemed torn between crawling into his seat or giving it up altogether. The Aequitas itself was quiet in their utter bewilderment.
Kadra tapped a hand on the edge of his seat and let his gaze roam over the crowd. Where are you, Noceo?
After a pleading glance at him, Cassandane gave up. “You’ve spent several months swearing up and down that Magus Supreme Kadra and Petitor Sarai held a coup. Now, here you are, doing the same?”
“Yes.” Verentia shrugged. “If she can, then why shouldn’t we?”
“That wasn’t a godsdamned coup!” Cassandane slammed a fist on the arms of her seat when Verentia opened her mouth. “Sarai’s life was at risk, or she wouldn’t have fought Aelius. I was there. I fought him too, godsdammit!”
“So, now you defend Death’s handmaiden!” Verentia said incredulously. “You are hereby stripped of your position—”
“You have no power to do that!” Cassandane rose. Tendrils of crimson lightning sputtered by her. “Stop this or—”
“Are you threatening me? Do you see this?” Verentia turned to the crowd, in a poor mimicry of Sarai.
Narrowed eyes. A skeletal hand tugging at her tongue to mark her lies with malicious joy.
Indignation that went only skin-deep. An absence of genuine concern.
A blasphemy of the sincerity with which Sarai walked this stage.
He cared little for Cassandane’s whispered pleas for him to intervene, but he wouldn’t let Verentia make a mockery of how Sarai played the game.
He waited for her to take a breath and spoke. “No.”
Verentia’s brows snapped together amid a hiss of fearful whispers from the audience.
“Is there something you wish to add, Magus Supreme?” she demanded frostily.
“Death goes where your Petitor does, and has now followed her all the way to Komis to kill innocents there. I won’t give her a chance to feed our souls to the Dark Realms any further.
If she’s miraculously survived yet again, she will submit to an exorcism. ”
Ice pricked up his neck and sank in. A masterstroke, Noceo. This was his coup. But where was the would-be-conqueror?
Kadra strode down the dais toward her, slow and unhurried. “No.”
Bravado fraying, Verentia fled back toward her group of priests. “By the Elsar, stay away from me. Have you gone mad?”
“No. But I’m in danger of growing rather bored, Inquisitor. You’ve forgotten why I never had a Petitor until Sarai.” Her name was hoarse in his mouth. “You creatures were always so easy to read.”
Verentia gaped. “Creatures,” she echoed to the crowd. “This is what your Tetrarchy thinks of—”
“Fools,” he finished softly, his voice nevertheless rising above the dull thrum of the crowd. “Priests who believe the word of a woman they barely know who tells them exactly what they want to hear. Frauds who espouse ideologies that they don’t believe in so as to get a political seat.”
Leaving her shaking on the stage, he returned to his marble seat on the dais and tilted his head laconically toward Cassandane’s chair. “You must have enjoyed that seat immensely at Sarai’s Hearing to go this far for it. Petitor Anek, how much of what she’s spouted does she believe in?”
“None of it,” a familiar, exhausted voice called.
Every muscle in his body stilled. The ruined nerves along his spine quieted. His heart clawed up his throat as Sarai emerged from the Petitor’s entrance. Blood and dirt tarred her skin. An ugly burn ran from the right side of her neck to her shoulder. She had never been more beautiful.
Cassandane slumped in her seat. “Oh, thank the Elsar,” she muttered under her breath before speaking formally. “Petitor Sarai, it’s good to see you alive.”
His throat worked. He would have stood, but for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure if his legs would support him. Unlike him, the Aequitas recovered its voice and pelted her with questions.