19
I’m sorry, Jenine,” Dorian said. “I’m sorry we didn’t leave earlier.” With snow falling now, they would have had to leave a week ago to make it through the passes. A week ago, he hadn’t even found Jenine yet. There was nothing he could have done differently. Still.
“You did everything you could. You were magnificent,” Jenine said. The way she said it, with such bravery and unguarded admiration, told him she expected to die. Of course she did. Twenty thousand good reasons for that were marching through the city. She was so brave it made Dorian ache.
“I love you,” he said. It just slipped out. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she put a finger on his lips.
“Thank you,” she said. She reached up and kissed him gently.
It shouldn’t have meant so much, those words, that kiss, coming from a girl who thought she was about to die, but they were liquid fire and hope and life to Dorian.
“We do have one chance,” he said.
“We do?”
He shook himself and Halfman—at least the Feyuri ears and eyebrows and the less comfortable portions of his eunuch disguise—burst apart and disintegrated.
Rugger gasped. “Dorian?” he blurted out.
Dorian glared at him. Rugger dropped to his face. “Your Holiness,” he said.
It was that simple. Garoth Ursuul had ruled absolutely, and if one disregarded the moral dimensions, he’d ruled efficiently and well. His death left a vacuum, and a people that expected to be ruled as they had been. They were a people accustomed to obeying orders instantly. Dorian and Jenine ran across Luxbridge and into the castle.
From somewhere deep in his mind, Dorian dredged up the correct sequences and shifted the halls so that the front gate led to the Lesser Hall, which then led to the Greater Hall, and finally to the throne room. The stones ground and shook, and obeyed him.
Before going to the throne room, Dorian ran to his old barracks. Hopper refused to open the door, so Dorian had to break it open. He quickly apologized to the terrified concubines, who all looked at him like they should know him, but didn’t. Hopper recognized him faster and dropped to his face.
“Hopper, dammit, I don’t have the time. Go to the Godking’s chambers and get me the finest clothes you can as fast as you can. I need you girls to dress Jenine appropriately, and then I need two or three of you to be throne ornaments—but it’s dangerous. Only volunteers, and only if you can be ready in five minutes.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Jenine said as he moved to go.
“If this is going to work, you must,” Dorian said.
She started to protest, then nodded. He ran from the room.
He didn’t go to the throne room. He went to his brothers’ dormitories. They were littered with bodies. The aethelings had grasped what the Godking’s death meant immediately. Several times in his search, Dorian saw younger children hiding beneath beds or in closets. He left them unharmed. All he was looking for were amplifiae, and in several of the rooms, he found many. The older aethelings had collected or created as many amplifiae as they could, knowing that one day they might be the difference between life and death. Dorian scooped as many as he could carry and ran to the throne room.
The throne room itself had been the site of one of the worst battles. Twenty dead aethelings and two Vürdmeisters sprawled in the shit and stench of death. Two young men were still alive, though too badly hurt to use the vir. Dorian stilled their hearts and took his throne amid the stench of burnt flesh and hair and the coppery smell of blood. All the amplifiae he had gathered were useless to him. He had some power left, but it would kill him to use what he would need to overmatch the number of Vürdmeisters marching toward the throne room right now.
Jenine and Hopper and two young concubines jogged into the hall, Hopper as awkward as his namesake.
“You look stunning,” Dorian told Jenine. She was wearing green silks and emeralds. “Ladies,” he told the concubines, “your bravery will not be forgotten.”
“They’re across the bridge,” Hopper said. He produced some of Garoth’s magnificent clothing, and the women stripped Dorian and dressed him as quickly as they could.
Dorian thought of the meisters hurrying here even now. Would they go slowly enough to try to read the residue of the battles they passed? What would they make of the gap in Luxbridge? He draped the heavy gold chains of office around his neck.
“You, there. And you, over there,” he told the concubines. “Jenine, on the floor beside the throne. Sorry there’s no chair. Hopper, over by the door in case I need you.”
He sat then in the great onyx throne and as he put his hands on the sinuous arms of the chair, he felt connected to the whole Citadel, but most especially to its heart—its empty heart now, where Khali should have been. Dorian thanked the God that she wasn’t there. He didn’t know if he could survive that. He could feel the meisters approaching the great doors, so through the throne that made the Citadel like part of his body, he threw the doors open with a crash.
The meisters and Vürdmeisters hesitated. There were hundreds of them, and they took in the carnage of the dead aethelings and the easy majesty of the man on the throne at once. Most of them had obviously expected to see Paerik. Their jaws dropped. Others had known, had been able to read the vir to know he died—and, as usual, hadn’t shared their knowledge with their fellows, hoping it would give them an edge.
“Enter,” Dorian commanded, amplifying his voice enough that all could hear, but not booming as an amateur would. Vürdmeisters would not be cowed by a simple weave, and using it too forcefully would make them suspect him.
He let those who were able to read the battle read it. Then he waited. He let them look around the room, stare at the women, stare at the magic, even glance at Hopper. He let them look at him, let those who remembered him gasp and mutter about who he was. Dorian the heir, returned from the dead. Dorian, the rebel. Dorian, the defiant. Dorian, the erased. He waited, and it made him remember when his father had been grooming him to rule. They had walked one day together in a wheat field.
“How do you keep such ambitious people in your grip?” Dorian had asked.
Garoth Ursuul had said nothing. He simply pointed to a stalk of wheat that grew above its fellows and lopped its head off.
These men were the ones who had survived generations of that process. None of them spoke for ten seconds, twenty, a minute. Dorian waited until he was sure one young Vürdmeister was about to speak. Then with his vir, he flung a staff at the man.
Two hundred shields sprang up in the throne room. The amplifiae hit the young wytch’s shield and fell to the ground. Dorian favored them with a condescending look and slowly the meisters lowered their shields. The young man who’d been about to speak scooted forward and picked up the staff, looking abashed. Then Dorian threw another amplifiae to the meister on his right. She caught it. Then he threw another and another until he’d dispensed all of the dozens he had, even his own.
There weren’t enough for every meister, of course, but there were enough to make Dorian’s point. A king didn’t arm his enemies.
Dorian raised his vir to the surface of his skin, and brought them not only into his arms, but up around his face. He allowed them to break through his scalp and form a living crown. There was pain there, pain as they broke his skin and as they broke through channels of power that he had blocked long ago. He was powerful again now. Powerful and dread.
“Some of you recognize me as Dorian, first seed, first aetheling, first survivor of training, first to accomplish his uurdthan, first son of Garoth Ursuul.”
“But Dorian is dead,” one of the younger meisters said, deep in the crowd.
“Yes, dead,” Dorian said. “You have read the chronicles. Dorian is dead these twelve years. As now Paerik is dead. And Draef is dead. And Tavi. And Jurik. And Rivik. And Duron, and Hesdel, and Roqwin, and Porrik, and Gvessie, and Wheriss, and Julamon, and Vic. Dead, all of those who questioned my resolve. So now each of you has a choice. Will you question my resolve and try to take this throne, or will you gather my enemies and bring them to me?”
Dorian’s face was perfectly impassive. It had to be. He had no Talent left, and no vir left if he wanted to live. The throne had some interesting powers, but not enough to destroy two hundred meisters.
He wondered suddenly if any of them realized how fragile he was. It wouldn’t take an attack to destroy Dorian. It would only take a single sneer.
But these were men schooled not to sneer at authority, no matter how much they despised it. The moment stretched unbearably, and then one young man hit his knees before his Godking. Then another. Then it was a rush not to be the last.
This, at least, I owe you, father. You cruel, brutal, amazing man. They called you a god and you made them believe it.
The new Godking affected not to be surprised. He started issuing orders, and they obeyed, running to secure the safety of the concubines, running to capture the living aethelings, running to take care of the armies, to summon the leaders of the city and the highland and lowland chiefs, to gather the meisters who had gone into hiding during the fighting.
“What have I done?” Dorian asked Jenine quietly when it was done.
She didn’t answer. There were still men and meisters in the throne room. It should have felt good to assume so much power, so much power to change everything he’d hated about his homeland. Instead, he felt trapped.
“Your Holiness,” the young red-haired Vürdmeister who had been the closest to opposing him said. “If . . . if Dorian is dead, Your Holiness, what may we call you?”
Godking Dorian was impossible, of course. Not only because his father had wanted him dead. Dorian didn’t want Solon or Feir or any magus to ever hear of this. Better they think him dead. Looks like I had to go through the shit one way or the other, huh, God? But the God didn’t answer. The God was far away, and Dorian’s challenges were here, immediate and deadly.
“I am . . . Godking Wanhope.” Wanhope was an archaic word that meant despair. When he looked at Jenine, she looked frightened but resolute. He squeezed her hand. She’s worth it. We’ll make it through this. Somehow.