They shared a wry smile. The Ever Living, the Eternal, the First and Last Ruler of the Sekemleth Empire, a mortal man who was immortal, who died and lived again a thousand times, reborn each time somewhere in what remained of his Empire. And so it could take years to find him. The current Emperor had been thirteen when he was finally recognized. Thirteen long, painful years of stalemate and stasis while everyone stared at every boy in the city in hope. Orhan was a rational man and had thought about things carefully. The only sensible solution was to identify the next incarnation before this one ended. A lot more efficient than years spent wandering around looking for a special sign of some sort or another to guide you. A flock of ravens cawing the word ‘emperor’ had been the clue to this one’s status. The sort of thing that gave the richest empire the world had ever known a bad name for superstitious idiocy, even among people who were credulous enough to believe their kings were descended from gods.
‘And if the woman has the bad manners to have a girl? Or a corpse, come to that?’
‘There are a couple of other likely candidates. A young whore down at the Weeping Docks, again due any time in the next few days now; another in Fair Flowers.’
A wicked smile flashed across Darath’s face: ‘If your timing had been better, you could have made your son Emperor. Want to delay things a few months?’
Had to laugh at that. ‘I think that would be a bit obvious, don’t you? And I don’t really feel like being executed just so my son can wear a black coat.’
Darath smiled. ‘A slight disadvantage, I admit. I might even miss you.’
Orhan sat in silence afterwards. All he wanted, in the end. Perhaps Tam was right, he had simply been looking for something to occupy himself. If he and Darath had mended things sooner … or had not broken things off at all … Everything would go on unchanged, and there was no threat to Sorlost. He was dreaming, seeking fears, a mirror for his own unhappiness. Bored and rich and idealistic and wound-up enough to start planning murder, and then finding it had all got real and solid and too late to stop.
No, he thought then. Darath sees it. Fragments of it. He’s not reckless enough to go into this without some cause. Just pretends he is. We can’t explain our reasons, either of us. But he understands why. That it’s necessary. We’re too weak, the way we are, sitting on our piles of gold pretending nothing exists beyond our walls. We need to be ready. And yes, that does mean blood.
I need to hold on to that, he thought. That it’s necessary. That Darath sees it too. If I was a bad person, he thought, doing this for bad reasons, I wouldn’t keep questioning it.
That’s so absurdly na?ve, Orhan, he thought.
But something Darath had said remained nagging at him, uncomfortable in the back of his mind. He’d dined, Bil sitting opposite him in frozen silence, read for a while and was preparing to sleep when it suddenly came to him.
The penalty for high treason. Rarely enacted, in the long, faded centuries of the Empire’s slow decline, but drummed into every nobleman as a child. He could remember his nurse telling it to him, his boyish confidence disbelieving, appalled and fascinated in equal measure. If one of the great families was found to have committed treason against the Empire or the Emperor, they were burned alive. Every member of their household was burned alive. Women and children. Bondsmen. Servants. Errand boys. Regularly visited whores. Their holdings razed to the ground and destroyed utterly. The ruins sown with salt and ash.
It hadn’t happened in his lifetime – yet – but he’d been taken to see the blackened wasteland that had once been the house of the Saddulae, an ancient line of petty kings with substantial holdings on the Chathean border who’d been absorbed into the Empire in a last sudden gasp of re-expansion a few centuries back. They were the last family to have been executed for treason against the Emperor, after they attempted to break free and ally again with Chathe. That had been fifty years ago, though it was remembered by the great families like it was yesterday. The Saddulae lands had been noted for the very high quality of their wine and oil. No longer, since the soil was now barren dead earth.
Wine. Old wine. A vintage fifty years old, an estate that no longer produced.
Rhyl was trying to warn him? Or threaten him? Why? For what?
Orhan sat up in bed, sick in his stomach, panic crushing him.
His death.
Bil, burning. His sister. His good-brother, stupid money-grabbing upstart that he was. Sterne. Amlis. The tiny unborn lump of Bil’s child. His beautiful house. His books.
Darath. Oh, God’s knives. Darath. If he hadn’t given in to his wishes …
Too late to back out now. That might even be what Tam wanted. A warning hint, so he would step back, and Tam could play on alone. Take everything, after Orhan had done all the work. His money, his plans. His name. He’d only come to Tam with it because his position as Nithque to the Emperor meant he was more useful as an ally than an opponent. Necessary. Thought Tam understood. He should do, after all he’d seen and had done to him. Couldn’t allow Tam to take it. And Darath would never forgive him for backing out now. He’d just have to keep alert.
As Tam had told him to be …
Signs and portents! Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it was a nasty joke.
Orhan got up and paced his bedroom, walked out onto the balcony, looked down onto a courtyard thick with flowers. The moon shone very bright. The stars were bright too: he could see the Crescent, the White Lady, the great single red star of the Dragon’s Mouth.
What to do, what to do …? Maybe it was simply an old cask of wine. Maybe it was from Chathe, or Immish, or across the Bitter bloody Sea.
There was a rustle of cloth behind him. He froze, no one could get in here, no one had any reason to get in here, but panic overcame him, ‘fifty years old, fifty years old, death for treason’, a voice seemed to ring in his head, he could almost feel a knife in his back, he turned and Bil stood looking at him.
‘What are you doing here?’ She never came into his bedroom. He’d made it clear when he married her that she wasn’t to go in there.
‘I heard you walking about.’ She went over to him. In the moonlight, her scars were barely visible. In the moonlight, he thought, someone could have loved her. Until they touched her skin. She said: ‘You should have told me. About Darath.’
‘Why? What business is it of yours?’ It came out harsher than he had meant it to, because he was so afraid.
‘I’m going to have your heir. I live in this house. My father paid off the debts your father ran up on this house. It would have been polite. It was the same day we went to the Temple, Orhan. People are already beginning to laugh. Saying you finally managed to bed your wife and then went running straight back to Darath Vorley.’
‘You should be grateful they’re saying the child is mine at all.’ She looked at him fiercely, her blue eyes pale in the silver light.
Orhan thought: that was cruel.
‘You should come inside,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t get cold, get sick.’ They sat down on low-backed wooden chairs placed by the balcony, smelling sweetly of resin and beeswax, the cushions stuffed with dried herbs. Bil looked at his bed for a moment then did not look at it again. Folded her hands in her lap. It was an odd sensation, being alone in his bedroom with a woman at night.