Marith took a long, shaky breath.
The man on the throne – the Emperor – was staring with a look of utter horror on his puffy face. The guards had formed a tight ring around the throne, swords pointing at Marith. Several of the blades shook. The man in white was backed up against the wall, also holding out a sword. Weakly and feebly, hardly knowing what to do with it. Rate, Tobias and Alxine stumbled slowly to their feet, faces grimacing with pain. Their skin was raw and red. But they were impressively otherwise unharmed. I saved them, Marith realized with a dizzy sensation of triumph. He laughed. His head swam and he almost fell over. He felt quite possibly worse than he’d ever done in his entire life.
‘You … you killed him,’ the Emperor whispered hoarsely. ‘You … you didn’t burn. You should have burnt …’ He started at his guards and began to shriek. ‘Kill him! Kill him now! Before he … he does anything else. Kill him!’
Five black-clad figures moved towards Marith, swords drawn on his heart. Dark blades, sharp as stars, burning blue. They could kill him as easily as thinking. He raised his own sword shakily. He’d felt more able to fight someone at the tail end of a four-day hatha binge. It almost didn’t seem fair. Rate, Tobias and Alxine drew closer together behind him. There is no plan to get out, he thought. There never was. Not for any of us. We all just die. And perhaps he deserved it more than most. The five guards looked at him, expectant.
The guards came at them at a rush, flashing fire from their blades. And they were good. Pressed them back, the four of them, fighting defensively, hardly attempting to do anything more than ward off the blows of the burning swords. They stung where they cut, hissing against the skin. I will not burn, Marith thought. I will not burn … Alxine stumbled backwards, his sword falling useless from his wounded arm. I saved him from burning, Marith thought. His legs felt like they were made of lead; he tripped on Alxine’s sword and almost fell himself. A sword struck him on the shoulder, drawing blood. Alxine was crying out as they trampled him, their own feet were killing him but they couldn’t get him up because they’d be cut down in turn. Rate was wounded in the leg. The swords burned as they slashed them. Not fair.
Not fair.
I’m not going to die, Marith thought.
Blood everywhere. His whole body was covered in it. A voice was shouting: ‘Amrath! Amrath! Death and all demons! Amrath and the Altrersyr!’ It came to him that it was his own. Four of the Imperial guards were dead. He had one of their swords in his hands, and the blue flames rushed over his hands, arching out from the blade, licking hungrily as he killed. He’d killed all four of the guards himself. He was still killing: he almost seemed to watch himself ward off two at once and then cut them down, severing one’s head from its body. Everything he struck seemed tainted by oily smoke. Someone appeared in his vision and he swung round and almost struck them down, before realizing it was Rate. He probably shouldn’t kill Rate. Not until he ran out of other people to kill. His mind was red. Everything was red. His head felt sodden with blood, spinning inside him, the one word ‘death’ ringing in his ears. He would kill and kill and kill until the world was dead and empty. He didn’t bother killing these men slowly. He simply killed them. Hungrily, joylessly. Nothing else in the world.
And so every one of the guards was dead. Not just dead: he seemed to have dismembered most of them. The Emperor was still sitting on his throne. He looked much the same, pale and puffy and stunned, except that he’d pissed and soiled himself. The man in white robes was still staring, with a strange expression on his face. He’d pissed and soiled himself too.
‘I’ll kill you, then.’ Marith turned to the Emperor on his stupid tasteless throne. The man squirmed and trembled before him. He switched to Literan, the absurd dead language of this absurd dead Empire. It made what he was saying even more gratifying. You can’t shout in Literan, he remembered his tutor saying. Not made for it. Too weak and decadent to shout. And his accent was considerably more elegant than the Emperor’s own. He shouted, ‘I’ll kill you slowly and surely and you’ll watch while I do it. You’ll watch as I take your hands. Your feet. Your lips and your nose and your manhood. You’ll watch and beg me to end it. Are you ready?’
He raised his sword. The man shrank back, moaning. Something in the man’s whimpering caught Marith for a moment. Pity, almost. Sorrow and pain at what he was doing. At what he was. The death fires within him were beginning to fade; he felt drained and hollowed-out. Sticky with blood. His eyes were itching. He looked at the gore coating his hands and felt sick.
I could just leave, now, he thought. Walk back through the flames, curl up somewhere with a bottle of something and drink until he couldn’t remember who he was to care. He could make it all go away. Go back somewhere that wasn’t pain and dying and something screaming within him, struggling to get out.
Riding through a meadow when the hay was being cut. Riding through green summer trees. Reading a book by the fireside. Swimming in the sea.
Good things.
I know what I am. What I have given up.
Help me.
The man in white was still looking at him. Like he knew him. Like he hated him. Like he was dirt scraped off his shoe.
Help me.
He moved towards the Emperor, writhing on his throne with a face full of weak fear and a lap full of his own piss and shit. Everything was red in his vision. ‘Death,’ he whispered. ‘Death!’ The man in white let out a cry of terrified rage.
The doors of the throne room burst open. Ten men ran in, yelling, shouting, heading straight towards him.
And then Tobias rushed at him, and everything disappeared in a shower of broken glass.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘You’re getting fat.’
Darath’s body was bronze in the candlelight. The colour of rich wood. Smooth, finely made, warm. Orhan ran his hand over Darath’s chest.
‘I’m not.’ Darath grabbed Orhan’s hand before it reached his stomach.
‘You are. I don’t mind, though.’ Orhan kissed him lightly on the lips.
They lay tangled together in Darath’s bed, dozing after sex. Darath had drawn down the shutters and filled the room with candles even in the sunshine of the afternoon, shutting out the world.
‘Do you want something to eat? I could have some supper brought up.’
‘Not yet.’
Darath sat up and poured himself a cup of iced water. ‘It’s getting stuffy in here.’
‘Don’t open the shutters.’ Didn’t want to be reminded of anything beyond this room.
‘What time do you think it is?’
‘Too late.’
‘Hmm?’
‘We have to leave at some point. This could be the last time we—’