It didn’t take long to get Tam Rhyl’s men under control. Tam was down, Orhan was alive: they knew which way to turn if they wanted to live to see daybreak. The Emperor was so pathetically relieved to see Orhan take some kind of command of things that he almost collapsed in gratitude. The entire Imperial Guard had just been slaughtered and the palace set on fire. Someone had to be responsible, so it might as well be Tam Rhyl. Especially as Tam Rhyl was lying on the floor in a pool of blood in no state to argue back. The Emperor himself had been miraculously and inexplicably saved from being slaughtered or set on fire. Someone had to be responsible for that, too, so it might as well be Orhan Emmereth. Who was kneeling in front of him holding a sword, with a troop of armed men at his back. Any man with even half a brain usually believed what he was told in these particular circumstances.
Orhan had never thought so fast in his life.
Tam had betrayed him. The assassins had betrayed him. He’d lost, theoretically, since the Emperor was still alive and kicking with nervous fear. He’d just somehow won, at the same time. All the other important people in the palace seemed to be dead. Several bodies in suspiciously Immish-looking armour were lying around missing vital body parts, swords dripping with good honest Sorlostian blood.
The pressing thing now was to get the fires put out before the palace actually burnt down completely. You live and learn, Orhan thought exhaustedly, looking at the smoke. If he ever arranged a massacre again, he’d ensure he had a bucket chain waiting alongside the swords. But, to be fair, he thought, it seemed basically impossible that the palace could burn. It was the Imperial Palace of the Asekemlene Emperor of Sorlost the Golden, the only mortal man to escape the finality of death. It had stood beyond cities. Beyond empires. Beyond gods. Constant in his life, and in all human lives. It would stand when the waters rose and life ceased and the world was drowned. It couldn’t just burn down.
So he’d better get people going with buckets to stop it before it did.
What to do with the Asekemlene Emperor himself was also something of a problem, since His Eternal Eminence couldn’t leave the palace except to visit the Great Temple and even then he had to go by palanquin, his feet never touching the ground. Hadn’t really planned for this either, seeing as he was supposed to be dead. In the end, Orhan remembered the bathing house in the gardens, isolated from the main building by stone colonnades and running water and with space and comfort enough for the Emperor to feel just about at home. Space for Orhan himself, too: he wasn’t going to leave the Emperor’s side until everything was settled and his personal candidates had been selected as Imperial Secretary, Imperial Presence in the Temple and every other post down to the girl who washed the Imperial chamber pot. The Emperor, for his part, was still so terrified he’d make more fuss if Orhan left him alone than he would if he got into bed with him.
Orhan divided the men around him into two, one larger party to begin work putting out the fires and gathering the bodies, the other to accompany the Emperor to the bathing house. The great families would be bringing men up to the palace, the Imperial army would be beginning to stir. Needed to consolidate, have things clearly and securely in hand before anyone else arrived.
He came out into the great audience chamber where they had originally fought Tam’s men. Found Darath slumped on the ground.
Wounded. Oh God’s knives. He’d forgotten in everything that had happened since.
‘Let me see,’ he said urgently, running over. Darath frowned at him, then nodded reluctantly. Proud bastard. Seen him in the depths of passion, in a towering rage, asleep, drunk, taking a piss, in bed with flu, kneeling before him begging to suck his cock, but the God forbid Orhan should see him wincing in pain after someone stuck a sword in his gut. He gently helped Darath roll onto his side. The wound was long, scoring across from the right hipbone up towards the navel, but not deep. A deeper wound there was inevitably fatal, though a man could live for days fevered and screaming first. He closed his eyes for a moment and murmured a little prayer of thanks.
‘I’ll live, then?’ Darath said, trying to sound as if he’d never been worried. He smiled at the Emperor, surrounded by Emmereth and Vorley men and staring wide-eyed at the two of them. ‘We … we didn’t quite pull things off the way we’d intended we would, I assume?’
‘The Emperor is alive, praise Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, and his enemies have been vanquished,’ said Orhan loudly. ‘The palace is secured and peace restored.’ He looked around at the bodies scattered on the ground around them, men beginning to sort them into piles. His men. Darath’s men. Tam Rhyl’s men. Palace guards. Invading assassins. The Sorlostians would be buried quickly, before they began to stink. But the murderers must be displayed in full gory detail in the Grey Square.
Darath got up slowly, wincing with pain. Orhan supported him over to where the Emperor was standing ringed with Emmereth men.
‘My Lord Eminence, light of the world,’ said Darath, hissing in pain through clenched teeth, ‘my heart rejoices that I have been injured doing service to you and your Empire. I will look upon my scars with pleasure, that they were incurred to save your immortal life. My only regret is that I could have suffered greater pain to spare you greater suffering.’ He bowed awkwardly and blinked at Orhan: I would prostrate myself, but I fear I would offend My Lord’s eyes by collapsing in agony if I did.
They got the Emperor settled in the bathing house with relative ease, cleaned up and changed into a half-decent robe salvaged from the Imperial bedroom; sent a man to the kitchens for food and wine. The gates and entrances were all secured by Emmereth and Vorley men, and most of the fires were out. Silk and carved wood panelling burnt quickly and savagely but not deep. Might even have the Emperor back on his throne by the morning, if they could get the bloodstains scraped off the floor. Finally, exhaustedly, Orhan was able to attend to Darath, cleaning and binding his wound and kissing him with deep and passionate relief.
Then the other lords began to arrive, and the real work started. March Verneth with twenty armed men, Holt Amdelle with fifteen. Lesser families too, the city’s leading merchants, ranking officers from the Imperial army, all crowding around shouting and arguing, the Emperor sitting dazed and exhausted, Orhan by his side watching it all. Holt and Mannelin Aviced could see which way the wind was blowing and leapt at it delightedly. March looked profoundly sceptical.