‘Who?’ Despair in Tam’s eyes. ‘Who? You can’t let Liseen die. Please, Orhan … Not after … what I made her do. That vile boy, Tiothlyn Altrersyr … He crippled her. She was pregnant, Orhan, and he … I made her bed him … My own daughter … She loathed him … But I wanted … You can’t let her die, Orhan.’
Don’t tell me, thought Orhan. I don’t want to hear this. I can’t bear to hear any more pain. ‘Where is the High Priestess, Tam?’ he asked. ‘Where?’
‘I … I don’t know what you’re talking about. Liseen, Orhan … Please, save Liseen …’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know … Please … Please … I’ll tell the Emperor. Please …’
Orhan removed his hands and retied the bandage. ‘You can have some more hatha, if you want. Keeps the pain away, though it will kill you quicker. I’ll bring the Emperor to you later. You confess all, that you plotted to kill him, that those men were acting on your orders, that they were about to kill him when I stepped in to save the day. As soon as that’s done, I’ll get them away to safety. Your daughter, your wife, your son.’
Tam nodded again. ‘The Emperor? He’s … still alive?’ He smiled weakly. ‘I won, then. You’ll appoint … good men. The kind of men I would have chosen … You’ll do as I … would have done.’ His face was blurred with pain but he shook his head when Orhan offered him the vial of hatha syrup. ‘No. No more. I’ll see him … as I am … Lie to him as I am.’ A spasm of pain tore through him and he gasped and writhed, clutching at his stomach. Grasped Orhan’s arm and muttered something, his face pallid, his voice harsh and urgent, not his voice at all. ‘Alive … He’s … still alive. Shouldn’t be alive … What have we done? What have you done? He’ll kill us, Orhan!’
‘I’ve done what was needful,’ Orhan said as he left. Speaking to himself as much as to Tam. He went out into the gardens, where dawn was breaking and birds were singing in the trees. He washed his hands in the lake, and was sick, and wept at what he was reduced to doing. There is never any need for these things, he thought. We could just have got on with our lives.
Tam Rhyl confessed to everything a few hours later, the Emperor and everyone and anyone Orhan could drum up in attendance. March Verneth was not among them, his men engaged in minor skirmishes with Orhan’s in the Grey Square, ostensibly over the best way of shoring up the smouldering Great Temple buildings. Cammor Tardein was present, his support for March wavering after Elis, in an uncharacteristic display of cunning, started dropping suggestive hints regarding a possible marriage proposal to the youngest Tardein girl. That Darath was making the same hints to March about Elis and a possible marriage proposal to the oldest Verneth girl was possibly unfortunate, but not unpredictable if any of them thought about it. By mid-afternoon, the Emperor was back on his slightly smoke-stained throne in the charred shell of his palace, appointing Orhan the Emperor’s Nithque in Tam’s place and filling the Imperial Bureaucracy with Emmereth and Vorley placemen. The Imperial army, sworn solely and absolutely to the person of Emperor, patrolled the streets glaring at people to stop panicking and get back to normal life. By late afternoon, Orhan was sitting in an office off the throne room, half dead from exhaustion, trying to focus his smoke-sore eyes on a list of the identifiable casualties and what their jobs had been.
‘A very effective coup, Orhan. I should congratulate you. Very novel, I must say.’
Orhan spun round. His sister stood looking at him. She seemed almost pleased.
‘Holt is thrilled. Good-brother to the Emperor’s personal saviour! He finally sees a reason in having married me. Forgave me my last dress bill, even. You did it all for that, I’m sure.’
Orhan sighed. ‘I’m tired. I’m busy. Go away.’
‘I thought you might want someone to watch over you while you slept. Stop someone else sticking a knife in your heart. Although Darath seems to have done that several times over already.’
‘Indeed. Go away. I can’t sleep now anyway.’
Celyse sat down next to him. ‘You need to sleep, Orhan. Really. Even Darath is worrying about you. You can’t do this alone, not all of it.’
‘I have so far. We’re all still a heartbeat from dying if I let go now.’
‘Oh, March will come around. Eloise knows which way things are going. She’s not as stupid as her son. He’s just piqued none of this occurred to him first.’
‘None of what, Celyse? I had the privilege of saving His Eternal Eminence from Tamlath Rhyl’s fiendishly cunning attempt at his life, an attempt possibly but not definitively planned with support from Immish. Nothing “occurred” to me.’
‘Oh, yes, yes. Well, March is piqued he didn’t do the saving first, then. He’s making his big stand now to feel he’s a free agent, then he’ll come back to see what he can get out of this. A Vorley marriage and a couple of men he trusts in lucrative positions, assurance this all means what we all know it means, I believe is the likely current price.’
She was good at this, his sister. ‘So what does it all mean?’ Orhan asked. Interesting to find out what they were saying about his reasons for all this.
‘Restored glory to the Empire. Better counsel to the Emperor. Greater strength through greater wisdom. A big army recruitment drive. Oh, don’t worry, brother dear, everybody knows your motives for everything were purer than pure. Far more so than March Verneth’s would have been, if any of this had occurred to him first.’
Orhan rubbed his eyes. ‘And as a result I have a lot of work to do. Do your sources also say whether the current price is acceptable to everyone?’ It would be nice to get this all over before blood had to start flying in the Grey Square. March had a wonderworker of some kind, he thought vaguely. The litter-maker. Didn’t Celyse say Eloise had kept him on? They’d do all this, and end up blasted to ashes by someone originally hired to flash up a party …
‘I couldn’t possibly say at this stage. If Elis gets a better haircut, that might help. But what will you do about Cam Tardein’s girl? Or is poor Elis going to have to commit bigamy?’
The woman knew everything, she really did. He should probably be profoundly relieved she hadn’t known about his plans. Or at least hadn’t told anyone about them if she had.
Celyse looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘No, wait, of course: there’s my own dear son, isn’t there? Better hope Bil has a girl, brother dearest, he’ll be a much more attractive prospect with the Emmereth titles attached as well. Zoa Tardein’s pretty-faced enough, if a bit old for him really. I expect he’ll be content. Whether she will … But her father will make her, of course.’ She laughed. ‘We’re all as subtle as blunt blades, in the end, aren’t we? It’s only Darath I wonder about. Did he really do all this out of lust for you?’