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  Preoccupied with my continuing dilemmas, I pushed my horse through the crowd, taking advantage of a large party forging a path toward the gates. Five warriors rode in a wedge, opening the way for a richly dressed noble. Two columns of soldiers rode behind him, protecting heavily laden pack animals. The troops were Hamrasch warriors, along with a few dark-skinned Thrid mercenaries, but the lord did not wear the gold tef-coat and wolf crest of the Hamrasch. I could not see his own heged symbol.

  “Clear the road of this offal,” commanded the noble, a soft-bodied man with a sleek blond braid. “Cut them if they won’t move aside.” The party had come to a standstill, the fault of several caravan outriders who were trying to use the same space to move several heavily laden sledges pulled by slaves. From a long cylinder strapped to his saddle, the Derzhi noble yanked an arm-length stick of polished wood and struck at a slave who had fallen to his knees when the sledge he was dragging caught the wheel of a cart going the opposite direction. The slave cried out and fell backward, blood blossoming on his forehead. He got tangled in the leather traces and pulled the sledge further askew, spilling its poorly lashed contents onto the roadway.

  The noble’s troops drew their swords and began to force other travelers to step aside. As he waited for the path to be opened, the Derzhi lord paced his horse back and forth beside the slave. Each time the bleeding man tried to rise and untangle himself from the traces, the lord, his face composed, struck him deliberately and viciously with his stick—on the face, on the elbows, on shoulders already raw from the abrasion of the leather harness.

  My bones ached with each blow. My back was scarred from years of such mindless cruelty, and no matter what I told myself of necessity and danger, I could not walk away. I dropped from the saddle, tied my mount to an abandoned tinker’s cart, and shoved my way through the surging crowd. Crouching low, ducking my head, and using the cover of the overturned sledge, I grabbed the tangled straps and snapped them with a word of enchantment. Grasping the fallen man’s bloody hand around the corner of the sledge, I gave him leverage to get his feet under him. As soon as he was up, I backed away into the crowd.

  “Tas vyetto” came a breathless whisper from the other side of the sledge.

  You’re welcome, I thought, already too far away for him to hear me say it. Would I could do more. I would have left him my knife, but his overseers were too close. If caught with a weapon, he’d lose a hand or an eye.

  I never saw the slave’s face, but I made sure to note that of the Derzhi, who was back among his guards and riding coolly toward the gates. He was perhaps fifty-five years old, tall and straight in the saddle. Women likely called him a fine figure of a man, handsome for his age, unscarred by weather or battle. But I thought his soft face vicious: his wide brow empty, his full lips gluttonous, and the round eyes set close beside his narrow nose devoid of human sympathy. Or perhaps I saw only the habitual cruelty in his hand and the lack of expression on that fine face as he beat a man to breaking while waiting idly for his path to be cleared.

  As I pushed back through the crowd to where my horse waited patiently beside the tinker’s cart, I felt a light touch upon my back. I whirled about. No one. But far across the passing crowd a tall woman stood staring my way, her dark eyes so penetrating, I would have wagered she could see the scars beneath my shirt. Her gown and veil were a brilliant green. Among the sea of shabby browns and grays, she stood out like a sprig of new grass in the desert. A party of riders came between us, and I scrambled into the saddle and rode onward. I needed no one to notice me.

  I reached the outer gates still unsettled with the incident, sure I should have done more, yet knowing that I could have used every scrap of my power and skill and changed the outcome not a whit. The slave and I would both have ended up dead.

  “Hold up there! Yes, you. Get off that bag of bones. Come here and let me look at you.” The mounted Derzhi who was patrolling the throngs of beggars, travelers, and beasts at Zhagad’s fortresslike outer gate waved his spear at me.

  Stupid. Stupid. Distracted by the incident with the slave, I had forgotten to mask my Ezzarian features when I approached the gate. Aleksander had revoked the law that required Ezzarians to be enslaved, but Ezzarians still caught the eye of soldiers, and the slave marks burned into my face and my left shoulder would forever leave me vulnerable to suspicion. The gate guard moved closer, and people fell away, leaving a path between us.

  I felt for the leather packet tucked into my shirt, and, trusting that Aleksander’s paper would prove sufficient as it had in the past, I dismounted and approached the warrior.

  As did all the Derzhi guards in Zhagad, he went shirtless in the heat, exposing massive, bronze-colored shoulders, one of them crossed by a dreadful scar. “Zakor! Over here,” he called to one of his fellows. “I believe I’ve found me a runaway.” The guard’s spear point pricked my neck, forcing me to turn my head to show him the falcon and the lion burned into my cheekbone on the day I had been sold to Aleksander. The Derzhi smiled and licked his lips, no doubt anticipating the pleasure of hacking off the foot of a runaway slave and the rewards of delivering him to the royal slave master.

  Controlling the fury that welled up at his bloodthirsty glee—and a gut-gnawing anxiety that had not quite vanished in the years since my release—I reached up with my right hand and grabbed the shaft of his spear, holding it away from my throat. With my left, I held out the worn parchment, making sure the imperial seal was clearly visible. My voice remained even. “Indeed you have not, your honor. I am a free man by order of the Crown Prince. Find a scribe and have this read. You’ll learn the consequences of interfering with me.”

  The guard squinted at the paper in the sun glare. “The Crown Prince ...” He shrugged his bare shoulders as he yanked his spear from my grasp and used it to poke at the writing. “... I Suppose he is still that. And for the moment his seal will get you off, but by tomorrow sundown, I’d advise you not rely on it. The Twenty will have something to say in the matter.” He spat onto the dusty paving stones and wheeled his mount.

  In a single heartbeat the insistent frenzy of the mobbed travelers took on a more ominous cast: furtive conversations, racing troops, shouts. From inside the walls came a constant wailing that grated on the spirit like steel on glass. On the stone towers where the red banners of the Derzhi lion hung limp and heavy in the hot air, something was missing—the gold banners with the silver falcon that always hung in place beside the red, the banners of the Denischkar heged, Aleksander’s family. In their place were banners of solid red. Everywhere solid red banners ... mourning banners ... Sweet Verdonne!

  I bulled through a knot of beggars to follow the mounted Derzhi. “Please tell me the news, your honor. I’ve been deep in the desert and not heard.”

  He looked over his scarred shoulder and sniggered. “You must be the only man in the Empire, then. The Emperor is dead by an assassin’s blade. The Twenty are gathering to see to the succession.” The man stabbed his spear into my freedom paper, which had fluttered to the paving stones, and offered it back to me. “I’ve heard it was Prince Aleksander himself who did it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Aleksander was not dead. The tale of the streets, that the Emperor’s murderer—what was left of him—hung in the marketplace, had frozen my heart. But it was a Frythian slave who had been found kneeling on the Emperor’s vast bed, bathed in royal blood, and who now provided a vultures’ feast in the heart of Zhagad.

  Frythia was likely already in flames. Soon there would be nothing left of the dignified little mountain kingdom, no structure, no artifact, no animal, and certainly no human with any identifiable drop of Frythian blood. But all that was no matter to the people of Zhagad. Every man and woman of them was convinced that the slave but did Prince Aleksander’s bidding. Certainly those who stood gaping at the grisly remnants of treachery had no doubts about whom to blame.... couldn’t wait for the gods to crown him ... I heard they argued ... threats were made ... Not enough his father let
him rule ... the Emperor was ready to revoke his anointing ... I was beginning to think he’d come to manhood ... No rumor of a kanavar, no supposition drifting through the streets that perhaps Aleksander was the target and not the arrow. The finest imperial torturers had succeeded in eliciting only one word from the assassin, so observers said. “Aleksander.” After seven hours they’d had to stop, else there would have been too little of the prisoner left to do sufficient screaming when they disemboweled and dismembered him in the marketplace.

  I needed to fly into the imperial palace of Zhagad. To enter the walled inner ring of the royal city, much less the palace, one needed a Derzhi sponsor, and I doubted Aleksander was available. Despite my dislike of alien cravings and the feelings of vulnerability as the senses I had honed for thirty-eight years were altered, bird form had its distinct uses. So I crammed myself into a deserted alcove—a stifling, nasty place at the end of a beggars’ alley—and considered shifting. Settle yourself, fool, I thought. Find him, warn him, and get away before you kill him.

  As always, I constructed the shape of my desire inside my head, summoned melydda from the deep center of my being, and tried to release my physical boundaries. The change should have happened easily ... an effortless merging of my limbs and torso with the image in my mind, a chilly shudder as I gave off heat, the natural result of shifting to a smaller form, a momentary adjustment of the angles and sensitivity of vision and hearing, and a breathless rippling pleasure as I touched the truest nature of my race. Thus Blaise and Farrol, and others like them, experienced shapeshifting. So I had felt it once when Denas and I had taken wing in the storm-racked demon land of Kir‘Vagonoth. But on that hot morning, I felt as though my bones were cracking, as if my eyes were being squeezed out of my head, as if my skin were being peeled away by a Derzhi torturer’s knife. Three rats hurriedly buried themselves in the rotting refuse, as I sank to my knees in groaning misery and forced myself into the shape of a bird.

  My silent demon lurked within me like the worm at the core of a ripe fruit.

  The Imperial Palace was ominously quiet. Its graceful cloisters and cavernous halls should have been bustling with gold-clad chamberlains and leather-clad hunting parties, with legions of slaves and servants, with white-robed warriors newly arrived from the desert, with stewards and clerks, their shoulders hunched with the burdens of running an expansive empire, with weapons makers and tailors, musicians and priests, and everywhere beautiful women dressed in silken gowns. But on that morning, as I fluttered through the latticed courtyards and shaded arbors, perching on balcony rails, listening at windows and doorways, I glimpsed only a few fearful slaves scouring footprints from the tile floors; every one of them had bruises and bloody streaks on face or shoulders. Nervous slave masters have heavy hands.

  Here and there in corners, small knots of courtiers huddled whispering, their verdict the same as in the streets. A slave could never have done such a deed alone. Someone had drawn off the Emperor’s bodyguards and ever-present courtiers. Someone had left a dagger in the Emperor’s bedroom, where weapons were forbidden, and had told the slave where to find it. Someone powerful had thought to profit from this death, and it was clear who looked to profit the most—the same one who had been summoned to answer charges of conspiracy not two days previous, the same one who had been the object of the Emperor’s screaming rage when closeted with him before last evening’s meal, the same who had refused to sit at his father’s table a mere three hours before the deed was done.

  The rustle of my wings quickly scattered the gossips. The falcon was the symbol of the Emperor’s Denischkar house, and those who noted me cast their eyes nervously to the heavens beyond my wings, as if expecting Athos himself to follow and render judgment on the cowardly villain responsible for this most heinous of all crimes—regicide, the murder of the god’s own voice on earth.

  I found Aleksander in the Hall of Athos, a vast columned temple dedicated to the sun god, built in the heart of the palace gardens. The soaring dome was sheathed with gold inside and out, and pierced with slits and delicately etched windows so that on every moment of the sun’s path, sunbeams fell like fine lacework upon the floor. The thick stone walls held the coolness of the night just past, and the high windows and broad doorways drew in whatever fair breeze wandered over the city. I settled in one of the slots in the gilded dome. Far below me spread a vast floor of shining white marble, inlaid with patterns of cool green malachite. On it lay two bodies, one draped in gold and one in red, both mortally still. As if Athos’ own beams were insufficient to the day, the two were surrounded by a thousand burning lamps of gold and silver, some set upon the floor, some hung on the forest of columns that supported the dome and the arched vaults of the side temples, some dangling from lamp stands of wrought silver and bronze. Among the lamps were braziers, burning sweet herbs and incense, so that wafting gray-green smokes obscured the mingled light of morning and the flickering death flames. At the great arched doorways that opened onto the Emperor’s gardens stood guards, their naked backs rigid and their spears crossed. The silence was absolute.

  My falcon’s heart racing, I shot downward toward the two still figures and took a closer view. Raptor’s instinct told me that only one of the two was dead. Ivan zha Denischkar, the one in gold. He lay upon a golden bier, four rampant lions with amethyst eyes holding up the comers, and he was draped in cloth of spun gold, adorned by a falcon worked in silver thread. The long white braid that lay over his right shoulder was unadorned, and a finely crafted sword, well used and plain, lay lengthwise on his body, hilt upon his chest. His face was cold and still. No sign of death terror for this man, stabbed by a gelded bodyslave as he was prepared for bed.

  Aleksander lay facedown upon the stone floor, his long, lean form laid out square to his father’s body. His arms were stretched to either side, the scarlet robe of mourning spread gracefully like the plumage of a fallen bird. His long red braid—the outward symbol of a Derzhi warrior’s manhood—was gone, cut off, leaving just enough fiery red hair to touch the floor, like a shaggy curtain to protect his private grief.

  I settled on the floor close beside the bier, behind a giant bronze statue of the sun god’s horse. Shielded from view by the statue’s massive base, I shifted back to human form. Again it took far too long, and I was near prostrate after, sweating as if I’d run ten leagues in the desert. My senses were near overwhelmed by the thickly scented smokes and perfumes, and I felt as if someone had slapped on blinders and stuffed my ears with wool as I reverted to my own sight and hearing.

  I leaned against the block of marble and waited, trying to shake off the unhealthy disturbance of my shifting. The Prince had not moved since my first glimpse of him. How did he mourn his cold and ruthless father? The father who had indulged his every boyish whim, and then given him to his harsh uncle to raise as a warrior. The father who had condemned his only son to die when Aleksander could not prove his innocence of that uncle’s death, and who had yielded only one fierce embrace when at last the truth came out and the executioner’s ax was stayed. The father who had been unable to face the rigors of ruling after so close a brush with disaster and laid the mantle of empire on a young man who scarcely knew himself. This day would be very hard for Aleksander, far beyond treachery and danger and duplicity. If they had parted in anger, as rumor had it, things would likely be worse.

  “Time gives us no indulgence, my lord,” I said at last, speaking softly from my hiding place. “And so I must intrude upon your grieving. I wish I had no need.” His enemies were moving.

  A long while passed before he answered, as if he had a very long way to come from wherever his thoughts had taken him. He did not shift a muscle, thus leaving his voice half muffled by the floor. “Have you a wish to die this day, Ezzarian?”

  Despite the somber circumstance, I smiled. Whatever threat an observer might have noted in those words was belied by their history and the particular dry tone in which he voiced them. When I was a slave and the demon Khelid h
ad afflicted Aleksander with an enchantment of sleeplessness, I had made a choice to venture the half-crazed Prince’s presence to tell him of it. On that day he had spoken those words and meant them ... and come very near fulfilling their mortal promise. Now they were a symbol of the gifts we had given each other.

  “There seems to be a surfeit of death,” I said. “That’s why I’ve come.”

  “I cannot leave here before sunset.” His quiet voice was slightly hoarse. It was almost midday, and he had likely taken up this vigil in the middle of the night. “It would do him dishonor.”

  “Then I’ll wait until sunset. Though I’ve no cause to love the dead, for the sake of the living I would do him no dishonor.”

  “Oh, gods, Seyonne,”—the quiet words ripped through the suffocating scents and smokes of death—“what cause have I to love the dead? And yet I would neither move from here nor have the hours pass, because the next thing will be his burning, and nothing will be left of him.” The Prince remained prostrate, as if bound to the cold stone.

  I could say nothing to ease him. My own beloved father had been as different from Ivan zha Denischkar as lush, green Ezzaria was from the Azhaki desert; his death in the Derzhi war of conquest was still my own deepest sorrow. And so I could not guess how much of Aleksander’s loss was love and how much was emptiness. Ivan had been ruler of all the known world for thirty-four years—a lion, a terror, a ferocious and intimidating warrior, the blazing, inescapable sun in Aleksander’s sky.

  Creeping darkness stirred within my head like a cat disturbed from afternoon sleep. No. No. No. Terrified that my murderous madness might explode so near the Prince, I called upon every mental discipline I knew to quell it. I had no time for madness. Kanavar had been spoken. Aleksander was going to die if we couldn’t find some way to stop it. A man needed no prophet’s gift to know this.