Dessert arrived at the point of a sword. A full dozen Letherii guards, led by Sirryn Kanar, burst into the private chambers of Tomad and Uruth Sengar. Weapons drawn, they entered the dining room to find the two Edur seated each at one end of the long table.
Neither had moved. Neither seemed surprised.
‘On your feet,’ Sirryn growled, unable to hide his satisfaction, his delicious pleasure at this moment. ‘The Emperor demands your presence. Now.’
The tight smile on Tomad’s face seemed to flicker a moment, before the old warrior rose to his feet.
Sneering, Uruth had not moved. ‘The Emperor would see his mother? Very well, he may ask.’
Sirryn looked down at her. ‘This is a command, woman.’
‘And I am a High Priestess of Shadow, you pathetic thug.’
‘Sent here by the Emperor’s will. You will stand, or-’
‘Or what? Will you dare lay hands on me, Letherii? Recall your place.’
The guard reached out.
‘Stop!’ Tomad shouted. ‘Unless, Letherii, you wish your flesh torn from your bones. My wife has awakened Shadow, and she will not suffer your touch.’
Sirryn Kanar found he was trembling. With rage. ‘Then advise her, Tomad Serigar, of her son’s impatience.’
Uruth slowly drained her goblet of wine, set it carefully down, then rose. ‘Sheathe your weapons, Letherii. My husband and I can walk to the throne room in your company, or alone. My preference is for the latter, but I permit you this single warning. Sheathe your swords, or I will kill you all.’
Sirryn gestured to his soldiers and weapons slid back into scabbards. After a moment, his did the same. I will have an answer for this, Uruth Sengar. Recall my place? Of course, if the lie suits you, as it does me…for now.
‘Finally,’ Uruth said to Tomad, ‘we shall have an opportunity to tell our son all that needs to be told. An audience. Such privilege.’
‘It may be you shall await his pleasure,’ Sirryn said.
‘Indeed? How long?’
The Letherii smiled at her. ‘That is not for me to say.’
‘This game is not Rhulad’s. It is yours. You and your Chancellor.’
‘Not this time,’Sirryn replied.
‘I have killed Tiste Edur before.’
Samar Dev watched Karsa Orlong as the Toblakai examined the tattered clamshell armour shirt he had laid out on the cot. The pearlescent scales were tarnished and chipped, and large patches of the thick leather under-panels-hinged with rawhide-were visible. He had gathered a few hundred holed coins-made of tin and virtually worthless-and was clearly planning to use them to amend the armour.
Was this a gesture of mockery, she wondered. A visible sneer in Rhulad’s face? Barbarian or not, she would not put it past Karsa Orlong.
‘I cleared the deck of the fools,’ he continued, then glanced over at her. ‘And what of those in the forest of the Anibar? As for the Letherii, they’re even more pathetic-see how they cower, even now? I will explore this city, with my sword strapped to my back, and none shall stop me.’
She rubbed at her face. ‘There is a rumour that the first roll of champions will be called. Soon. Raise the ire of these people, Karsa, and you will not have to wait long to face the Emperor.’
‘Good,’ he grunted. ‘Then I shall walk Letheras as its new emperor.’
‘Is that what you seek?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing on him in surprise.
‘If that is what is needed for them to leave me be.’
She snorted. ‘Then the last thing you want is to be emperor.’
He straightened, frowning down at the gaudy if bedraggled armour shirt. ‘I am not interested in fleeing, witch. There is no reason for them to forbid me,’
‘You can step outside this compound and wander where you will… just leave your sword behind.’
‘That I will not do.’
‘Then here you remain, slowly going mad at the Emperor’s pleasure.’
‘Perhaps I shall fight my way through.’
‘Karsa, they just don’t want you killing citizens. Given that you are so, uh, easily offended, it’s not an unusual request.’
‘What offends me is their lack of faith.’
‘Right,’ she snapped, ‘which you have well earned by killing Edur and Letherii at every turn. Including a Preda-’
‘I did not know he was that.’
‘Would it have made a difference? No, I thought not. How about the fact that he was a brother to the Emperor?’
‘I did not know that either.’
‘And?’
‘And what, Samar Dev?’
‘Murdered him with a spear, wasn’t it?’
‘He assailed me with magic-’
‘You have told me this tale, Karsa Orlong. You had just slaughtered his crew. Then kicked in the door to his cabin. Then crushed the skulls of his bodyguards. I tell you, in his place I too would have drawn upon my warren-assuming I had one, which I don’t. And I would have thrown everything I had at you.’
‘There is no point to this conversation,’ the Toblakai said in a growl.
‘Fine,’ she said, rising from her chair. ‘I am off to find Taxilian. At least his obdurate obsessions are less infuriating.’
‘Is he your lover now?’
She halted at the doorway. ‘And if he was?’
‘Just as well,’ Karsa said, now glowering down at his patchy armour. ‘1 would break you in two.’
Jealousy to join the host of other madnesses? Spirits below! She turned back to the door. ‘I’d be more inclined towards Senior Assessor. Alas, he has taken vows of celibacy.’
‘The fawning monk is still here?’
‘He is.’
‘You have sordid tastes, witch.’
‘Well,’ she said after a moment, ‘I see no possible way of responding to that comment.’
‘Of course not.’
Lips pressed tight together, Samar Dev left the room.
Karsa Orlong’s mood was foul, but it did not occur to him that it in any way flavoured his conversation with Samar Dev. She was a woman and any exchange of words with a woman was fraught with her torturer’s array of deadly implements, each one hovering at the very edge of a man’s comprehension. Swords were simpler. Even the harried disaster of all-out war was simpler than the briefest, lightest touch of a woman’s attention. What infuriated him was how much he missed that touch. True, there were whores aplenty for the champions awaiting the Emperor. But there was nothing subtle-nothing real-in that.
There must be a middle ground, Karsa told himself. Where the exchange exulted in all the sparks and feints that made things interesting, without putting his dignity at risk. Yet he was realistic enough to hold little hope of ever finding it.
The world was filled with weapons and combat was a way of life. Perhaps the only way of life. He’d bled to whips and words, to punches and glances. He’d been bludgeoned by invisible shields, blindsided by unseen clubs, and had laboured under the chains of his own vows. And as Samar Dev would say, one survives by withstanding this onslaught, this history of the then and the now. To fail was to fall, but falling was not always synonymous with a quick, merciful death. Rather, one could fall into the slow dissolution, losses heaped high, that dragged a mortal to his or her knees. That made them slow slayers of themselves.
He had come to understand his own traps, and, in that sense, he was probably not yet ready to encounter someone else’s, to step awry and discover the shock of pain. Still, the hunger never went away. And this tumult in his soul was wearisome and so a most sordid invitation to a disgruntled mood.
Easily solved by mayhem.
Lacking love, the warrior seeks violence.
Karsa Orlong sneered as he slung the stone sword over his left shoulder and strode out into the corridor. ‘I hear you, Bairoth Gild. You would be my conscience?’ He grunted a laugh. ‘You, who stole my woman.’
Perhaps you have found another, Karsa Orlong.
‘I would break her in two.’
That has not stopped you before.
But no, this was a game. Bairoth Gild’s soul was bound within a sword. These sly words filling Karsa’s skull were his own. Lacking someone else’s attention, he was now digging his own pitfalls. ‘I think I need to kill someone.’