He was not a man in bed. Oh, his parts functioned well enough, but in every other way he was a child, this Emperor of a Thousand Deaths. But worst of all, Nisall decided, was what happened afterwards, as he fell into that half-sleep, half-something else, limbs spasming, endless words tumbling from him in a litany of pleading, punctuated by despairing sobs that scraped the scented air of the chamber. And before long, after she’d escaped the bed itself, drawing a robe about her and taking position near the painted scene in the false window, five paces distant, she would watch him crawl down onto the floor and make his way as if crippled from some spinal injury, the ever-present sword trailing in one hand, across the room to the corner, where he would spend the rest of the night, curled up, locked in some eternal nightmare.
A thousand deaths, lived through night upon night. A thousand.
An exaggeration, of course. A few hundred at most.
Emperor Rhulad’s torment was not the product of a fevered imagination, nor born of a host of anxieties. What haunted him were the truths of his past. She was able to identify some of his mutterings, in particular the one that dominated his nightmares, for she had been there. In the throne room, witness to Rhulad’s non-death, weeping there on the floor all slick with his spilled blood, with a corpse on his throne and Rhulad’s own slayer lying half upright against the dais-stolen away by poison.
Hannan Mosag’s pathetic slither towards that throne had been halted by the demon that had appeared to collect the body of Brys Beddict, and the almost indifferent sword thrust that killed Rhulad as the apparition made its way out.
The Emperor’s awakening shriek had turned her heart into a frozen lump, a cry so brutally raw that she felt its fire in her own throat.
But it was what followed, a short time after his return, that stalked Rhulad with a thousand dripping blades.
To die, only to return, is to never escape. Never escaped… anything.
Wounds closing, he had lifted himself up, onto his hand and knees, still gripping the cursed sword, the weapon that would not let go. Weeping, drawing in ragged breaths, h crawled towards the throne, sagging down once more whe: he reached the dais.
Nisall had stepped out from where she had hidden moments earlier. Her mind was numb-the suicide of he king-her lover-and the Eunuch, Nifadas-the shocks one upon another in this terrible throne room, the deaths, tumbling like crowded gravestones in a flooded field Triban Gnol, ever the pragmatist, knelt before the new Emperor, pledging his service with the ease of an eel sliding under a new rock. The First Consort had been witness, well, but she could not see Turudal Brizad now, as Rhulad, hlood-wet coins gleaming, twisted round on the step and bared his teeth at Hannan Mosag.
‘Not yours,’ he said in a rasp.
‘Rhulad-’
‘Emperor! And you, Hannan Mosag, are my Ceda… Warlock King no longer. My Ceda, yes.’
‘Your wife-’
‘Dead. Yes.’ Rhulad lifted himself onto the dais, then lose, staring now at the dead Letherii king, Ezgara Diskanar. Then he reached out with his unburdened hand, grasped the front of the king’s brocaded tunic, and dragged the corpse from the throne, letting it fall to one side, head crunching on the tiled floor. A shiver seemed to rack through Rhulad. Then he sat on the throne and looked out, eyes settling once more on Hannan Mosag. ‘Ceda,’ he said, ‘in this, our chamber, you will ever approach us on your belly, as you do now.’
From the shadows at the far end of the throne room there came a phlegmatic cackle.
Rhulad flinched, then said, ‘Now you will leave us, Ceda. And take that hag Janall and her son with you.’
‘Emperor, please, you must understand-’
‘Get out!’
The shriek jarred Nisall, and she hesitated, fighting the urge to flee, to get away from this place. From the court, from the city, from everything.
Then his free hand snapped out and without turning he said to her, ‘Not you, whore. You stay.’
Whore. ‘That term is inappropriate,’ she said, then stiffened in fear, surprised by her own temerity.
He fixed feverish eyes on her. Then, incongruously, he waved dismissively and spoke with sudden weariness. ‘Of course. We apologize. Imperial Concubine…’ His glittering fece twisted in a half-smile. ‘Your king should have taken you as well. He was being selfish, or perhaps his love for you was so dleep that he could not bear inviting you into death.’
She said nothing, for, in truth, she had no answer to give him.
‘Ah, we see the doubt in your eyes. Concubine, you have our sympathy. Know that we will not use you cruelly.’ He fell silent then, as he watched Hannan Mosag drag himself back across the threshold of the chamber’s grand entrance-way. A half-dozen more Tiste Edur had appeared, tremulous in their furtive motions, their uncertainty at what they were witnessing. A hissed command from Hannan Mosag sent two into the room, each one drawing up the burlap over the mangled forms of Janall and Quillas, her son. The sound as they dragged the two flesh-filled sacks from the chamber was, to Nisall’s ears, more grisly than anything else she had yet heard on this fell day.
‘At the same time,’ the Emperor went on after a moment, ‘the title and its attendant privileges… remain, should you so desire.’
She blinked, feeling as if she was standing on shifting sand. ‘You free me to choose, Emperor?’
A nod, the bleary, red-shot eyes still fixed on the chamber’s entranceway. ‘Udinaas,’ he whispered. ‘Betrayer. You… you were not free to choose. Slave-my slave-I should never have trusted the darkness, never…’ He flinched once more on the throne, eyes suddenly glittering. ‘He comes.’
She had no idea whom he meant, but the raw emotion in his voice frightened her anew. What more could come on this terrible day?
Voices outside, one of them sounding bitter, then diffident.
She watched as a Tiste Edur warrior strode into the throne room. Rhulad’s brother. One of them. The one who had left Rhulad lying on the tiles. Young, handsome in that way of the Edur-both alien and perfect. She tried to recall if she had heard his name-
‘Trull,’ said the Emperor in a rasp. ‘Where is he? Where is Fear?’
‘He has… left.’
‘Left? Left us?’
‘Us. Yes, Rhulad-or do you insist I call you Emperor?’
Expressions twisted across Rhulad’s coin-studded face, one after another, then he grimaced and said, ‘You left me, too, brother. Left me bleeding… on the floor. Do you think yourself different from Udinaas? Less a betrayer than my Letherii slave?’
‘Rhulad, would that you were my brother of old-’
‘The one you sneered down upon?’
‘If it seemed I did that, then I apologize.’
‘Yes, you see the need for that now, don’t you?’
Trull Sengar stepped forward. ‘It’s the sword, Rhulad. It is cursed-please, throw it away. Destroy it. You’ve won the throne now, you don’t need it any more-’
‘You are wrong.’ He bared his teeth, as if sickened by self-hatred. ‘Without it I am just Rhulad, youngest son of Tomad. Without the sword, brother, I am nothing.’
Trull cocked his head. ‘You have led us to conquest. I will stand beside you. So will Binadas, and our father. You have won that throne, Rhulad-you need not fear Hannan Mosag-’
‘That miserable worm? You think me frightened of him?’ The sword-tip made a snapping sound as its point jumped free of the tiles. Rhulad aimed the weapon at Trull’s chest. ‘I am the Emperor!’