‘No, you’re not,’ Trull replied. ‘Your sword is Emperor-your sword and the power behind it.’
‘Liar!’ Rhulad shrieked.
Nisall saw Trull flinch back, then steady himself. ‘Prove it.’
The Emperor’s eyes widened.
‘Shatter the sword-Sister’s blessing, just let it fall from your hand. Even that, Rhulad. Just that. Let it fall!’
‘No! I know what you want, brother! You will take it-I see you tensed, ready to dive for it-I see the truth!’ The weapon was shuddering between them, as if eager for blood, anyone’s blood.
Trull shook his head. ‘I want it shattered, Rhulad.’
‘You cannot stand at my side,’ the Emperor hissed. ‘Too close-there is betrayal in your eyes-you left me! Crippled on the floor!’ He raised his voice. ‘Where are my warriors? Into the chamber! Your Emperor commands it!’
A half-dozen Edur warriors suddenly appeared, weapons out.
‘Trull,’ Rhulad whispered. ‘I see you have no sword. Now it is for you to drop your favoured weapon, your spear. And your knives. What? Do you fear I will slay you? Show me the trust you claim in yourself. Guide me with your honour, brother.’
She did not know it then; she did not understand enough of the Edur way of life, but she saw something in Trull’s face, a kind of surrender, but a surrender that was far more complicated, fraught, than simply disarming himself there before his brother. Levels of resignation, settling one upon another, the descent of impossible burdens-and the knowledge shared between the two brothers, of what such a surrender signified. She did not realize at the time what Trull’s answer would mean, the way it was done, not in his own name, not for himself, but for Fear. Fear Sengar, more! than anyone else. She did not realize, then, the immensity’ of his sacrifice, as he unslung his spear and let it clatter to, the tiles; as he removed his knife belt and threw it to one side.
There should have been triumph in Rhulad’s tortured eyes, then, but there wasn’t. Instead, a kind of confusion clouded his gaze, made him shy away, as if seeking help. His attention found and focused upon the six warriors, and he gestured with the sword and said in a broken voice, ‘Trull Sengar is to be Shorn. He will cease to exist, for ourself, for all Edur. Take him. Bind him. Take him away.’
Neither had she realized what that judgement, that deci-sion, had cost Rhulad himself.
Free to choose, she had chosen to remain, for reasons she could not elucidate even in her own mind. Was there pity?
Perhaps. Ambition, without question-for she had sensed, in that predatory manner demanded of life in the court, that there was a way through to him, a way to replace-without all the attendant history-those who were no longer at Rhulad’s side. Not one of his warrior sycophants they were worthless, ultimately, and she knew that Rhulad was well aware of that truth. In the end, she could see, he had no-one. Not his brother, Binadas, who, like Trull, proved too close and thus too dangerous for the Emperor to keep around-and so he had sent him away, seeking champions and scattered kin of the Edur tribes. As for his father, Tomad, again the suborning role proved far too awkward to accommodate. Of the surviving K’risnan of Hannan Mosag, fully half had been sent to accompany Tomad and Binadas, so as to keep the new Ceda weak.
And all the while, as these decisions were made, as the Shoming was conducted, in secrecy, away from Letherii eyes, and as Nisall manoeuvred herself into the Emperor’s bed, the Chancellor, Triban Gnol, had watched on, with the hooded eyes of a raptor.
The consort, Turudal Brizad, had vanished, although Nisall had heard rumours among the court servants that he had not gone far; that he haunted the lesser travelled corridors and subterranean mysteries of the old palace, ghostly and rarely more than half seen. She was undecided on the veracity of such claims; even so, if he were indeed hiding still in the palace, she realized that such a thing would not surprise her in the least. It did not matter-Rhulad had no wife, after all.
The Emperor’s lover, a role she was accustomed to, although it did not seem that way. Rhulad was so young, so different from Ezgara Diskanar. His spiritual wounds were too deep to be healed by her touch, and so, even as she found herself in aposition of eminence, of power-close as she was to the throne-she felt helpless. And profoundly done.
She stood, watching the Emperor of Lether writhing as he curled up ever tighter in the corner of the room. Among the whimpers, groans and gasps, he spat out fragments of his conversation with Trull, his forsaken brother. And again and again, in hoarse whispers, Rhulad begged forgiveness.
Yet a new day awaited them, she reminded herself. And she would see this broken man gather himself, collect the pieces and then take his place seated on the imperial throne, looking out with red-rimmed eyes, his fragmented armour of coins gleaming dull in the light of the traditional torches lining the chamber’s walls; and where those coins were missing, there was naught but scarred tissue, crimson- ringed weals of malformed flesh. And then, this ghastly apparition would, in the course of that day, proceed to astonish her.
Eschewing the old protocols of imperial rule, the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths would sit through a presentation of petitions, an ever-growing number of citizens of the empire, poor and rich alike, who had come to accept the Imperial Invitation, feeding their courage to come face to face with their foreign ruler. For bell after bell, Rhulad would mete out justice as best he could. His struggles to understand the lives of the Letherii had touched her in unexpected ways-there was, she had come to believe, a decent soul beneath all that accursed trauma, And it was then that Nisall found herself most needed, although more often of late it was the Chancellor who dominated the advising, and she had come to realize that Triban Gnol had begun to view her as a rival. He was the principal organizer of the petitions, the filter that kept the numbers manageable, and his office had burgeoned accordingly. That his expanded staff also served as a vast and invasive web of spies in the palace was of course a given.
Thus, Nisall watched her Emperor, who had ascended the throne wading through blood, strive for benign rule, seeking a sensitivity too honest and awkward to be other, than genuine. And it was breaking her heart.
For power had no interest in integrity. Even Ezgara Diskanar, so full of promise in his early years, had come to raise a wall between himself and the empire’s citizens in the last decade of his rule. Integrity was too vulnerable to abuse by others, and Ezgara had suffered that betrayal again and again, and, perhaps most painfully of all, from his own wife, lanall, and then their son.
Too easy to dismiss the burden of such wounds, the depth of such scars.
And Rhulad, this youngest son of an Edur noble family, had been a victim of betrayal, of what must have been true friendship-with the slave, Udinaas-and in the threads of shared blood, from his very own brothers.
But each day, he overcame the torments of the night just gone. Nisall wondered, however, how much longer that could list. She alone was witness to his inner triumph, to that extraordinary war he waged with himself every morning. The Chancellor, for all his spies, knew nothing of it-she was Certain of that. And that made him dangerous in his Ignorance.
She needed to speak to Triban Gnol. She needed to Blend this bridge. But I will not be his spy.
A most narrow bridge, then, one to be trod with caution.
Rhulad stirred in the gloom.
And then he whispered, ‘I know what you want, brother…
‘So guide me… guide me with your honour…’
Ah, Trull Sengar, wherever your spirit now lurks, does it please you?.’ Does this please you, to know that your Shaming failed?
So that you have now returned.
To so haunt Rhulad.
Guide me,’ Rhulad croaked.
The sword scraped on the floor, rippling over mosaic Hones like cold laughter.