Looking down from the hills above Askander, Tamara felt she was finally home. The city lay nestled around the Bay of Claws, a giant monument to the glory of her people. The chill northern sunlight filtered down through thin clouds. It was a light unlike any other she knew, estuarine, over-brilliant, as if the sky had taken on something of the glitter and sheen of the sea. Gulls squawked, and the air had the familiar wet, salt tang.
From up here she could see the mighty dragonspires of the Temples, the ancient walls the city had long outgrown and the statues of former Emperors and Empresses that dominated the squares set at each compass point of the central ring. A dozen more of them stood on huge island plinths in the bay, gazing out to sea.
Over everything loomed the Imperial Palace, a combination of fortress and royal mansion that dominated the city by its sheer size, massive as the cliff in which it had its roots, its walls every bit as strong as the rock on which they rested. It seemed an extension of the cliff, part of some great demonic tusk of stone emerging from the soil of the city. Beneath it was an endless labyrinth of dungeons in which terrible things happened to the enemies of the Empress.
As in all the lands she had ridden through so swiftly, there were signs of gathering war. In the bay a massive fleet was anchored, a mixture of galleons and trading ships pressed into service. The purple flag of Sardea fluttered proudly on every vessel. She was surprised that the fleet had not sailed yet. It must be costing a fortune to keep it there.
The rumours were true then. The Quan Sea Devils had closed the northern waters to all Terrarch vessels, and not even Arachne’s proud fleet would risk the wrath of those alien monsters. Kraken could smash even the mightiest ships in their tentacles, and the Quan possessed alien sorcery that was matchless on the ocean. So much for landing troops by sea on the coasts of Kharadrea.
She studied the city, drinking in its appearance. It was a place that represented all that was proudest and most ancient in the traditions of her people. Cynical as she knew herself to be, it never stopped surprising her that some small part of her responded to that. She was part of a generation who prided themselves on seeing through the follies and hypocrisies of their elders, and yet as she grew older she discovered that she had more in common with them than she liked to think. Perhaps it was her father’s influence.
Her steed panted, grateful for the rest. It was the last and strongest of the relay of post horses she had used since the border. She had driven it unmercifully, using magic when necessary to keep it moving, and she had made good time. The journey had cost her dearly in energy, but its hardships had distracted her from her grief and worries.
The sight of the city below her made it all worthwhile. She loved the place with its broad avenues and ancient alleys, its cafes and salons and palaces, its starving authors and civil servants and its rich nobles who packed it in season from every corner of the far flung Empire. She had grown up here, attending balls and Court functions, taken her first lovers, killed her first enemy, learned sorcery and stealth. She felt the same way about Askander as the First felt about the home world. If she truly had any place in this world, it was here.
With a word, she urged her mount down the long winding road, through the farmlands and estates, towards her father’s ancient townhouse.
Tamara rode through the outskirts of town. The South Road came in through the least fashionable area, where the poorer Terrarch families had their small mansions and the shops of the less expensive tradesmen catering to them were to be found. There were some factories and manufacturing concerns where coaches and saddles and guns and dresses were made. Corrals for livestock driven in from the country stank up some squares. Tanneries belched chemicals into the nearby waters as they turned hides into leather.
There wasn’t the huge slum population she so often encountered in the cities of the West. In the Empire, no humans had been driven off the land, and come to town in search of work. Most Sardean Terrarchs still measured their wealth by the number of thralls they owned.
Askander was considered backwards by the progressives of the West, but that was true only in some areas. In the study of sorcery and the occult mysteries, the Empire still led the world, and there were more scholarly bookshops, and monasteries here than in the whole of Talorea.
There was also a profusion of Temples and shrines to saints, and even at this time of the day, they were surrounded by human supplicants. Within each was an altar and hundreds of sacred ikons and above each altar was a picture of the Empress, revered by them as Madonna and goddess, the living embodiment of the greatness of Sardea.
It was an irony that Tamara’s father had always enjoyed pointing out. In Sardea, where humans were most oppressed, they loved and worshipped their ruler all the more. Many of the older generation claimed that it showed humans loved the lash, and lost respect for those who would not use it. She had heard the arguments trotted out again and again, spoken of with the certainty of religious truth but she had come to doubt them.
Something was happening in the West. The world was changing as the humans woke to the strength of their numbers. The old order would be swept away if it did not adjust to that new reality. Or unless it did something dark and deadly.
As she rode on the size of the buildings increased. Statues to famous Terrarchs stood proudly at every junction and over every fountain. Many clasped ever burning lights in their hands or had them mounted on their crowns or the blades of their swords. By daylight they were merely dull gems but by night they would emit their soft sorcerous glow.
She reached the Ring; its streets lined on the outer side by the palaces of the mighty, on the inner side by the offices of the great government departments such as the House of Gold and the Palace of War. Each of those buildings was sub-divided as a beehive into hundreds of offices where thousands of drones moved from small cells to administer the wishes of their masters who sat like queen bees in their central cells.
The main industry of Askander was government, and the maintenance of the small army of functionaries who oversaw the workings of the great bureaucratic machine. Power was the material that was dealt with here, cut and sewn by those who held it and dispensed to their representatives so that they might go and work the Empress’s will in the wider world. Every Terrarch family had their palaces here for that reason. They could not afford to be too far from the font from which all other benefits flowed.
She was getting stared at now. She had changed out of her earlier disguise but she still looked grubby from travel, dressed in male clothes, and armed. On the roads she had been one more soldier swept along by the winds of war. Here the Terrarchs were more elegant, finely dressed and spectacularly well-groomed. As she sometimes did, she felt suddenly rootless again, out of place among these glittering people, unsure of herself. It was a feeling that had swept over her since her father had begun her true education, and her training as a Shadowblood. She was apart from these people, separated from them by a terrible and holy secret, for which she could be killed if it were ever uncovered.
One or two of the high Terrarchs looked like they might like to hail her or challenge her, but that would not be polite, and it was always possible she was someone of very high status returning on some mission of great importance, so they did what was normal and ignored her.
She entered the Street of Saint Selena and was at once struck by the wealth and beauty of the mansions that fronted it, its proximity to the towering mass of the Imperial Palace that dwarfed them all. She saw the number of small private temples interspersed among the buildings, and the swarms of liveried humans going about their master’s business. She turned right and came to the gates of her father’s house, now her own, she supposed, and was gratified when the humans on guard duty recognised her and saluted her at once.