Count Perivos smelled something distinctly unsavory. Why would Ludis trade such a valuable pawn as Olin, unless it were to end the siege? But Sulepis would surely never give up the siege for the single lowly prize of a foreign king, especially the master of a small kingdom like Olin’s, which hadn’t even managed to ransom him from Ludis after nearly a year. None of it made sense.
Still, there was no good to be gained wasting time trying to understand it. Count Perivos handed his sheaf of plans to the factor, then turned to the foreman. “Irinnis, keep the men working hard—that outwall won’t last the night. And don’t forget that the wall near the Fountain Gate needs shoring up, too—half of it came down.”
The count hurried away across the wreckage of what had once been Empress Thallo’s Garden, a haven for quiet thought and sweet birdsong for hundreds of years. Now with every other step he had to dodge around outcrops of shattered stone knocked loose from the gate or smoking gorges clawed into the earth by cannonballs: the place looked like something that the death-god Kernios had ground beneath his heel.
With twenty full pentecounts of the city’s fiercest fighters surrounding his temporary headquarters in the pillared marble Treasury Hall, it would have been reasonable to suspect that Ludis Drakava, Lord Protector of Hierosol, feared an uprising from his own people more than he feared the massive army of the autarch outside his city walls.
Perivos Akuanis looked bitterly at the huge encampment as he walked swiftly between the rows of soldiers. We have nearly had two breakthroughs along the northern wall since the last sunrise. Neither of them would have happened if these men hadn’t been held back—a thousand out of the seven or eight thousand trained soldiers in the entire city, all they had to counter the autarch’s quarter of a million. The Council of the TwentySeven Families had surrendered the throne to Ludis so that a strong man would stand against the Autarch of Xis, whatever the loss of their own power, but it was beginning to look as though they would have neither.
If the outside looked like a fortress, the inside of the treasury looked more like the great temple of the Three Brothers: half a dozen black-robed, long-bearded Trigonate priests surrounded the transplanted Jade Chair like roosting crows, and like crows they seemed more interested in hopping and squawking than doing anything useful. Count Perivos, who had never liked or trusted Ludis, had lately come to loathe Hierosol’s lord protector with a fierce, hot anger unlike any he had ever felt. He hated Ludis even more than he hated the Autarch of Xis, because Sulepis was only a name, but he had to stare into Ludis Drakava’s square, heavy-browed face every single day and swallow bile.
The lord protector stood, flapping his arms at the priests as though they truly were crows. “Get out, you screeching old women! And tell your hierarch that if he wants to talk to me he can come himself, but I will use the temples as I see fit. We are at war!”
The Trigonate minions seemed unwilling to depart even after so clear an order, but none of them was above the rank of deacon. Grumbling and pulling at their whiskers, they migrated toward the door. Scowling, Ludis dropped back onto the throne. He caught sight of Count Perivos. “I suppose I should count my blessings the Trigonarch was kidnapped by the Syannese all those years ago,” Ludis growled, “or I’d have him whining at me, too.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what kind of stinking news do you bring, Akuanis?”
“I think you know about what brings me, although it was fresh to me only a half-hour gone. What is this I hear about Olin Eddon?”
Ludis put on the innocent look of a child—particularly bizarre on a brawny, bearded man covered with scars. “What do you hear?”
“Please, Lord Protector, do not treat me as a fool. Are you telling me that nothing unusual has happened to King Olin? That he has not been hustled out of his cell? I am told he is being traded to the autarch for...something. I do not know what.”
“No, you don’t know. And I won’t tell you.” The lord protector crossed his heavy arms on his chest and glowered.
There was something wrong with the way Ludis was behaving. Drakava was a surprisingly complex man, but Akuanis had never seen him show the least remorse for anything he’d done, let alone act like this—childishly petulant, as though expecting to be scolded and punished. This from the man who had declared an innocent priest (who also happened to have the only legitimate claim to the Hierosoline throne) a warlock and had him dragged from his temple and pulled apart by horses? Why should Ludis Drakava have become squeamish now?
“So it’s true, then. Is there time to stop it? Where is King Olin now?”
Ludis looked up, actually surprised. “By Hiliometes’ beard, why should we stop it? What can a milk-skinned northerner like that mean to you?”
“He is a king! Not to mention that he is an honorable man. Pity I cannot say the same of Hierosol’s ruler.”
Ludis stared at him malevolently. Count Perivos was suddenly aware of the fact that he was surrounded by troops who owed him no personal loyalty, but who received their pay in the lord protector’s name each month. “You climb far out on a thin branch,” Ludis said at last.
“But what do you gain by this? Why give an innocent man over to the cruelties of that...that monster, Sulepis?”
Ludis laughed harshly but turned away, as though still not entirely comfortable meeting the count’s eyes. “Who wears the crown here, Akuanis? Your reputation as a siege engineer gives you no right to question me. I protect what I must protect...”
He broke off at the sound of shouting. A soldier wearing the crest of the Esterian Home Guard shoved his way through Drakava’s Golden Enomote and threw himself down on the mosaic in front of the throne. “Lord Protector,” he cried, “the Xixies have come over the wall below Fountain Gate! We’re holding them in the temple yard at the foot of Citadel Hill, but we have only a small troop and won’t be able to hold them long. Lord Kelofas begs you to send help.”
Akuanis strode forward, all thoughts of Olin Eddon blasted from his mind. The temple yard was only a couple of miles from the townhouse where his wife and children waited in what they thought was safety—they and thousands more innocents would be overrun in a matter of hours if the Fountain Gate defenses collapsed. “Give me some of these men,” he demanded. “Let me go and hit Sulepis in the teeth now—this moment! You have a thousand around this building, but they will be like straws in a gale if we don’t keep the autarch out.”
For a moment Drakava hesitated, but then an odd look stole across his face. “Yes, take them,” he said. “Leave me two pentecounts to defend the treasury and the throne.”
After all the harsh words, Count Perivos was astonished that the lord protector would give up his troops so easily, but he had no time to wonder. He dropped to his knee and touched his head to the floor—bowing not to Ludis, he told himself, but to all the Hierosoline kings and queens, emperors and empresses, who had sat on the great green throne before him—then rose and hurried off to the taksiarch of the men encamped around the treasury. He could only pray that the engineers and workers he had left behind in the Empress Gardens had almost finished the wall, or holding the wall at Fountain Gate would mean nothing.
“Make us proud, Count Perivos,” shouted Ludis as Akuanis and the taksiarch got the men into fast-march formation. The lord protector almost sounded as though he were enjoying some theatrical spectacle. “All of Hierosol will be watching you!”
Eril was so furious with his young mistress that at first he wouldn’t even speak to her, but only followed with his sword nearly dragging in the dust as they set out from the Sivedan temple toward the Citadel Hill. As they climbed upward on the spiraling road, breasting a great tide of folk hurrying the opposite way, he finally found his tongue.