And he burst into the throne room, seeing the seat of all his power and command, yet taking no joy from it.
His throne room had a door, though it was very rarely closed. Now he got his hands about the rim and hauled at it until the valve-like disc closed shut behind him.
But there was no way to seal it. This was no pressure door, such as led into the ocean. Aradocles could pry it open with ease. Claeon had always relied on guards to keep out his enemies. Now he had no guard but himself.
He thought he could hear shouting beyond the closed portal. Were the cursed boy and his landsmen even now approaching, calling out his name? Claeon whimpered with dread and hate, raising up his maul. Can it be done? Then I shall do it. With a great cry, he launched the weapon’s beaked head at the door’s hinge, striking away jagged fragments of stony stuff, compacting the hollow chambers of the coral. Shouting incoherently, he struck four, five times, smashing the substance of the frame, pressing it in on itself. Either the door would fall completely away, leaving him not greatly worse off than he was before, or…
Panting heavily he stepped back and looked at his handiwork. He had exposed the tombs of a thousand tiny creatures: the barren little cells that their brethren had sealed them up inside, when they were built over, when Hermatyre was being laid down. The door still held its place, though and, when he tugged at it, it was wedged solid. He had now sealed himself within his throne room.
‘What have you done?’ a woman’s voice demanded, and he whirled about with his maul raised. Stepping from behind the throne came Haelyn, his majordomo. The Sepia-kinden woman looked aghast.
‘My throne,’ Claeon snarled. ‘I am the Edmir, no other. He shall not have it. This is mine.’
‘And what will you do now?’ Haelyn asked incredulously. ‘Do you think they won’t find a way in? And if they don’t, will you starve? Or what?’
‘I will defy them to my last breath. If I die, I shall be the last Edmir of Hermatyre to sit here and rule.’
‘Claeon, listen to me,’ she insisted, ‘there is another way. For all that has gone wrong between you, Aradocles is your nephew still. If you beg it of him, he will be merciful.’
‘Why?’ The Edmir scowled at her. ‘Why mercy, when he has me by the throat? Mercy is not for Edmirs. Mercy is only for the weak.’
‘What other chance have you?’ she yelled at him, stepping down from the dais. ‘Listen to yourself, Claeon!’
His eyes narrowed abruptly, and she stopped. ‘Who let them in, Haelyn?’
‘Who let who in?’
‘When they stole those land-kinden from my oubliette, when they took my dear Paladrya from me, who let them in? Who was it who betrayed me? I am betrayed, and who better for that than one who held my utmost confidence?’
Until then, he had only the faintest suspicion, his paranoia seeking any target, but now he saw the faintest flush of colours swirling over her skin. A flinch, a twitch of guilt, revealed even under the shadows of her Art, and he knew.
‘Traitor!’ he shrieked, and in the next moment he was running at her, maul upraised. She retreated upwards beside the throne, shouting his name, but he was done with that – done with her. His majordomos always failed him, sooner or later. Well, this last one would not survive him. He would regret only that he could not finish her off properly, and at his leisure, but perhaps it was fitting that his last act as Edmir should be a brutal one.
She dodged behind the throne, and his next swing smashed the back of it in a cloud of fragments, obliterating its beauty in a single moment. He would indeed be the last Edmir to govern Hermatyre from that seat. Haelyn retreated and retreated, but Claeon was mad with fury now, whirling the maul about him, cracking dents in the floor, in the walls, until at last she tripped and fell.
She screamed, and he savoured it, standing over her with the comforting weight of the maul in his hands. It was grimed now with pulverized coral, but he’d wash that off soon enough. He raised it high.
Her eyes had slipped away from the weapon, from his own gaze. She was staring now at something beyond him. He was a fool for doing so, but he could not stop himself craning around to look.
The Arketoi stood there, some half-dozen of them: pallid little hairless men and women, tattooed and almost naked, as like unto each other as siblings. They stared at him wordlessly, for they never spoke. Even as he watched, a few more of them trickled into the throne room, twisting their way through the walls, walking somehow in between the infinitesimal spaces between the dead coral. Some had gone over to the door, and were examining its smashed hinge.
‘Do not touch that! Do not heal it!’ Claeon protested. The majority of the Arketoi just stared at him reproachfully. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
‘You hurt the colony,’ Haelyn whispered. ‘You hurt them.’
Claeon snarled. ‘It’s my colony! I’m the Edmir!’ But he saw Haelyn’s face and her immediate reaction. It’s their colony. It always has been. We are but guests.
The Arketoi began shuffling towards him, and he threatened them with his maul. One by one, they raised their hands towards him, as if in salute.
‘Get back!’ Claeon howled. He struck one a blow with the maul – not solidly, but the little man was such a frail piece of work that he crumpled immediately. The others simply came on at him, reaching out with their pale fingers. More and more of them crept into the room from every crack and corner, from nowhere at all. There were twenty – no thirty, at least – all focusing only on Claeon.
He swung the maul to all sides of him, catching another pair, but then they reached him, and Haelyn screamed again, not from fear for herself but for what they then did.
When Aradocles, Stenwold and Paladrya finally entered the throne room, through a perfectly functional door, they discovered Haelyn pressed against one wall, hands covering her mouth, and, in the centre of the room, nothing but the rough shape of a man – as though a statue had been abandoned to the ocean many decades past, and become thoroughly encrusted over by barnacles and coral.
Forty-Six
‘You know what you’re doing, of course,’ remarked Tomasso philosophically.
Stenwold just shrugged, his eyes fixed on the sea. Overhead the Tidenfree’s sails bellied and flapped, lowered halfway and turned from the wind so that the crew could let down the ship’s boat in safety.
‘Still in sight of Collegium harbour, as well,’ said the Fly captain, approvingly. ‘A right piece of theatre. I’ll wager they’re cramming the sea wall with telescopes in their hands. You’re a man with a knack for building your own legend.’
‘I never wanted a legend,’ Stenwold said softly. ‘If I could have lived my whole life merely as a tinker and a scholar, that would have suited me.’
Tomasso made a rude noise, and then said, more solicitously, ‘You don’t want anyone along with you? You’re sure, now? I’ve got good hands here, who’d gladly do it. Stab me, but Laszlo would come, if only he had four whole limbs. I’d not be able to keep him back. Prefers you to me, these days.’
‘We went through a lot together,’ said Stenwold fondly. ‘No – no others. Anyone with me is a hostage being handed to the enemy.’
‘Well, then,’ said Tomasso. ‘Ready the boat. Master Maker’s fixing to leave us.’
Parting had been hard, after all that dagger work had been done. Aradocles had wanted him to stay just a little longer. There was to be a procession, a ceremony, where the boy would make pledges to the people of Hermatyre such as an Edmir had never offered before. He was going to make Salma proud of him, Stenwold knew. He would rule the colony as a true Commonweal prince, whose first concern must always – or should always – be for the well-being of his subjects.
But Stenwold could hear a clock ticking in the back of his mind. How long for them to raise their grand armada, and sail on Collegium? How long for the Black and Gold to take note and start their next grand war? He had made his apologies, after begging one simple audience with the new Edmir. After that, he had headed for the water, where Wys’s submersible was waiting to carry him, as swiftly as possible, back to his home.