Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The Bunker

Deep beneath the Temple of Whispers, old Kira, mother of Sasheen, stepped from an elevator into an underground tunnel lit by gaslights, and saw that all but one of the carriages had already departed.

She boarded the remaining one, the carriage sitting there with its wheels on the rails and the driver diligently avoiding her eye, the team of zels sniffing and snorting in impatience. With a hard tug on the cord she rang the bell, and the driver, a slave with a complexion made pasty white from lack of sunlight, lashed his whip across the backs of the zels, and they were away.

Deep within her own her own heart, a fierce fire was burning. With the bland concrete walls flowing past her, and the harshness of the lights interspersed with identical lengths of gloom, she stoked it with memories of her daughter, and her grandson too, young Kirkus, both of them gone now.

It had been Kira, in her capacity as a handler within the Section, who had given the order to the Diplomat Che concerning what was to be done in the event that Sasheen was captured, or ran from battle. An order that had needed to be given, as it always had been when a Matriarch or Patriarch had taken to the field; an order she had been commanded to pass on herself.

And now it had come to pass. Her daughter lay dead, poisoned by a Diplomat’s bullet.

Oh, Sasheen, she thought, and couldn’t help the grip of loss that seized her thin frame.

Her direct bloodline would end with her own passing. Others within the family of Dubois, her half-sister Velma and her get, would take the helm of the family’s falling fortunes.

Her thoughts turned to the Diplomat still at large in Khos, the one who had clearly shot her daughter through the neck. Che, the young man with his Roshun ways. A deserter, if the vague report from the twins was in any way accurate.

Kira wondered how utterly she could destroy him.

It felt like hours, rocking from side to side as the carriage rolled along the endless track of rails, always downwards towards a never-changing vanishing point. Time to linger on things, to allow her emotions to slowly ebb into numbness and her mind into random thoughts.

She was jolted as the carriage came to a halt, and saw that they had arrived at their destination. The air was stale here, so deep beneath the catacombs of the Hypermorum.

Kira stepped out and walked to the heavy iron door in the wall. Even as she approached, a priest stepped out from a cubicle to open it. He bowed low as she stepped through the raised threshold into the small chamber within, which was cylindrical, its sides glassy smooth, so that she felt as if she was standing in a bottle. Another round iron door plugged the end of it.

Darkness, as the light slowly faded to nothing. A hiss as a fine spray covered her, smelling of pine trees and the sea.

‘Your pass, please,’ came a voice from all around her.

‘Eight-six-oh-four-nine-nine-one.’

The inner door cracked opened. Kira stepped through into the light beyond.

The bunker was a tomb for all those who had been buried there alive; the iron doors were there to keep them in as much as others out.

The priests and slaves who lived down here would never see the sky again. Some had volunteered for this half existence, but for most there had been little choice in it. The dry, filtered air that fluttered through its rooms held an atmosphere of hopes abandoned and desires forever repressed. Quiet chatter came from the pools and salons and cages of the harem. Silence from the libraries and map rooms. Singing, even, from a boy standing naked on a pedestal in a marbled hallway, his words a celebration of the jealousy of lovers.

Kira stood beneath the strips of gaslights that made it as bright as day in there, surrounded by friezes on the leather-faced walls of forest hunting scenes. It smelled of dampness in the waiting chamber, and of decay, even with the fresh scents on her clothing and skin.

Four others stood in various postures around the room. Octas Lefall was there, famous uncle of Romano, leaning on the mantelpiece of a decorative hearth while he stared down his long nose at her, looking as though he was pleased with the news of the Matriarch’s death. The rest were over by the bar, conversing quietly in whispers.

Kira returned the stare of Octas with one just as icy. She would afford him no small victories today by an outward betrayal of her emotions.

They all fell quiet as a set of double doors clattered opened. Quickly, they gathered in a line and fell to their knees, their heads bowed low.

The high-backed chair creaked as it was wheeled through by a burly male priest. The man sitting in it had his eyes closed behind a pair of gilded spectacles. He was naked beneath his half-open silk robe, and his ancient withered skin was covered with the blotches of liver spots and the odd wiry white hair. His bald head rocked slightly as the chair stopped before them. His bearer retreated from the room and closed the door.

Nihilis snapped open his eyes.

Through the thick spectacles, the watery orbs were oversized and spiteful.

‘Kira,’ he snapped, and his voice sounded as worn and scratchy as his one-hundred-and-thirty-one years warranted. ‘Your daughter lies dead in Khos. My condolences for your misfortune. May she be remembered for her strengths and not her many weaknesses.’

Kira bowed her head even lower, if only to hide her sudden flush of rage.

He rang a tiny bell that sat in his lap. The tips of his fingers were coal black.

Another priest entered, and strode silently across the plush carpet to hand him a crystal tumbler filled with Royal Milk. Nihilis smacked his lips as he took a sip from it. Colour washed into his face, and he straightened. The robe parted further to reveal the silver spikes in his nipples, the mass of piercings in his genitals.

She watched him from beneath her eyelids, loathing himas much as she feared him.

‘So. What is to be done now? It seems we have an empty throne requiring an occupant.’

Octas Lefall cleared his throat first. Lefall was as old as Kira, had been there too during the Longest Night and the subsequent rise of Mann. ‘My nephew intends to lay his claim once he has wrested control of the Expeditionary Force in Khos. He is a stronger candidate than any other, and all here know it. We should notify the Arch-general to accede to his command. Let the transition be a smooth one. Let them get on with the business of taking Bar-Khos.’

‘A predictable sentiment, Octas. As always. And what do the rest of you think of this?’

‘I would support such a motion,’ commented Chishara of the Bonnes. ‘The longer this war continues, the longer it costs us all dearly.’

Hart, of the coal-rich Chirt clan, looked to Chishara in surprise.

‘That may be,’ Hart responded loudly. ‘But there are others who intend to make a rightful claim to the throne. My sonis one of them. He should be given his chance.’

A snort of derision came from Lefall, who snuffled it with a swipe of a finger down his long nose.

‘You wish me to give the nod to spirited Romano,’ Nihilis said to him. ‘Yet that is hardly our way, is it? No. We must see if he is fit enough to rule first. If he wins through in Khos, then he may have my consent. If not, we shall see who rises from the infighting here in Q’os, and I shall decide then if they are right for it.’

‘But, lord,’ said Chishara. ‘If we allow them to dither, we may lose our chance at Bar-Khos.’

‘Oh, the Free Ports will fall all right, have no doubts on that, Chishara.’

Kira found that her attention was drifting. Her fists were clenching tight by her sides. She could feel her fingernails biting into her palms. A fierce bitterness had possessed her, a sense of shame, even, at this lessening of her daughter before them all; at the lessening of her own position.

Look at the harm you have caused our family, she spoke to her daughter. We are losers now. Our star falls and our force diminishes. You were meant to win, my child! You were meant to conquer!

Beyond her, in the greater world, Chishara was glancing at Lefall as she made to reply. ‘It is not only that, my lord. There is the expense of it. Last week, my annaliticos informed me that if the war continues for another year, it will have cost us more than we can hope to recoup from the islands over twenty years of occupation.’

Nihilis waggled a finger at her, as though at an impudent child. Indeed she was the youngest of the gathering, barely beyond fifty years old. ‘The defeat of the Free Ports means much more to us than merely what we can profit from their wheat and ores.’ He paused to drink again from the tumbler of Milk. Savoured the taste of it for a lingering moment. ‘Yes, I see that you are interested now, all of you. Kira, tell them of this clever plan of ours.’

Hostile faces turned to observe her. Stares that accused her of their lord’s favouritism, because she had once been this his casual lover.

‘Of course,’ Kira croaked, gazing straight at Nihilis now. Her knees were starting to hurt, kneeling like this. ‘A plan, I should add, first endorsed by myself and my daughter.’

A tight-lipped smile stretched his wrinkled features, and his head nodded in subtle acknowledgement.

To the others, she said, ‘We project that the Free Ports will have fallen within the year, once we have dealt with Bar-Khos. When they do fall, we will be free to turn our attentions to the problem of Zanzahar and the Caliphate.’

A rolling of the eyes from Lefall. Kira chose to ignore it.

The words tumbled from her lips of their own practised accord. ‘At that point, we become their sole customer for blackpowder. With the war over, we will cut our demand for blackpowder to almost nothing. We will do so under the guise of a temporary consolidationofour accounts. At the same time, we will manufacture a famine in Pathia, or another of the southern lands, so that the price of our wheat will soar. We will be forced then, or so it will seem, to raise our tariffs in the wheat that we sell to Zanzahar, and which they are reliant upon.

‘Within a year of these double blows to their economy, Zanzahar will be experiencing a period of deepening crisis. Conditions will be ripe for a coup against the House of Sharat. We will make certain of that. We will manufacture the coup ourselves, with players of our own choosing, using our Diplomats to back them. Zanzahar and the Caliphate shall fall without a single battle. More importantly, their monopoly on trade with the Isles of Sky shall be ours. And with it, the only known source of blackpowder.’

They were all blinking at her as though she was speaking in tongues.

‘Are you quite serious?’ exclaimed Chishara, forgetting herself in the heat of her temper. ‘We stand on the verge of finishing the Free Ports here, and already you wish to gamble with all that we will have gained? What if the Caliphate realizes our true intentions? They could call an embargo on our heads, choke us of powder whilst feeding it to whatever insurgencies they can foment within the Empire.’

‘You fear for what we might lose,’ interjected Nihilis, lifting a finger again. ‘That is always your weakness, Chisara. Better if instead you embraced all that we could gain from this.’

‘So it’s settled, then,’ asked Lefall. ‘We’re going ahead with this?’

Nihilis craned his head back so as to scrutinize the man better. Kira gazed at the startling redness of her master’s lips, the tip of his tongue, the fleshy rims of his eyelids.

‘Do you have enough chattel, Lefall? Enough to satisfy you, I mean.’

Lefall chanced a subtle smile. ‘One can never have too much, my lord.’

The vivid tongue of Nihilis probed the air for an instant.

‘Then there is your answer, is it not?’