The Crown of blood

I

The dockyards were a cauldron of ceaseless noise. The thump of wooden mallets was so intense and so prevalent that Jutaar retired to his rooms every night with his head still pounding. The rat-tat-tat of rivet hammers, the buzz of saws, the creak of tensioned rope, the thud of planks and the constant pattering of bare feet intruded into every moment of Jutaar's waking life, and often his dreams.

It had seemed a simple enough job that his father had given him. Build a fleet large enough for fifty thousand men, to sail hotwards along the coast and make landing on the dawnward shores of Askhor, beyond the mountains that separated the homeland of the empire from its surrounding provinces.

And it should have been simple. Jutaar's father had drafted thousands of labourers from the shipyards along the Greenwater, nearly doubling the number of men in the port of Askhira. Carpenters and sailmakers, caulkers and coopers, overseers and ledgermen, all put into action the orders of the general, attended to by a similarly sized army of cooks and traders, wives and whores. To house them, three architects from Nalanor had arrived, with even more men to raise long tenements along the sea front, and to build new docks so that more ships could be laid down. All under the watchful gaze of the Tenth Legion.

Jutaar had only to keep an eye on things, to make sure the monies were paid, the materials supplied and the workers protected. Yet this had proven more difficult than he had been led to believe. Amidst the overcrowded workers' apartments, tempers flared regularly. Small incidents had a habit of sparking large confrontations, and four times Jutaar had sent in companies of the Tenth to suppress potential riots.

It was not just at home that the work force was unhappy; the labourers were constantly fractious with their masters, the captains argued with the harbour masters, and disputes between suppliers often brought the flow of materials to a standstill. Accidents happened every day, most of them minor, but several were more serious and had claimed the lives of nearly two hundred men in total. There were rumours that the endeavour was cursed, but how and by whom nobody would say.

That such superstition had taken root was in itself a symptom of the Brotherhood's absence. Not a single black-robed Brother could be found in all of Maasra, nor in Okhar, or Nalanor or any of the other provinces outside Askhor. It came to light over the course of a few days; in towns and cities across the empire, the Brotherhood disappeared. The precinct pyramids were deserted, their doors locked, their windows barred. This sudden departure had a twofold effect. Most obviously, the machine of state ground to a halt. Without the Brotherhood and their taxes, censuses, marriages, funerals, quotas and archives, people's everyday lives were left without structure, while commerce became sporadic and returned to a small-scale, local trade more common in savage places like Salphoria and Mekha.

It was just not the practical issues that bedevilled Jutaar and the others attempting to run Ullsaard's newly acquired domains. The people of the provinces felt abandoned without the Brotherhood. There was a strange feeling in the towns; a hushed fear around the empty precincts; an unsettled atmosphere in streets where black-robed figures no longer walked.

Jutaar knew that his father and brothers thought him slow and somewhat dim, but he was not without some thoughts. It occurred to him that a Brother might simply take off his robe and be indistinguishable from any other man. It was unlikely that hundreds of Brothers across Maasra were mysteriously spirited away by some strange force; Jutaar firmly believed that the Brotherhood were still around, but had chosen to hide in plain sight.

He had written to his father to warn of the fear that the Brotherhood were agitating against Ullsaard. Jutaar knew enough about the morale of men to understand that it takes little to turn uncertainty into fear, fear into anger. It was Jutaar that had persuaded Allon's legions that they had no chance against Ullsaard, and taken his father's offer of a new allegiance to them. He had seen firsthand the disquiet sown by his father's manoeuvres and half-truths, the lies spread by his men through the ranks of the common soldiers. Now, as far as Jutaar could tell, the Brotherhood were retaliating in kind.

Men already working long shifts to build a warfleet did not need much of a push to start complaining. An act of sabotage, a whispered voice of dissent, could fan the embers of annoyance into something far more dangerous.

Other than asking for advice from his father, Jutaar could not see what else he could do. He kept the Tenth close at hand and walked the docks every day with kind words, resolving disputes, reminding people of the great venture they were embarking upon and the age of prosperity they would all enjoy under the rule of King Ullsaard. Jutaar was lavish with the treasury of Maasra, despite many complaints from the governor, Kulrua, who was by nature a miserly, bureaucratic man. Each ship completed was celebrated with a feast for all and Jutaar continued to build more homes to give the workers more space.

Despite this generosity, he felt that all of the gold in Magilnada, Nalanor and Okhar would not assuage the growing resentment of his newly subject people. Every time the legionnaires broke up a fight, every time a timber cracked and a man was injured, the shipyards bubbled with quiet rebellion. Tools were downed and shifts sent home while tempers eased.

It was even stranger given the placid reputation of Maasrites across the empire. They were known for the most part as peaceful people. A little more than one hundred years ago, the Maasrite tribes had joined Greater Askhor without a fight; famously, their six chieftains cut out their tongues so that they could offer no word of protest and keep their honour. This became the Vow of Service that a proportion of Maasrites still followed. Jutaar had always been uncomfortable with voluntary self-mutilation, but being in Askhira had taught him that the practice was far less common than he had thought. Most of those that took the Vow of Service were servants across the rest of the empire, who had followed their forefathers' act of sacrifice so that they could not dispute the wishes of foreign masters.

Jutaar wondered if the influx of foreigners into Maasra had upset the locals, but there was little evidence. The docile, workmanlike Maasrites had been agitated by far more than the arrival of belligerent, loud Okharans and Nalanorians. Like the other workers, they were fearful of some undisclosed fate and complained of nightmares of the town being swallowed by the sea.

All of this disruption had put Jutaar far behind schedule. Ullsaard was coming to the province to see the delays first-hand and to resolve them quickly.

So it was that Jutaar waited at the gate of Askhira's wall in the summer afternoon heat, feeling downcast that he had failed his father, and fearful of the meeting about to take place. The coming of Ullsaard was heralded by a dust cloud on the horizon, and it was quickly evident that the general had come with a large body of men. As the bells sounded the arrival of High Watch, the marching column of the Thirteenth could be seen in the haze, their golden standards and black shields snaking along the road from the Greenwater.

Jutaar and Rondin had arranged a guard of honour by the Tenth, who lined the road outside and inside the gate, spears raised in salute as General Ullsaard rode into Askhira, while the Thirteenth stopped half a mile outside of the town to make camp. The general had Urikh and Noran with him, both also on ailurs, though Urikh looked far from comfortable on his beast. Jutaar hurried down the steps from the gate tower to greet his father in the square just inside the wall.

Dismounting, Ullsaard clasped his son's hand and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't look so worried, son," said the general. "I'm not here to give you a hard time."

"That's good to hear," replied Jutaar with a smile of relief. He turned to his brother. "Urikh. Good to see you."

"Brother," Urikh replied tersely, half-falling from the back of his ailur.

"How are you doing, Jutaar?" asked Noran as he let himself out of the saddle with far more grace, tossing the reins to a waiting legionnaire. "You have been kept busy, I hear."

"Very," said Jutaar.

The group walked down the main street of Askhira, heading towards the docks. The town was quiet, a few women and children around to watch the new arrivals, the bulk of the inhabitants at work. Even from this distance the noise of labour was audible. As they crested a rise, Ullsaard stopped and the others gathered around him. The harbour was laid out before them, the town sloping gently towards the sea.

Set on an inlet of the Nemurian Strait, Askhira followed the shallow coast around the bay, a thin crescent of red-roofed homes and wooden-beamed warehouses. Warmed by the hotward winds blowing up the Maasran Gulf, Askhira was hot and humid, prone to summer storms that were violent but brief. Even in winter the coast was pleasantly mild and two rearing headlands provided natural shelter for ships. To coldwards the land rose swiftly into the foothills of the Askhinia Mountains, the hotwards range bordering the home of the empire. The hills had once been solid with forests, but centuries of shipbuilding and timber export had cut a large swathe through the trees, visible as a pale scar amongst the dark green, stretching out of sight into the distance.

The sky was clear and Jutaar could see out across the straits, to a dark blotch where sea met sky. That way lay the islands of Nemuria, a chain of active volcanoes that smudged the air with their fumes. When he had first arrived, Jutaar had taken a ship out into the straits to see the islands. By old agreement, no ship approached within a mile of those islands without permission, so Jutaar had tried his best to peer through the smog and gloom to see the lands of the Nemurians. They reared out of the water with high cliffs and steep, ash-wreathed shores. Through breaks in the cloud he had seen huge edifices of black granite standing high above yellow-leafed trees, and thought he glimpsed flashes of red and orange at the tips of the peaks.

The wind, treacherous around Nemuria, had turned foul and forced the ship's captain to tack back lest he break the one-mile limit. Nobody was sure what the penalty would be for breaking the convention, but Jutaar would be the first to admit he did not want to find out the hard way. Little was known of the Nemurians, least of all their numbers, and it was regarded by all to be a good thing that they seemed content to remain on their islands and only came to the mainland to work as mercenaries. Nothing had been seen of them since Nemtun had dismissed his corps of five thousand — even Maasra, their home away from home, was empty of the non-humans. The prevailing wisdom was that the Nemurians were waiting to see who ended up running the empire before they got involved again.

That had been Jutaar's first and last sight of Nemuria, but each time he gazed across the strait, he wondered what else might be seen in that patch of grey.

"You said you had trouble elsewhere?" Jutaar said, tearing his eyes away from the mysterious islands.

"In Parmia and Narun, mostly," replied Noran. Ullsaard was still staring across the sea at the pall of smoke. "A bit of trouble in Geria, but that's to be expected as Nemtun's old capital. Even had a riot in Duuris."

"What did you do to stop it?" Jutaar asked.

"That, my son," said Ullsaard, breaking from his entranced state, "you will see tomorrow."

Wondering what this might mean, Jutaar led his visitors down into Askhira, to the houses he had occupied on the dockside.