The Dark Defiles

CHAPTER 68

The Emperor Jhiral Khimran II sat at breakfast by the window, chewing an apple down to its core and reading a death warrant. Sunlight flooded in through the bedchamber’s stained glass windows and painted him a motley of warm pastel shades. He shifted in his seat and his silk robe fell open to below the waist. The chamberlain cleared his throat, shifted uncomfortably, and averted his eyes. The Emperor looked up from the warrant, noticed.

“Oh, come off it Yaresh. I know you haven’t got the tackle anymore, but you’ve seen the like enough times, surely.”

“Yes, my lord.” Still looking pointedly out the window.

Jhiral sighed, tossed the apple core back onto his breakfast table, and pulled the robe across himself with his freed hand. He gestured with the parchment.

“You know, I hold cowardice pretty high on the list of unacceptable failings in a man. But as I understand it, this Commander Karsh only suggested a tactical withdrawal from the Hin valley, not a full retreat. And the kicking our forces got subsequently seems to suggest he might have had a point.”

“The report was signed by Admiral Sang and General Henark both, my lord.”

“Yes… No love lost between the Karsh and Henark clans, of course.” Jhiral brooded for a moment. “You know what? I’m commuting this. Have an order drawn up—Karsh to be, let’s see… dishonorably discharged, or broken back to the ranks if he prefers. His choice. Oh, and let’s say fifteen lashes for disobedience. That, and time served. I’ll sign it after lunch.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Emperor tore the warrant across, doubled it, and tore it again. Handed the quarters to Yaresh, who bowed, impassive as ever. Jhiral stifled a yawn.

“Right, that’s all. You can get out.”

The chamberlain went. The Emperor got up and stretched. Glanced at the vast rumpled bed, the tangle-haired figure that lay there under the sheets at its center. He grinned.

“Did you hear that? Got me in a good mood this morning.”

No response. Jhiral’s grin curdled to a grimace. He prowled to the edge of the bed, grabbed a double handful of sheet, and yanked the covers right off the girl who lay there. Stared down at the motionless, voluptuous curves. The marks of his hands still on her flesh, dull blue and angry red. The face turned away.

She curled into herself the faintest fraction, but otherwise didn’t move.

“You know,” he said somberly. “I like a wench who fights back a bit, as much as the next man. The sweet, hot taste of stolen virtue and all that. But don’t push your luck with me. I can do without the sulking.”

Still no response. Jhiral growled impatiently, grabbed an ankle, and dragged the girl brusquely toward him.

Like a war-cat at bay, she turned on him. Slapping and screaming, kicking savagely with the leg he hadn’t gotten hold of, clawing with the lovingly manicured harem nails they’d given her. He weathered it—had worse from tutors and my own fucking sister as a boy—snagged a wrist to match the ankle, yanked her violently forward, to the edge of the bed. She went after his face with her free hand, scored furrows across his cheek. Fuck this shit. He let go the ankle, belted her backhanded in the face, full force. She yelped and recoiled. He pursed his lips, hit her again, slower and more deliberate this time, flat of his open hand across her cheek, once, twice, all right, enough. She whimpered and sagged from the grip he still had on her wrist. He took her firmly by the throat, lifted her to face him again.

Breathing a little heavily—he mastered it before he spoke.

“You know, I’m sorry about Kefanin. I like him well enough, for a eunuch. But the lady Archeth has given him a very exaggerated sense of his importance in the grand scheme of things. I’m afraid that’s what manumission does sometimes. Not in favor of it myself, whatever the Revelation says.”

“He was,” forcing the words hoarsely past his clamped grip on her throat, “trying to protect me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he was. But you see, my men had orders to get you. And they don’t take it kindly when anyone gets in their way. They have to answer to me for any failure, after all. Kefanin’s very lucky they stopped at a couple of broken bones.”

She stared back at him, trembling. Made no attempt to prise his fingers from her throat, just stared. Split and bloodied lip, fresh tear tracks through her makeup, on top of those from last night, and looked like that cursed eye was going to bruise now, too. Looked a real state, was going to look worse.

Not what he wanted at all.

Jhiral sighed. Loosened his grip a little. “Listen to me, Ishgrim. You are a slave. I own you. Now suppose you start behaving like you understand that.”

“I am… Archeth’s,” she wheezed creakily.

“No, you were Archeth’s. My gift to her, and good luck with it. But now she’s warmed you up a little, I’m claiming you back. As is my privilege. Got a big muscly dark girl from down south to pair you with, just so you can show me some of the tricks you two got up to.” He let go of her wrist. Stroked the hair out of her eyes, thumbed the tears off her face. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ishgrim. In fact, I want you to have fun. I want you to come like a screaming bitch when that black girl sinks her mouth into you. Now—is that so bad?”

She stared back at him, unblinking as a cobra.

“She’ll come for me,” she husked.

He chuckled, genuinely amused. “I seriously doubt that. Archeth’s currently several thousand miles the wrong side of the battle lines in an all-out war we’re having with your homeland. Perhaps you’ve heard about it.”

He let go of her throat and turned away. Went back to the breakfast spread and scanned it, talking absently to her over his shoulder.

“Of course, I’ll ransom her home if she’s managed not to get herself killed in the interim. She’s really far too useful not to have around, and—you may not believe this—I have a very real affection for her. But ransoming captives takes time. It can take years, Ishgrim.”

“She will come for me. And the Dark Court will see her home. I’ve prayed for it.”

“Yes, well you see that’s heresy.” He gave her a smile over his shoulder, to show he didn’t mean it. Picked up a slice of melon and bit into it, nodded appreciatively, talked through the mouthful. “Your dark gods are in fact petty demons, or more likely do not exist at all. In any case, no match for the power of the Revelation and the Empire.”

He turned and winked at her.

She crouched on the bed where he’d left her. Thighs spread—rather prettily, he thought—under her, hands in her lap, head unbent. You had to give her credit for that much, even if she was acting like some unbroken fucking village halfwit. And that loaded fruit-stall body of hers…

Wasted on a brush muncher like Archeth, really.

“You want some breakfast, Ishgrim? Want some fruit?”

She shook her head vehemently. “She will come for me.”

He sighed again. “What are you, a fucking parrot? Look, even if she does come home, and soon, you’re missing the point. The lady Archeth and I go way back. She’s been my retainer since I was born, and my family’s retainer for a couple of centuries before that. She believes in this Empire. In what it stands for. You really think she’s going throw over all of that for a casual slave fuck she’s known less than two years? Really, Ishgrim. Let it go. Come on, you want some fruit?”

She just stared at him. He felt his temper starting to fray again.

“All right, then… get out.” He waved her away, snapped his fingers. “Go on. Fuck off. And tell them not to send you back until that eye’s cleaned up. Look’s like we’ll be postponing our little reenactment session.”

She got up in silence, collected the ripped gown from where he’d left it on the floor the night before. She pulled it around her as best she could. Then she walked straight backed and silent still, all the way to the doorway and out. Left him alone with his food and the empty bed.

He stared after her for a couple of moments. Shook his head and snorted.

“She’ll come for me. Yeah, right!”

CHAPTER 69

A thin, muffled keening comes from the Dispossessed Prince’s tent.

Outside, they exchange bleak looks. The last healer is long gone, thrown out in a flurry of screaming and tears. She went away with tear tracks on her cheeks herself. No one wants to guess the bad news, but it’s growing clearer by the minute. By now, Moss should have been out with his newborn held high in his hands, grinning like a loon.

But so far, they haven’t even heard his voice.

Haven’t heard a newborn’s cry, either.

“Hoy, who the fuck—”

“—said you can’t—”

Disturbance beyond the ring of flames from the campfire. They spin about, groping for what few weapons the troupe can lay claim to. An ax, a spear, an unused tent pole—

And freeze, as they see the figure in the firelight.

Tall and broad shouldered, wrapped in a patched and battered sea captain’s cloak, face shadowed beneath a wide-brimmed hat. Across his shoulder, the newcomer carries a broadsword, sheathed in a scabbard of woven metal that throws back the light in myriad glints of gold and purple and crimson red.

“I am here for Moss’s son,” the figure says. “You’d best let me through.”

They fall back, inches at a time, and he shoulders a path through the gap they’ve left. He reaches the entrance to the Dispossessed Prince’s tent and ducks inside. The volume of the keening rises briefly as he passes through, then grows muffled again. It’s not clear to anyone later whether he actually lifted the flap, or whether it flung itself back rather than be touched.

Inside, the father swings about at the new arrival. He’s a big, weather-beaten man, but his face is tracked wet with tears and his hands knotted up into trembling fists. His jaw is set, and he’s breathing hard through his nose. You can see in his face and stance just how badly he wants to hit someone.

“Who the fuck are you? I told Rif nobod—”

“Sit down,” says the newcomer coldly, and Moss drops into the chair by the bed like he’s had his legs cut out from under him. “Give me the child.”

The mother sits up in bed amid tangled, bloodstained sheets. It’s her mouth the keening comes from, through lips stretched taut across her teeth, as if she’s still straining through the clench and the pain of labor. But she isn’t. She’s curved over, rocking minutely back and forward, hugging a tiny bundle of limbs and skull and cord to her chest, as if that’s going to help. The sound coming out of her seems to fill the space inside the tent like freezing fog. She looks up at the cloaked and brim-hatted figure, the long arm it extends toward her, and she shakes her head numbly. Denial moans from her.

“…no, no, no, he’s not, he isn’t, no, he’s not…”

“Well, he fucking will be if you don’t give him to me.”

And just as her husband has slumped into the chair, so she opens her arms and mutely holds out the silent, unmoving bundle of blue-tinged, blood-streaked flesh she’s been hugging. The newcomer scoops the infant up in a single, gnarled hand and holds it there as if it needs weighing. His other hand brings the sword down off his shoulder and holds it up reversed by the grip. He looks from sword to unbreathing child and back again, and later the mother will say she heard him sigh.

Then he opens his mouth and bites down hard on the sword’s pommel.

The bereft mother gapes, stirred right out of her grief by the new shock. Beneath the brim of the hat, the muscles in the stranger’s jaws knot and contort. A snarling builds in his throat, the breath hisses in and out of his nose and mouth. There’s a sound of something splintering and a thin howl of pain. One more sharp breath drawn in.

The stranger spits out the pommel and with it some fragments that might be teeth or metal or both. Blood drips from his lower lip, black in the gloomy light, and where droplets of it spatter the bed, holes smolder in the sheets. The stranger drops the sword to the floor, holds the infant with both hands now, puts one finger into the tiny mouth and forces it open a crack. He stoops and places his lips over the gap.

Breathes softly out.

The mother gapes. Moss struggles in his chair against limbs turned soggy and numb. The stranger lifts his hat-shadowed face away.

Mewling cry, just the one, scarcely loud enough to believe. The infant’s fist lifts at the end of a stubby arm. The head twitches and turns. A second cry, louder now. The mother shrieks and reaches for her child. Moss’s lower lips quivers and he starts blubbering like a small child himself. The infant is crying hard now, not wanting to be left out.

The stranger hands him gently to his mother.

“Fucking mortals,” he mutters under his breath. “It ends in tears, it starts in tears. Why the fuck do I even bother?”

He stands back and lets Moss shamble to his shaky feet, gestures for him join his wife and son on the bloodied bed. Then he reaches around inside his mouth, grimaces and tugs something loose, spits on the floor, and bends to gather up the sword.

“Time you were in a fucking museum,” he tells it.

At the tent flap, he pauses and looks back. The infant is already at the breast, fastened on and suckling hard. The mother’s still weeping, right onto his upturned puffy features. Moss looks up from his family, snatched suddenly out of grief, sees the dark figure still standing there like some hangover from a bad dream. He wipes at his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. Sniffs and gasps, gets himself under some sort of command.

“I—we—this is a great debt.” He swallows. “Who? Who are you?”

The stranger sighs. “Give it some thought. It’ll come to you in the morning, probably. But it’s not important.” An arm raised, a gnarled finger pointing. “He’s important. He’s got things to do, further down the road. You look after him, you keep him safe.”

“But…” The mother looks up from her feeding child. She’s getting it together a lot faster than her husband. “If we do not know your name, how can we honor you with his?”

“Oh, that.” The shadowed figure shrugs. “Well, all right. Call him Gil.”

Then he’s gone, through a gap that might be just the entrance flap of the tent, and might not. A tiny chill comes in and walks around the bed, then warms slowly away. The mother gathers her son closer to her.

“Gheel?” she asks her husband blankly.

Moss shrugs. “Hjel. I think.”

“Hjel, then. Good. It is a strong name. I like it.”

And the two of them huddle together around the new spark of life they’ve been handed by a bad-tempered, broken-mouthed god gone away.