The Emperor's blades

46

The ground before the Temple of Light looked more like a muster field than a holy space. The bastard must have added another five hundred soldiers, Adare thought to herself, eyeing the Sons of Flame as they stood at their posts. None challenged her palanquin, none so much as glanced in her direction, and yet the message sent by all that glittering mail, those twelve-foot polearms, was clear: The Church of Intarra felt as though it had enemies inside the city of Annur, and it intended to defend itself.

Aside from the soldiers, a middling crowd had assembled before the temple, filing in for the noon service. As Adare stepped down, an angry stir passed through the group. Her role in Uinian’s trial had spread as quickly as his “miracle”-the jealous princess who had tried to see an innocent man, a holy man, condemned-and the Aedolians were forced to shoulder a path through the throng. A few of those closest dropped to one knee, knuckling their foreheads, but for many the gesture was slow, almost resentful, and a few rows back, people were mocking her or shouting open defiance.

There were many ways that her plan could fail, but the thought that she might not even make it to the door had not occurred to her. I should have taken Ran up on his offer to provide more troops.

The kenarang had been adamant.

“I don’t want to see you cut down by an angry mob,” he insisted, “especially now that I know how well you kiss.”

She had pushed him away, flattered and irritated at the same time.

“You can’t be part of this.”

“I’m the regent. You can’t stop me. Besides, against my better judgment, I find myself smitten.”

“Listen,” she said, “this can’t be about you. First of all, it can’t look like we’re forcing the issue or overwhelming the temple with an Annurian legion. That will just breed more resentment of the Dawn Palace and more support for Uinian. More importantly, though,” she pressed on, putting a finger to the kenarang’s lips to stifle the objection, “this is between Uinian and me. He’s made a personal attack on Malkeenian power, and if my family is going to hold on to the throne, I have to humble him personally, not through some overbearing show of force.”

The argument had made sense at the time, but as the grumbling mob pressed close around her knot of Aedolians, Adare found herself wishing for just a little more support. Sanlitun had once explained to her that men were most fickle in the grip of emotion, and that mobs magnified emotion. If the crowd were to turn ugly, the dozen Aedolians surrounding her would crumple before they could even draw their steel.

Just keep walking. Hide the fear. Hide the doubt.

She managed to keep her head high and her eyes level, but heaved a sigh of relief nonetheless when they passed, finally, beneath the gate.

* * *

Thankfully, the imperial family kept a small booth inside the temple, from which the Malkeenians could observe the ceremony without rubbing elbows with the common folk. The wooden walls of the box wouldn’t restrain an angry mob, but they gave her some breathing space, especially after the Aedolians had taken up their posts around the perimeter, and she sat on one of the plush chairs to hide the trembling in her legs. Some of the parishioners looked her way and pointed with angry mutters and scowls. She ignored them, keeping her eyes on the charred stone beneath the lens. The sun had risen almost to its noonday height, and a column of air beneath the lens had begun to shimmer already with that blistering heat.

Only when the crowd had settled did Uinian IV make his entrance from a gilded door halfway down the southern aisle. If you stripped off that overwrought amice and alb, Adare thought, you might mistake him for a carpetmonger or a wheelwright. The priest’s entourage ensured that there was no danger of that. Before and behind him walked two columns of novices, boys and girls both, each dressed in the gold and white of Intarra, each swinging a crystal from a golden chain. The stones caught the light and scattered it dizzyingly across the walls and floor, but Adare kept her eyes on Uinian.

The man’s defiance and ambition had only grown in the weeks since the Trial. In addition to augmenting the Sons of Flame, he was preaching openly on the distinction between human and divine rule, turning what had been an abstract theological issue into a contention that could overturn an empire. According to il Tornja, people were arguing about the difference between Divine Mandate and Divine Right in the Graymarket and the dockyards, arguing, that was, about the very legitimacy of Malkeenian rule. Worse, Uinian had taken to repeating his “miracle” every day in the noon service. To the men and women gathered in the pews, he was not simply the Chief Priest; he was the anointed of the goddess herself.

Which is why I have to be here, Adare reminded herself. To do this.

For a long time it appeared that Uinian had not noticed her, but as he drew abreast of the imperial booth, he halted the procession with a gesture, and turned to face her. When he spoke, he kept his eyes on hers, but his voice was meant for the congregation.

“How unusual. The princess graces us with her presence.” A hiss and murmur rippled through the crowd, but Uinian raised his hand for silence, a sly smile on his face. “We have not seen you in this place of worship for a very long time, my lady.”

Adare took a deep breath. She had broken the dam; it was time to see if the flood would carry her on its current or drown her. “My family worships the goddess who gave us life in the old place, atop Intarra’s Spear each solstice.”

“Of course,” Uinian nodded, steepling his fingers before his lips. “Of course. An ancient place, and holy. And yet, the solstice services come but twice a year.”

“It would be strange,” Adare shot back, “if we had more solstice services than solstices.”

As soon as the words left her lips, she knew she had made an error, conceded territory in the dangerous game they were playing. The parishioners who came to the daily noon service were pious folk, devoted to the goddess. Some, no doubt, made the visit every day from as far away as the dockyards, the Graymarket, or south of the Godsway. Her flippant tone grated against their faith.

Uinian’s smile widened.

“Each of us serves the goddess in our own way,” he acknowledged. “I’m sure there are more … bureaucratic tasks that demand your attention. But tell me, why have you joined us today? Might I be so bold as to inquire if you come in penitence for your recent … errors?”

The man was bold indeed, to insult her to her face before the assembled citizens of Annur. Ran’s words came back to her: There is a time in every battle when you must act. There could be no half measures now.

“I come to illuminate my people, to bring them the truth.”

Uinian narrowed his eyes. He was on his own ground here, surrounded by his own people, hard on the heels of his recent triumph. He had nothing to fear from her, and yet, clearly he had not expected this line of attack.

“Illumination? Those eyes of yours may smolder, but they fail to cast much light.”

Adare ignored the gibe, turning instead to the congregation and raising her voice. “Your priest claims to be half divine himself.”

“No,” Uinian said firmly. “Just a faithful servant of the goddess.”

“He claims,” Adare continued, pressing on as though the man had not spoken, “that Intarra guards him from the flames. He lies.”

An angry chorus exploded at her charge. Those who came for the noon service were the heart of the faith, the most devoted. She was treading on very dangerous ground here. Uinian himself, however, held up a hand to still the congregation.

“Those who have seen, know the truth,” he said, “while those who have come now, questioning, will have it revealed.” He turned to gesture to the lens above him. “The goddess has graced us with her light this noon, and I will undertake the Trial once more, as a gesture of my faith.”

“Your faith is barren falsity.”

He turned to the crowd once more. “You hear now the sad and desperate recriminations of a house that will lie, even kill, to retain its grip on power. You hear the empty mewling of a tyrant so far fallen in her faith that she would utter bald untruths here in this holiest sanctum.”

Uinian leaned close then, pitching his voice for her ears alone. “Your father was a thorn in my side,” he murmured. “I was delighted by his death. But it is you, yourself, who have sealed the fate of your family.”

She almost vaulted over the wooden partition to claw out that smug smile. It was the memory of her father’s voice that restrained her: To rule over others, Adare, you must first learn to rule yourself. She could almost hear him, as though he stood at her shoulder, his words staying and steadying her.

“You will fail,” she replied simply.

The Chief Priest shook his head and turned to the altar.

“Behold,” he said, raising his hands to the great lens as though inviting the heat, “the grace of the goddess.”

Then, as the congregation drew in a great gasp, he stepped into the beam of molten light.

The stone beneath him smoldered as it had during the Trial, and, as during the Trial, he turned, triumphant, to the assembled multitude.

“Now,” Adare murmured.

In that moment, the assassin il Tornja had found for her stepped forward, a man dressed like the other Aedolians but carrying a thin wooden tube, a blowgun he called it. He raised the weapon to his lips and a dart flicked out, quicker than sight, catching Uinian in the neck.

“I have paralyzed your priest,” Adare announced, turning to the congregation, “to show you the truth.” There was no going back. She had moments only before the crowd realized what had happened, before it fell on her and destroyed her, and yet she had to speak clearly, calmly, to make them understand. “To show you that he is not a priest at all, not the favorite of Intarra, but a charlatan, worse, an abomination. The man you know as Uinian is a filthy leach, who would have you take his kennings for divine grace.”

Dozens of people were on their feet now, a few were shouting, and yet the crowd was confused, uncertain. I have time, she told herself. I have time.

“But how to tell a leach’s kenning from the love of Intarra, a miracle from a monstrosity? For a long time I pondered this question in my heart. How to know which is true, and which is treacherous?”

She turned to consider Uinian. He stood in the blaze, his arms stretched out as before, as though accepting the impossible light and heat, but there was something different, a bead of sweat on his forehead, a glint of fear in his eyes.

“Yesterday,” she pressed on, “I climbed to the top of Intarra’s Spear, to the old sacrificial altar of my family, to sit as close to the sun as I could, to meditate on this question, and Intarra spoke in my heart. The goddess reminded me that there is a way.”

She had stepped over the wooden balustrade and approached as closely as she dared to Uinian in his pillar of liquid light. Even at half a dozen paces, she felt the cloth of her cloak burning against her flesh, smelled the singeing silk. She turned her gaze to the Chief Priest. His face was twitching, his lips squirming with the effort of speech, but he would speak no more today-the paralytic had seen to that. Sheets of sweat poured off his brow. Adare favored him with a grim smile of her own.

“This is for my father,” she murmured before turning back to the congregation.

“The difference between the miracle of the holy man and the kenning of the leach, is that the holy man relies on his goddess, while the leach trusts only himself. The leach, through his own foul machinations, twists the world around him, he himself does the work. The holy man need not raise a finger.” Adare shifted to meet the eyes of those closest to her one by one, willing them to see the distinction, to understand. “This is what the goddess reminded me. She can rain down her favor, weave her protective shroud over one who is distracted. Even one who is asleep.

“At the moment he is simply immobilized, and so his kenning still holds.”

A man in the foremost pew lurched to his feet, murder in his eyes, but one of the Aedolians brought him down with a quick blow to the head.

Quickly now. They’re ready to break.

“Now,” she pressed on, “I will prick him with a different dart, one that brings on a gentle, dreamless sleep. If Intarra loves this man, she will watch over him and you may do what you will with me for forsaking the sanctity of this place and the holiness of your priest. If, however, if he is a leach…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “If he is a leach, he cannot weave his kenning while asleep. The fire of the goddess will wash over him. It will consume him.”

Uinian’s hands, outstretched in benign acceptance, had stiffened into claws. The tendons of his neck strained beneath the skin, and his eyes bulged in their sockets. He’s terrified, Adare realized, the satisfaction running through her veins like strong wine. The man who murdered my father is terrified, and soon he will be dead.

She raised a finger and the assassin’s second dart hummed through the air, burying itself in the priest’s neck.

With what must have been a desperate effort, Uinian forced his mouth open a crack, but instead of words, his tongue lolled out, frothing and red between his lips. A shudder ran through his chest, convulsing up through his neck, and his eyes rolled back in his head. As he dropped, slowly, to his knees, his garments, so white and pristine, began to smoke, then char. Then his entire body burst into flame as he toppled from the beam of light.

With a howl, the crowd closed around them like the sea.