The New World

Chapter Twenty-one

2nd day, Month of the Eagle, Year of the Rat

Last Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th Year since the Cataclysm

Kelewan, Erumvirine

Prince Pyrust could not blame the people of the Illustrated City for lining the streets to jeer at him. The carnage surrounding the city, the ruin of the gates, and the hollow expressions on their faces marked them as defeated. While the Virine had never been particularly martial, they had not been useless either. Proud beyond reasoning, perhaps, but they claimed an Imperial legacy that every other of the Nine wished for itself.

Pyrust had never been favored in Erumvirine. Spies had reported that the Princes and populace feared him. He read that fear in their eyes now along with anger. Had I come as a liberator, they would have welcomed me with flowers.

He trudged along with others of his command. Count Vroan and his surviving Ixunites had entered the city triumphantly. Trampled flowers marked their passage. Vroan had pledged his fealty to the kwajiin quickly, and the Ixunites had even guarded the Desei fighters for Nelesquin’s troops.

It would appear, Cyron, that someone else will have to rid you of that traitor.

The heavy chains linking Pyrust’s wrists and ankles clanked with each step. It was not their weight that slowed him, but the short length of chain from wrist to ankles forcing him to shuffle stooped and subservient.

I am forced to walk as if conquered.

Pyrust felt anything but conquered. Exhausted, certainly, and bruised. Three horses had died beneath him in that battle. He’d gone down only after his sword had broken and the ax he’d appropriated got lodged so deeply in a kwajiin chest that he could not pull it free. He’d certainly been defeated, but conquered?

No.

“Not so proud now, are you?” A madwoman, with one eye wide and the other squeezed shut, broke through the edge of the crowd. She grabbed his chains and yanked. Spittle flecked her lips as she screamed. “We’ve an emperor here! You’re a fool to defy him.”

Pyrust shoved her away. “Then your duty is to the Empire, isn’t it? Get out of my sight.”

More of the crowd cheered her and jeered him. Virine warriors-old men, mostly-wearing blue sashes on their robes, forced the woman back. Someone in the crowd threw a rotten piece of fruit. Handfuls of mud, stones, and night soil followed, pelting Pyrust and the eighty warriors who were being paraded through the streets.

They have no idea what they are doing. Mud and feces missed the intended targets and instead splashed against the city’s walls. The beautiful murals that had given the city its name added new stains to the blood that had dripped over them. They destroyed out of fear, and from that fear there was no recovering.

Pyrust raised his head. Cyron had warned him against destroying too much. Pyrust had not thought that possible. Kelewan showed him that it was. Out of fear the people cursed those who would have freed them. Men collaborated with their conquerors. Pyrust did not doubt that any armies marching north to lay siege to Moriande would have units drawn from the Virine and the Five Princes. Fear would unman the greatest of heroes, and surrendering to fear, in some ways, was the greatest of sins.

The old woman had understood that. To all others she had been a madwoman, but Pyrust had recognized her. Delasonsa, the Desei Mother of Shadows, had come in disguise. Others had seen her yank his chains, but she’d managed to slip a small garnet-and-silver ring onto his smallest finger. The talons clasping the edge of the garnet were sharp and poisoned. A casual scratch at his throat, and he’d die inside a minute.

Painlessly, too. She would not have me die an ignominious death.

She’d have rescued him, too, were that possible. Pyrust knew better than to think it was. Any effort to rescue him would doubtless kill loyal Desei agents. He would not reward their fidelity thus. With his comment to her, he’d turned Delasonsa over to Empress Cyrsa, to serve her as faithfully as the assassin had served him.

Prince Nelesquin might not have transported him to Kelewan to kill him, but it certainly wasn’t to let him go again. Having Pyrust brought to heel would make for a great show, and would sow doubt among the opposition. Only by escaping could Pyrust salvage any victory from his defeat.

Nelesquin could not let that happen.

By dying when he wants me to be kept as a pet, I defy him.

Pyrust smiled grimly. His defeat hardly warranted a death sentence. In retrospect, Virisken Soshir’s strategy would have been more effective-and might yet be. Even with reinforcements from the south, Nelesquin’s army would be hard-pressed to lay siege to Moriande. Bleeding the army, hitting it where it was weak, these things could blunt the attack.

He’d fought on the plains because the Empress had ordered him to do so, but he could have easily overruled those orders. The fact was that he’d wanted to fight there. He had believed he could win. And he could have, save for a certain confluence of circumstances.

They did not defeat me, really, I defeated me.

Up to that battle, his southern campaign had been conducted flawlessly. He had used the superior intelligence and training of his troops to outwit the enemy. He’d crushed the Helosundians. He’d tricked Vroan. He’d overwhelmed Cyron.

But while his flooding of the plains had mirrored the tactic he used against the Helosundian Council of Ministers, it had actually worked against him. It narrowed the battlefield, which gave the kwajiin an advantage by allowing them to concentrate their troops.

Marching through the city, he ignored the catcalls and curses. Instead, he once again envisioned the battle. He should have contested the enemy’s entry into the plains. His cavalry could have made countless grazing attacks, raking the kwajiin with arrows. It would have made the invaders fear the cavalry, and that fear would have slowly killed them.

Weakened, the kwajiin would have had to choose battle or withdrawal. Pyrust could have retreated before them, then hit their supply lines. The invaders would have fallen apart.

So the question is not why did I lie to Soshir, but why did I choose to believe the lie?

Pyrust hesitated for a moment, then stumbled forward when pushed from behind. He had his answer and for that answer he thought he might, in fact, deserve to die.

Doing what he should have done was not the work of a warrior. Cyron could have run that kind of a campaign. It would not have been a military victory, it would have been a victory of logistics. He would have been doing to the kwajiin what Cyron had tried to do to him. Pyrust would have controlled the invaders by denying them supplies-a shopkeeper’s war.

Victory was what they required of me, but I wanted a specific type of victory-a military victory. More the fool, I. Never buy with blood what can be won with words, time, or rice.

The parade of soldiers stopped at the Imperial Palace. Kwajiin warriors pulled Pyrust from the midst of his companions and forced him up the stairs. At the top they allowed him to turn and look back. The crowd of Virine dwarfed the soldiers. As miserable as his men looked-Desei, Naleni, and Virine combined-they possessed more nobility than all the residents of Kelewan.

As the warriors marched Pyrust into the palace, he could not help but smile. He’d never seen the place before, but it lived up to even the most fanciful of descriptions. Nelesquin’s new statue glared down at him, but did not inspire fear. In fact, Pyrust took heart in seeing it.

He filled that niche very quickly. The man clearly suffers from vanity.

The trek up the stairs and to the throne room confirmed Pyrust’s assumption. Already murals had been repainted, rewriting Virine history. Nelesquin’s face replaced those of legendary heroes-no matter that the events depicted occurred after the Cataclysm.

The guards stopped him at the throne room’s entrance. They unlocked his chains. They stripped off the soiled robe and replaced it with a plain red one. They looped a gold sash around his waist and even tucked a short dagger in a wooden scabbard at his right hip.

Then the doors opened. Along strip of red carpet edged with purple connected the entrance to the foot of the throne dais. Nelesquin sat in the Bear Throne, backed by a huge stone disk with all the signs of the Zodiac carved into the edge. It transformed the Bear Throne into an Imperial throne and its presence did not surprise Pyrust.

What did surprise him was the fact that the disk was taller than any door or window in the room. It had no seams. How did he get it into this room?

Tales of his vanyesh and their power tightened Pyrust’s guts. If his forces are backed by xingna, is there a strategy that will defeat them?

Pyrust lifted his chin and began the trek along the carpet. A side from Nelesquin and himself, only two others occupied the room. One, a slender man in an emerald-and-black cloak, stood to Nelesquin’s left. The other man knelt at his right, on the floor, with a golden chain connecting his collar to the foot of the throne.

Nelesquin stood. “Of you, Prince Pyrust, I have heard much. My field general praised you and your effort. As you can see with your brother, Prince Jekusmirwyn, I am not without mercy. A man of your skills and standing could be of use in my Empire.”

Nelesquin’s rich, warm tones filled the room. Jekusmirwyn twitched at the sound. The man’s eyes did not quite focus in the present. Pyrust had seen that look in the eyes of those Delasonsa had tortured. He understood the quality of Nelesquin’s mercy.

Pyrust stopped shy of the throne and chose not to bow. “It has not been my custom to subordinate myself to a prince.”

Nelesquin smiled slowly. “I am an emperor.”

“A pretender. Empress Cyrsa sits on the Dragon Throne in Moriande. Her claim predates yours and is stronger.”

The larger man’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you were a warrior, but you speak like a bureaucrat. Tell the truth. You chafe beneath her orders.”

Pyrust rubbed his raw wrists. “I would chafe beneath your orders as well.”

“Brilliant.” Nelesquin looked to his companion. “I told you, Kaerinus, there were men of this age that yet had steel in their spine. The worthy did not all die in Ixyll.”

The cloaked man said nothing.

Nelesquin stepped from the dais and waved Pyrust over to a window. He slid a panel open. Down below, in the square before the palace, the eighty men who had marched in chains with Pyrust stood surrounded. Visible from that height, eighty wooden crosses were being erected on the city walls.

“I have need to show mercy to the people of Kelewan. I will pardon eighty men and women to celebrate our victory, and have your men crucified in their place. It’s a most unpleasant way to die.”

Pyrust nodded and fingered the ring. “I am not a stranger to crucifixion.”

“Freeing the Virine will build loyalty, but I need them less than I need a man like you. If you join me, then Deseirion and Helosunde will come with you. This makes eliminating Nalenyr much easier. Cyrsa will be deposed and the rightful order can be re-established.” Nelesquin rested a hand on Pyrust’s shoulder. “You will be much rewarded and your men will be spared.”

“Your offer is most generous…” Pyrust’s right hand came up and around in a backhanded slap that caught Nelesquin on the right cheek. The pretender staggered back. His hand rose to his cheek and probed the gash.

He began to laugh. His hand came away dry. The torn skin was not bleeding.

Nelesquin’s blue-eyed stare bore into him. “Poison, I assume?”

“A noxious venom. Some sea creature, I suspect. It will be painless.”

Nelesquin nodded. “I’m quite sure it would be. Have I anything to fear, Kaerinus?”

The cloaked man shook his head. “I can neutralize it, but what is the point?”

“True.” Nelesquin smiled and ran a finger over the torn flesh. In its wake the flesh had sealed itself. “You see, Prince Pyrust, when I decided to become Emperor, I did not wish to leave anything to chance. Not even death. I took precautions. Were I as shortsighted as you are, I should now be dead and you would be a hero.”

Nelesquin’s fingers weaved through a sigil. Purple fire illuminated the character for a heartbeat, then Pyrust’s silver ring heated up. It glowed, then melted through the Prince’s little finger.

Pyrust clutched his hand to his chest, breath hissing between clenched teeth. Blood dripped, but the robe absorbed it. Then something hit him in the back of his knees, driving him to the stone floor. Nelesquin grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back.

“I would have given you much, had you but worshipped me.”

“What you would give, I would never want.”

Nelesquin stooped and drew the dagger from Pyrust’s sash. “Then I shall give you eternity to mull over your folly.”

The Desei Prince caught his face flashed in reflection on the steel. He smiled. His eyes betrayed no fear and remained clear, even as Nelesquin drove the dagger into his throat and lodged it in his spine.

Pelut Vniel stared at the dagger lying on his tea table. He looked down at his reflection. A haggard man looked back. Dark circles haunted his eyes. His flesh had taken on a pallid hue.

His gaze flicked from the dagger to the note that had come with it. Prince Cyron had written it himself. Pelut recognized his brushwork. None of the others had come in the Prince’s hand.

“The tragedy of battle now demands all take heart and unite to oppose the enemy. Those who do not do their utmost in opposing him, are complicit with him. Make this blade the sign of your commitment to the future.”

Pelut shivered. Others who had gotten daggers from the Prince had proudly slid them into their sashes. The Prince had won them over. Praising them. Rewarding them. Making them feel important, but in doing so he had overturned the natural order of things. He had destroyed the safeguards that prevented the nation from lurching into anarchy or despotism. It did not matter that his efforts seemed necessary to oppose an enemy. They transformed the state into something that would always need an enemy.

Once Nelesquin was defeated- if he was defeated-where would Cyron turn next? Cyrsa would occupy the throne, but it would be Cyron’s dream of empire that would be fulfilled. He would make his vision real, by hook or by crook, destroying the very structures that had kept humanity safe.

Every other minister’s dagger had been sheathed, but not the one sent to Pelut. Cyron acknowledges my threat. The others had been invited to join Cyron, but Pelut was invited to kill himself. That was what the bared blade meant. If Pelut wanted to provide his own scabbard, if he wanted to acquiesce to Cyron’s wishes and work with him, then he could be accepted.

My companions are all fools.

They failed to see the true import of the gift. They believed Cyron was raising them in status equal to warriors. He would allow them to wear a dagger in his presence-a privilege reserved for nobility and honored warriors. But this also bound them; Cyron could slay them if they failed. A few might have seen that, but they dismissed it. Nelesquin’s threat made Cyron’s plan seem acceptable.

It is not! I see the greater threat. Pelut reached for the hilt. In some ways it would be easier for him to pick it up and open a vein. He’d heard that cutting his wrists would be painless. Here, in a pristine room, wearing a white robe, his death could even be beautiful.

Far more beautiful than his current circumstance. He remained a minister of high rank, but in name only. Cyron had isolated him and hobbled him. Things were moving too swiftly to be controlled, and once the controls Pelut had labored his whole life to sustain were destroyed, they could never be slipped back into place.

So, there it is. The challenge. Join Cyron or kill myself.

Both options revolted him. Though he had been outmaneuvered, he had not been defeated. If he killed himself, the world he fought to preserve would die with him.

“You give me two choices, Prince Cyron. Join you or die.” Pelut picked up the dagger and watched himself smile. “I see a third. Fight you. The world cannot surrender to you, nor can it survive you. So fight I will-from the shadows, from behind a smile, but fight I shall.”

The man nodded to himself. “And when the time comes, this very blade will be your undoing.”