The Steel Remains полностью

“Oh, good. We have in fact already been hearing from my other, loyal servants.” A casual gesture to where Mahmal Shanta, Faileh Rakan, and Pashla Menkarak stood before him in a loose arc. Just the hint of a pause after other, the lightest of accents on loyal. It was done with masterful subtlety, and Archeth saw how secret smiles flickered among the courtiers. “It seems there’s some disagreement about how the situation in Khangset was handled. Some question of you overstepping the limits of your authority?”

Shanta slid her an apologetic glance. She could already guess how things were going. Menkarak had raged all the way back, had in fact been fulminating from the moment he woke up in the camp at Khangset and found Archeth had been busy all night without bothering to secure his approval for anything she’d done.

“It was my understanding, my lord, that the expedition was placed exclusively under my command.”

“Within the framework of the Holy Revelation,” snapped Menkarak. “To which all secular rule is subordinate. There can be no light to outshine the radiance of truth, and the servants of truth must brook none.”

“You were fucking asleep,” said Archeth.

“And you abroad by night in the company of an infidel sorceress.”

Jhiral lounged back in the throne and grinned again, toothily. “Is this true, Archeth? A sorceress?”

Archeth pulled in a deep breath, held it, let it out. She tried for authoritative calm.

“The woman Elith believes she is a sorceress, that much is true. But her claims are suspect to say the least. I do not think she is wholly sane. She and her family suffered greatly in the war, she was forci—. . . she became an imperial resident under very difficult circumstances. She lost almost her entire family in the war. I would say she was probably half mad with grief well before this raid took place. What she saw when Khangset was attacked may simply have pushed her the rest of the way.”

Menkarak exploded. “Enough! She’s an infidel, a faithless stone-worshipping northerner who would not convert when the hand of the Revelation was extended to her in friendship, and who persists in her stubborn unbelief deep within our borders. The evidence is plain—she has even torn the kartagh from her garb to blind the eyes of the faithful she dwells among. She is steeped in deceit.”

“Well now, that is a crime, Archeth,” Jhiral said reasonably. “And crimes are usually committed by those with criminal inclination. Are you sure that this woman had nothing to do with the raid?”

Archeth hesitated. “There’s no evidence to connect her directly, no.”

“Yet Pashla Menkarak here says you incited her to perform outlandish rites on the bluff overlooking the town.”

“Well.” She affected an icy disdain. “His holiness was not actually present when we went to the bluff, my lord. So it’s hard to see how he could know. Perhaps he suffers from an overactive imagination.”

“You blackened whore!”

And the world seemed to rock briefly on some unseen axis around her. The krinzanz slugged in her veins, pounded for release. Her palms twitched. Almost, her knives were in her hands.

But she heard the rustling murmurs run through the courtiers as well, saw the way even the urbane Jhiral blinked, and she knew Menkarak had overreached himself. Knew that in some hard-to-define fashion she’d won whatever ritualized combat Jhiral had wanted to see here.

She went in for the kill.

“It’s also hard,” she said evenly. “To imagine where his holiness learned his court manners. Must I and the memory of my people be insulted in this fashion, my lord, in the very throne room they helped build?”

From among the crowd on the right hand of the throne, a senior invigilator detached himself and came forward to Menkarak’s side. He took the younger man’s arm, but Menkarak shook it off angrily.

“This woman,” he began.

But Jhiral had had enough, at least for one day. “This woman is a valued adviser to the court,” he said coldly. “And you have just cast aspersions on her character that may require answer before a magistrate. You came highly recommended, Pashla Menkarak, but you disappoint me. I think you had better retire.”

For one insane moment, it looked as if Menkarak might defy the Emperor’s command. Archeth, watching keenly, saw something in his eyes that was at best poorly moored to any sense of self-preservation. She recalled Shanta’s words to her on the ridge overlooking Khangset. They say it’s a whole new breed coming through the religious colleges now. Hard-line faith. She wondered if that included aspiration to martyrdom, something the Revelation had flirted with on and off in the past but hadn’t seen much of recently.