The Steel Remains полностью

She remembered street battles in Vanbyr, the advancing lines of imperial halberdiers, the screams of the ill-equipped rebels as they broke and were butchered. The shattered homes of collaborators and the lines of shaven-headed captives afterward. The shrieks of women dragged out of line at random and raped to death by the side of the road. The ditches piled with corpses.

After the savagery of Ennishmin and Naral, she had sworn she would not take part in any action like it again. She’d sworn to Ringil, as she talked him down, it was the last fucking time.

She rode through Vanbyr and tasted her own lie like the ashes in the air.

And now here was Jhiral, contemplating the same thing in his own capital.

“Perhaps, my lord, we’d do well to analyze the new tendencies in the Citadel and aim to block them at a legislative—”

“Yes, yes, Archeth, I’m well aware of your liking for legislation. But as you’ve just seen, the Citadel is not currently breeding men with much respect for the niceties of a civilized society.”

“Nevertheless—”

“God damn it, woman, will you just shut up.” It was impossible to tell if Jhiral was genuinely aggrieved or not. “You know, I expected a little more support out of you, Archeth. It was you he insulted, after all.”

Yes, he insulted me. But only after you gave him cause to believe I was out of favor with that snide little comment about loyal servants. You built Menkarak a gangplank he thought was secure, and then when he set foot on it, you kicked it away from the ship and watched him get wet. You play your little games, Jhiral, you play us all off against one another for your greater security and amusement. But someday, you’re going to kick someone’s gangplank away and they won’t go down alone. They’ll grab your ankles and pull you down with them.

“My apologies, my lord. I am of course deeply grateful for the protection you extend to my honor at court.”

“I should bloody hope so. I don’t go up against the Citadel lightly, you know. There’s a balance to be played out here, and it’s ticklish at the best of times.”

She bowed her head. Anything else would have been risky. “My lord.”

“They don’t like you, Archeth.” Jhiral’s tone had shifted, taken on a pettish, lecturing tone. “You’re a final reminder of the godless Kiriath, and that upsets them. The faithful don’t react well when they run up against infidels they can’t conquer or condescend to—it starts to look like a nasty little flaw in God’s perfect plan.”

Archeth sneaked a look at Rakan, but the Throne Eternal captain was impassive. If he heard his Emperor’s words as the borderline heresy they so patently were, he gave no sign that it bothered him. And the two guardsmen on either side of the throne might have been carved from stone for all the reaction they offered.

Still . . .

“Perhaps we should discuss Khangset, my lord.”

“Indeed.” Jhiral cleared his throat, and she thought that for just a moment he looked almost grateful for the interjection. She wondered how much of his guard he’d let down in that last outburst, how much self-pity there was along with the sympathy in the words they don’t like you, Archeth. Rule from the Burnished Throne was, for all its brutal potential, very much the ticklish business Jhiral described.

“We were discussing, my lord, the—”

“Yes, I remember. The madwoman Elith, and these rites you say she didn’t perform. Let’s have it, then.”

“She did perform the rites, my lord.”

“I rather imagined so. Menkarak, whatever his other deficiencies, doesn’t strike me as a liar. And was this at your instigation?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Jhiral sighed and sank back into the arms of the throne. He leaned an elbow on the arm, put his hand to his brow, and looked at Archeth wearily from under it. “You are going to explain all this in a satisfactory manner at some point, I assume.”

“I hope so, my lord.”

“Then could we perhaps accelerate the process? Because at the moment I appear to be listening to a member of my inner court admitting to sorcery in collaboration with an enemy of the realm.”

“I don’t believe there was any sorcery, my lord.”

“Ah.”

“Khangset was certainly attacked by some force with technology we don’t have access to, and Elith thinks she helped summon them. But her involvement in these matters is coincidental at best. I encouraged her to repeat the rites she thinks communicate with the attackers, and of course nothing happened.”