Moon's Artifice (22 page)

‘To live it,’ Kesh declared fiercely. ‘To find my mother safe and well and go home. This isn’t my world, the Empire I live in.’ She gestured to the bloodstains on the floor and the weapons on the ground beside Irato. ‘You’re welcome to it.’

‘Is it my world if I can’t remember any of it ?’ Irato wondered.

‘You’ve still got skills. Narin and I’d likely be dead if you hadn’t defended us. The Empire’s got enough uses for a man like you.’

Irato was silent for a long moment. ‘What if I don’t want that ?’ he said slowly, as though even attempting to decide something for himself required great effort. ‘What if I don’t want to be the man I once was ?’

‘You don’t even know who you were !’

‘Does it matter ?’ he said simply. ‘I was a killer – friend of killers. You say I’m never going to remember who I was, and maybe that’s for the best. Maybe that’s the shape of my soul ; but maybe the world made me a killer. Either way I’ll never know that man – never think his thoughts or live his life. Maybe I get a chance to be something better, something more than a plague on this world.’

Kesh stared at him for a long time, trying to make sense of the clashing emotions inside her. Part of her was desperate to help his wish come about ; to satisfy a cynic’s secret yearning that the world was not all terrible, despite everything that had happened. But the cynic was also suspicious, and the black flame of grief still screamed for the man’s blood – a distant but urgent shriek at the back of her mind.

For some reason her thoughts went back to her father, of the cheerful man she’d waved goodbye to on his last voyage. It had been only a few years ago, but it now seemed a lifetime – two lifetimes. Everything before the loss of Emari, just a few days ago, was now another lifetime, while the seasons she’d spent on the merchantman had changed her just as irrevocably.

Father would want to help him,
Kesh realised. He had been warm-hearted and generous, sometimes to a fault. The cynic at the back of Kesh’s mind spoke in her mother’s voice, but her father would have been glad of Irato’s wish to put his past behind him.

Emari too,
she realised,
daughter of a different father – isn’t that what he used to call her ? No guile, little sense half the time, but they’d be the ones laughing in the sun while Mother and I kept a weather eye open.

‘To get that chance,’ she said hesitantly, ‘you’ll probably have to kill again – you realise that ? These next few days you’ll be faced with those friends of yours, I’d bet. They’ll have to die or you’ll never have time for peace.’

Irato’s face was chillingly blank as he responded. ‘If that’s the price, that’s what I’ll pay.’ He opened his mouth to say more but hesitated until Kesh frowned at him. ‘I can’t bring your sister back,’ he said slowly, ‘and I can’t make you forgive me, I know. But I’ll see you safe through this or die trying. I owe you that much at least.’

‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep,’ Kesh said, hating herself for the slight waver in her voice. ‘My mother’s lost one daughter already and I’m the only one who knows what your friend Jehq looks like. They’ll want you dead as a traitor, but if they find out I know more than you, I’ll be top of their list.’

Irato seemed to bow under the weight of thinking for himself, of making decisions without someone to prompt him, but after a few heavy breaths that made him wince at his cracked ribs, he looked up again.

‘That’s the price,’ he said with a determination she’d not heard from him before. ‘Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.’

Kesh nodded. ‘Your injuries improving ? Good – then get your weapons clean and once the floor’s been scrubbed, get that armour on,’ she ordered and pulled her father’s knife from her jacket, draped over the back of her chair. ‘It’s been months since I properly practised with this and we’re both going to need to be ready for what’s to come.’

Narin and Rhe returned by boat to the Palace of Law, their prisoners trussed and limp in the belly of the small barge. There was barely space for all of them, so the bargeman was forced to perch at the very back of his craft while he rowed, but he made no complaints. If he’d even thought to, the faces of his two conscious passengers would have kept him silent. Rhe was as cold and detached as always, Narin thunderous and glowering.

The rest of the Shure had been empty – conspicuously so. Only those looking to kill Narin had remained ; whether the rest had been instructed to keep away or had simply caught wind of last night’s events, they couldn’t say. Narin refused to believe every man and woman who trained at the Shure in Moon – or any of the others across the Empire – were all thralled to the order’s rulers in some cruel, arcane manner, but they had no way of knowing how many were.

And what of those who aren’t ? Are they innocent in this, or do they know what’s going on ? Are they complicit and all the more to blame for choosing to be part of it ?

He shook his head as his gaze travelled down to the nearer of the two insensate figures.

No – perhaps one or two, but the rest must be ignorant. Lots of people want to join for just the reasons I might have in another life. I’ve never heard of someone being turned away by the goshe – not all can have been poisoned as a child, can they ?

The goshe were both young, they all had been. Men with down on their cheeks, women with the slimness of youth making them hard to distinguish from the majority. Boys and girls, really – probably unaware that they were mere living tools, but all the more dangerous for it. They would not question, nor hesitate nor regret.

Or would they ? Would they see those they killed for years to come, tormented in dreams they cannot understand, plagued by orders they cannot resist ?

Narin found himself biting down on his knuckle, feeling the shudder from striking that woman echo up his arm again. The crisp swipe of hardened ash through the air, the faint flutter of his sleeve and the surge through his body as every muscle worked in unison to deliver its power.

It was a killing blow – that’s what dachan has taught me. To put everything into a stroke, to take strength from every part of my body and channel it. On the court it means speed, a strike that might win me the game. But I’ve long known what dachan was created for, why Investigators are encouraged to play it. And now I’ll hear the crack of bone in every point. And now I realise my body’s been trained to glory in every blow, to take pleasure in the killing strokes.

Lawbringer Shoten and Investigator Orel remained at the Shure, awaiting a party of Investigators sent in their wake to seal the place off. Narin was glad Rhe hadn’t wanted to wait. They had doctors at the Palace of Law – Gods, some even trained at the goshe hospital perhaps – and these two needed attention as much as interrogation.

The problem of Kesh and Irato remained at the forefront of his mind. They were now imprisoned at the compound, secure given the guards on the gate and roof, but to stay there indefinitely ? Should they be moved to the Palace of Law ? Out in the open, how skilled would an assassin have to be when they feared neither death nor arrest ?

The Crescent was busy now ; they passed dozens of boats as they skirted the northern edge of the Imperial District. This shore of the island was rocky and unwelcoming, consisting of small jagged beaches beneath sheer cliffs or blank, slime-coated walls of ruined buildings. The ruins were merely walls, mostly, relics of when there had been garrisons and fortifications sheltering the otherworldly presence of the Imperial Palace from attack.

Once they had rounded the lonely spur of island known locally as Demon’s Point, the barge turned and headed for the canal dug into the heart of the island hundreds of years previously. The traffic on it was exclusively Imperial functionaries of one form or another, passing a wide stone wharf at the edge of the Palace and branching off down a smaller off-shoot towards the Palace of Law. Narin had never stopped at the Imperial Dock ; rarely did he travel by barge at all and certainly no one of his caste would think of using that half-deserted dock.

He knew folk joked that one had to be warrior caste just to row the Emperor’s private barge, but the truth wasn’t so different. The servant castes who worked in the Palace came from only certain families, breeding with all the exclusive and regimented attention of nobility. Like the bargemen of the Crescent, Imperial servants jealously protected their small niche in the Empire and remained dismissive of all those outside it.

At the Palace of Law, half a dozen young novices were waiting on the dock to receive them. One must have caught sight of Rhe as they approached, Narin reasoned, but when the barge slid neatly into the grey brick dock it was eager voices rather than hands that greeted them.

‘Lawbringer !’

The cacophony of excited voices rendered any message entirely garbled, but the youths fell silent when Rhe raised a hand.

‘You,’ the Lawbringer said, pointing at the eldest. ‘There is a message for me ?’

The youth flushed with pleasure and bobbed his head. ‘The Vanguard Council are waiting on your arrival – you’re to attend them at once.’

‘Why ?’

‘The goshe,’ was the reply, ‘they’ve sent a delegation ! Their leaders arrived almost an hour ago ; they’re in with the council now and waiting on you, sir.’

Rhe nodded curtly. ‘Narin, see to the prisoners then follow me. I want them with a doctor and under guard. Novice, do you know the names of those who’ve come ?’

The young man shook his head. ‘No, Lawbringer, but they’re high born – came in full ceremony too, litters and heralds all the way to the gate someone said.’

‘Have they come to deny involvement ? What else could they have come to say ?’ Narin asked as the novices began hauling the prisoners from the bottom of their barge.

‘We shall have to see,’ Rhe said at last. ‘Attend in the gallery when you are done with these two. It is what they don’t say that may prove the most valuable.’

Narin followed the second of the goshe out of the boat, glad to be standing on firm ground again. ‘The manner of their denial ?’

‘Everything that is unsaid. Consider yourself in their position. What would you say if you truly knew nothing, had nothing to hide and were appalled by last night’s events ? It is hard to forget all you know to play a part – the direction of what they want us to believe may reveal what they already know. Keep that in your mind as you hear their words and decide what is missing – decide why it might be missing and what it tells you.’

Narin bowed and Rhe turned away, marching swiftly toward the Hall of the Vanguard. He walked in the unconsciously poised manner of a nobleman, one elbow bent so his hand rested on the polished pistol butt he had used not long ago to shatter a man’s skull.

The Investigator shook himself, realising he was staring with the rest of the novices as they watched their idol stride fearlessly away.

‘Come on,’ he said gruffly, ‘hop to it, all of you. There’s work to be done.’

The Hall of the Vanguard, ruling council of the Lawbringers, was a great domed chamber at the heart of the Palace of Law. Having seen his prisoners into the care of the resident doctors and left under heavy guard, Narin hurried through the maze of passageways to reach the hall before much was said. There were half a dozen entrances to the gallery that overlooked the hall, each one flanked by white stone statues of an armed Lawbringer, while glorious colours poured through the narrow entrances from the stained glass of the dome beyond.

One of the few parts of the Palace of Law to bear the grandeur one expected from a palace, the hall was built to seat the five hundred appointed Lawbringers around the walls while in the centre was an enormous oval stone table at which the Law Masters presided. Above it all was a dome structure built of iron and stone, segmented so that fifty long, slender windows ran from the rear of the gallery to the golden spear that pointed straight down from its apex.

As Narin slipped through to the wooden benches of the gallery, the sun came out from behind a cloud and the chamber was filled with a dazzling spray of colours from the images of the Gods arrayed on the glass above. The voices below momentarily stopped as scarlet and orange slashes from Lady Jester’s robe erupted across the room, even the Law Masters of the Vanguard made to pause by the riot of colour that filled their sombre chamber.

At the north end was a huge throne large enough for two men to sit side by side. Built of black stained oak and inlaid with gold and gems, the back was a single curved column fully fifteen feet high. Bearing the Emperor’s personal sun emblem in gold at the top, it was reserved solely for his Imperial Majesty on ceremonial occasions. Right now Lawbringer Rhe stood before it, carefully keeping apart from the object itself, but the sight itself was enough to make Narin pause and he doubted he was the only one struck by it.

Opposite the throne stood a lesser chair, but still ancient and impressive – the seat of the Lord Martial of the Lawbringers, leader of the Vanguard Council and the only one of them permitted by the Great Houses to bear a military title. Down each side were eight more chairs for the Law Masters of the council. Narin could see the distinctive broad shape of Law Master Sheven in one of the nearest seats, but to his surprise the members of the Vanguard present only occupied one side of the table. Opposite them were men and women in a variety of dress. They could only be the leaders of the goshe.

‘Quite a mix, eh ?’ whispered a voice in his ear.

Narin jumped at the unexpected sound. His mouth fell open as he turned to see Prince Sorote sat just behind him, a small smile on the minor royal’s face.

‘Close your mouth,’ Prince Sorote muttered, ‘it’s hardly dignified.’

Narin blinked. ‘What are you doing here ?’ he whispered back. ‘How did you … ?’

Sorote wore a long white cape over his clothes, but it wasn’t exactly anything mimicking Lawbringer garb. Instead it was emblazoned with a stylised sun and, just to make the point clear, Sorote wore the gold-braided collar that announced he was Imperial caste.

‘Titles are rather wasted on you, aren’t they, Investigator ?’ Sorote said, still smiling, as he looked back to the table in the centre of the room. ‘No, don’t worry about formality, bit late now and you’re busy. If you need any help working out who’s sat down there, by the way, please do just ask.’

‘How did you get in here, Prince Sorote ?’

‘There’s no law to preclude members of the public from sitting in on open discussions here, that’s rather the point of the Forum isn’t it ?’

‘But still …’ Narin gestured around to indicate Sorote was the only person present not to be in the employ of the Lawbringers somehow.

Sorote shrugged in a way that reminded Narin rules didn’t often apply to members of the Imperial caste. The minor prince put a finger to his lips, bidding Narin be quiet. He obeyed reluctantly, knowing the time for questions was later. Rhe had wanted him to be present for this and he could worry about Sorote afterwards.

Down on the floor of the chamber, Rhe finished giving his account of the events at the Shure and the Lord Martial leaned forward in his chair. Rehn ald Har was an archetypal Lord Martial – stern and white-haired, but strong enough to cross staves with the novices when he chose. He was a Wolf by blood ; pale skinned with startling red-tinted eyes, but he had lived his whole life in the Imperial City and was utterly devoted to it. What he would be thinking after the events of the last night, Narin could hardly imagine.

‘Thank you, Lawbringer,’ ald Har announced. ‘You may retire.’

Rhe bowed and retreated to a seat out of Narin’s view, beneath the gallery. Once he was gone attention turned to the five members of the goshe delegation. As Sorote had suggested, they cut a strange group in any circumstance. Their apparent leader was a nobleman, of House Wyvern, no less, according to the orange emblem on his robe and deep brown skin, while a local female merchant sat on his right and a young man of the religious caste on his left – not a priest, given his clothes, but displaying devoutness by the tattoos on his shaved head and austere black clothes. With a start, Narin saw the young man had similar eyes to Lord ald Har and realised he too was a Wolf.

Of the other two, one was what Narin expected of the goshe, a burly middle-aged man with the stiffened red collar of a warrior caste, while the last was the biggest surprise of the lot. Almost separate from the rest and furthest from the Lord Martial sat a woman with jet black hair swept down over one side of her face and gold braid on her collar. She was strikingly beautiful, with light coffee-coloured skin suggesting mixed parentage, a rare thing for any high-caste, let alone an Imperial. She contrived to lounge in her hard oak chair, content to remain a distraction for the room rather than lead any conversation as would be her right.

‘Her name is Kerata,’ Sorote continued quietly. ‘Not highly ranked within the horde of my cousins, but unmarried still – scandalously, given she’s well into her twenties – which gives her significant influence with suitors. Uninterested in the games of court I’m told, but now it’s clear why.’

Narin nodded, eyes still fixed on the woman.

The goshe count royal family among their members ? That they brought a Wolf before Lord ald Har is unsurprising, but to reveal a royal family member as one of their own – are the goshe that desperate ?