On a less melodramatic note, I frequently reminded him that compromising my rank that way would make inheritance of the throne of Calanthe problematic, as if it weren’t already. What imperial governor could be trusted with Calanthe’s bounty, which I kept pristine for him and from which I tithed so generously? I’d managed to continue my father’s gambit and the stalemate that, if tenuous, at least let me remain on Calanthe. The entire empire viewed me as the emperor’s fiancée in essence, if not reality, which worked fine for my purposes. And they viewed the enduring beauty of Calanthe as testament to the stability of Anure’s rule.
Syr Leuthar had been blathering on, assuming a grave expression, using many words and saying very little. He toyed with the feather on his hat. Nerves? Interesting.
This trouble worried the emperor far more than I’d have predicted. The news from Keiost mattered to Tertulyn, thus it mattered to me, but it was a small kingdom with relatively little wealth, especially after Anure pillaged it. Beyond his propensity to want to own all land and people in existence, the emperor shouldn’t be so bothered by a small rebellion. In fact, he enjoyed bloodshed and visiting punishment on those who dared resist. Whatever had happened in Keiost, though bloody, shouldn’t reach as high as Anure’s seat of power. Not unless something monumental had occurred.
“I must inform You”—Leuthar finally came to the point—“that Keiost has been overrun, fallen to a craven enemy of the empire.”
The court gasped as one entity at the words that were tantamount to treachery to even voice aloud. Enemy of the empire.
The orchid ring on my finger tightened, petals flexing to send a scent wafting up. The smell of broken iron, old ashes, and new burns. A wolf, dragging its chains.
Whatever the dreams foretold, it had begun.
6
I left the plaza and its conquered populace, swallowing down the grate of ash burning my throat. General Kara quickly caught up and paced alongside me, subtly directing the angle of my escape. “I have the imperial governor confined to his treasure room,” he said. “You’ll want to interrogate him.”
Want wasn’t how I’d have phrased that. “Treasure room?” I inquired instead of saying as much. Surely Anure hadn’t left much “treasure” behind to be hoarded in Keiost.
“You’ll see. The room has the great benefit of being secure.” His smile made a lipless slash on his sere, dark face. “In fact, if you want the man to answer any questions, you might hurry, as I can’t guarantee the air supply now that we’ve sealed it.”
Sondra bowed as she joined us, Kara’s words hanging in the air, her grin as tight and toxic as his. “Your prisoner awaits, Conrí,” she said by way of greeting.
I ask only to hold the torch. She didn’t speak the words aloud, but I heard them like the day she first spoke them to me. They resonated in my memory like the striking of steel against stone, lingering like the stench of sulfur in the air. Even though it had dissipated in the breeze off the ocean, the vurgsten smoke lingered in the ache between my eyes and the burn in my lungs.
My father had felt that burn as he died, as the vile shit slowly suffocated him. His death had been foul, not fitting for a king. His blood would never return to the soil of Oriel. There had been no state funeral with solemn crowds and violet-stained horses drawing his draped casket. Instead the fallen King Tuur had died bald and emaciated under a cloud of gray ash falling around us like burning snowfall. Knowing the man barely clung to life, the guards and even the overseer had watched from a healthy distance. Dying men brought bad luck, according to the old ways. The specter of mortality swung its weapon in wide arcs, happy enough to take bystanders along with the chosen. Anure might’ve declared all that to be untrue, but the old superstitions die hard. The guards were hardly enlightened men. They’d left us alone.
And I’d held my father at the end. I’d put my back against a rock, the dying king propped upright against my chest, lying against me like the son I’d never have. An ironic reversal of our roles. Keeping him at that angle let the fluid of infection in his lungs settle to the bottom as much as possible.
Still, he’d drawn in each breath with terrible effort. He strained to inhale. If he’d had air to give voice to the pain, he would have. But he had no breath for screaming. His mouth contorted with it, a wide hole, gaping nearly toothless after years of his body weakening. The hearty grinning father from my youth, the arrogant, untouchable king who’d defied prophecy, boomed orders, and wielded a mighty sword had collapsed into a wraith, a bare skeleton wrapped in weakened parchment, blackened from fire and ash.
The only thing that remained of the father I remembered were his eyes, the fierce blue rheumed and milky, but something of his ferocious spirit still shining within. I’d tried to calm him, but he’d stared up at me, his only remaining son, gasping for life like a dying fish out of water. Desperate to speak a last message.
I’d bent close trying to hear, weeping shamelessly, not caring who witnessed the accursed weakness. Even if I had cared about anything but watching my father die, I couldn’t have stopped those tears. And it took so long, the wait unbearable, each racking breath, each grating shudder seeming to be the last. The air would leak out. His body going still. And I’d think it was finally done. Until, impossibly, the man breathed again. Fighting, always fighting. He’d never known when to quit, when to surrender to the inevitable defeat.
If he had, maybe the emperor’s retribution wouldn’t have been so severe. Wishes like ash on the wind.
In the end, he vanished in one of those long pauses between one breath and the next. It seemed death should arrive with more fanfare than that. Instead the last remnant of the man inside the desiccated husk simply evaporated. I kept waiting for that next labored breath that never came. Finally, it became clear the old king would never breathe again.
“The king is dead. Long live the king.”
The quiet voice burned through my vigil. Sondra crouched nearby. She must’ve crept over to share my vigil. She’d smeared ashes in lines over her shorn skull. More lines of ash trailed down her cheeks in the traditional style, something she’d done purposefully, rather than the standard grime that coated us all. Even in my stunned grief I’d had the thought that if she wanted to recognize the old man’s death, to demonstrate in the old ways that it mattered, she’d have washed. But that would’ve meant squandering precious water rations we needed to keep ourselves alive.
“The king is dead. Long live the king,” she intoned again with somber gravity.
“It’s not a time for jesting.” Even then her humor had been black and twisted. The ashes grated between my teeth.
Her dark eyes fixed on mine, rage in them. “You insult me, Conrí.”
A laugh, harsh and bitter, escaped me, painfully scraping out of a throat choked with unmanful tears, and jostling my father’s corpse. He weighed nothing, and I fancied his bones rustled in a mocking reply. “Don’t call me that,” I bit out. “That’s not my name. Oriel is gone. My family is all dead. I’m king of nothing. I’m only a slave, as we all are.”
“Shall I call you the King of Slaves then?” Sondra sneered. She’d meant to taunt me, but it sounded right. With my father gone forever, the boy prince I’d been had died with him. Conrí, a boy who would never be king, had finally and utterly ceased to exist.