Rebellion

CHAPTER 36

The whole of Palace Ricinus had been torn down, save for Rix’s leaning tower. The rubble had been cleared away and the land dug deep to expose the foundations of the kings’ palace that had stood here in ancient Cythe, when the royal city had been called Lucidand. Lyf had sketched the great buildings of the city as he remembered them before the First Fleet came, and given the sketches to his architects. Soon he would make a start on the restoration.

“This is an unhealthy obsession, Lyf,” the shades of his ancestors kept telling him. “Our past means nothing to your people any more.”

There were a hundred and six of these shades, and each, in life, had been one of the greater kings or ruling queens of old Cythe. Lyf had created them, his ancestor gallery as he liked to think of them, during his long exile as a wrythen. For centuries he had relied on them for advice and support, though latterly their advice had mostly been contrary, and he was fed up with it.

“It does, it does,” said Lyf.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Bloody Herrie, the angriest and most contrary shade of them all. He rubbed his red, hacked throat. “The remnants of old Cythe were extinguished when our degrado camps were burned by the enemy and you allowed the last of our people to die.”

“Not the last — just the last of the adult degradoes. They were fatally corrupted. We had to start again, with the children. The untainted ones.”

“Your aim may have been noble, but in doing so you wiped our past clean. You took those children and remade our people from them, but they have no history save the one you fabricated for them, in your blasphemous Solaces. Why should any of this matter to them? Let Cythe go, Lyf.”

“I can’t!” he cried.

The kings’ temple had been restored to its simple, ancient beauty. Yet, though every flagstone had been torn up, cleaned, and the soil for a yard beneath it had been removed and replaced, still the foul odour lingered.

But all would be well, in time. After the war had been won Lyf would use king-magery to heal his land and his troubled people.

“I’ll have the daily war report,” he said to his waiting generals.

“The chancellor is playing at war in the south-west,” said General Hramm, “but he’s plagued by self-doubt and struggling to make alliances. We can discount him.”

“I never discount an enemy until his head is impaled on a pole,” said Lyf. “The chancellor may be down, but he’s a wily, formidable foe. He may be making his case look worse than it is to gull us. Redouble the watch. Urge our saboteurs and insurrectionists to greater efforts. Undermine him every way we can.”

“It will be done, Lord King. In the north-west, there have been a number of skirmishes north of Bledd. Though none to trouble us.”

“What about the hunt for the slave, Tali, and my master pearl? Surely you have some good news there?”

General Hramm looked all around the room.

“Well?” said Lyf.

It burst out. “Tali escaped from Fortress Rutherin with a man called Holm. They were pursued out to sea but escaped again, sinking most of the pursuing boats. Lizue found them in the Southern Strait and attempted to take Tali’s head in a bag — ”

“Well?” said Lyf.

“Tali beat Lizue in combat, threw her overboard, and she was eaten by a shark.”

Lyf reeled. “Not Lizue! She was my best. How do you know this?”

“Her gauntling came back, eventually…”

“Yes? Go on.”

“The bond between gauntling and rider is strong, Lord King, and when she died in so bloody a way, the balance of its mind was broken. It turned renegade and dropped an oil bombast onto Holm’s boat. It burned and sank.”

“It sank?” Lyf stared into empty space. Could two thousand years of planning be defeated by the malice of a deranged shifter? He had created shifters specifically to terrorise the enemy and the irony was too painful to contemplate. “What about Tali?”

“Her fate isn’t known. The gauntling was badly injured by a crossbow bolt, and fled. I’m sorry, Lord King. The treacherous beast will be put down once it’s found, of course.”

Lyf clacked back and forth on his crutches, struggling to breathe, then whirled and stalked to the pearls. Taking them in his hand, he sent out the call. It was not answered, but neither did he feel the painful emptiness that would signify the master pearl had been destroyed.

“Don’t put the beast down. I don’t believe the pearl has been lost. Identify the location, then redouble the search where the boat sank, and for a hundred miles around.”

“Yes, Lord King. We’ll have to be more careful with gauntlings in future.”

“They’re a flawed creation,” said Lyf. “The intelligence that makes them such useful spies also gives them less desirable attributes. They’re headstrong, vengeful, malicious…”

“And always looking to break our control. I recommend that you put them all down, Lord King.”

“Once the master pearl has been found and the war won, I will. Until that time, they’re the only aerial spies I have, and I can’t do without them.”

Lyf floated up into the air, as if the extra height could enable his inner eye to see further, but it did not. He descended to the floor. “What else?”

“Lord King,” said General Hramm, with a show of reluctance, “the ice grows ever closer, and the weather colder. With so many prisoners to feed, it will be a struggle to survive the winter.”

“There is a solution,” Lyf said softly.

“Not one that is palatable to your people, Lord King. As you know, for some time there has been muttering about the senseless bloodshed and wanton destruction.”

“Very well,” snapped Lyf. “A wise king listens to the voice of his people. What are they saying?”

“That we’ve done enough. That we should negotiate for peace. And coincidentally, the chancellor has sent a second lot of envoys.”

“I know,” said Lyf. “They’ve been waiting for three days, trying to see me, and I’ve been refusing them.”

“It never hurts to talk, Lord King. They’re bound to reveal more than you will.”

“I suppose so. Send them in. But I’ll never trust the chancellor. And I’m making no concessions, nor giving back any territory.”

After seeing the envoys, he called Hramm back to complete the war report.

“What’s the situation in the north-east?”

“Mostly quiet, but underneath, rebellion seethes,” said Hramm. “As you know, there are many Herovian manors in that area.”

“That irks me,” said Lyf. “Have we the strength to subdue the region?”

“It would take another two armies. The mountains are difficult to fight in, the manors isolated and well fortified, the people of a rebellious disposition — and the weather very bad.”

“Are they preparing for war?”

“Not that we know, save for the place where your most bitter enemy, Deadhand, has taken refuge.”

“Does this place have a name?”

“Garramide. And he has the sword, Maloch, with him.”

Lyf let out a hiss. “How did you find him?”

“A lord in our pay brought news of a planned raid on our garrison at Jadgery. Our troops were waiting. They crushed the attack and followed the tracks of the survivors. Deadhand — Lord Rixium — was their leader.”

“Garramide,” said Lyf. “Do I know it?”

“The manor of Wendand Nil stood there in your time — ”

“My time? Now is my time.”

“When you were king of all Cythe, my king,” Hramm said hastily. “It was torn down, and Garramide built in its place by Axil Grandys for his bastard daughter. It’s been a Herovian outpost ever since.”

“Hand-pick a force, the best we have. Crush Garramide and raze it.”

“Yes, Lord King,” said Hramm.

“Then bring me the sword, and Deadhand’s hands — and his head, impaled on a spike.”