The City (39 page)

The only gods left were those too old and tired to move on (for even the gods become old, given enough time), or those who most loved the people of the City, or those who still perceived a profit in staying. These were the weakest of them and in time their names were forgotten, their existence forgotten.

Their descendants, who had banded together and bred together to strengthen their bloodlines, formed seven Families, and these Families ruled the City for millennia. In a very long life you could accumulate a great deal of power, and many descendants to support you, and, sometimes, even wisdom.

Of the seven Families, two died out centuries ago, Kerr and Broglanh.

‘But I know people called Kerr,’ Arish interrupted Shuskara’s narrative as they sat in the whitewashed room above the palace dungeons. ‘There is Flavius Randell Kerr, your friend.’

‘Flavius is not my friend,’ replied Shuskara. ‘But yes, there are many Kerrs, including Reeve Kerr Guillaume, once one of the emperor’s closest advisers. But they are long-ago scions of the Kerr Family tree and they are careful to make no claims to belong to a ruling Family. The others are Sarkoy, Guillaume, Vincerus, Gaeta, and Khan. Of these Sarkoy, the Family of the emperor, and Vincerus are the most powerful. You know these names well, of course.’

‘And there is a delicate balance of power,’ said Arish eagerly, keen to show he understood the City’s politics. ‘They furnish the City’s armies. More than two-thirds of the armed forces are supplied by the emperor and the Vinceri, including the Maritime, a Sarkoy army, and the Adamantine, a Vincerus army.’

Shuskara nodded. ‘And I have finally come to my point,’ he told the boy. ‘Your advocate is of the Family Vincerus. She is …’

‘She!’ cried Arish, appalled. ‘A woman? What use is a woman to us?’

Shuskara’s face darkened and his voice became grave. ‘It seems to me, boy, that you should be grateful for any help you can get. Few people would speak against a decision by the Immortal. An advocate who is also a member of the Families has a better chance than anyone. And Archange is very wise. If she agrees to do this, though I am not sure she will, you should consider yourselves very lucky.’

‘Then will you speak to her for us?’

Shuskara nodded. ‘That is why I am here. I am to see her this evening. I will send a message to you. I doubt you will see me again. It does me no good to be connected with you.’ He stood and knocked on the door and the guard opened it.

Reluctant to return to the squalid cell, Arish said hastily, ‘You never told me why you owe my father a life.’

Shuskara shook his head and frowned. ‘My memory,’ he said gruffly, and he waved away the guard and sat down again.

He said nothing for a while and Arish thought he had forgotten the question again, but at last the general said, ‘I was sixteen when your father became Lion of the East, and he was eighteen. We were the closest of friends, closer than brothers. I mourned his father’s death more than I was to mourn my own father’s a year later. Ever since we were young your father told me he would make me his first general when he was king, and I never doubted that. He was always a boy of his word, and when he became a man that did not change.

‘Your country was always at war with somebody,’ Shuskara continued. ‘Later it went to war with the City, but at the time they were allies, and the Lion’s main enemy was Tanares. The country no longer exists, but when it did it bordered the valley of the lower Arceton, called the Shining River, to the east, in the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon. There were constant skirmishes and the border constantly changed. The people of the valley suffered grievously in those days, for the Lion’s soldiers often took them for Tanaree, and the Tanaree believed they supported the Lion.

‘It is commonplace during wartime to think that all death and horror that falls on us is a result of the conflict, so when reports came to the Lion’s Palace that the people of the valley, men, women and children, simple peasants, were being crucified in their hundreds, we condemned the Tanaree for their cruel practices. Perhaps they in their turn blamed us, and it was a long while before our intelligence told us that the atrocities were the responsibility of a band of Garian
warriors from the north. These Garians believed, perhaps they still believe if any survive, that those who do not share their religion should suffer torment and death. The more exquisite the torture the more honour to their blood-drenched gods.’

Arish saw his jaw clench and his eyes harden as he thought back down the years.

‘I was sent with a small army to the valley to track down these Garians. You know, Arish, I have been a soldier for more years than I care to remember and I have seen some terrible deaths. I have inflicted them myself. But at the time I was hardly more than a boy, and the sights I saw stained my soul for ever.’

He stood and paced the white room. Arish saw he favoured his right knee. The older Fell, battle-hardened, would have noticed other injuries suffered by the general and adapted to over the many years.

‘We did not hunt down all the Garian bandits,’ he went on, ‘but our army’s presence stopped the killings, and I returned to the Lion’s Palace older and wiser, but with a dark place in my soul. By the end of the summer the Garians had been wiped out or had fled, and at the turn of the year we heard that their leader had been captured. His name was Malkus Tesserian. Now Malkus Tesserian was my swordmaster when I was a child living in Odrysia. He was huge and bearded, and a devout Garian, and I found it amusing as a child to see him worshipping what looked to me like children’s dolls. He was a stern man, and humourless, but a good teacher and he treated me and the other children fairly enough. I found it hard to imagine the swordmaster I knew inflicting the horrors I had seen, but I knew terrible things were done in the name of religion.

‘I thought about it for several days – the time it took for Tesserian to be delivered to the palace by our troops. Finally, when our victorious army was in sight I went to your father and asked him to spare the life of the captured leader. Looking back I can only guess what I was thinking. Your father was surrounded by his advisers, the old counsellors his father relied on, and the young men who fawned upon him, hoping for a place in his inner circle. I cannot remember, but I imagine that I hoped to demonstrate to them the power I wielded over the new king, my influence as his good friend. I don’t know.

‘He had already been advised by those around him to kill Tesserian justly, in the way he had killed others. But your father listened to me. I told him the man had been a good teacher to me, that any skill I had
with a sword was down to his early tutelage. This was false modesty. I knew I could wield the blade better than anyone there, including your father.

‘The counsellors were all angered by my request and they argued that the man should die, but your father said nothing, although his eyes grew cold. At last he nodded and said, “Very well, Shuskara. And what should we do with him? Let him go?”

‘I hadn’t really thought that far. I said, “He should be returned to his stronghold and told that if he ever crosses the Shining River again he will be executed.”

‘Your father looked at me hard. “It will be as you say, my friend.” It was the last time he was to call me friend. “But now you owe me a life.”

‘You have probably guessed already that the man brought before us was not my old tutor. It was his son, of the same name, a man touched by the gods of chaos, a killer who delighted in the torment of others and felt no remorse, no pity, no mercy. He was released and sent back to his home, where he continued to kill and torture until he was executed by the soldiers of Randell Kerr a year later.

‘I left the Lion’s Palace the next day, and never returned. I believe it lies abandoned now.’

The trial of the six boys was not held in the emperor’s Great Hall, or in the Court of Law, where most criminals were brought for a show of justice. The day after Arish met Shuskara the captives were taken from their grim cell, sluiced down with icy water to take some of the stink off them, fed some watery gruel, and led back through the tunnels. When they were brought, blinking, into the light they found themselves in the Circle of Combat, an ancient stone amphitheatre in the south of the City, once used for gladiatorial displays, now abandoned to the rats and red ants.

It was early morning and the pale sun had barely cleared the crumbling walls of the arena, and the boys were left in the middle of the sand still chained together. But they were now in the custody of soldiers, not dungeon guards. Arish asked for water and it was brought to them. Then he asked for food and they were given good fresh bread and a little meat and some fruit. So it was that by noon, when spectators started to gather, the boys felt stronger than they had in days.

Arish had not told them a woman was to speak for them, for he had received no message from the general, and he did not want to discourage the others with news which might prove false. He only told them the general was finding an advocate.

So when a woman walked across the sand towards them they only stared at her. Even Arish did not appreciate who she was, for he had little experience of women beyond the old servants who dished out their meals in barracks and the skinny whores they eyed hungrily on street corners. This woman was tall, taller than most men, and had the bearing of a general. She wore long robes in shades of blue, and her snowy hair lay in a thick plait on her shoulder. Despite the whiteness of her hair her face was unlined, grave, with a beauty that stopped the heart. Arish and the others shied away a little as she walked up to them, for this was a creature as strange to them as the white panther of the Mountains of the Moon or the speckled phoenix of the Wester Isles.

She did not appear to notice, and she smiled and said, ‘I am Archange Vincerus. I am your advocate. I will speak for you today.’ She looked assessingly at the silent boys. ‘You must tell me exactly what happened on the wilding.’

At first they all blurted out the story in an incoherent jumble, and she listened, black eyes flickering from one to another, until she held up a hand and they fell silent. She pointed to Sami.

‘You tell,’ she commanded, and Sami told their story carefully, missing nothing out, and she listened. She asked the boy a few questions. Then she said, ‘You will not be allowed to speak at your trial. Is there anything else you wish to tell me, or ask me, before it starts?’

The smallest boy, Evan, piped up, ‘The dogs ate my brother.’

Archange looked down at him for a long moment. ‘What is your name?’ she asked gently.

‘Evan Quin,’ the child said, stumbling over the last name as if he was not used to saying the word. ‘Conor was my big brother. The dogs killed him and ate him up.’ His pale eyes welled up, and he said, ‘They were bad dogs.’

Archange nodded, and she asked them all their names, and their fathers’ names, looking at each one gravely and with concentration. Then she turned and walked back across the arena to where the nobles were filling the imperial stand. Arish saw her talking to someone, and realized it was Shuskara. He wanted to wave, to attract the man’s
attention, but the general had his eyes averted from the sand. He nodded as Archange spoke. His face was very sad. Arish felt hope draining away.

The emperor was joined on his gold balcony by the two men chosen to decide the boys’ fate with him. Arish later found out that these were Goldinus Vara, the wealthy owner of a fleet of trading ships, who had been given this entertaining role in lieu of payment of an imperial shipping contract, and Bal Carissa, an ancient seer and long-standing adviser to the king, who was so far into his dotage that he was unlikely to understand what was taking place in front of his nose. Arish squinted to make out the emperor, but all he could see was a fair, bearded man.

The air was hot and dry. The sand seemed to suck all moisture from it, and the water they had drunk hours before was just a memory. The arena was a bowl of sunlight. Arish felt light-headed, and when at last the prosecutor walked out in front of the eager crowd he had to concentrate hard to understand his words.

It was a soldier, in the uniform of a senior general, with a sword at his hip. Arish felt his spirits lift a little. A soldier would understand the need to kill the dogs. A soldier would not lie down and let himself be killed, by man or by dog.

But as the general addressed the emperor, Arish listened in rising disbelief.

‘My lord emperor,’ the man cried, ‘you have done me a great service today. Few people are lucky enough to win the chance to speak on behalf of the emperor, for the Immortal needs no one to represent him. His word is law, his smallest whim a command, his every command writ in the stones of eternity.’

Arish heard Sami give a small discouraged sigh, and he turned his head a fraction and they exchanged glances.

‘But this day,’ the general went on, ‘the emperor has shown his generosity, his magnanimity, his imperial munificence, and rather than simply have these young thugs executed, as all sane men know they deserve, he has granted them the mercy of a trial. Now,’ the man was striding about as he spoke, ‘the facts of this case are simple. These boys are all foreigners who have been generously granted sanctuary here. Sons of renegade kings and enemy rulers, they are potential traitors in the heart of our beloved City. Nevertheless, the Immortal, in all his …’ the man struggled for another word ‘… munificence,’
he repeated, ‘sheltered them in his palace and gave them the best of educations, both in the arts of war and in the pursuits of peace. They were treated as honoured guests. Even when their parent kings betrayed the emperor and took up arms against him, still these boys were granted refuge here.’

The general clutched his chin as if marshalling complex thoughts.

‘Now, it is the custom, as you all know, to allow our young trainee soldiers a great deal of freedom. Other lands, other cities, might look at us and wonder why this is. It is because …’ he paused and raised one hand theatrically, ‘our emperor, in all his … wisdom, believes that a life, a heart, given to the City freely, is a life worthy of the name.’ He fell silent as if dumbstruck by the grandeur of this thought.