The smell hit Josiri first. Death. Not the old death of the rooms above, but the iron tang of blood recently spilt. The rough stone floor was dark with it, and never more so than where glistening grooves led towards a large, open grate at the room’s far end. In the chamber’s centre sat a low stone altar, its worn flanks etched with effigies of carrion birds with glittering gems for eyes.
The strangest feature was the lone, empty archway between altar and grate. Like the altar, it was made of older, rougher stone than the room in which it sat. Like the altar, it was covered in bloody smears – the print of many different hands visible against pale grey stone.
But of the kernclaw – or indeed, any other living soul save Kurkas, Josiri caught no sign.
They don’t come out, not ever.
A couple of dozen, Altiris had said. Depending on how long he’d been here, the true tally was likely higher.
“Blessed Lumestra,” breathed Kurkas.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?”
“On my old mother’s soul, I have not. Never even heard of anything like this.”
Josiri set the lantern down on the altar and put a hand to his mouth in a vain attempt to blot out the smell. No bodies, but that didn’t mean anything. Not with the sound of water rushing somewhere beneath the grate. A sewer, or one of the Estrina’s tributaries.
They don’t come out, not ever.
Indenturement was bad enough. This was worse. Whatever “this” was.
“I think it’s time you fetched Captain Darrow,” said Josiri.
Two
Josiri’s mother had once insisted that the Privy Council chamber was the Tressian Republic distilled to its purest form. For years untold, weighty decisions and momentous events had played out in that austere chamber, shepherded to fruition by representatives from families of the highest rank.
He’d been only a boy, easily impressed by Katya Trelan’s descriptions of the great stained-glass windows and stone visages of councillors long dead. Where history clung to every breath, filling the lungs as readily as the dust. Such an impression had her stories left that they’d survived Josiri’s turbulent passage into adulthood. For all the woes that had flowed south from that room – for all that the deaths of his parents and the oppression of his people had been plotted at that gilded table – it retained a status almost divine.
Or perhaps the deaths were part of it. Perhaps the Privy Council reflected not the citizenry below, but the divinities above. Of all the gods and goddesses, only Lumestra showed compassion for her ephemeral children.
Nine chairs beneath the golden map of a Tressian Kingdom now shrunken to a beleaguered Republic. Four counties remaining of a continent-spanning realm. Royal Tressia, spiritual heart of the nation. The rebellious Southshires – once Josiri’s home, and his family’s domain. The embattled Eastshires. The Marcher Lands that bound them all together.
Five men. Three women. One chair empty. And the latter often the most productive of the lot. The Privy Council was home to much talk, and little action. Still, better to be there than among the irrelevant multitudes of the Grand Council in the chamber below.
“Why ever did you take it upon yourself to get involved, Josiri?” Elbows braced against the table, Lord Lamirov leaned forward in his chair. Combined with hairless pate and leathery, wrinkled skin, he resembled a turtle striving to escape its shell. “It’s not becoming to embroil yourself in… squabbles.”
Josiri counted silently to five, partly to instil the false impression that he’d given the words weighty consideration – which he hadn’t – but mostly to quell a temper worn thin. He hated the austere, tailored suit seemliness required he wear to council; the silk cravat and the high-necked waistcoat. They constricted and confined, made him feel something other than himself… which he suspected was the point.
“Squabbles, Leonast?” Using the personal name was a conceit of council – the pretension of familiarity and shared purpose where too often none existed. “Dozens of my people tortured and killed at vranakin hands?”
“You didn’t know that at the time.” Lord Lamirov’s eyes gleamed. “Intent matters in all things, and it troubles me that a representative of this council indulges his ardour by seeking cheap thrills. Especially a councillor of your… reputation.”
He leaned back, content to have landed a telling blow – though to what end that blow had fallen wasn’t immediately obvious. Such was often the way when Lord Lamirov spoke in council.
It had bothered Josiri at first, for the woman who’d previously occupied that very chair had revelled in verbal fencing to further wicked ambition. But as the months had passed, and no such ambitions had flourished, Josiri had realised that Leonast Lamirov had few aims beyond cleverness for its own sake, and of burnishing his own ego to the detriment of others. If the Privy Councillors were indeed to be likened to gods, then Lamirov was Jack o’ Fellhallow, ensconced in his thorny fastness; offering torment and bargain to those within his orbit for no other reason than because it amused.
It didn’t take much imagination to conjure the spectre of Ebigail Kiradin laughing at her successor with disdain. No one could ever have accused her of being without grand design – however cruel and misjudged her attempt to seize control of the Republic had been. The memory of the horrors Ebigail had unleashed usually gave Josiri the strength to tolerate the withered old man’s fussiness. But not today, with the horrors of the portreeve’s manor still uppermost in memory. Patience – never Josiri’s most abundant asset – began to slip.
“My reputation…?”
A hooded glance from the head of the table warned Josiri that his voice held entirely too much growl. But Malachi Reveque simply turned his filigreed paper knife over and over in his hands and made no move to intervene. By nature a conciliator, he wore the rank of First Councillor lightly. Gracious Lumestra, holding court over her quarrelling siblings… no matter how little he looked the part.
In a city where fine cloth and golden thread so often heralded status, the drab greys of Malachi’s waistcoat and tailored jacket marked him out more as a merchant of the middling sort, rather than the holder of authority unprecedented since the Age of Kings. Authority that had taken its toll. Dark hair fought a losing retreat against the grey of still-distant middle-years.
Josiri took a deep breath. “You can speak plainly, Leonast. We’re all friends here.” The lie came easily, born of practice. “What has my reputation to do with any of this?”
Lord Lamirov glanced away. A terror to those who laboured on his estates, he soon tired of confrontation with those who snarled back.
“Your reputation has everything do with this, your grace.”
Erashel Beral had seen barely half Lord Lamirov’s sixty years. She seldom spoke without purpose, or without care. There’d be no accident in her use of the ducal honorific.
Erashel’s father had fought and died for Katya Trelan’s rebellion. The following Exodus – the Council’s punishment for the failed insurrection – had scattered her family, just as it had done so many other southwealders. The Settlement Decree had unshackled Erashel from a Selanni farm, and restored to her a portion of the estates and property stolen after her father’s death, but calloused hands and weatherworn skin would for ever set her apart from sheltered peers. As did her chestnut hair, worn short and without the plaits and ribbons customary for noblewomen. She bore her past as proudly as Josiri sometimes wished to forget his own.