Read The Darkness that Comes Before Online
Authors: R. Scott Bakker
The Darkness that Comes Before (23 page)
Words of mutual outrage were exchanged, then Calmemunis, Xinemus, and their escort stormed from the Imperial Audience Hall, leaving Xerius alone with his thundering heart.
He scratched at the memory of bird shit upon his cheek. Squinting against the sun, he looked up to his throne, to the burnished silhouettes of his servants. He vaguely heard his Grand Seneschal, Ngarau, cry out for a basin of warm water. The Emperor had to be cleansed.
“What does it mean?” Xerius asked numbly.
“Nothing, God-of-Men,” Skeaös replied. “We fully expected them to initially deny the Indenture. Like all fruits, our plan requires time to mature.”
Our plan, Skeaös? You mean my plan.
He tried to stare down the insolent fool, but the sun confounded him. “I speak neither to you nor to the Indenture, you old ass.” To accentuate his point he kicked over the bronze lectern. The Indenture swung like a pendulum in the air before skittering to the floor. Then he gestured to the skewered bird lying at his feet. “What does
this
mean?”
this
mean?”
“Good fortune,” Arithmeas, his favourite augur and astrologer, called out. “Among the lower castes, to be . . . ah, shat upon by a bird is the cause of great celebration.”
Xerius wanted to laugh, but he could not. “But being shat upon is the only fortune they know, isn’t it?”
“Nevertheless, there’s great wisdom to this belief, God-of-Men. Small misfortunes such as this, they believe, portend good things. Some token blight must always accompany triumph, to remind us of our frailty.”
His cheek tingled, as though it too recognized the truth of the augur’s words. It was an omen! And a good one at that. He could
feel
it!
feel
it!
Again the Gods have touched me!
Suddenly revived, he climbed the steps, avidly listening as Arithmeas expanded on the way this event coincided with his star, which had just entered the horizon of Anagke, the Whore of Fate, and now stood upon two fortuitous axes with the Nail of Heaven. “An excellent conjunction,” the portly augur exclaimed. “An excellent conjunction indeed!” Rather than resume his place on the high bench, Xerius strode passed it, bidding Arithmeas to accompany him. Trailing a small herd of functionaries, he walked between the great rose marble pillars that marked the missing wall and out onto the adjoining terrace.
Like a vast fresco chalked in smoky colours, Momemn spread out below him, stretching toward the setting sun. His palace, the Andiamine Heights, occupied the seaward quarter of the city, so that he could, if he wished, see Momemn in her labyrinthine entirety simply by turning his head from side to side: the square turrets of the Eothic Garrison to the north, the monumental promenades and structures of the temple-complex of Cmiral directly west, and the congested bedlam of the harbour along the banks of the River Phayus to the south.
Still listening to Arithmeas, he peered across the distant walls to where the groves and fields of the surrounding countryside were bleached by the belly of the sun. There, bunched and scattered across the landscape like mould on bread, he could see the tents and pavilions of the Holy War. Not many so far, but in a matter of months, Xerius knew, they could very well encircle the horizon.
“But the Holy War, Arithmeas . . . Does all this mean the Holy War will be mine?”
The Imperial Augur clasped his corpulent fingers and shook his jowls in affirmation. “But the ways of Fate are narrow, God-of-Men. There’s much we must do.”
So intent was Xerius on his augur’s diagnoses and prescriptions, which included detailed instructions for the slaughter of ten bulls, that he initially failed to notice his mother’s arrival. But there she was, a narrow shadow in his periphery, as unmistakable as death.
“Prepare the victims, then, Arithmeas,” he said peremptorily. “That’s enough for now.”
As the augur departed, Xerius glimpsed slaves bearing the basin of water that had been summoned earlier.
“Arithmeas?”
“Yes, God-of-Men?”
“My cheek . . . Should I wash it?”
The man waved his hands in a comical fashion. “No! D-definitely not, God-of-Men. It’s crucial that you wait at least three days. Crucial.”
Several other questions assailed him, but his mother had approached, followed by the waddling bulk of her eunuch. She moved with the willowy grace of a fifteen-year-old virgin, despite her sixty whorish years. With a whisk of blue muslin and silk, she turned her profile to him, studying the city as he had moments earlier. Sunlight flashed along the scales of her jade headdress.
“A son,” she said dryly, “hanging upon the words of a babbling, blubbery fool. How it warms a mother’s heart.”
He sensed something odd in her manner, something
bottled
. But then everyone had seemed peculiarly ill at ease in his presence of late—no doubt, Xerius supposed, because they had finally glimpsed the divinity that dwelt within him, now that the two great horns of his plan had been set in motion.
bottled
. But then everyone had seemed peculiarly ill at ease in his presence of late—no doubt, Xerius supposed, because they had finally glimpsed the divinity that dwelt within him, now that the two great horns of his plan had been set in motion.
“These are trying times, Mother. Too perilous to ignore the future.”
She turned and appraised him in a manner that was at once coquettish and masculine. The sun deepened her wrinkles and drew the shadow of her nose across her cheek. The old, Xerius had always thought, were
ugly
, both in flesh and spirit. Age forever transformed hope into resentment. What was virile and ambitious in young eyes became impotent and covetous in old.
ugly
, both in flesh and spirit. Age forever transformed hope into resentment. What was virile and ambitious in young eyes became impotent and covetous in old.
I find you offensive, Mother. Both in appearance and in manner.
His mother’s beauty had been legendary once. While his father yet lived, she’d been the Empire’s most celebrated possession. Ikurei Istriya, the Empress of Nansur, whose dowry had been the burning of the Imperial Harem.
“I watched your audience with Calmemunis,” she said mildly. “A disaster. Just as I told you, hmm, my godlike son?” Her smile riddled the cosmetics about her lips with small cracks. A longing to kiss those lips struck Xerius with bodily force.
“I suppose, Mother.”
“Then why do you persist in this nonsense?”
And now this latest bizarre turn. His mother arguing against sweet reason.
“Nonsense, Mother? The Indenture will see the Empire
restored
.”
restored
.”
“But if a fool such as Calmemunis can’t be gulled into signing it, what hope does your Indenture have, hmm? No, Xerius, you serve the Empire best by serving the Holy War.”
“Has Maithanet bewitched you as well, Mother? How does one bewitch a witch?”
Laughter. “By offering to destroy her enemies, how else?”
“But the whole world is your enemy, Mother. Or am I mistaken?”
“The whole world is every man’s enemy, Xerius. You’d do well to remember that.”
In his periphery, he glimpsed a guardsman approach Skeaös and whisper something in his ear. Harmony, his augurs had told him, was musical. It demanded that one be attuned to the nuances of every circumstance. Xerius was a man who needed not to look at things to see them. He possessed a refined sense of suspicion.
The old Counsel nodded, then momentarily glanced at his Emperor, his eyes troubled.
Do they plot? Is this treachery?
But he shrugged these thoughts away; they occurred far too frequently to be trusted.
But he shrugged these thoughts away; they occurred far too frequently to be trusted.
As though guessing the source of his distraction, Istriya turned to the old Counsel. “What say you, Skeaös, hmm? What say you of my son’s infantile avarice?”
“Avarice?” Xerius cried. Why did she provoke him like this?
“Infantile?”
“Infantile?”
“What else? You squander the gifts of the Whore. First Fate delivers you this Maithanet, and against my counsel you try to assassinate him. Why? Because you do not own him. Then she delivers you the Holy War, a hammer with which to crush our ancestral foe! And because you do not own it, you seek to destroy it as well! These are the tantrums of a child, not the ploys of a cunning Emperor.”
“Trust me, Mother, I seek to procure, not destroy, the Holy War. The foreign dogs
will
sign my Indenture.”
will
sign my Indenture.”
“With your blood! Have you forgotten what happens when one weds empty bellies to fanatic hearts? These are warlike men, Xerius. Men intoxicated by their faith. Men who
act
in the face of indignity! Do you truly expect them to endure your extortion? You risk the Empire, Xerius!”
act
in the face of indignity! Do you truly expect them to endure your extortion? You risk the Empire, Xerius!”
Risk the Empire? No. To the northwest, few Nansur lived within sight of the mountains, such was their fear of the Scylvendi, and to the south, all the “old provinces,” which had belonged to the Nansurium at the height of her power, lay in the thrall of heathen Kian. Now Fanim drums echoed across her old conquests, calling men to worship the False Prophet, Fane. Now the fortress of Asgilioch, which the ancient Kyraneans had raised to guard against Shigek, was again the frontier. He did not risk the Empire, only the pretence of one. Empire was the prize, not the wager.
“Fortunately your son is not quite so doltish as that, Mother. The Men of the Tusk won’t starve. They’ll eat from my bowl, but one day at a time. I don’t intend to deny them the provisions they need to live, only the provisions they need to march.”
“And what of Maithanet? What if he directs you to provision them?”
In matters of Holy War, an ancient constitution bound the Emperor to the Shriah. Xerius was obligated to supply the Holy War, on pain of Shrial Censure.
“Ah, but you see, Mother, that he cannot do. He knows as well as we that these Men of the Tusk are fools, that they think the God himself has ordained the overthrow of the heathen. If I provide Calmemunis with everything he requests, he’d march in a fortnight, certain that he could destroy the Fanim with his paltry household alone. Maithanet will mime outrage, of course, but he’ll secretly applaud what I do, knowing it’ll purchase the Holy War the time it needs to gather. Why else do you think he commanded it gather about Momemn rather than Sumna? Aside from taxing my purse, he
knew
I would do this.”
knew
I would do this.”
She paused, her eyes abruptly narrow and appraising. No soul as serpentine as hers could fail to appreciate the subtlety of such a move.
“But does this mean that you play Maithanet, or that Maithanet plays you?”
Over the previous months Xerius had, he could now admit, underestimated this new Shriah. But he would not underestimate the fiend again. Not in this.
Maithanet, Xerius realized, understood that the Nansurium was doomed. For the past century and a half, those with knowledge or power in Nansur had awaited the catastrophe, the news that the Scylvendi tribes had united as of old and were rumbling toward the coasts. This had been how Kyraneas had fallen two thousand years ago, and how the Ceneian Empire had fallen more than a thousand years after. And this would be how, Xerius was certain, the Nansurium would fall as well. But it was the prospect of this inevitability conjoined with Kian, a heathen nation that waxed even as Nansur waned, that truly terrified him. After the Scylvendi left, and they always left, who would stop the Kianene heathens from snuffing out the muddied blood of Kyraneas, from cutting out the Three Hearts of God: Sumna, the Thousand Temples, and the Tusk?
Yes, this Shriah was shrewd. Xerius no longer regretted the failure of his assassins. Maithanet had given him a hammer like no other—a Holy War.
“Our new Shriah,” he said, “is much overrated.”
Let him think he plays me.
“But for what purpose, Xerius? Even if the great among the Holy War succumb to your demands, you don’t truly think they’ll spill their blood to hoist the Imperial Sun, do you? Even signed, your Indenture is worthless.”
“Not worthless, Mother. Even if they break their oath, the Indenture is not worthless.”
“Then
why,
Xerius? Why all these mad risks?”
why,
Xerius? Why all these mad risks?”
“Come, Mother. Have you grown so old?” For a moment, he suffered an uncommon glimpse of how things must appear to her: the mercantile, and therefore extraordinary, demand that every high noble of the Holy War sign his Indenture; the dispatch of the greatest Nansur army assembled in a generation not against the heathens of Kian, but against their far more ancient and temperamental foe, the Scylvendi. How these two things alone must have taxed her! With plans as sublime as his, the logic was always hidden.
Xerius was not fool enough to think he was the equal of his ancestors in strength of arms or spirit. Ikurei Xerius III was no fool. The present age was different, and different strengths were called for. The great man of this day found his weapons in other men and in the shrewd calculation of events. Xerius now possessed both: his precocious nephew, Conphas, and this mad Shriah’s Holy War. With these two instruments, he would win back the Empire.
“What is it you plan, Xerius? You must tell me!”
“Painful, isn’t it, Mother? To stand at the heart of the Empire and yet be deaf to its beat—and after a lifetime of playing it like a drum!”
But instead of displaying outrage, her eyes opened in abrupt epiphany. “The Indenture is simply a
pretext,
” she gasped. “Something to protect you from Shrial Censure when you . . .”
pretext,
” she gasped. “Something to protect you from Shrial Censure when you . . .”
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