THE LIGNITE CITADEL engulfed the dead city of Tlaanthothe like a great bramble. Deep within that thicket was a prison, and within that prison was a close, dark chamber that smelled of hot metal and seared flesh, and within that chamber was First Commander Cherenthisse, listening—as usual—to somebody’s complaints. The complainer was Bakranai, the God-Empress’ chief interrogator, and the subject of his distress was the interrogation chamber’s translator glyph.
“It’s been misbehaving all week, First Commander,” said Bakranai, a florid mortal man with thinning hair and pale, watery eyes.
The translator glyph was an intricate mesh of spellwork, wrought in a narrow band all around the walls of the chamber, its clean, bright quicksilver looking out of place among the filth. Cherenthisse couldn’t see anything obviously wrong with it.
“What exactly is the matter with it?” said Cherenthisse.
“Couldn’t say, First Commander,” said Bakranai, “but we can’t make head nor tail of the foreign prisoners. Not but what those Qarsazhi mages don’t do nothing but spit anyway—”
“And the containment wards? Are they intact?”
Bakranai shrugged. “Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a problem, First Commander. This is the third failure in a month. You know they’re saying there’s some kind of saboteur—”
Cherenthisse gave him a sharp look.
“An official of your station should not spread rumours,” she said.
At the back of her mind, concern mingled with resignation. Concern, because the containment wards were the only thing that kept the Citadel’s mage prisoners from bursting their bonds and wreaking havoc. Resignation, because there was only one person who could fix them.
“This does sound inconvenient, First Commander,” said Qanwa Shuthmili.
The years had not done much to alter the person who was now known as the Hand of the Empress. She was small and thin, unarmed, austerely dressed, and she wore her hair in a severe braid coiled on top of her head. The only noteworthy thing about her was the pair of leather gauntlets she wore at all times, which made her look as though her hands and forearms were covered with smooth black scales. Nevertheless, as Shuthmili stalked into the interrogation room, Bakranai took a step back, as though an invisible wake radiated from her. The interrogator put the fear of god into most mortals and several of the Thousand Eyes, and even he would not look Shuthmili in the eye.
Shuthmili didn’t appear to notice him. She spent a few minutes tapping and peering at the wall. Bakranai shuffled out, leaving Cherenthisse alone with Shuthmili.
“Apparently this is the third failure in a month,” said Cherenthisse, relieved that she no longer had to be polite. “What’s happened?”
“You ask as though I could possibly know,” said Shuthmili, still inspecting the glyph.
“You wrote the translator glyph. And all the other containment measures,” said Cherenthisse. “Either your work is failing, or somebody is deliberately meddling with it. You need to fix it.”
“Is it any wonder so many people see you as my handler?” said Shuthmili. Her voice was as flat as ever. She still didn’t deign to look up.
“This is your responsibility. And only attack dogs need handlers. The Hand of the Empress should be able to handle herself.”
The Hand was the God-Empress’ personal intelligencer. She reported directly to the Empress and had no part in the Citadel’s factional politics, except when called upon from time to time to execute a traitor. Once you had seen Shuthmili exsanguinate some luckless aspiring regicide, it was hard to forget the sight. The worst of it was that her face never changed.
“The Hand of the Empress is an extremely busy woman, Cherenthisse. You called me away from ciphering a letter for Her Majesty. You might at least ask nicely.”
Whatever it was Shuthmili did up in her turret all day, Cherenthisse suspected she had gone rotten up there, like a fruit left too long on the branch, turned in on herself until this kind of mind game was the only thing that entertained her.
“I am sorry to interrupt what I’m sure was important work,” said Cherenthisse, bitterly. “But would you mind helping me?”
Shuthmili gave her a thin smile, clearly pleased at how well Cherenthisse had learned the trick. “Thank you, First Commander. Let us cut to the chase. How many prisoners are in the isolation wing just now? Who was interrogated most recently?”
“There are a few dozen, but Bakranai says he’s been working over the two mages from the Vehement Rejoinder,” said Cherenthisse. This was a Qarsazhi warship, shot down months ago, with only these two survivors.
A sigh hissed between Shuthmili’s teeth.
“One of them must have tampered with the glyph,” she said. “It’s subtly done, too. Only a mage could have done it. Goodness knows what else they’re capable of. Rather inconvenient.”
The God-Empress did not have her own client mages in this world. The death of the Siren had incapacitated Tlaanthothe’s existing practitioners, and none of the children born in the Citadel since her accession had yet shown signs of aptitude. They would come in time, but in the meantime, the God-Empress only had Shuthmili, whose patron was some unpleasant-sounding Qarsazhi goddess, to help maintain the Citadel’s arcane logistics and defences. An escaped mage could wreak all kinds of havoc before the Thousand Eyes could get them back under control.
“Can you fix the glyph?” said Cherenthisse. She had worked alongside Shuthmili for fifteen years now, and she didn’t think this, at least, would take much cajoling. There weren’t many reliable levers where the Hand of the Empress was concerned, but by god, the woman loved a puzzle.
“Yes,” said Shuthmili. “But whoever has done this could be responsible for the other security breaches.”
“That was my thought,” said Cherenthisse. It hadn’t been, but she refused to give Shuthmili credit for an idea anyone might have put together.
Rumour was everywhere, but it was a fact that there was a mole somewhere in the Citadel. Shipments went missing. A group of dissidents who operated an illegal printing press at the Lemon Tree public house had been warned, early enough that half of them had escaped before the Thousand Eyes raided the place. Someone was leaking information to the Empress’ enemies.
“I think perhaps I’d better speak to these Qarsazhi,” said Shuthmili.
They brought in the first of the Qarsazhi prisoners with her hands and ankles bound. According to the file, her name was Thurya Mishari, a fourth-year Adept of the School of Aptitude. When she saw Shuthmili, her face twisted and she spat on the ground.
If Shuthmili objected to this, she didn’t show it. One of the things Cherenthisse most disliked about Shuthmili was that she had no sense of leadership, as if it didn’t matter what anybody thought of you. Cherenthisse had made great efforts to understand the people working for her. It was on her initiative that the Thousand Eyes said mortals now rather than prey, for instance. It was important to set an example.
Still, Shuthmili’s reputation could be useful under circumstances such as this.
Shuthmili raised an eyebrow, murmuring something in Qarsazhi. Without a working translator glyph, Cherenthisse couldn’t understand what was being said, but Thurya responded with a stream of what were obviously curses.
Shuthmili went on in her usual indifferent drawl. Cherenthisse stood back out of spitting range. This went on for a few minutes to no avail.
“If she won’t cooperate—” said Cherenthisse.
“Fuck you, snake,” said Thurya, spitting out the foreign words as if they were jagged in her mouth. “Fuck you, Inquisitor Qanwa. Fuck you to hell, all snakes.”
Shuthmili’s face went very still, and then she leant in close, lifting Thurya’s chin with one gauntleted hand. She held eye contact with the prisoner for a second. Thurya trembled in rage and terror, then Shuthmili released her, shaking her head.
“It wasn’t her,” said Shuthmili. “Not capable of it, unless they worked together.”
“Inquisitor?” said Cherenthisse. “I thought that was a Qarsazhi title—”
Shuthmili twitched, clenching her jaw.
“It’s what they all call me. A funny joke,” said Shuthmili. “Thurya knows nothing. Let’s talk to the other.”
Cherenthisse chained Thurya Mishari to a bench by the wall and called for the second prisoner.
This one was old and shrivelled, with a completely bald head and a shrunken face. It wasn’t immediately clear whether they were a man or a woman or a member of some other mortal class. Cherenthisse found it difficult to tell. In Old Echentyr, such distinctions had been exclusively a prey matter, unseemly and rather primitive, and in the new order of things, she generally had to rely on styles of hair and clothing to make a guess.
“What’s their name?” said Shuthmili, flipping through the papers. “Oh, it says they won’t admit it. My, Cherenthisse, your interrogators have not got far with this one.”
“Qanwa Shuthmili,” said the prisoner, now strapped into a chair in the middle of the interrogation room. Their voice rasped in their throat like a knife being sharpened.
Shuthmili’s eyes widened—only a fraction, only for a second, but Cherenthisse caught it. She had been taken by surprise. The prisoner had recognised her, and there was no mistaking the look on their face. That was bitter, personal hatred.
The prisoner gave an empty wheeze of laughter and said Shuthmili’s name again.
“Ah, of course,” said Shuthmili, and then a word in Qarsazhi which Cherenthisse did not recognise: “Vigil.”
There was a brief exchange in Qarsazhi, and Shuthmili rolled her eyes.
“You cannot expect me to believe you do not speak Tlaanthothei,” she said.
Vigil said something biting, and then, in clipped but comprehensible Tlaanthothei: “This serpent is your master. Yes?”
“In a manner of speaking,” said Shuthmili, giving Cherenthisse a derisive glance.
“Now I warn you, serpent,” said Vigil, fixing their deep-set eyes on Cherenthisse. “This one, she is the traitor. She kills her aunt, she outrages her faith, she runs away from punishment. You trust her now, and she betrays you too.”
If the prisoner thought Cherenthisse trusted Shuthmili an inch, they were dead wrong, but she said nothing.
Shuthmili’s mouth twisted in a thin smile. “The prisoner is a Quincury Adept,” she said. “Everything they see and hear will be received immediately in Qarsazh by the rest of Vigil Quincury. Yet another security breach. I hope your people have been discreet.”
Not good. The war with Qarsazh had reached a kind of holding pattern, but in its worst years, the Imperial Quincuriate had been a real threat, perhaps the only real threat to the might of the God-Empress and her Thousand Eyes.
“You’re certain?” said Cherenthisse.
“I know this one long ago,” said Vigil. “She hurts many of me. She kills my bodies.” Vigil looked up at Shuthmili again, their dry eyes blinking. “To be cut away, this is the worst pain. You know this, yes, I think?”
Shuthmili’s lips curved up in something that looked quite like a smile. “No punishment worse than exile? I know that line. The kind of thing my aunt Zhiyouri used to say.”
Only now did Cherenthisse realise something was wrong, and she didn’t have time to warn Shuthmili before it happened. All the while they had been talking, the silver sigils on the wall had been shifting, so slowly and slightly that she hadn’t seen it even out of the corner of her eye. Now they moved like water ruffled by the breeze. She could almost hear the breeze itself, though they were deep in the bowels of the palace, where the air never stirred.
“Look out, the wards—” said Cherenthisse, springing toward Shuthmili and Vigil. Before she could reach her, she was seized from behind as if by a gigantic hand, lifted and suspended, twisting in midair.
Thurya Mishari had been slumped on the bench, eyes fixed on the floor. Now the links of her cuffs fell away like sand, and the look of triumph on her face was unmistakable. Vigil had broken their bonds too, and they had Shuthmili pinned against the wall.
The sound of the wind rose. Behind Thurya, where once there had been a black wall of fossil-stone, there was a crude archway, and beyond it a dark passage, winding sharply away as though drilled into the earth itself. The wind whipped Cherenthisse’s hair and clothing, but she still could not move. Every attempt just sent her spinning in midair.
Thurya’s hands twitched. Cherenthisse knew the look of someone calculating whether they had time to kill her. Then she shook her head. “Vigil!” she yelled, then something else in Qarsazhi that was clearly let’s go! She limped through the archway and disappeared.
As soon as Thurya was gone, Cherenthisse dropped to the floor.
Vigil’s hands were braced around Shuthmili’s throat. They still had some of their fingernails, long and black with dirt. If they heard Thurya, they showed no sign of it. So desperate to kill Shuthmili that nothing could have drawn them away. Cherenthisse supposed she knew the feeling.
“A little help, First Commander!” said Shuthmili, wriggling in Vigil’s grasp.
Cherenthisse was a loyal servant and a dutiful soldier, but she would have needed the mercy and patience of the God-Empress herself not to enjoy the moment.
“Help?” she said, hooking her thumbs through her belt.
“If you have a chance to interrupt what I’m sure is important work—” said Shuthmili, kicking out at the Adept to no avail. “Would you mind?”
Cherenthisse grabbed Vigil by the middle and dragged them back. They were really very light, frail as an empty cocoon. All their focus and magic must have been concentrated on Shuthmili, because they came away from her like a bundle of dead ivy, and when Cherenthisse dropped them on the floor they crumpled.
Shuthmili stood over them, pinning one shoulder with her toe. She was wearing soft little slippers, but Vigil went as still as if they were manacled to the ground.
Vigil bared a row of small yellow teeth in a rictus of defiance, and the wind howled through the room like a wolf. “Very much you look like Zhiyouri today,” they said. They opened their mouth as though to speak again, but a black tendril sprouted from behind their teeth.
There was a crisp squelching sound, like someone biting into a grape, and more tendrils burst through the holes in Vigil’s ragged shirt. In a very short time, their rib cage was a nest of slithering things, looping in and out between the bones. Shuthmili’s expression was dispassionate.
The wind died with the Quincury Adept, and the archway in the wall was gone.
“Was it necessary to kill them?” said Cherenthisse.
Shuthmili rose, brushing some invisible dust from her skirts. “You would never have learned anything from them. It was an absurd risk to hold them here. They will have reported everything they have seen and heard to the Inquisitorate.”
“Of course you know best,” said Cherenthisse bitterly.
It was typical of Shuthmili to make it sound as if she’d somehow done Cherenthisse a favour, when in fact it was a godawful mess. She would need to send someone to clean up the wreck of Vigil’s body, she would need to explain to Bakranai why one of his prisoners was dead, she would need to explain to the God-Empress herself that Thurya Mishari had escaped …
“Thank you, First Commander,” said Shuthmili. “Send some of your people after Thurya, if you like, but I doubt she will get far. She must have been relying on Vigil to sustain the passage. Opening that kind of door is more of a Quincuriate specialty.”
Cherenthisse dimly recollected this was one of the reasons they had been holding Qarsazhi mages in the first place. As Iriskavaal’s successor, the God-Empress was the sovereign of all space and time, and she resented any usurpation of that power by alien mages.
“Now, if you’re finished with me, I really should get back to this cipher—” Shuthmili started to say.
“Another funny joke,” said Cherenthisse. “We need to talk to the Empress.”
The throne room of the God-Empress was vast and high-vaulted, and it altered itself constantly at the will of the goddess, expanding and relaxing like the ribs of a great animal. That day it was full of a mist, rising from the far end of the room and rolling over the dais. It smelled of ozone, like the air after a thunderstorm.
In it there were only two fixed and immutable things.
The first, set into the base of a pillar, was a tall cylinder of thick green glass. It was full of salt water, and suspended upside down in it was the body of the pretender Belthandros Sethennai. Its chest rose and fell as if it was asleep. Tubes and nozzles ran in and out of its mouth and nose, winding away into the fabric of the palace. They had retrieved Sethennai’s body from the sarcophagus, back in Saar-in-Tachthyr, and it was now preserved here as a warning against defiance.
The second was the throne itself, a huge half-graceful fan of green chrysoprase. The God-Empress sat upon it, tapping her toe restlessly against her shin. The Mantle wafted around her, almost invisible, like a breeze made solid.
The God-Empress wore an enormous dress of layered translucent silk, every layer embroidered in gold so that she seemed to move within a gigantic mechanism, a cloud shot through with lightning. Beneath the Mantle, her dark hair fell to her waist, combed to the texture of silk and weighted with pendants of jade.
Her features were as lovely and as tranquil as ever, illuminating the crude vessel with divine power. As always, her lips were serenely curved, half in melancholy and half in sweetness. In these fifteen years, she had scarcely changed. Like stone, she did not age or yield. Like stone, the vessel had taken on a shimmering, translucent quality, hard and bright and impermeable. She had torn out the vessel’s gold tusk and replaced it with another tooth cut from a single immense diamond. Even the scar that curved down her face looked more like a flaw in a jewel than the remains of a wound.
The whole throne room was full of her presence, a dark and stinging radiance, a weight and pressure like that of oceans. A mortal secretary stood at a safe distance at a lectern. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was thin, riddled with purplish veins. Spending too much time too close to the Empress could have this effect on mortal flesh, as though her very skin breathed out poison.
“Approach,” said the Empress. Her voice crackled and sang with power. They knelt before her, Cherenthisse clutching her hand to her chest in a gesture of fealty.
“Well?” said the Empress. She raised a hand, bidding them rise. “Something troubles thee, First Commander?”
When Shuthmili used Cherenthisse’s title, it was an insult. Hearing it on the Empress’ lips more than made up for that. Cherenthisse had never hoped to rise so high. Every time the Empress spoke it aloud, Cherenthisse knew her true purpose again. Out of the dust of Echentyr new glory would rise.
Even so, it was uncomfortable to explain what had happened in the isolation wing, and Shuthmili—of course—remained silent throughout, letting Cherenthisse stumble through it.
When she had finished, the Empress considered them steadily.
“A catalogue of errors we do not expect from either of you,” she said. “It is just as well that we had no further use for the Qarsazhi heretics.”
“Majesty, there’s something I had wondered,” said Shuthmili, sounding not at all abashed. Cherenthisse darted a glance of disapproval at her, but the Empress inclined her head. “The presence of a Vigil Adept is a serious security breach. Could that have been the mole we’ve been dealing with? If Vigil was relaying information to Qarsazh, the Inquisitorate may have been passing it on to agitators in Ringtown.”
Cherenthisse cursed her silently. Now Cherenthisse would get all the blame for the fiasco, and Shuthmili all the credit for the insight.
“It’s not possible,” said Cherenthisse. “Of course it’s a security breach, but how would a prisoner in the isolation wing have known anything about our supply lines? What were we questioning them about? Qarsazhi magic?”
“The heretics have some limited capacity to manipulate space, as you two saw when you let them escape,” said the Empress. “We had hoped it might be turned to the good of the great work. To no avail, however.”
The great work was another phrase that sent shivers down Cherenthisse’s spine. That was something Shuthmili could not steal from her. Cherenthisse had known and believed even before the Mantle of Divinity had been restored. Whatever Shuthmili might say about her loyalty and commitment, she was just a tagalong.
“Thank you, Majesty,” said Cherenthisse. “I can’t see any reason why the interrogators would tell a prisoner anything about Citadel logistics. The most they might have transmitted back to Qarsazh is the fact that we’re interested in their magic. That can hardly have been a surprise to the Inquisitorate.”
“We have been pursuing our own leads on the security breach,” said the God-Empress. That was news to Cherenthisse. To her immense satisfaction, she saw it was news to Shuthmili too, and that she looked hurt by it. It was past time for Shuthmili to learn that the Empress did not have the luxury of trusting anybody. “We do not believe the Qarsazhi prisoners were involved. However, you have given us much to consider, and we appreciate your candour.”
They both bowed and murmured their thanks, and the conversation moved on to the arrangements for the Midsummer Feast.
“My apologies, Majesty,” said Shuthmili, as they were leaving. “I hope Cherenthisse and I have not offended—”
“Upset not thyself, Shuthmili,” said the Empress. Her smile softened a little, and she reached out to brush a hand against Shuthmili’s cheek. Cherenthisse’s fists tightened with the usual resentment. “All is well. All is in hand. Until this security breach is remedied, we prefer to keep our silence on certain matters. But thou art ever dear to me.”
Shuthmili made the appropriate expressions of gratitude, but Cherenthisse had not missed the moment of hesitation, the flicker of some other strange emotion that preceded it. This was exactly why Cherenthisse did not trust her. She just had the look of someone who was hiding something, and always had.
Cherenthisse shouldered her way down the corridor, with Shuthmili following in her wake. The Lignite Citadel wasn’t usually so resistant, not to the First Commander of the Thousand Eyes, but when the Empress was in a difficult mood, the currents of space and time swirled wildly, and it took sustained effort even to walk in a straight line.
The inhabitants of the Citadel had come up with their own ways of dealing with it. At a crossroads they passed a group of mortal clerks in pairs, neat and serious in their green uniforms, all clinging to a rope that stretched ahead of them down a spiralling passageway.
At another intersection was a pillar of fossil-stone tagged with chalk sigils like tidemarks. Waiting for them at the bottom of the pillar was Shuthmili’s secretary, full of some news. He saluted them both, but he clearly hadn’t expected to run into Cherenthisse.
The secretary—Keleiros Lenarai—was a pretty Tlaanthothei whose anxious, delicate features were framed by a cascade of dark ringlets. Cherenthisse happened to know that anxiety masked a sharp eye and a very healthy self-interest. The boy had been reporting privately to her on Shuthmili’s activities for a few months now.
Keleiros looked from Shuthmili to Cherenthisse and back again. Shuthmili raised her eyebrow.
“Did you have something to report, Keleiros?”
Whatever it was, she did not want Cherenthisse to hear it, but Cherenthisse had swallowed more than enough of Shuthmili’s superiority for one day, and Keleiros knew which side his bread was buttered. She leant against the wall and waited.
“Ma’am—yes—I’m so sorry to interrupt you, but I assumed you’d want to be notified. One of your staff has been arrested, ma’am. They think he’s been involved with the security breaches. Niranthos Charossa.”
“Ah,” said Shuthmili. Someone who knew her less well wouldn’t have noticed the little twitch of startled disquiet. Shuthmili hated to be taken by surprise. “That’s a pity. He was a good worker.”
Cherenthisse was quietly pleased. If they really had apprehended the source of the leaks, that was one more problem off her desk. And she had to admit to a certain pleasure at learning it was one of Shuthmili’s people who was to blame. After fifteen years, Cherenthisse had given up hope that Shuthmili might ever get easier to deal with, but she could do with bringing down to earth a bit. She thought her position as the Empress’ Hand made her untouchable. It was about time she learned things could go wrong for her.
“If someone has been leaking information from my office, I need to know how much and to whom,” said Shuthmili to Keleiros. Cherenthisse could have laughed at that. The Hand clearly had no idea that Keleiros himself was Cherenthisse’s own man. “Tell Bakranai I would like to be present for the interrogation.”
“That’s highly irregular,” Cherenthisse cut in. She was sure Shuthmili wanted to use the opportunity to try and smooth things over, to make herself look less culpable for Charossa’s betrayal. “Bakranai won’t allow it.”
“Bakranai is an idiot,” said Shuthmili. “Niranthos Charossa is quite diligent, but he does not have the initiative to do something like this on his own. Someone will have directed him. If we have an opportunity to find out who that is, we can’t afford to pass it up.”