CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Snow was falling in Mirukad, the first snow of late autumn. Fat, wet flakes settled on the streets and rooftops. In the brightness of early morning, the new snow lent such beauty to the old port town that Adred found himself enjoying the view, despite the chilliness.

He watched the falling snow through the window of his second-floor room at an inn outside the center of the city, and meanwhile he periodically stoked his fireplace, whistled a tune, and packed his belongings. It was two days after the Celebration of Perpetual Grace, and Adred felt that he had stayed long enough in Mirukad. He was in much better spirits than he had been when he had left his friends in Sulos. He had seen the sights; he had talked with friendly strangers in taverns and in the sellers’ stalls. He had bought himself a new pair of boots and for the first time in his life had trimmed his beard and mustache—both now sufficiently full to require daily attention. He had bought Orain more material than she could possibly use, some very fine cloth, and, for Galvus, two books. He had even found a gift for Mantho: an exquisitely carved figurine that he knew his friend would add proudly to a collection that contained some of the finest—and rarest—miniature sculptures in the world.

When his things were packed, Adred finished dressing and took his breakfast downstairs in the serving room. He was in a light mood, so he joked with the woman who brought his meal, the innkeeper’s wife, a portly woman, friendly and talkative. Adred settled his bill with the house master and asked him whether one of the man’s sons could porter his belongings down to the wharfside later in the morning. The innkeeper assured him that, yes, one of the lazy good-for-nothings could be hired for the purpose.

After finishing his breakfast, Adred walked down to the docks. He might have taken a carriage, but he preferred to stroll. The day was chill, but there was only a slight wind. He noticed few others on the street, however, and many who passed him had indeed hired carriages. Adred wondered if civilization had brought with it distaste for the cold and for being out of doors.

When he came to the docks, he entered one of the city offices and inquired about buying passage on the next sailing to Sulos. The young clerk behind the counter was surprised by the request.

“To Sulos?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Adred told him, imagining that perhaps this one hadn’t been at his job for very long. “You know—south of here? In Kendia? Rather a large city—lots of ships, quite a few tall buildings.”

“Sir, excuse me—we aren’t permitted to release any passages or shipments to Sulos until we hear what’s happened with the revolt there, sir.”

Adred missed a breath. “The revolt?”

“You haven’t heard?”

Fear gripped him. The room blurred. “What revolt? In Sulos?”

Now the clerk seemed to become as frightened as Adred. “Two days ago. I’m sorry. We thought everyone knew. Everyone was in the streets two days ago down there, on Celebration. Half the city’s burned; they killed the governor—”

There was a second clerk in the office, an elderly bureaucrat who, overhearing all of this, now moved from his desk farther back and approached the counter. “Careful, now,” he cautioned the younger man. “We don’t have all the facts yet.”

“Tell me what’s happened!” Adred said. “Please, please. I have friends there!”

“Sir, we don’t have all the facts yet. People without jobs started some trouble. We’ve heard that there were fires set.”

“How many people have been killed?”

“We don’t know, so don’t—”

“I have friends down there!” Adred exclaimed. “They’re like family to me!”

“Sir, I understand. I have friends, too. We’re waiting, is all we can do.”

“When will ships sail again? From here?”

“I can’t say. We can sell you passage on—”

“Is there a way overland?”

“Sir—calm down, please, sir.”

Why hadn’t he heard before now? All of those people in the taverns, in the streets, yesterday, the day before—had they been discussing it? Had he simply not been paying attention while shopping for cloth and toys? Why hadn’t he overheard?

He looked up again. “Can’t you at least—”

The door to the office opened, a cold wind blew in, and the clerks looked up. An old sailor entered, stamping snow from his boots. He slammed the door behind him and tramped to the counter, shaking his feet. He reached beneath his long overcoat to produce thick envelopes of paper, slapped them on the counter, and began to untie them.

“In from Port Aru,” he announced. “My mate’s unloading now. You’ll want to check with the—”

Adred was staring impatiently at him; he knew that Aru was a small city farther north, but perhaps the captain had heard—

The older clerk noticed. He interrupted the ship’s master with a curt, “News from Sulos?”

“None.” He shook his head quickly and noticed Adred. “You don’t want to be going there, do you?” he asked.

“If I can board a ship, yes. Yes, I do.”

“They went crazy down there, lad. Set fire to the place. I been to Sulos a thousand times. Had some land there. Was going to settle there after a few more boatloads. I expect it’s gone, now.”

Adred left. He moved up the street, numb. The wind had come up; it blew in off the waves, attacking him, sending icy rain into his hair and the back of his neck. He began to shiver uncontrollably; tears started hotly in his eyes, and he fought to hold them back.

Name of the gods, Sulos burned to the ground? He had to get back there! How could he get back there?

* * * *

“Oh, there’s a sea to the north,

And a sea to the west,

But the see I love best

Is to see her…un—dressed!”

He cackled with laughter. Drunk. Old dog. Glanced over at Galvus and nudged the youth with his elbow.

“Understand?” he chuckled. “‘Sea’? ‘See’? Understand?”

Galvus looked toward Orain, who was sitting across from him, huddled by their open fire and stirring the soup pot. Trying to keep warm. Not that it was much of a fire. The wind might have whipped it to life, but instead, as damp as it was, the flames had been reduced to warm coals.

The old gentleman, an aristocrat born, pulled at his wine jug (where he had gotten hold of it, Galvus had no idea) and laughed and laughed at himself and at the lad beside him. Galvus looked from his mother to their makeshift tent; it was ragged and would need to be redraped soon, and tied down again before they could spend another night in it.

Another night.…

That tent was as wet as the field that was their home now. It kept the wind from them, or the worst of the wind, when it picked up, but that mattered little. Galvus was already soaked through, and had been for three days.

Beyond the tent, the field. Dusk was settling, and the enormous crowd of outcasts, homeless, frightened—reduced to senselessness, many of them, by their lack of plush cushions and servants, their warmth, their fine clothes—was becoming an indistinguishable knot of shadow, a lump against the high darkness of the purple sky and the gray of the wind-combed field.

Orain glanced at her son. “We might as well eat it now,” she whispered to him. Her voice was hoarse. “Are you hungry? You should eat.”

He shrugged.

“Galvus?”

“No,” he said tiredly. “I’m not very hungry.” But he pulled his arms out from under the blanket he had wrapped around him and extended an army-issue ration cup he had been given. Orain dipped it into the warm pot of soup and returned it. Steam lifted into Galvus’s face and made him blink; he sipped, but the broth was hotter than he’d expected. It faintly burned his tongue.

Next to him, the aristocrat began another verse. Galvus tightened.

“Don’t,” Orain cautioned him, nodding quickly to the man. “He’s not as strong as we are. He needs to do it this way.”

Galvus frowned and continued to sip.

At the sound of an approaching horse, he looked up. An officer, surveying them.

“Everything all right?”

Galvus nodded but jerked his head toward the drunk.

The soldier smiled. “We’ll get you back into the city tomorrow,” he promised. “Or the day after. Soon, now.”

“What about the rebels?” Galvus asked him. “The governor’s house?”

The soldier’s expression turned grim. “We’ve sealed off the square,” he answered Galvus, somewhat curtly. “But the rest of the city’s safe.”

In order to invite no more unwanted questions then, he reined away, asking the next clot of huddled exiles, “Everything all right? Anyone sick? Anyone need an extra blanket?”

Galvus continued to sip.

Orain sneezed.

All around them sounded the low din, the whining, the complaints.

While inside the city, Galvus thought, the corpses were piled as high as monuments, out here, these purebloods and gentry, now that the shock had passed, complained about trivialities, small injustices, leaks in their tents, the boredom.

Complained—because they were still alive.

The dead weren’t complaining of boredom, he wanted to tell them.

It disgusted him. Disgusted him to his core.

He turned to the drunk and growled angrily, “Shut up!”

But the old man laughed at him, invited him to sing with him, and, after another long swallow of Silesian ale, continued with:

“Oh, she gives me a wink

As she passes. I think

With what pleasure I’d sink.…”

Orain patiently reminded Galvus again, with a smile, to remain temperate.

But Galvus now was concerned with more than the stupid, drunken aristocrat. Other thoughts had taken hold of him.

That he was nephew to the king, that his mother was sister-in-law to the crown, neither of them had mentioned. They preferred it thus. There was far too much potential danger in their identities, and they had no reason to flaunt their station.

Galvus looked upon the walls of Sulos and, in that moment, by the dark light of the night and his reflective, embittered spirit, saw those walls as the enclosures of a trap, saw them as the fortifications of an enigmatic maze, saw them as an illusion, and a lie.

And he had no reason to think of himself as a liar, and he had never been a friend of illusions or deliberate injustices, or traps.…

* * * *

Evening had fallen, and King Elad was at supper with the Imbur Ogodis, Princess Salia, and members of the Athadian court, when Colonel Lutouk’s messenger arrived at the steps of the palace. A Khamar, as appalled by the man’s exhaustion and as by his dire news, conducted him inside and interrupted Elad’s fete with a whispered, “Your crown, we have grave news from Sulos.”

Elad excused himself with much formality and, as he had been interrupted while telling the Lady Salia a particularly humorous story involving himself as a boy, he warned the Khamar underbreath, as they exited, that this grave word from Sulos had better be such that it required his immediate attention.

However, the king had himself ordered the palace guard to interrupt him on the moment whenever news sufficiently critical required it. Elad’s mood therefore changed instantly when, following the Khamar into a private antechamber, he heard from Lutouk’s messenger why the man had worn down three horses to reach the capital this evening.

Elad moved to a chair and sat still and silent for a long, terrible moment. His listened to his own breath and to his quick heart. Then, emotional, his voice uncertain, he asked several precise questions of the rider. As the breathless messenger told what he knew, Elad insisted upon specifics to get as complete an understanding as he could of what had transpired.

At last, King Elad told the rider to get himself to the kitchen for food and to take his rest. The messenger thanked him, saluted him with fist over heart, and followed the Khamar outside, where a waiting servant escorted him to the kitchen.

Then, as the Khamar waited, Elad took a sheet of paper from those on the table, opened an ink gourd, and composed a careful message to Colonel Lutouk of the Fourth Regiment in Sulos. Heating a bar of wax at an oil lamp, Elad affixed his royal seal to the document, rolled up the parchment, tied it with a golden ribbon, and placed it in a wooden holder.

Standing, he handed the wooden tube to the guard. “This,” he ordered the Khamar “—immediately—by your fastest rider, to Lutouk only. But if he is dead, then to the acting consul, or to his second. There is to be no failure.”

The Khamar slapped his chest. “It is done, your crown.”

As that one left the room, Elad took up a large bell on the table and rang it loudly. Within a heartbeat, a servant entered from the hallway, followed by others—and by Abgarthis, an expression of curiosity on his face.

“Rouse council immediately,” was Elad’s direction to the servants. “Every one of them. We hold session now.”

The servants went as Abgarthis faced Elad.

“What is it?” the adviser asked.

Elad said nothing, only looked at him with an expression of the deepest possible rage.

* * * *

As the councilors entered their chamber, singly and in pairs and groups, Abgarthis made certain that the imbur and his daughter were seated comfortably to one side of the dais that held Elad’s chair. Whispers and low voices carried with them as the councilors found their places, wondering why Elad had ordered his council to meet so irregularly. Elad himself sat on his throne looking downward at nothing in particular, one fist on his chin, in a slumping posture. He looked up as the last of the robes settled in. Several chairs remained empty, the result of his purges.

Elad frowned at the thought of further purges yet to come.

At last, as every face there looked toward him, Elad leaned forward, glanced at his scribes to make certain that they were alert to him, and began.

“Upon the dawn, I am ordering the Third Legion West under General Vardorian to Sulos. Until Vardorian can return from the frontier, I am ordering Colonel Sildum of the Third Regiment to move east to reinforce Colonel Lutouk’s forces. The Third and Fourth regiments are to seize and restrain any rebel forces found within the city and execute anyone—anyone—who resists questioning or arrest. They are to quarter themselves in Sulos until further word from me. In the morning, we will reconvene this council and read into the record my precise orders to General Vardorian and to Colonel Lutouk and my reasons for taking this military action of extreme emergency. I have already sent a rider to Sulos with specific orders for Colonel Lutouk to proceed as he sees fit until the arrival of Colonel Sildum.

“Council, rebels have taken the city; they have slaughtered at the very least several hundred citizens; they have targeted the business classes and those with property. They have assassinated Governor Jakovas, and— Quiet! Silence!”

Elad gave the men in that chamber the moment they needed to digest the fact of Jakovas’s murder and of the occupation of the city by its own rebellious citizens. He looked at Ogodis, at Salia—and he noticed that Salia in particular seemed impressed with him.

Abgarthis, for his part, watched Elad until the king met his stare, and then asked, “Your crown…what of the royal family?”

Elad told him and the others there, “We have no word of them as yet.”

Lord Bumathis rapped on the table before him and stood. “My lord…if we may ask…who from the palace is in that city?”

“Princess Orain and her son.”

Voices rose, making noise like the surf at tide, with mutterings and whispers throughout the room.

Bumathis promised, “I will pay priests to pray for them.”

Others in the council chamber voiced similar assurances.

Elad raised a hand. “Then I give you my gracious thanks, Lord Bumathis. Now…,” the king began again. “They have assassinated Governor Jakovas, and they now occupy the governor’s mansion. My orders to Colonel Lutouk, and to our legions, are to take those revolutionaries in the mansion and execute them. I open the room to comment.”

For a moment—silence. Then, a loud voice to Elad’s left: “Kill them!”

That sentiment was repeated quickly and more and more loudly, until the council chamber was filled with a chorus of vengeful men: Kill them. Kill the rebels. Kill every one of them. Kill, kill, kill them.

* * * *

Word spread rapidly of the rebellion in Sulos. Rumors that traveled from city to city gave the impression that a revolution had come at last. Spontaneous demonstrations and riots broke out in every major city of Athadia, from Bessara to Sugat on the coast as well as in Isita, Himosis, Irkad, and other inland cities. These reactions, although quickly and forcefully put down, made plain to Elad a situation that neither he nor any of his council had ever suspected: that the episodes of discontent that had surfaced recently were indications of widespread, deep-seated anger with the throne and the government’s economic mismanagement.

In Sulos, Lutouk received King Elad’s orders a week after the revolt, on the day of the Holy Observance of the Ascension and the Deliverance. He had, over the past several days, entered into a dialogue with the rebels. He had listened to their grievances and accepted from revolutionary representatives a list of demands to be presented to the king.

Colonel Lutouk took these grievances seriously; he did not wish to respond arbitrarily, to heedlessly punish violence with further violence. Long years of service in the imperial army had taught him much, had made of him a resourceful, understanding leader who appreciated the use of many types of tools and strategies. His hope now was that, because a rational issue was at stake, those involved on both sides would act rationally. Crowds may bolt like a herd of animals, and the powerful may react by throwing thunderbolts at them, but in the best of circumstances, although the irrational in people always waits like an animal to jump out and cause harm—

Lutouk’s hope now what that the king would act rationally. For Elad to presume that this rebellion was a problem to be put down peremptorily, as though these rebels were no more than angry children (as the king indicated in the language of his order) was, for Lutouk, a glaring misapprehension of the facts. He had long ago learned the truth of an old aphorism common in Galsia, where he had been born: Blood is not washed clean with more blood.

Still, he understood, on the afternoon he received his orders from Elad’s rider, that the legions on their way north would arrive soon. It had taken the messenger three and a half days overland to reach Lutouk, and a ship could make the sailing much faster than that. Immediately, therefore, Lutouk met with representatives from the mansion and, after making assurances that he would do all that he could to protect their lives, informed the rebels of Elad’s decision. He appealed to them to give themselves up to the mercy of the throne.

Although they initially scoffed at this proposal, the rebels knew that they could not remain indefinitely in the mansion. Already those outside, who had been managing to get them food and other supplies, had been discovered and arrested. Common sense told them that, even if their leaders were executed, they could go to their deaths nobly. And likely some of them, the least of them, would be spared. The king would not execute the children here in the mansion, surely. And after serving their terms in prison or in exile, these survivors would remain alive to carry on the essence of the revolt—educating others and continuing the demands for reforms and justice.

That afternoon, therefore, they gave themselves up peacefully, relinquishing their makeshift weapons to Lutouk’s soldiers, then waiting, defenseless, in the cold mansion as the late day darkened.

Colonel Sildum’s regiment of reinforcement arrived that evening, and Sildum presented to Colonel Lutouk his current orders.

Lutouk confronted a dilemma. Angered, he felt hot tears of rage rise within him. Standing in the Shemtu Square, just outside the former office building that now served as his command headquarters, Lutouk silently read King Elad’s orders, reread them, and showed to Colonel Sildum of the Third Regiment a starkly cold expression.

Then, to the embarrassment of the soldiers present, Lutouk crossed the Shemtu Square and, beneath the eyes of every badge and shield, spoke on familiar terms with the leaders of the revolt, who had come outside to meet him.

“I swear to you, before the eyes of the prophet, that I am ashamed this day to be an Athadian. Despite the violence you have done, and despite the long years of violence done to you, I truly believed that debate could be managed. Our king does not wish this. Your deaths will increase the rebellion, I’m sure—not end it. But I am sworn to my badge of command, and I am bound, as acting governor of this province, to honor the direct orders of the throne. King Elad has ordered that you be executed immediately. All of you.”

The wind blew; the snow fell; the icy cold wrapped around them. Not one voice of pain or anguish, sorrow or regret came from that crowd.

One of them asked Lutouk, “Even the children?”

“All of you,” Lutouk answered him.

The man who spoke said, “Then tell our king that, sooner or later, now that he has begun this, he will have to kill everyone in the empire. He is alone.”

That was all.

Colonel Lutouk turned from them and returned across the square.

To Colonel Sildum: “I will do this, but once I have done it, I am resigning my commission.”

“This is insubordination,” Sildum informed him. “This is treason.”

“It is not. I will fulfill my orders from my king. And then I will be done with this.”

Sildum, a broad-chested man whose armor strained to contain his bulk, spat into the ice near Lutouk’s laced boots.

Colonel Lutouk took out his sword and ordered the first and second platoons of Company Wolf to cross the square and fulfill the crown’s directive. He himself held his head low, refusing by that gesture to witness what he regarded as an intolerable injustice.

But his officers and their men entered the mansion, escorted all of the rebels outside, and forced them to kneel in the ice and snow. The parents held their children close to them for as long as possible. As the work began, those watching from windows and roofs overlooking the Shemtu Square raised loud cheers and prayers of thanks.

For despite Lutouk’s Galsian optimism, people seldom do act rationally, even when the issue at stake is itself a rational one.

When it was done, Colonel Lutouk tore the badges from his coat and removed his rings and handed them, with his sword, to Colonel Sildum, telling him, “Return these to Elad. I hereby renounce my rank and station and am outside the army of this empire. Any money due me, tell this boy-king—” Lutouk considered for a moment “—tell Elad to distribute it all to the families of Athad’s ghettos.”

Perilously close to treachery with those words, Lutouk turned and, in the evening’s bitter cold, mounted his horse and left the city, returning to his villa beyond the walls of Sulos.

Through the night, by the light of bonfires built in the square, the men of Lutouk’s command, now under the direction of Colonel Sildum, fulfilled the last of King Elad’s orders: they gathered the heads of the one hundred twenty-four rebels executed in the square, disinterred four hundred fifty-one additional corpses previously buried in a common grave outside the city walls and decapitated those bodies, then carted the gory trophies to one of the ships that had been sent from the capital.

By morning, the deck of the war galley was filled from gunwale to gunwale with the heads, and by Elad’s direct order, a mooring line was stretched from its bow to the stern of a second galley. As the tide went out and the winds lifted, this flagship steered into the ocean. Crowded because of its double crew, it began the slow, gruesome task of towing King Elad’s cargo southwest down the coast, to the capital.