The Orchid Throne Read online

  Harden or die was the lesson of Vurgmun.

  “Conrí. My king.” She bowed, stiff in her armor, helm tucked beneath her arm. I bit down on the reflex to tell her not to call me that. She wouldn’t listen. She returned my scowl with her fierce, flesh-eating grin and paced alongside. “Take the Tower of the Sun. Who’d have thought we’d make it this far?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She was the one whose faith had never flagged. Instead she gave me a piercing look. “Did you sleep? You don’t look like it.”

  I nodded, not planning to waste breath on convincing her. “Casualties?” I asked.

  She lifted a shoulder, rotating her sword arm in a half shrug, half reiteration of the pitched battle. “Ten percent or so. Mostly imperial soldiers and fat slugs of the governor’s staff. No great loss.”

  For whatever reason, her voice had survived better than most, though the nightingale soprano she’d been famed for was forever lost. She spoke with a whiskey burr that might give a sultry sound to the old songs, but the world would never know. Sondra refused to sing ever again, saying that girl had died. I understood that. Our younger selves had all died in the mines, and we’d emerged as hard-shelled but empty versions of those children.

  I didn’t care for her cavalier attitude, however. Sondra’s black humor had helped her survive, but killing innocents was no joke. I didn’t have much in the way of morals, but I didn’t kill without offering the choice. We always gave them the opportunity to change loyalties. The accountants and secretaries that served the imperial governors wore chains the same as any of us, just invisible ones that imprisoned them at desks. Insane that this war of ours required so many to suffer and perish, while the man who caused it all dined on delicacies.

  “We killed staff?” I asked, growling the question I’d hoped to keep neutral.

  “Us or them,” she replied with impatience.

  “Fat slugs were a threat?”

  She scowled. “You’d be surprised at the stings some vermin conceal beneath their jeweled robes.”

  I said nothing more about it. It was done. No sense in reviving a stale argument, and I wouldn’t want to trigger any of her old memories. Aside from a decided tendency to kill certain men in the most painful way possible if they reminded her of the wrong sort, Sondra kept her most vicious thirst for vengeance mostly under control. We all had our festering wounds and managed them the best way we could. The escaped slaves and other victims that couldn’t wrestle their demons … Well, most of them had imploded—or exploded—early on. The ones who managed to keep going I treated like packages of vurgsten: carefully handled and pointed only at the enemy. Sondra included.

  “Any sign of the former king’s bloodline?” I asked, hoping to steer her away from brooding down a dark path. We never found any descendants of the former ruling families, no matter whose realm it had once been. As much as Anure scoffed at the old ways and sneered at the superstitions of blood ties to the land, he’d been thorough in killing or imprisoning the old families. Still, I always asked, some part of me unable to believe they’d all been obliterated. Part of me childishly longing to restore rightness to the world that my adult self knew was forever lost.

  “Nowhere to be found,” Sondra replied. “Conflicting rumors regarding them—some say dead, others say fled. Could be even worse than that, you know. The young princesses would have fetched a high price in the underground flesh markets, if Anure didn’t simply keep them for himself.” Sondra shrugged in a show of callousness far thicker than mine. “That trail would be years cold. Can’t save everyone,” she added.

  It might as well be our credo. If I had a crest—which would be a set of broken chains like those that had choked me and killed Father—the cynical motto would fit perfectly. But I hadn’t sunk that far. Not quite yet. “That doesn’t mean we won’t try,” I said, and it came out as a growl again, not only because of my sore throat.

  Sondra flashed me a surprised glance. I shook my head, dismissing her concern. Not enough sleep, that I’d spoken that aloud. But she inclined her head in agreement. “That’s why we saved the ex-imperial-governor”—she emphasized that with relish—“for you to interrogate. Though I may have softened him up for you.” She smiled, not at all nicely. I restrained a sigh, almost feeling sympathy for the bastard. Hopefully she hadn’t terrorized the man past coherent speech.

  “And Ambrose?” I asked.

  “Found the alchemist’s library and workroom in the tower.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder with some glee, a vicious triumph in what had once been a flirtatious gesture, sweeping her hand toward the golden tower that stood out against the sky.

  “And no,” Sondra added, “before you ask. We didn’t have to kill the alchemist. To all appearances, the place has been abandoned for years. Probably dead along with all the other magic workers. Ambrose says he’ll send for you when he has information—or a new insight into the future.”

  Oh joy. I only hoped it would be useful information, like the kind that would have me taking a force to kill Anure.

  “Take the king through there, Bert.” Sondra pointed as we arrived at a narrow tunnel. She handed me a flask that contained the honeyed herb infusion Ambrose brewed to soothe my throat long enough to last through a speech. “Better entrance for the rabble to first glimpse their new and forever king. I’ll guard the rear.”

  Bert. That was the boy’s name. I made a mental note before throwing Sondra a reproving look. “These people you call rabble will soon be your companions at arms.”

  “You might change your mind once you see them,” she retorted, adding a crooked smile.

  She was trying to cheer me up. Which meant I’d failed to lead. So I drank deeply of the unpleasant brew, then toasted her with it, trying to appear as if I savored this victory. She saluted me, looking relieved, so I’d been at least partially successful. I followed young Bert through the shadowed portico and into the bright sun of the open stage. Trumpets blasted, the ringing tones encouraging me to feel as majestic as they proclaimed. My officers ringed the stage at attention, all clean and neatly attired. They saluted in unison, a striking maneuver, one we’d practiced many times—though we’d never before defeated a city this size—and I acknowledged them curtly, my role in this elaborate staging.

  We all know that any performance requires a costume.

  The leather cloak I’d stitched together with my own hands over many nights by the campfire streamed from my shoulders. No, it’s not made from the skins of my enemies, though that’s a useful rumor. The crown weighed heavy on my brow. The crown is a deliberate inversion of tradition. Made of silver, we looted it from minor nobility who’d thrown in with Anure and thus kept their lands and wealth. Until we relieved them of their greedy gains bought with the blood of the land and people they’d been supposed to protect.

  It had been one of the first estates we captured. The more minor the house, it seemed, the more elaborate the badges of office. When Sondra showed the crown to me, I’d rejected it immediately as too gaudy and uncomfortable. She insisted I had to have one—and when did I plan to find another?—so I’d conceded as the easier path. But I’d wrapped the sparkling thing in leather strips left over from the cloak, to at least help keep it on my head. Also, we’d needed the funds from the jewels more than I needed a flashy crown, so we prized those out to be sold for supplies. I’d rather liked the gaping holes left behind, as they seemed appropriately symbolic.

  Kara had been the one to suggest filling the holes with polished black stones from Vurgmun. We all had our supplies of them that we’d collected—bitter souvenirs of a time best forgotten—so we’d spent an evening in someone’s looted salon, drinking their excellent contraband liquor, laughing at the fine joke as we refitted the broken crown with stones gathered by prisoners in the mines. The perfect crown for a king of convicts.

  And it was nothing like my father’s crown, which had been set with the jewels of Oriel, handed down for over a thousand years, a magical totem symbolic of the king�
��s connection to the realm. Anure had said from the beginning that magic didn’t exist and he proved it to be true by relentlessly destroying every aspect of it, merely symbolic or not. The crown was lost—along with the realm—and rumored to have been melted down to serve as part of the emperor’s chamber throne, where he shat his final insults to those who’d resisted imperial aggression.

  In the end, they were all empty symbols. Crowns and costumes. Magic, too, if it had ever been real. But I’d use whatever I must in order to win my vengeance and put the restless shades of my family and kingdom to rest at last.

  At center stage, I stopped, surveying the throng crowding the extensive escarpment below. As Sondra had snidely implied, they did not impress. The people looked ragged. Too thin and too poor for denizens of this prosperous capital city. Regardless, they looked better off than we had when we escaped the mines and taken our own lives back. I’ll never forget that first glimpse in the mirror, its too-bright reflection wiped free of dust. How that soft-faced boy I’d remembered had somehow swelled into a hard-faced monster of big bones and ropy muscle, a scarred wraith of burning anger.

  I’d avoided mirrors ever since. Judging by the uneasy silence of the crowd, their aghast faces as they stared at me, not much had changed. I forced down the insidious doubts, the brutal mockery of the overseers, the whispers of all the dead, my father’s lifeless and accusing gaze, my sister’s dying whimpers as the soldiers had at her.

  I raised my fists, though I hardly needed to silence the defeated and suspicious gathering. They waited, braced for the worst. No matter how many times I’d given this speech, unease crawled down my spine, and not just in anticipation of the discomfort of projecting my voice and speaking so many words in a row. I cleared my throat, hoping Ambrose’s brew had done its work.

  “People of Keiost.” My voice boomed out, raspy, but carrying reasonably well. “I offer you a new day, a new life, if you choose it. Though we have all passed through a long night of death, destruction, and misery, let us put that in the past and forge a new direction, together. I am the Slave King.” A murmur through the crowd at that, though surely they’d known. Perhaps they simply wondered at my audacity in owning the insult. “Your king. The ones who called themselves your imperial governors, the puppets of a distant and uncaring empire, they are dead or imprisoned. Your lives belong to me now. I grant each of you a single choice, which you must make today. Give me your allegiance—swear it by Sawehl and Ejarat—or give me your death.”

  Utter silence settled at the grim words. The words of a tyrant, of an autocrat as ruthless as Anure ever was. They didn’t know I had no choice in this, either. I was a fraudulent king. One without lands, castles, dungeons, or camps in which to keep prisoners. Even if I had, I could spare no one to serve as guards, much less supplies to sustain them. We struggled to preserve the supply chain back to Vurgmun, to keep possession of it and our precious supply of vurgsten.

  I couldn’t afford to have enemies at my back, as I faced entirely forward. A lethal arrow pointed at the emperor’s heart. Nothing else mattered.

  I let them absorb that blow, then offered the salve. “Give your loyalty to me and I will restore your kingdom to you. If any remain with the blood of the royal family of these lands, come forward to take your rightful place, to resume guardianship of your people and your realm. I have no desire to rule. I ask for your warriors, your supplies, your ships. Make your choice. You will leave this assembly as my vassal or as a body to be burned with those already dead.”

  Finished, I walked away. We’d refined the speech to the bare minimum, to spare my ravaged throat, but also because nothing more could be said. Through no fault of their own, these people faced the same choice as any prisoner. Submit or die.

  5

  There’s a trick to walking in the elaborate gowns of the Flower Court. The spine must be very straight, with shoulders centered over hips and chin tucked slightly so that the point of the skull aims at the sky. Imagine standing under a waterfall so that the cool torrent flows into your head, through the column of your neck and down your spine to fill your legs. My teachers made the practice into an art form that is nearly a religion, complete with the requisite philosophical mantras. That particular lovely image was meant to teach me to carry the immense weight in the legs, rather than in my fragile back.

  A woman’s strength is in her legs, after all.

  Also the chin tuck is critical to balancing the wig and, for me, the crown. And lest you think the brackets at hips and shoulder are simply frames to display the extra jewel-and flower-studded veils, cloaks, and trains, those work to distribute the load, too. Witness the maids of the villages carrying their yokes across their shoulders, buckets of milk or grain dangling from either end. Peasant laborer or queen, we are not so different. Except, perhaps, in the burdens we carry.

  I’d never be so trite as to wish to be one of those maids, but I sometimes envied the simplicity of their burdens.

  I confess I like the way court waits for me. One of my petty pleasures. When I enter a room, they fall silent in deference to my arrival. After that moment, they relax to some extent, as people familiar tend to do. Besides, I am not so exacting on such protocols. But in that first moment when I enter, they all hold their collective breath, ladies and gents alike keen to see my gown for the day.

  Tertulyn has regaled me with the court theories on how my attire and choice of flowers reflect my mood and thus the prospects for the petitions I’ll review and for the state of Calanthe at large. Political forecasting based on feminine frippery. There’s an underlying truth to it that the older generations remember—that as I am, so is Calanthe—but the younger think it’s all my whims.

  Courtiers even offer my ladies gifts to slip them hints ahead of time on what I plan to wear. I don’t know if they accept those gifts, as it doesn’t matter to me. I suppose it’s no more flimsy a magical theorem than casting stones or ripping open the innards of some innocent animal that deserved better than to be wasted so.

  Still, those courtiers would better spend their time in the study of science. The wizards are dead and the final truth is that no one can know the future because it is fundamentally unknowable. It doesn’t exist to be known because it has not yet occurred. Simple logic. It baffles me that anyone with wit can think otherwise.

  Besides, if I dressed according to my mood, today I’d be in dread gray with accents of days-old blood. Ha! Now there would be a fashion trend to set.

  The buzz of court echoed down the back hall, to which I descended each day via my private stairs. I paused there before stepping through the velvet curtains on the dais. A bit of showmanship never hurts. My father, regardless of his other faults, set the bar high there, and I emulate him. My most junior lady parted the curtains, and those courtiers watching for the movement with the sensitivity of the dependent sycophant—there is no more alert or more desperate creature under Ejarat’s gaze—dropped their conversations instantly, the ripples of silence spreading faster than through any other medium. My naturalists inform me that sound travels more quickly in water than in air, because fluid is denser than gas. I, myself, have observed that the air of court is the densest by far of any other human-occupied medium.

  A word. A reaction. All ricochet with blazing speed. The reverberations only catch up later, like the tardy thunder chasing after a lightning bolt long since vanished from the sky.

  One by one, my ladies preceded me into the bated anticipation of the throne room, in order of seniority and my favor, which amount to the same thing as I give rank to those I trust, and whom I like. A minor exercise of my royal muscles that at least smoothes my daily life. They are my vanguard, my frame, and my first and last line of defense. Never underestimate the blossoms of the Flower Court. We all have our thorns.

  I counted to three after the last of Tertulyn’s train swished through the doorway. Then I entered, pausing a moment, both to let the gossips assess my outfit—many of them actually jotting down surreptitious not
es on the bound pads of paper it had become fashionable to carry and tuck in the various hidden pockets of court garb—and for me to breathe in the tenor of court.

  Tense. Fearful, though not fully afraid. Anticipatory. Scanning the faces, I wondered how many had heard the news from Keiost. A few, perhaps, but not many.

  Taking small steps—not mincing, never mince, glide—I moved to my throne, pausing to rest my hand on Lord Dearsley’s forearm while Tertulyn and Calla arranged my train and skirts. After a decorous moment, I lowered myself onto the hard seat. Dearsley bowed and backed off the dais, though remaining close at hand. He’d been my father’s adviser before he was mine, and I valued his experience. For his part, he valued that I actually listened to him—for the most part—as my father had not at the end.

  With one last survey of the assembly, letting the moment stretch out, a small public flexing of my power—never let them forget they sit and stand with your permission—I finally lifted a hand, granting them the opportunity to rest themselves. Tertulyn lowered herself to a chair a step down, at my right hand, the others of my ladies on stools ranged below.

  The emperor’s emissary remained standing. Of course. He was never one to appear to follow my dictates in any way. At least he’d left his Imperial Guards at the rear of the assembly.

  Grandly garbed in the emperor’s somber grays and rigid gold armor, Syr Leuthar inclined his jaw ever so slightly but did not bow. He enjoyed special status in my court, and I pretended to be fine with it. My court, my palace, my kingdom even—my land in the most profound way—but all of that belonged to Anure, by force and fear. So did I and so did the emissary. It made us siblings, of a sort, both beholden to a mad parent more likely to starve us or deny our privileges than to care for or guide us. Like those siblings, too, we’d knife the other in the back if it meant our survival.