Within Rhulad’s head battles were being waged. Armies of will and desire contested with the raving forces of fear and doubt. The field was sodden with blood and littered with fallen heroes. Or into his skull some blinding fog had rolled in, oppressive as oblivion itself, and Rhulad wandered lost.
He sat as if carved, clothed in stained wealth, the product of a mad artist’s vision. Lacquered eyes and scarred flesh, twisted mouth and black strands of greasy hair. Sculpted solid to the throne to cajole symbols of permanence and imprisonment, but this madness had lost all subtlety-ever the curse of fascism, the tyranny of gleeful servility that could not abide subversion.
Look upon him, and see what comes when justice is. vengeance. When challenge is criminal. When scepticism is treason. Call upon them, Emperor! Your father, your mother. Call them to stand before you in this inverted nightmare of fidelity, and unleash your wrath!
‘Now,’ Rhulad said in a croak.
The Chancellor gestured to a guard near the side door, who turned in a soft rustle of armour and brushed his gauntleted hand upon the ornate panel. A moment later it opened.
All of this was occurring to the Errant’s left, along the same wall he leaned against, so he could not see what occurred then beyond, barring a few indistinct words.
Tomad and Uruth Sengar strode into the throne room, halting in the tiled circle. Both then bowed to their Emperor.
Rhulad licked his broken lips. ‘They are kin,’ he said.
A frown from Tomad.
‘Enslaved by humans. They deserved our liberation, did they not?’,
‘From the Isle of Sepik, Emperor?’ asked Uruth. ‘Are these of whom you speak?’
‘They were indeed liberated,’ Tomad said, nodding.
Rhulad leaned forward. ‘Enslaved kin. Liberated. Then why, dear Father, do they now rot in chains?’
Tomad seemed unable to answer, a look of confusion on his lined face.
‘Awaiting your disposition,’ Uruth said. ‘Emperor, we have sought audience with you many times since our return. Alas,’ she glanced over at Triban Gnol, ‘the Chancellor sends us away. Without fail.’
And so,’ Rhulad said in a rasp, ‘you proclaimed them guests of the empire as was their right, then settled them where? Why, not in our many fine residences surrounding the palace. No. You chose the trenches-the pits alongside debtors, traitors and murderers. Is this your notion of the Guest Gift in your household, Tomad? Uruth? Strange, for I do not recall in my youth this most profound betrayal of Tiste Edur custom. Not in the House of my family!’
‘Rhulad. Emperor,’ Tomad said, almost stepping back in the face of his son’s rage, ‘have you seen these kin of ours? They are… pathetic. To look upon them is to feel stained. Dirtied. Their spirits are crushed. They have been made a mockery of all that is Tiste Edur. This was the crime the humans of Sepik committed against our blood, and for that we answered, Emperor. That island is now dead.’
‘Kin,’ the Emperor whispered. ‘Explain to me, Father, for I do not understand. You perceive the crime and deliver the judgement, yes, in the name of Edur blood. No matter how fouled, no matter how decrepit. Indeed, those details are without relevance-they in no way affect the punishment, except perhaps to make it all the more severe. All of this, Father, is a single thread of thought, and it runs true. Yet there is another, isn’t there? A twisted, knotted thing. One where the victims of those humans are undeserving of our regard, where they must be hidden away, left to rot like filth.
‘What, then, were you avenging?
‘Where-oh where, Father-is the Guest Gift? Where is the honour that binds all Tiste Edur? Where, Tomad Sengar, where, in all this, is my will? I am Emperor and the face of the empire is mine and mine alone!’
As the echoes of that shriek rebounded in the throne room, reluctant to fade, neither Uruth nor Tomad seemed able to speak. Their grey faces were the colour of ash.
Triban Gnol, standing a few paces behind and to the right of the two Edur, looked like a penitent priest, his eyes down on the floor. But the Errant, whose senses could reach out with a sensitivity that far surpassed that of any mortal, could hear the hammering of that old man’s wretched heart; could almost smell the dark glee concealed behind his benign, vaguely rueful expression.
Uruth seemed to shake herself then, slowly straightening. ‘Emperor,’ she said, ‘we cannot know your will when we are barred from seeing you. Is it the Chancellor’s privilege to deny the Emperor’s own parents? The Emperor’s own blood? And what of all the other Tiste Edur? Emperor, a wall has been raised around you. A Letherii wall.’
