Page 36

CHAPTER

Thirty-Six

T HE DOOR TO Neema’s old room was still a bright, emerald green.

The colour was against Raven palace regulations. She’d thought herself daring for painting it, back then, and had braced herself for reprisals. None came, because no one gave a shit about this obscure, run-down part of the Raven palace, not even the people who lived in it.

So here it remained—a cheerful green splash of rebellion in a dank, gloomy corridor. This section of the palace was as neglected and unfashionable as it had been in Neema’s time. The majority of the rooms she passed were unoccupied. People would rather co-habit in a more popular block than have their own room here. And the bathroom, the communal bathroom… It wasn’t just the bins that had a cockroach problem.

Eight, she’d been happy here.

She’d been hoping to speak to Gaida’s servant Navril again, but couldn’t find him. After yesterday’s atmosphere of stunned grief, the second palace was in an equivocal mood. Some were out celebrating the Day of the Raven while others were preparing for the funeral. Corridors echoed, offices lay empty. She left a note instead, asking Navril for a list of everyone who had attended the afterparty—guests, staff and gatecrashers. The killer’s name, she was sure, would be among them.

She took a key from her pocket, borrowed from the deserted porter’s office. The door creaked as she opened it.

The room was even more cramped than she remembered. The same narrow bed, stripped bare. The same mattress by the looks of it. The balcony door, where Cain had pressed his face to the glass and left a smudge. The battered desk. Her old chair.

The air was stifling. Neema cracked open the balcony door, and let in a warm, nostalgic waft of rotten waste.

Don’t cry. That would be such a stupid reason to cry.

She put her hands on her hips and turned a circle. The shelves were bare, the cupboards empty—but that was no surprise. Apart from Gaida’s secret visits, the room had been unoccupied for months.

Neema checked the desk, opening each drawer in turn. Lifted the mattress. Nothing.

One place left to try.

That fateful day, when Vabras came knocking. Cain lying on the bed, talking about anything but the subject in hand, knowing it would tear them apart. I built a secret compartment in the skirting yesterday, I know you said not to bother, but maybe one day your life will be exciting enough to need one, and then you will thank me.

She kneeled down under the desk, ran her fingers along the skirting. Cain had replaced the entire section, from the corner to the balcony door. When he’d first constructed the compartment it had been seamless, but time and damp had warped the wood. Not enough to notice at a glance, but easily discovered by anyone who spent any time in here. As she kneeled down she saw greasy fingermarks where someone had prised it open.

Feeling hopeful now, she pressed the board with both hands and it clicked free from the inside. Beautiful craftsmanship from Cain. Sprawled on her back, her wrist bent at an awkward angle, she groped her way along the narrow cavity that lay between the interior wall and the exterior cladding. Her fingers caught on something. A folder, smeared with dust and cobwebs. She pulled it out, whispering please, please, please —and opened it up.

Inside lay a single sheet of paper, brittle with age. She read the top line. Month of the Fox, 1523…

“Hah!”

She’d found it. She’d found it! Yaan Rack’s report of their meeting at the Raven monastery. She scanned through it quickly.

Neema Lee is not worthy of a Raven name… insolent… ungrateful… solipsistic.

She laughed. His criticism had wounded her back then. Even two days ago he could have reached from the grave and ruined her life. But now? The only other person who knew about this was Gaida, and Gaida was dead.

She lowered the folder to her chest. After elation, a wave of sadness. Gaida must have been thrilled when she found this. A chance to destroy her old enemy, with her own father’s words . The perfect revenge. She must have thought it was a gift from the Raven. She must have danced around the room with glee. And it had come to nothing. She’d waited too long, died too soon.

Putting the folder aside, Neema searched the cavity again. She’d almost given up when she found it—lodged higher up, just within reach of her fingertips. A book, with its cover boards ripped off so it could be folded through the skirting gap. She worked it free, tearing the title page in the process.

“Sorry,” she said to the book, and pressed the torn segments together. A biography of the Bear abbot, Brother Lanrik. Gaida had scrawled her name along the top with a date. Month of Am, 1538 . Last winter—shortly after the abbot’s death.

Neema flipped through the pages and found a folded note wedged towards the centre. Her breath stopped. It was addressed to her, using a name few would recognise.

Desy. In case I don’t make it.

Neema read the words over again, tracing them with her thumb. Then she opened up the note. A list of queries and page references, also in Gaida’s hand. There would be answers here, ones Gaida was too afraid to set down in ink. Neema would have to puzzle it out for herself. Her own private Raven Trial.

She sat down at her old desk, a scholar again, the world fading as she sifted through the list.

p. 221 B’s “distinctive sword style”

p. 222 ref to B’s bold brushwork

p. 231 G!!

p. 237 CtM

pp. 339–40 final ref. to pers corresp from B to L. Confirm archives.

Gaida had double-ticked this last one to show that she’d followed it up.

Neema checked the pages in turn. B, as she’d expected, stood for Bersun—the first four notes all came from the same chapter detailing his friendship with Brother Lanrik, his abbot and mentor.

G, it transpired, was Gedrun—the emperor’s younger brother. Nothing more than a glancing mention, despite Gaida’s excited exclamation points. Its significance must be tied up with the other notes somehow. She flicked forward to page 237, and read the marked paragraph.

It is said that Brother Bersun was moved to tears but once in all his years at Anat-garra, when, during a Kind Festival feast, a delegation from the Monkey monastery entertained their hosts with a performance of the old Ketuan folk song “Come to the Mountain.”

The great Bear warrior, in visible distress, rose abruptly from his seat in the Great Hall and left without a word. Apologising to his guests the next day, he explained that the song had been a favourite of his late father. When the young Bersun Stour foreswore his family to follow the Way of the Bear it caused a terrible rift between father and son—one that never healed. That night in the Great Hall, as the ancient melody echoed from the Bear monastery’s thick stone walls, Bersun said he had felt his father’s spirit come to him “with love and understanding in his heart.” Never again, he said, would he dismiss the transforming power of music.

Neema lowered the book. CtM. “Come to the Mountain.”

At the opening ceremony Gaida said she had chosen the song after speaking with Bersun’s brother Gedrun. But clearly this was the passage that had inspired her. Why had she lied about that?

She moved on to the last note. Page 339—more asterisks in the margin. Bersun, now emperor of Orrun, sends Lanrik a short personal scroll, wishing his Brother Abbot a peaceful new year. May the Bear bless you and remain Hidden.

The winter of 1522–3 is a bitter one. The remote mountain fortress of Anat-garra is cut off until late spring. When a messenger finally makes it through, she delivers not only the scroll, but news of an attempted coup at the palace. Lord Andren Valit is slain, cut down by the emperor himself. But the price of victory is high. The emperor is grievously wounded. There are fears he will not survive.

Long had his holiness feared this day. When Andren was welcomed back to court in 1518, Brother Lanrik had written to the emperor to caution him. “Your majesty, we have spoken before on this matter. Lord Andren thinks himself the best of men, incapable of evil. Dangerous delusion! When he swears he is loyal to the throne he will mean it—even as he sinks his blade into your heart. ‘For the sake of Orrun!’ he will cry, when in truth he means, ‘For the sake of Andren Valit!’”

Well, Neema thought. His holiness had that one right. She moved on to the final marked paragraph. Gaida had underscored certain phrases in thick pencil.

The injuries to Emperor Bersun’s right hand left him incapable of writing his own correspondence. The brief new year’s note would be the last private message the two old friends would share. Unable to write or meet , Brother Lanrik’s influence on the emperor faded over subsequent years.

Neema sat back.

The answer was here, she knew it was. If she was more intuitive like Gaida, she might have made the leap. But then, Gaida’s impulsive leaps had not always served her well.

She turned the note over. Blank.

Think.

Gaida had uncovered something important when she visited Anat-garra. A secret so powerful, so damaging, that Bersun had ordered her killed for it. A scandal from his past? Something to do with his father, or his brother?

Neema read the first two points out loud. “His distinctive sword style. His bold brushwork.” She’d never seen either of these herself.

Bersun had lost both skills when he lost his right hand…

“Ohhh,” she breathed.

Two things he was praised for. Singular things, that could not be imitated.

Not even by a close relative.

Neema’s heart was pounding. Once you saw it…

“He died,” she whispered. “Bersun died. And they replaced him. Gedrun replaced him.”

She clamped a hand over her mouth.

Impossible. And yet, as she tested the theory, she found it made perfect, terrible sense. Staring blankly out of the balcony door, Neema projected herself back to the throne room, the bloody aftermath of the coup. Andren’s mangled corpse stretched out by the steps, the throne almost in reach. High Commander Gatt Worthy cut down. Two Imperial Bodyguards dead, another dying, another injured. And the emperor, collapsed at the foot of the throne, surveying the carnage.

So much red on the white marble floors. The seat of power looks more like an abattoir.

Vabras—a mere captain back then, patrolling the inner sanctum—breaks down the door and rushes to the emperor’s side, shouts for aid. Bersun’s injuries are terrible, but he is tough, and strong, and stubborn—he clings to life. The doctors rush him away, patch him up as best they can. Then, they wait. For weeks he lies shrouded in his sick room, fighting the greatest battle of his life. Finally, on the fifth day of the fifth month—the month of the Bear—he opens his eyes and asks for water. A miracle.

That was the official story.

But what if that last part wasn’t true? What if Bersun lost his battle?

Again she projected, into the emperor’s sick room that first night. This time not the official story, but the version Gaida had patched together from her research.

Three men stand over the bed. The surviving bodyguard, the doctor. And Captain Hol Vabras. He says, in that neutral way of his: “I have sent for the brother.”

Vabras, and his bloodless calculations. Whatever it took to keep order. At best, the emperor’s death would lead to violent upheaval and unrest. At worst—civil war. If there was one thing Vabras disliked above all things, it was chaos.

Neema, still projecting, followed Gaida’s logic through. Vabras was a pragmatic man, and because order was everything to him, everything…

He sat down at his desk and worked out a solution.

Gedrun.

Five years younger than his brother. A merchant, not a warrior—with a merchant’s physique. But very like Bersun in other ways. Another broad-shouldered giant of a man, filling any room he entered. Big, craggy face. Small brown eyes and grey-brown hair. The same rough, lined complexion. He could pass. He would pass.

The counterfeit emperor.

Gedrun lived on the family estate near Ketu—the opposite end of the empire. Did they send for him, that spring of 1523? Turn up at his door and escort him away? Either way, it would have taken him months to complete the journey.

Meanwhile Vabras dissembled. The emperor was convalescing, and needed time to heal in private, undisturbed. No visitors save for Vabras himself, the doctor, the bodyguard. No one would dare challenge him. People were losing their heads back then, in the High Commander’s purges…

Neema groaned softly. Vabras. Vabras.

The purges. Gedrun might deceive the outer circles of the court, but the inner circle? Those who had served at Bersun’s side for eight years? They would know. Vabras could dismiss many of them—servants, bodyguards, minor officials. Others would stay quiet for a price—Lord Clarion and Lady Harmony, Kindry Rok. The rest? The incorruptible few?

Neema could see Vabras at his desk, drawing up the list of names. Handing it to his loyal Hounds. “Arrest them.”

Her gaze dropped to the folder on the floor.

Yaan Rack.

How swiftly he fell, and how far. He was weeping when they led him to the scaffold. Not just fear, but disbelief. Outrage. You cannot do this. Even as they put the rope around his neck, he was still calling for justice. Not mercy. Justice.

They’d killed Rack to keep their treachery hidden. And then, sixteen years later, they’d killed his daughter for uncovering it.

The room was hot. Neema’s head was spinning. Staggering from the desk, she stepped out on to the balcony, and gripped the rusty iron rail tight.

She thought of Gedrun, smuggled into the palace, footsore and confused. Demanding: Where’s my brother? What the Eight is going on?

And Vabras, no preamble, saying something like, “Your brother’s dead. Rule Orrun in his name. Or die.”

Not much of a choice, when you thought about it.

Or maybe he’d been happy to agree. To usurp the brother he’d never cared for.

She flexed her right hand. They must have cut off his fingers. She winced in sympathy. Then wondered, Eight, did Bersun even lose those fingers in his fight with Andren? It was a suspiciously useful injury—Gedrun could never have learned his brother’s “bold brushwork” or his “distinctive sword style” fast enough to fool the court.

As for the rest—Gedrun would know how to mimic his brother’s mannerisms, his voice, his temperament. The physical differences could be explained by the emperor’s long illness. Of course he looked thinner, of course he lacked his legendary strength. He’d almost died, for Eight’s sake.

Slowly, training with Vabras every day, Gedrun would have built himself up from merchant to warrior, as tough and strong as his brother had been. And how well he looked, the Old Bear, when he’d recovered. Younger than his years, somehow…

Alone on the balcony, in the silence of an empty palace, Neema felt as if she were standing in a new world. Nothing made sense. Everything made sense. It explained so many of the odd quirks she’d noticed, over the years. Why the emperor never left the island. Why he never spoke of his old monastery, or invited his close Brothers and Sisters to visit him. Why he’d changed so much in the years following the rebellion.

Emperor Bersun had been a gruff, plain-speaking man in the beginning. Assiduously, he had kept to the same rigid routines he had learned at the monastery. Punishing days of work, training and prayer. Gedrun must have found his brother tiresome to play. Slowly, over time, he had smoothed the rough edges. He began to enjoy life. Shorter days with his ministers, longer nights with Lady Kara. “The Old Bear has mellowed,” people said, approvingly. “His brush with death has taught him to appreciate life.”

With a sudden force, it struck Neema that she had never known the real Emperor Bersun. Never met him. The real emperor had been dead for sixteen years. Andren Valit had killed him. The Old Bear of Anat-garra and the Golden Tiger of Samra had always been closely matched. In their final battle, they had fallen together.

So who was he, this imposter? What did Gedrun want, now that his brother’s reign was coming to an end? He could hardly go back to his old life as a merchant. And this plan to “return” to the Bear monastery as abbot—how would that work? Assuming he could fool Bersun’s Brothers and Sisters, did he really want to spend the rest of his days locked away in a grim mountain fortress? No feasts, no pleasure gardens, no Lady Kara? Only duty, plain food and water, and itchy woollen robes, and prayers on his knees, on the cold stone floor.

No. Of course not.

What then?

Neema rubbed her face. She had no idea. This man had lived a lie for fifteen years. She had no idea who he was beneath the mask, or what he wanted.

She did know he was ruthless, when it came to protecting his secret.

Gaida had been testing her theory at the opening ceremony. In her introduction to the song, she’d talked about how she met Gedrun on her trip west. If she was wrong—if that was the real Emperor Bersun scowling down at her—he would think nothing of it. But if she was right, then Gedrun would have to wonder—does she know the truth? Because of course she couldn’t have met him in Ketu.

She must have been watching the emperor’s expression closely as she sang. Did he look unsettled, disturbed, angry? But Vabras had already warned him that she’d figured out the truth. So he’d acted just as Bersun had done that night in the Great Hall, covering his face, breaking down in tears. Playing his brother so naturally, it had left Gaida perplexed. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe that really was the Old Bear up there.

So she’d come back to the Raven palace, puzzled and deflated. But not for long; Gaida was never defeated for long. Within the hour she was entertaining her guests in her apartment. Entertaining her killer.

If you’d confided in me, Gaida, I could have told you—a secret this big needs more than two conspirators to work. I would have warned you not to say a word to Yasila. To watch your step with Lord Clarion and Lady Harmony. With Kindry.

If only they’d trusted each other better. If only Gaida hadn’t been so set on ruining Neema’s final night at court. If only they’d sat together that first day at the Raven monastery. If only they’d been friends.

Heading indoors again, Neema returned the book to its hiding place. She had to get back to the library; Kindry had his eye on her, and now she was wondering—how much does he know of all this? He’d succeeded Yaan Rack as High Justice, and had made a fortune from the post, while tossing the hard work to everyone else. Few had benefited so well from the purges as Lord Kindry. Was that why he was keeping such a keen eye on her investigation? Reporting back to Vabras if she brushed too close to the truth? She was certain no one had spotted her coming up here, but she needed to leave quietly, while her luck still held.

She was about to clip the false skirting back in place when a metal glint caught her eye. She drew out the silver pendant on its silver chain, Fox on one side, Raven on the other. Her first anniversary present from Cain. She couldn’t bear to wear it after he left, but it had felt wrong to throw it away. So she’d hidden it here, and pretended to forget about it.

She rubbed away the tarnish, as if a genie might materialise and grant her three wishes. Take me back to that day. Let me choose again. She sees herself packing up her things, leaving the scroll and the inkstone on her desk, and hurrying off to meet Cain at the quay.

This was not how life worked. She had done what she had done. There was no going back, only forward.

She didn’t leave the island then, but she had to leave now. Running would make her look guilty, but she had no choice. She couldn’t accuse the emperor without proof. Her best chance was to reach the mainland, collect the evidence she needed and hope she lived long enough to present it to the next ruler of Orrun. Ruko, most likely. Emperor Ruko. Eight.

That was tomorrow’s problem. Today, she just needed to escape the island. Cain would know a way, and surely he’d be happy to see her gone. As his abbot had pointed out—she was a distraction.

Outside on the service path, she ripped Yaan Rack’s report into pieces and threw it in one of the bins. To be extra cautious, she tore out the bit with her name— Neema Lee— and ate it. She also ate the words “combative,” “defiant” and “unduly pedantic.” She was happy to be all of these things, these were qualities that could save her life. She would absorb the words like an offering to herself.

A pair of cockroaches watched her with interest from the rim of the bin. The rest had vanished, as cockroaches do—impossibly fast, and collectively. 12

“The emperor is an imposter,” she told them. She had to tell someone. They’d be fine—they were famously indestructible. She wished them both a pleasant afternoon and closed the bin.

Fuming, we watch her walk away.

She’s talking to cockroaches.

Confiding in them.

She ignores us.

And talks to them.

Never have we been

So insulted.

Footnote

12 . Hence the popular saying, “Why throw your shoe at a cockroach.” Meaning: don’t waste your time, it won’t work.