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CHAPTER

Seventy-Three

I T WASN’T PERSONAL . It never was, with Vabras.

The best way to curb a rebellion was to never let it start. Sixteen years ago, his purges had removed a generation of opposition thinkers and leaders and cowed the rest for years. Tonight’s massacre would do the same. Anyone who might question what was coming next, who might resist the changes Andren had set in motion—the independent thinkers, the fervent idealists, the shrewd, the wary, the naturally rebellious—would be erased.

He consulted his watch. The Fox palace would be in flames by now. The Bear palace under attack. Two thirds of the Imperial Hound army dead or dying. Still underway: the discreet assassination of a select number of Monkeys, Oxes, Ravens, and even a few Tigers who could not be trusted to fall into line.

One thousand, seven hundred and ninety-three souls, in total.

The blame would fall on Bersun’s shoulders. An attempted coup, they would call it. After twenty-four years on the throne, the Old Bear had refused to hand over the reins of power—least of all to Andren Valit’s son.

Vabras took a last sweep around his modest rooms. His few belongings were already packed on board the new High Admiral’s private Leviathan. At dawn, Emperor Ruko the First would set sail for Samra. After fifteen hundred years of neglect, Orrun’s ancient capital would be restored to its past glory. The Marble City—the great, opulent wonder of the empire. Meanwhile Yasthala’s island would fade and fall to ruin. Armas city, built to serve the island, would become a backwater town. Andren’s revenge. What you did to my beloved city, I shall do to yours.

Vabras yawned behind his hand, then frowned at his own deficiency. As a child, he had trained himself to survive on four hours’ sleep. These past few days had been punishing, but that was no excuse.

A tap at the door. A Samran Hound captain stepped in to give her report. Everything was going according to plan, she said.

One of the square silver buttons on her tunic wasn’t straight. Vabras reached out and neatened it. “Have you found the traitors?”

The captain confessed that she had not.

“Then everything is not going to plan,” Vabras observed. “Precision please, in future.”

This was the problem with killing all the people you had trained up. You had to go right back to the start. Tedious, but necessary.

In the throne room, Lady Harmony and Lord Clarion were putting on the performance of their lives. Reception guests, ushered in from the gardens, had screamed and clutched each other as they stumbled into the gory scene. Abbess Rivenna Glorren lying dead in a pool of blood, eyes staring blankly to the ceiling, the marble cracked beneath her. And, sprawled on the throne steps above, a gilded dagger lodged in his heart, the Old Bear. His Majesty Emperor Bersun the Second.

A touch operatic, we would have said, if we could speak. If we were not trapped in our portrait, trapped in ceaseless torment. So many of us, so much magnificence, glued and squashed together, melded into one. We could have told the sobbing guests—that is not Emperor Bersun. He died sixteen summers ago, on the exact same spot. (Like we said—operatic.) That poor fellow was Gedrun Stour. Gedrun with his expertly maimed hand, dressed in an imperial silk tunic, with his brother’s iron crown clamped to his head. Useful to the last.

“He would have killed us all!” Lady Harmony sobbed, as her husband comforted her.

Bersun—they said—had attempted to assassinate Ruko, using the Blade of Peace. Mad. Deranged. If Abbess Glorren had not stopped him… Lady Harmony dropped to her knees beside Rivenna’s corpse, and gave a plaintive, semi-convincing wail.

People asked about the Eight. They had seen the rip in the sky, they had feared the Last Return had come. What had happened?

We are here! We wanted to scream. Let us out, let us out, let us out!

“They Returned,” Lord Clarion said, in an expert stage whisper.

“The Dragon would have burned the world to ash,” his wife added, arcing her hand to the ceiling. “But the kind Monkey intervened on our behalf. Our dear Rivenna,” she cradled the corpse, “sacrificed her life to save the emperor-in-waiting. An act to be honoured, and praised—not punished.”

“But what about the curse?” someone asked—and regretted it later.

“Rivenna!” Lady Harmony cried, lifting her hands to show the blood. “Hero of Orrun. You saved two worlds with your sacrifice.” A slight pause. “Tell them, darling, of Ruko and the Tiger,” she prompted.

Lord Clarion sighed, reverent. Never had he seen such a moving sight. The emperor-in-waiting, kneeling bravely—yet meekly—before his Guardian. “The Tiger placed one great, but loving paw, upon Ruko’s head.” Clarion mimed this, placing a hand on his own greyish-blonde curls.

“And so His Majesty’s glorious reign begins,” Lady Harmony concluded. “Blessed by the Eight.”

And soaked in blood , some thought, but did not say. Did they believe Lord Clarion and Lady Harmony’s account? The lucky ones did. The rest kept their doubts to themselves. Facet. Grace Eliat. Such seasoned courtiers, that they didn’t even risk glancing at each other. Bersun was dead, right there in front of them on the steps. This story—fiction or fact—was the new truth.

“The Eight,” someone asked, anxiously. “They’ve gone back? They are Hidden?”

“They are home,” Lord Clarion confirmed, with a reassuring smile.

In the walls, we seethed.

“Gather two squads,” Vabras said, to the Hound captain. “I will find them myself.”

She bowed and left him.

It wasn’t that Vabras admired Andren, or liked him. He could not be seduced by charm, or corrupted with bribes. Andren had won Vabras’s loyalty for one reason alone.

Order. The second Tenet of the Hound, but—to Vabras’s mind—the only one that really mattered. What use were justice, loyalty and honour, in a world of chaos? They existed purely to create order. They held no intrinsic value in isolation.

Andren would guarantee order for generations to come. With the Chameleon Spell, he could conceivably live for ever. In a few years, he would usher in dynastic rule. Blood is destiny— the old Valit family motto . And each heir would suffer the same fate as Ruko.

Only Vabras knew this. Andren had confided in him because he knew it would please his High Commander. No more successions, no more change. Order. Peace. They were the same thing. For Vabras, they were the same thing.

There was a small garden attached to his rooms. A lawn, roses, a cherry tree. He ventured outside. The full moon, he thought, would help in the search. It did not occur to him that it was beautiful.

Something stirred in the bushes. A pair of eyes gleamed yellow in the moonlight.

Pets were not allowed in the Hound palace. By order of Vabras. The cost, the disorder, the distraction.

But there was a cat.

Six years ago Vabras had found it in the bushes with an injured leg. A black-and-white mouser from Chef Ganstra’s kitchen stores. Vabras had taken it in and nursed it back to health in secret. He did not know why. Sometimes it came back to visit.

He could take the cat with him to Samra. He could make it happen with a snap of his fingers. He was the High Commander of Orrun. But such an act of self-indulgence would expose him to scrutiny or worse—ridicule.

He might, though, say goodbye.

He made a soft, coaxing sound. The eyes gleamed again, reflective in the moonlight. A soft rustle, then nothing.

“High Commander.” The captain had returned. “We are ready for you.”

Vabras gave a stiff nod, and headed back inside.