Empress of the Fall Read online

  Ril wrenched his blade out, vaguely sickened, and turned . . .

  . . . as Roginald Clef fell for a sucker-thrust, blocking high as his man went low. The Corani knight jolted, grunting disbelievingly as he looked down at the sword in his groin, then the Kirkegarde, his face impassive, ripped upwards, cleaving steel like tin. Clef’s guts spilled like writhing worms as he went down.

  The grandmaster’s face shone with righteous triumph as he strode through the line, heading for Ril, the man who’d killed Clef falling in behind him. ‘Right, you Corani scum, let’s see what else you’ve got,’ he snarled, his shields strong and energy coursing through his blade: pure-blood-bright.

  Ril shouted urgently, and then

  Basia was being battered backwards, but Larik stormed out of the smoke, hammering his blade at Basia’s man, first high-high, then a feint and low. The man’s shields flared strongly in the wrong place . . . and Larik drove his blade through the man’s thigh. The Kirkegarde screamed and fell; the bloodied blade swept up and around and the man’s head rolled to a stop three feet from his body.

  Three on two . . .

  But the Kirkegarde weren’t backing off, which told Ril that this place was damned important after all. The man who’d killed Clef went for Larik, but the grandmaster came at Ril, who delivered a flurry of mage-bolts and one heavy blow that slammed against the grandmaster’s sword like the ringing of the monastery bells. Pure-blood on pure-blood, knight and grandmaster—

  Krang! The grandmaster’s counter-blow smashed against Ril’s blade and almost wrenched it from his hand. Crunch! The next blow hammered his shields, which flashed from pale blue through to deep scarlet, and got through enough to dent his hem. Ril staggered back, glassy-eyed, but still smashed the next blow away. He shook his head to clear it and circled back. From the corner of his eye he saw Basia send a mage-bolt at the grandmaster’s back.

  With a contemptuous backwards gesture, not even looking, the grandmaster replied with a blast of kinesis that sent Basia thirty feet through the air. She crashed back to the ground and skidded into the stone surround of a well, hitting it so hard half of the wall caved in. She bounced like a discarded doll and flopped dazedly on her side.

  The grandmaster turned back to Ril. He looked to be in his fifties, old enough to have been involved in 909. ‘Who sent you, Corani? How did you know to come here?’

  ‘An Owl told me.’

  The Grandmaster spat. ‘Setallius.’ He raised his sword, staring at Ril along the blade. ‘I give you this chance to leave. It’s the only one you’ll get.’

  Ril spun his own blade casually. ‘Generous, but I have a mission. So I return the offer.’

  ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ the Kirkegarde sneered.

  Ril had never been terribly interested in heraldry, so the complex emblem the man wore on his tabard meant nothing. ‘Not a clue, and I don’t give a shit either. I only have one question: where were you in 909?’

  ‘Esdale Barracks—’ The grandmaster’s eyes suddenly narrowed in understanding.

  ‘Then you’ll know why killing you won’t trouble my conscience.’

  ‘I’m amazed you have one. Do you know who the prisoner here is?’

  Prisoner? Ril thought. ‘Maybe I do.’ And maybe I don’t . . .

  A few yards away, Larik and the other Kirkegarde were still bashing away at each other with reckless intensity. It wasn’t the sort of fight that both would walk away from – but if Larik lost, he and Basia were sunk.

  So best we just get on with this. ‘Look, I could chat all day, but why delay the inevitable?’ He lunged in, their blades belled and their shields flared again, but this time he drew on the double-edged blade of combat-divination. The grandmaster’s sword began to blur, showing him the ghosts of intentions, the blows his foe meant to unleash, a split-second before he swung – which was great, but sometimes divination in combat could overload the senses and leave you more vulnerable, not less. Ril parried gracefully, arched his back away from a blast of energy and flitted from the knight’s reach at the crucial point in a combination of blows designed to take his head off.

  The grandmaster’s frustration began to grow.

  Then Larik took a blow through the side and staggered.

  Oh Hel . . . Ril took a step back, pretending to lose concentration as he half-turned towards his falling friend. The grandmaster unleashed a huge killing stroke at Ril’s neck—

  —which Ril ghosted under as with his left hand he blasted a mage-bolt into the man’s thigh, forcing his shields to coalesce low . . .

  . . . and almost in the same motion, with his right hand, drove his gnosis-powered blade into the man’s breastplate. The blade punched through in a sizzle of super-heated blood and meat, and the grandmaster went down.

  Ril twisted, too late to aid Larik . . .

  . . . when a giant shadow swept over the last Church knight and two steel-shod hooves smashed down with force well beyond any mage’s capacity to shield, at speed and without warning. The knight’s helmet caved in as Pearl gave an almost human shriek of triumph. She reared over her fallen foe, then whinnied protectively at Larik.

  Kore’s Halo, I love you, pooty-girl . . .

  Ril ran to Larik. The knight was ashen-faced. ‘I’m fine, just need a healer,’ he gasped. Dazed, he looked around for Basia. ‘So could you perhaps wake her Ladyship?’

  Those venators still living, unable to pull free from their pickets, were snapping and snarling impotently. All the Kirkegarde were dead, and so was Roginald Clef. In the distance, Ril could see the nuns fleeing back to their gates. He hurried to the fallen Basia. ‘Fantoche?’ he called urgently. Her eyes were glassy, her right arm limp. He patted her shoulder, which made her eyes bulge open. ‘Rukka! Don’t touch me there!’ she snarled. ‘My collarbone’s snapped, idiot—’ Then her eyes rolled back into her skull and she fell sideways again.

  ‘Shit!’ He looked around. Malthus was also going to be out for some time. The nuns were mostly gone, but one of them was hobbling towards him. He straightened and went to meet her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘Why do you assail the knights of the Holy Church?’

  He had to admire her cantankerous belligerence. ‘Isn’t this supposed to be a monastery?’

  The nun, a thin woman with a paunch, surveyed the motionless, bloodied bodies scattered around as if she had all the time in the world. She had no gnostic aura, but her robe was of good thick wool, so perhaps she was in charge. ‘I presume you’re a Corani,’ she observed. ‘Why are you here?’

  He took a guess. ‘To collect the prisoner. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Abbess Jaratia of Saint Balphus Abbey. The old monastery was re-consecrated years ago. There are eighty souls in my care. Leave before you bring more dishonour on your House, Corani.’

  Ril spotted a dispatch pouch hanging from the fallen grandmaster’s belt. He plucked it from the corpse and found a sealed envelope inside, addressed to Abbess Jaratia herself. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘That’s the grand prelate’s seal,’ she said. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Ril said, opening it and pulling out a note scrawled on parchment.

  Abbess Jaratia: the Grace of Kore be upon you. The time has come to end your vigil. Release your prisoner to the grandmaster, and cooperate fully. DW, Pontifex

  It was accompanied by a small hourglass: an execution order.

  DW, Pontifex – Grand Prelate Dominius Wurther . . . Holy Hel, what is this?

  ‘Bring out this prisoner,’ he said, ‘or I’m going in.’

  ‘No! And you will stay outside—’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Our convent is forbidden to all unordained men – stay out, brigand, or be for ever accursed—’

  She’s playing for time . . . He went to go around her and she blocked him, shouting over her shoulder as loudly as she could, ‘Secure the abbey and kill the prisoner!’

  Kill
the prisoner? He slammed a kinesis push into the abbess, sending her sprawling, then pelted towards the gates, already swinging closed, but he blasted them open, ignoring the nuns rolling around like skittles. A fat woman with immense shoulders roared like a bear and tried to tackle him; he hurled her aside with a blast of force, ignoring a bucket and hammer bouncing off his shields. He punched another nun blocking his way, and now most were fleeing – but a few were blocking some stairs leading from the courtyard, maybe to the tower he’d spotted. A bolt of blue light flew at him and as his shields solidified to repel it, he glimpsed one nun shrouded in gnostic shields of her own.

  Another mage-bolt flashed at him. He re-engaged combat-divination and picked a course through ghosted futures of lancing mage-bolts, then engaged Air-gnosis and leaped skywards, arcing towards the foot of the tower, an inhuman leap that deposited him some ten yards from his foe: a handsome woman in the deep blue robes of an Anchorite: a mage-nun of Kore. A lethal burst of icy air and water flew from her hands, but he darted aside, closed the distance and sent an illusory bolt at the woman’s legs while thrusting his longsword straight-armed at her chest. Her eyes bulged, her mouth formed an ‘O’ and she collapsed.

  ‘The fearsome Ril Endarion, scourge of nuns,’ he muttered sarcastically, but she’d been too dangerous to take lightly. Then a young woman’s voice, crying out in fear, carried down the stairs of the windowless tower. He sprang to the staircase and used kinesis to leap up them five steps at a time. He barely checked himself at the top, bursting through the studded wooden door into a small, sparsely furnished chamber.

  In the centre a hefty nun was straddling a girl with a flushed, frightened face, her thick, meaty fingers wrapped around the struggling girl’s neck. The girl was kicking her legs and flailing her arms, but it was clear she had no idea how to fight off her assailant – so Ril smashed his sword-hilt onto the back of the nun’s head and she collapsed sideways.

  The girl beneath rolled into a ball, gasping and holding her battered throat. She had honey-gold hair and a pallid but pretty face. She looked no more than twenty.

  Ril slammed the door closed and sealed it with gnosis energy, then looked around. The small cell had barred windows, a small pallet bed and a writing table. A chair had been broken in the struggle. There was no other obvious threat, so he gathered the young woman in his arms, scared she was going to go on choking until she expired. ‘Hey, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ he said soothingly. Whoever you are, pretty girl . . .

  She kept on shaking, her face contorted with terror. Already her slender throat was bruising, and her chest was still heaving. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe, I swear it,’ he said, stroking her head. ‘You’re safe now.’

  She looked at the fallen nun, the one who’d been throttling her, then buried her head in his chest again, as he thought furiously, Who the Hel is she – and why has Dominius Wurther ordered her death?

  Finally she stopped gasping for breath, but she made no effort to move away. She stared up at him with hero-worship in her vivid sapphire eyes. ‘You rescued me,’ she panted. ‘You saved me – like Celine and the White Knight!’

  I suppose I did, he thought. And she reads The Fables. But who is she? ‘At your service, my Lady . . . er?’

  She missed his cues. ‘I owe you my life,’ she said, sounding as if she was reciting lines of a play. ‘Everything I have is yours.’

  He glanced around the room – everything she had didn’t appear to amount to much more than a pile of small-clothes, a comb and a couple of books: a Book of Kore and The Fables of Aradea. The former was to be expected in a monastery – no, an abbey – but the latter looked out of place. He was about to ask for her name again when he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs below.

  ‘Sister Taddea?’ someone called tremulously.

  The girl pointed at the unconscious nun. ‘Taddea’s sleeping,’ Ril called. ‘Rukk off!’ He heard whispering consternation, then the slap of sandals receding. Everything went quiet again.

  If she’s the prize we seek, I have to get her out, and make sure the others are safe.

  She clutched his hand. ‘Are you a good man, Sir Knight? Can I trust you?’

  They weren’t his two most favourite questions: No and Maybe were probably the most honest answers he could give. But she needed more, that was clear, and he had an almost overwhelming instinct to protect her right now. ‘You can trust me,’ he told her, and to his surprise, he found he actually meant it. Damn, I thought I was over that heroic urge . . .

  Her face had a guileless innocence that made him fear for her: she was like the delicate snowflakes who lasted barely a month at court before fleeing back to the pastoral home, usually with a full belly and their reputation in ruins. The deflowering of virgins was a competitive field in Coraine.

  ‘Thank you,’ she breathed. Her face was small and delicately structured, but her eyes had a steadiness that hinted that while she might not be worldly, she didn’t lack for inner strength. She touched the badger sigil on his left breast, and said, ‘You’ve come from my mother’s people.’

  She’s Corani? He studied her face, seeking traces of family lineage, but coming up blank. ‘I’m Ril Endarion, a knight in the service of Radine, the Duchess of Coraine.’

  ‘I’m Lyra Vereinen,’ she replied. When he looked at her blankly, she added, ‘My mother was Princess Natia.’

  ‘Natia’s daughter?’ he echoed as the whole world fell silent.

  Holy Kore! Natia had a child? Ainar Borodium must have got her with child before they cut his head off—!

  ‘My mother’s dead,’ Lyra said before he could ask. ‘She took her own life after I was born – but she left me a letter, and her signet.’ She pulled a necklace from round her neck, upon which a ring had been threaded. It certainly looked Imperial. ‘I’ve been here all my life.’

  Ril examined her aura and found a powerful Chain-rune. The spell preventing her from reaching her gnosis was too strong for him to easily break, and time was slipping away. Gnostic murmurs told him Larik and Basia were on their feet, but Gryff and Malthus were still down. They were a long way from safety, and more Kirkegarde could be coming.

  ‘We must leave.’ He went towards the door, but she didn’t follow. ‘My Lady?’

  ‘They don’t let me go outside except on Holy Days,’ she said plaintively.

  Holy Kore, what sort of life has she had? ‘You’re not a prisoner any more, Princess,’ he told her. ‘You’re free now.’ As he said those words, his mind was making mental leaps, each one more stunning than the last. ‘Emperor Constant and his mother Lucia Fasterius are dead. Constant has children . . . but you’re Natia’s daughter, and she was Magnus’ heir.’ He paused, realising something quite stunning. ‘You’re the rightful Queen of Rondelmar . . . you’re the Empress of Rondia!’

  They shared a lot of disbelief and wonder.

  It’s like one of her rukking Fables . . .

  The Palace of Tulips, Saint Agnetta’s, near Pallas

  Junesse 930

  Final month of the Moontide

  Solon Takwyth didn’t like other men. Those who were kin were rivals, and those who weren’t kin were enemies. It paid to remember these divisions in moments of uncertainty. Women were trophies, of course, chosen for breeding and connections, precious only for the status they gave and the children they provided . . . though he’d once been in love – truly in love – before she’d been snatched away.

  Priests, though, were an unsettling breed, a strange paradox, a separate gender, emasculated and barren. They ought not to count at all, but infuriatingly, the world gave them status. Utterly unproductive yet so influential. They made no sense to him.

  So when he burst into that final antechamber at Saint Agnetta’s, the blood of three Imperial guards on his sword, he was neither pleased nor relieved to find a clergyman there, ally or not. ‘Ostevan Prelatus! Why are you here?’

  Ostevan bowed. ‘You’re late, Takky. Almost fatally late.’ He pointed
at the two men in Sacrecour livery sprawled on the floor with broken necks, surprised horror on their faces. ‘A good thing I came myself.’

  Takwyth knew Ostevan had sent the information that had brought him here – but that didn’t mean he had to like him. The priest was altogether too self-regarding – a chaplain of boudoirs; a seducer of foolish wives, and too pretty to be a real man. If a knight looked like him, someone would break his nose in the practise yards.

  ‘Are the royal children secured?’ he demanded as Dirklan Setallius stalked into the chamber.

  Ostevan bowed. ‘They are indeed. Be nice; Radine wants them grateful for this “rescue”.’

  Takwyth started towards the doors, then turned back to the prelate. ‘What have you gained from this, Priest? Wurther will have you excommunicated.’

  ‘Wurther won’t be long for this world, Solon. The Synod will be unanimous in voting for his removal, and I shall replace him.’

  Takwyth sniffed. ‘Well, I suppose you’d be as good as any.’

  ‘Kind of you to say so. Please’ – he gestured extravagantly – ‘your prizes await.’

  Takwyth left Ostevan and Setallius and entered the ornate nursery where Constant’s children awaited him. Nine-year-old Cordan was standing stiff and formal as a young esquire, his sister Coramore, two years his junior, behind him. Both were in formal white and gold, wearing child-sized crowns. They had their father’s pale skin, ginger-gold hair and weak chin.

  ‘Prince, Princess; I’m Sir Solon Takwyth of House Corani and I’m here to protect you.’

  ‘We had protectors,’ Cordan replied, gripping his sister’s hand. ‘You’ve killed them.’

  He’s frightened. The people who’ve warded him all his life are dead. But we’ve only got about ten more minutes before the Palace and the Church react, and we can’t be trapped here.

  ‘My Prince, Mater-Imperia Lucia entrusted your lives to Grand Prelate Wurther. He sought to misuse that trust. We must remove you to a place of safety.’