The laughter was largely sycophantic, but Archeth had found her mouth stretching to echo it anyway. Privately, though she commiserated with some of her friends from the old guard, she felt there was a lot in what Jhiral said. She knew the provincial governor who’d sent the emissary, and didn’t hold him in much regard. Quite conceivably, he’d overreacted to a situation a shrewder man could have handled without rising from his desk. The revolt very likely could have been extinguished with relatively little fuss—could perhaps even have been avoided altogether, with a little intelligent foresight. You kept your finger on the pulse, you picked up the warning signals well before matters reached boiling point. You made a few examples, you made a few concessions, nine times out of ten the combination paid off. She’d done it herself enough times in the past, when Akal was still on the throne.
Panic and overreaction—the late response of fools.
Now, waiting in an antechamber for Jhiral to get out of bed, going over what the Helmsmen had told her, she couldn’t be sure if, sleepless and churned up and raw from the krin, she wasn’t giving in to a similar fool’s impulse herself.
But:
The dwenda are gone, Archeth. Thousands of years ago. They fled the parameters of this world when they couldn’t defeat us.
Apparently, they’re back.
One of the Helmsman’s unnerving silences. Then, severely:
That’s really not funny. The dwenda are not something you joke about, daughter of Flaradnam.
I’m not trying to be funny, Angfal. I’ve got better things to do with my time than come down here and tell you jokes.
You certainly have. To start with—if you’re right and the dwenda really have returned, now, with the Kiriath gone—then you have graves to dig. About a hundred thousand ought to do it—you might want to get started ahead of time.
“The Emperor will see you now.”
She glanced up and saw the smirk on the chamberlain’s face. She supposed there weren’t a lot of courtiers receiving audience in Jhiral’s bedchamber. It begged a rather obvious question, and court gossip would doubtless provide a dozen different salacious answers by lunchtime.
“You can wipe that fucking grin off your face,” she told him as she got up. “Or I’ll come back and cut it off for you.”
The smirk vanished as if dragged downward off the man’s visage with a claw. He shrank from her as she passed. The krin made her glad.
Better get ahold of that temper, Archidi. His radiance Jhiral Khimran II won’t bully as easily as his servants.
She stepped through into a room that reeked of sex.
The imperial bedchamber faced east by careful design and had floor-to-ceiling windows for the view. The sun flooded in, struck deep into the back of the room, and gilded what it touched—the drapes on the huge four-poster bed, the rumpled covers, and the three tousle-haired sleeping forms that lay amid them. Archeth registered the curves, made herself look carefully away.
“Archeth! Good morning!” Jhiral was over by the wood-paneled partions on the far side of the room, wrapped in a long silk robe and picking at an extravagant spread of breakfast platters set out on three separate tables. He turned to face her, put a quail’s egg into his mouth and chewed vigorously. Lifted a wagging finger. “You know, when I said I’d hold you to your promise of rapid progress, I didn’t intend you to take it quite this hard. Sometime this afternoon would have been fine.”
She bowed. “I must apologize for intruding on your rest so early, my lord, but—”
Jhiral waved it away, still chewing. “No, it’s fine. Educational.” He swallowed and gestured at the breakfast spread. “Some of this stuff, it’s the first time I’ve ever tasted it when it’s still hot. So what’s the news?
Did you have a good night in the sheets with my little gift?”
“Your generosity . . . overwhelms me, my lord. I have not yet actually been to bed.”
“What a pity.” Jhiral picked up an apple and bit into it. His eyes met hers across the top of the fruit, and the look in them was suddenly hard and predatory. He gouged the chunk of fruit loose with his teeth, chomped it down, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’d rather hoped we could compare notes, actually. Maybe even share young Ishgrim’s training between us.”
“My lord, the reaction of the Helmsmen to my news about the dwenda incursion has been . . . disturbing.”
“Yes. Well, you certainly look disturbed.” Jhiral stared down at the bitten apple for a moment, then tossed it back among the platters on the middle table. “Oh, very well then. You’d better come through.”
He forced the slides of the partition apart at the join and walked through into the chamber beyond. There was a surfeit of sunlight in here as well, though diluted down and tinged in various colors by stained-glass panels set into the lower half of each window and depicting scenes of historic triumph from imperial history. Vibrant little smears of pink and blue lay across the wooden floor and paneled walls, and the green leather surface of a large writing desk in one corner. Armchairs were set up at the back of the room around another, low table covered to match the desk.
“Sit.” Jhiral gestured her to a chair and took the one opposite. He covered a leonine yawn with one hand, sank back in the arms of the chair, put a slippered foot on the edge of the low table, and steepled his fingers. The robe split and gave her a narrow view of an impressive—if you liked that sort of thing—prick and balls. She couldn’t tell if it was deliberate. “So—disturbing. In what way?”
Archeth hesitated. “I think the Helmsmen are afraid, my lord.”
“Afraid.” Jhiral coughed up a short, uncertain laugh. He shifted in the chair and straightened his robe. “Come on. They don’t understand things like fear. You told me yourself, they aren’t anything like human. Anyway, suddenly you’re talking in plural here? How many Helmsmen have you actually spoken to?”
“Two, my lord. Angfal, who is installed in the study in my home, and Kalaman in the fireship Toward the Candle of Vigil Maintained at the Kiriath Museum. Their attitudes are somewhat different, Kalaman is more pragmatic, less inclined to drama, but their basic responses are the same. Both give extensive warnings about what the dwenda are capable of; both are of the opinion that if these creatures are returning to this world, then the results will be catastrophic.”
“Hmm.” Jhiral stroked at his chin. He seemed to have been doing some thinking of his own since the night before. “Catastrophic for whom, though? The way you’ve explained it, this is a northern thing, this dwenda mythology. Is it possible these creatures might confine their depredations to that part of the world?”
“They came to Khangset, my lord.”
“Yes, in response to either the prayers and idolatry of a northerner or the presence of a type of stone found only in the north.”
“Found mostly in the north, my lord.” Holding down a tremor of alarm, because she could see where this was going. “Glirsht deposits are to be found in various parts of the Empire as well.”
Jhiral gave her a shrewd look. “But you don’t really believe it’s the glirsht itself, do you, Archeth? If the dwenda use this stuff as a beaconing device, it would need to be shaped in some way, crafted to its purpose. The way our little friend from Khangset crafted her idol.”
“I don’t believe th—”
“Don’t interrupt your Emperor when he’s thinking aloud, Archeth. It’s rude.”
She swallowed. “My apologies.”
“Oh, accepted. Accepted.” A languid gesture. “Now look; our trade ships don’t just steer down the coast by any old fire they happen to see on a clifftop, any piece of brightly colored junk floating in the water that they might pass. They look for lighthouses and marker buoys. The dwenda are going to be the same—they’re going to be looking for a specific form of this rock, something shaped. Something prepared by their acolytes, by those who worship them.”