‘The Red Gods will not suffer me to be abused,’ Lanta screeched, her fury a lightning bolt from a clear sky. Insolent, arrogant child! He thinks stabbing men in the back gives him authority over the gods? Over me?
Men shrank away from her anger, but Corvus’s smile mocked. He returned to his throne before answering, stretching the moment long, forcing Lanta and the rest to wait.
‘Where is your obeisance, Blessed One?’
Lanta gaped, disbelief etched across her face. ‘What did you say?’ she whispered.
‘Liris was weak – you took advantage of that to seize more power than your station demanded. I’m restoring the balance. You may not have authorised a new king, but the Dark Lady did. So kneel. Or die. I don’t much care either way.’
‘I know the Lady’s will,’ Lanta shouted. ‘I am the Blessed One. She talks to me, not you.’ Her fists were clenched, face hot with outrage and anger. A challenge directed not just at her power, but that of the gods? I’ll see him writhing beneath my knife for this outrage.
Corvus spread his red hands. ‘Then you’ll know it was Her will that I defeated my rivals. If She didn’t want me on the throne, they would’ve killed me.’
There were murmurs and Lanta felt the shift in the room. He was right and everyone knew it; godsdamnit but she knew it. A change in tactic, then. ‘King Corvus,’ she said and he grinned, ‘now is not the time for a change in administration. Perhaps—’
‘Well, unless you can bring a man back from the dead, you’re fucked,’ he replied and there was muted laughter, quickly stilled.
Lanta bared her teeth. It had been years since anyone’d dared interrupt her. She remembered now how little she liked it. ‘I simply meant, perhaps our people would prefer a united front until you settle into your new role. There are many things I can advise on. If you would allow it?’
‘No.’
Lanta could feel her cheeks burning. The air fizzed between them as Corvus looked into her eyes, all cool detachment and deep amusement, daring her to look away.
She smiled. There were many ways to play this game and she had far more experience than he did. Still, he’d riled her. ‘Perhaps men will be sent to Crow Crag for your consort,’ she hissed, and heard the collective intake of breath. Had she really just threatened the king? Corvus flicked his fingers in dismissal, his face disinterested. As though she hadn’t even spoken. Lanta inhaled hard.
‘Perhaps you should focus on finding Liris’s killer instead,’ he said.
‘Oh, don’t you worry about that,’ she said. ‘They’ll be found and dragged before you for judgement. I wonder what sort of a king you’ll be then, when you have before you the one who really granted you the throne.’
Lanta was never reckless; the gods had too many plans and she was too important to all of them. Yet that easy smile, those infuriating blue eyes, made her desperate to hurt him, but instead of her barbs finding his flesh, everything she said simply glanced off him, as though he was wearing that ridiculous Rilporian plate armour.
‘Tread lightly, Blessed One,’ Corvus said, his voice low with menace. ‘You have no idea who you’re dealing with.’ He paused and smiled, friendly, open. ‘But I can show you, if you ever threaten me or mine again.’
Perhaps that had been over-hasty, she conceded as she stared at Corvus and his bloody hands, his bloody boots. His strawberry-blond hair was wild and sweaty from the fight, and she dropped her gaze from his to examine the bodies. Wounds in the back. She snorted faintly. He hadn’t even had the balls to do it properly.
But done it was. While she’d been examining the torn and bloody corpse of Liris in the room next door, she’d lost everything. The gods’ desires subordinated to the desires and whims of a man. No, she vowed into the silence of her skull, not during my lifetime. Not when I still have some power.
‘It is a comfort to hear you will not let Liris’s killer escape. By all means conduct your own investigation; I shall entreat the Dark Lady’s advice. Liris had taken a whore into his bedchamber before he was killed; she escaped during the confusion but I’ve already sent men after her. The chances are good she saw the killer and we can use her to identify the man,’ Lanta said, deliberately keeping Rillirin’s identity to herself. She needed every scrap of leverage she could find.
‘Why don’t you think it was the whore?’ Corvus asked.
Lanta laughed. ‘A slave and a whore? Impossible.’ She turned away. Even so, I’ll have that cunt on the altar stone one way or another, belly open to the sky and soul food for the gods.
‘Blessed One,’ Corvus said in a voice of honey, and she gritted her teeth and stopped. ‘You still haven’t made your obeisance.’
‘I kneel only to the gods,’ she grated over her shoulder, her eyes murderous slits.
Corvus tutted and shook his head. ‘Not true. I hear you regularly knelt to Liris, mouth open and no doubt eyes closed. Who’d want to see that, after all?’ He laughed and there was a ripple of shocked amusement through the hall, amusement at her expense.
Lanta could hear her teeth grinding and swallowed a roil of nausea. She stared at him in silence. The air grew thick with hate, but Corvus never lost that easy smile. She could level men with a glance but not, it appeared, this one. Not yet. So she curtseyed, low, deep, correct. What does it mean, after all? Nothing. It is as empty as his supposed kingship and soon to be as distant a memory.
In stunned silence, Lanta walked the length of the hall, proud and distant. She crooked a finger and her priest, Pask, held the door for her and then followed her through. It closed with a click and she sucked in a deep breath of mountain air. She had much to think about.
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Commander’s quarters, the palace, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘So, Captain Tailorson, it appears you have led a varied and interesting career in the last two years with the North Rank. Any particular reason for that?’ Commander Durdil Koridam eyed him from behind his desk.
‘No, sir.’
‘Demoted to lieutenant for brawling with common soldiers, a month in the cells for smuggling a family over the border into Rilpor, promotion back to captain for outstanding gallantry under fire … Outstanding?’
‘Major Bedras found himself surrounded by the Dead Legion. It seemed appropriate to save him.’
‘From the Dead Legion? Alone?’ Durdil’s grey eyebrows rose a fraction.
‘There were five of them, sir, youngsters on a blood hunt to prove their manhood.’
‘And how did they manage to surround the major?’
‘Couldn’t say, sir.’
‘No, though I note from General Tariq’s subsequent report that the major is no longer a major.’
‘As you say, sir.’
‘And the family you allowed into our country?’
‘A woman with three children, starving and filthy. Husband killed by the Dead, fleeing to save her children’s lives. It was … it was the right thing to do.’
‘You are a soldier, Tailorson. Right and wrong is for your superiors to decide.’
Crys