William King - Shadowblood

“Lady Tamara. It pleases me to see you once more.” The Empress’s voice was low and thrilling but it had a falseness in it, a lack of warmth or empathy, a brittle quality that at this moment was somehow emphasised. “You have our leave to speak freely and without awaiting our permission.”

“I thank you, Majesty. It pleases me to stand within the radiance of your august presence.” The surprising thing was that she did feel that way. Old habits died hard.

“There are matters I wish to discuss with you. Step out onto the balcony with me.”

Tamara waited for the Empress to pass through the doors onto the great balcony and then followed her. The platform was massive and decked with flowers, a greenhouse with a fine view of the city and sea below, a place protected by the strongest warding spells, where things might be discussed in utter privacy when the crystal doors were shut. Tamara was suddenly acutely aware that she was alone with the Empress, as she had not been since she was a child.

Arachne turned to look at her, her face no longer a rigid mask, fear written in her eyes. “I am sorry to hear about what happened to your father,” she said.

“I am not entirely certain I know what happened to him,” Tamara said.

“He is dead, or so Xephan tells me. Asea killed him.”

“She was always his enemy.”

“Not always. Only in the struggle that emerged after my mother died.” There was an odd stress on the word mother. Arachne was about the same age now as Amarielle had been when she was murdered, Tamara thought. No wonder she was sensitive about Kathea’s death.

“I know he feared her.”

“He was right to do so. She is the most formidable sorceress the Terrarchs ever produced and even here on this sadly diminished world her magic is deadly. Apparently she has a new tool now — some renegade half-breed killer she plucked from the gutter and made her apprentice. I understand you have met him.”

Was that what this meeting was about? “His name is Rik. I believe she has been teaching him sorcery — he is very powerful.”

“Is it true he killed your father?”

“Rumour would have it so.”

“Then he is to be feared indeed. Your father was a very dangerous Terrarch.”

Tamara sensed she was being watched closely and her reactions weighed in the fine scales of the Empress’s mind. Caution whispered soft warnings in her mind. She had been away from Court too long, and she was not able to judge things as well as she once had been.

“I do not think your Majesty has anything to worry about from him,” she said.

“From him, perhaps. The ones I fear lie closer to home.” The Empress’s nostrils flared and her stare was intense. Her lips were compressed into a thin tight line. Be very careful, Tamara thought.

“What do you mean, Majesty?”

“Why did you go to see the Prime Minister before you came to see me?”

“Lord Xephan sent a note requesting I attend him.”

“Is it necessary for the Empress to request her subjects attend her?”

“Of course not, Majesty. But your Majesty is busy and I had no idea that you had any interest in your most humble subject.”

“Please Tamara, we are alone. Neither you nor your father were ever humble.”

“I cannot contradict your Majesty’s judgement.”

“And please dispense with the false humility. It smacks too much of mockery.”

“I do not understand what your Majesty means.”

“Perhaps I should make myself clear then…I want to know where your loyalty lies. To your Empress or to the Prime Minister.”

To myself, thought Tamara. Her lips said, “To my Empress, of course. I am shocked that your Majesty could think otherwise.”

Arachne’s smile was mocking and, what was worse, contained a hint of fear. It was the nervous grimace of one counterfeiting humour in the face of terror. Tamara had seen the look on the faces of some of the people she had killed as they had tried to talk her out of it. Was the Empress really afraid of her? Did she know the truth about her Shadowblood upbringing? What had Malkior told her?

“Your father and Xephan were not friends,” she said eventually. “Not at the end, at least.”

“That is a fair judgement, your Majesty.”

“Then it is one of the few I have made of late.” Tamara let the silence hang, tempting the other woman to speak. The Empress cleared her throat and continued. “I was not a friend to your father in the last few years of his life. I think that was a grave mistake.”

“My father never doubted that you had his welfare at heart,” she said, knowing full well that her father had cursed Arachne’s fickleness every day when she was the only one around to hear.

“That was kind of him,” said Arachne, as if there had been no irony in Tamara’s statement. “I feared your father, you know. I feared what he was capable of. I feared the power he held. I feared that his subordinates were more loyal to him than to me.”

And that is why you slowly promoted his rivals, Tamara thought, eroding the power base he had built up subtly and over the years. She said, “None of your Majesty’s subjects could possibly feel that way.”

Arachne smiled again and there was humour there this time. Perhaps I let a little too much irony show in my voice that time, Tamara thought. The Empress was not a fool after all, merely a Terrarch whose judgement had been warped by being the centre around which the world orbited for far too long. “I am afraid that there are those who do.”

“Surely all tremble in your divine presence.”

“I have asked you to please spare me the mock humility Tamara. Now I am commanding you to.”

“To hear is to obey. Who is it that worries you so, Majesty?”

“You have come from his presence.”

“Xephan? Surely you have but to dismiss him from his post. He is your creature, Majesty. You made him. You can break him.”

“I promoted him as a counter-balance to your father — that is true. The young are ever ambitious and seek to prove themselves. Your father was of the old breed, and was thought too conservative for this new age.”

“Sometimes it is best to stand by that which is time tested.”

“It has taken me some time to appreciate that.”

“Why do you fear Lord Xephan is disloyal, Majesty?”

“He has grown arrogant, and he has grown powerful.”

“Dismiss him.”

“I wrote a warrant of dismissal. My chamberlains did not deliver it.”

Shock rippled through Tamara. It was unheard of for the chamberlains to disobey the reigning Empress. “Dismiss your chamberlains,” Tamara suggested. “Have your guards scourge them and drive them from the Palace.”

“I fear my guards would not obey. I have not dared give the order. I am a prisoner in my own Palace.”

Tamara’s mind whirled. What game was being played here? Was the Empress testing her, or was Xephan really so powerful? Perhaps this whole audience had been arranged simply to show her that power. Deadly currents swirled here. She needed to be careful and cautious. The Empress seemed almost embarrassed by what she had said.

“And there are other reasons for not making the attempt. We are at war with the West now. Any show of disunity would be disastrous.” Tamara thought she saw a scared woman saving face, but chose to disregard the intuition. After all, the Empress might just be acting, or saying these things for reasons of her own. What had happened at Court while she was in the West, Tamara wondered?

“Your Majesty’s words are wise.” Tamara calculated swiftly. It would not be the first time a faction had grown over-powerful at Court. It had happened with Asea and Azaar, and with her own father, but in the end an Empress could always outwait her followers. She held the divine mandate after all, and while circumstances always changed, the bedrock truth of Terrarch society was that the Empress was the chosen one.