Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

Her knuckles ached, and she looked down to find her hands strangling the reins, twisting them until the leather dug into her skin. Slowly, she relaxed her grip. The fault lay with the council, not with the people of Annur. You could hardly blame the city’s shopkeepers and washermen, artisans and builders, for being taken in by the lies of their leaders. They hadn’t been to the north, after all. They didn’t know Adare, couldn’t observe the workings of her mind. Most of them, if they’d ever caught a glimpse of a Malkeenian at all, had seen her in some imperial procession, glimpsed for a moment from behind a writhing mob, through a cordon of guards and soldiers.

She was riding alone now to fix that. To show herself.

She took a long breath, then looked over at Lehav, wondering how much of her agitation he’d noticed. If the man had been watching her, he was looking at the city now. “I don’t want to die,” she said finally. “But we are at war, Lehav. I don’t know the first thing about swords and formations, but I know you cannot win a battle without taking risks. Listen to me when I tell you this, and listen well: we will not survive this battle-not you, not me, not any of the men-if the people of this city do not look at me and see a woman who believes in herself, in her empire, and in them.”

“They are fools,” the man replied. “They have no idea what to believe.”

Adare shook her head bleakly. “My father told me something once. I haven’t forgotten it: If the people are foolish, he said, it is because their leader has failed them. ”

* * *

For a long time no one said a word to her. She rode down the center of the bustling street in a shifting eddy of calm. Every person she passed-shopkeeps and carters, street sweepers and grocers-refused to meet her gaze. In a way, it was nothing new. Adare had lived a whole life in which people were uncomfortable around her eyes. Even high ministers and atreps preferred to drift past her without looking, fixing their own eyes elsewhere, moving just a little faster as she approached.

For a long time, this was like that-an entire city refusing to meet her gaze. They followed, though, gathering like birds at a scattering of crumbs, holding back at what seemed a safe distance, whispering, hissing, arguing almost inaudibly, dozens then scores drawn from their day’s affairs by the possibility of celebration or bloodshed.

Let it be celebration, Adare prayed.

It was not.

By the time she reached the Godsway-riding out toward the massive marble statue of Anlatun before turning east-word of her arrival had spread, the cluster trailing her swollen to a crowd. More and more people flooded in from side streets and alleys, skidding to a halt when they finally spotted her, pulling back, falling suddenly silent. Everyone seemed to experience the same shock, as though they hadn’t believed the words of their neighbors- The last Malkeenian. Alone in the city. Riding south. That shock, however, was fading, and the mob was drawing closer.

As she angled down the Godsway, Adare’s heart throbbed behind her ribs. She’d lost sight of Lehav and his Sons. They were out there somewhere, lost in the tide of humanity, close enough to hear her if she screamed, probably, but too far away to do any good. She was starting to question her wisdom in keeping them back, but there was no time for questions. She had returned to Annur. A thousand eyes were upon her. Two thousand. Five. There was no counting them. The voices were getting louder, too, so loud she could barely hear her gelding’s hooves clopping over the enormous flagstones. She fought down the urge to wipe her sweaty palms against her robes, kept her eyes forward, fixed on Intarra’s Spear in the distance.

At least I didn’t bring Sanlitun . The thought calmed her. Whatever happened next, whatever came of the growing mob, her son was hundreds of miles away in Aergad, tucked behind the castle walls with Nira watching over him. He is safe, Adare reminded herself.

Then the first stone struck.

It hit her just above the eye-a hot, white explosion that knocked her halfway off her horse. For a moment, it was all Adare could do to stay upright, to see anything beyond the pain’s brilliant blaze. She managed to keep her saddle either by good luck, divine favor, or sheer force of will. Blood ran down the side of her face in a hot sheet. Her stomach clenched, heaved; she thought she would vomit. Then, when she had fought that down, she realized they were chanting, shouting again and again the same terrible word: Tyrant. Tyrant. Tyrant .

Her horse tried to bolt, but she pulled the reins back tight. If the mob thought she was trying to flee, they would tear her apart. She wanted to cringe, to curl into herself, to cover her bloody face with her arms before someone threw the next stone. Instead, when she’d managed to bring the horse back under control, she let go of the reins and spread her hands slowly, her unarmored body an offering to the crowd. They quieted a moment, and she spoke into that quiet.

“You call me a tyrant. Does a tyrant return alone and unarmed to a city that hates her?”

The words couldn’t have reached more than a dozen paces, but Adare could see the effect on those closest. They looked confused, hesitant, as though suddenly wishing they were farther back, away from the center of whatever storm was about to break. The mob pressed them forward all the same, forcing them, with its sheer weight, to step closer.

Never speak to a crowd. Her father’s words, measured and steady. Especially not a crowd of thousands. Always speak to a single person .

Pain hazing her vision, Adare picked one at random, a gaunt, middle-aged woman carrying a basket on her hip, just one of Annur’s millions dragged along by her own curiosity. Adare clung to that woman’s stare when she spoke again as though it were a post holding her up, a spear to lean on.

“My generals told me to bring an army, but I did not bring an army. My guardsmen urged me to ring myself with their steel; I refused. My councillors implored me to return to Annur in disguise, or in the middle of the night, sneaking through the streets with my eyes hidden, my face obscured.” She raised her chin a fraction. The blood was hot on her face. Her head throbbed. She wondered if she was going to fall out of the saddle after all. “I did not. I will not.”

The next rock grazed her chin. A third stone, smaller than the first two but sharp as a knife, sliced her cheek just below the eye. Her face was awash in blood now. It dripped onto the sleeves of her robe, onto the leather of her saddle. The horse, sensing the rage of the crowd, was starting to shy beneath her once more, snorting heavily and tossing his head, searching for a way out.

The poor beast didn’t understand the truth, couldn’t understand, in the dim workings of his animal mind, that there was no way out. There never had been. Not since Adare fled the Dawn Palace a year earlier. Not since Ran il Tornja put a knife in her father.

And now they’ll kill me, Adare thought. This is where I die, here, on the streets of the city where I was born.

The packed savagery of the mob had grown too heavy. Any moment now, all those bodies would surge forward to collapse the fragile space in which she rode. Another stone would fly, and another, and another, until the blow that finally knocked her from the saddle. Her horse snorted again, on the edge of panic. Adare urged the beast on with her heels-better to die moving forward than standing still. One step. Then another. And to her surprise, the ring of space around her held.

She tried to read some expression in the nearest faces. There was anger, and surprise, and disbelief, twisted lips, narrowed eyes, leveled fingers. A few tried to keep up the chant of tyrant, but most had let it go. They didn’t love her, but their curiosity had overwhelmed, at least for the moment, their fury. It was an opportunity, and Adare seized it.