‘You want my sisters out of the way, too-perhaps more than I do. Squirming on that throne of yours, are you?’
‘Convenient convergence of desires, Menandore. Ask Hood about such things, especially now’
‘If I give you access to Starvald Demelain, you will use it more than once.’
‘Not I.’
‘Do you so vow?’
‘Why not?’
‘Foolish,’ Hood said in a rasp.
‘I hold you to that vow, Shadowthrone,’ Menandore said.
‘Then you accept my help?’
‘As you do mine in this matter. Convergence of desires,. you said.’
‘You’re right,’ Shadowthrone said. ‘I retract all notions of “help”. We are mutually assisting one another, as fits said convergence; and once finished with the task at hand, no other obligations exist between us.’
‘That is agreeable.’
‘You two,’ Hood said, turning away, ‘are worse than advocates. And you don’t want to know what I do with the souls of advocates.’ A heartbeat later and the Lord of Death was gone.
Menandore frowned. ‘Shadowthrone, what are advocates?’
‘A profession devoted to the subversion of laws for profit,’ he replied, his cane inexplicably tapping as he shuffled back into the woods. ‘When I was Emperor, I considered butchering them all.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked as he began to fade into a miasma of gloom beneath the trees.
Faintly came the reply, ‘The Royal Advocate said it’d be a terrible mistake.’
Menandore was alone once again. She looked around, then grunted. ‘Gods, I hate this place.’ A moment later she too vanished.
Janall, once Empress of the Lether Empire, was now barely recognizable as a human. Brutally used as a conduit of the chaotic power of the Crippled God, her body had been twisted into a malign nightmare, bones bent, muscles stretched and bunched, and now, huge bulges of fat hung in folds from her malformed body. She could not walk, could not even lift her left arm, and the sorcery had broken her mind, the madness burning from eyes that glittered malevolently in the gloom as Nisall, carrying a lantern, paused in the doorway.
The chamber was rank with sweat, urine and other suppurations from the countless oozing sores on Jamil’s skin; the sweet reek of spoiled food, and another odour, pungent, that reminded the Emperor’s Concubine of rotting teeth.
Janall dragged herself forward with a strange, asymmetrical shift of her hips, pivoting on her right arm. The motion made a sodden sound beneath her, and Nisall saw the streams of saliva easing out from the once-beautiful woman’s misshapen mouth. The floor was pooled in the mucus and it was this, she realized, that was the source of the pungent smell.
Fighting back nausea, the Concubine stepped forward. ‘Empress.’
‘No longer!’ The voice was ragged, squeezed out from a deformed throat, and drool spattered with every jerk of her misshapen jaw. ‘I am Queen! Of his House, his honeyed House-oh, we are a contented family, oh yes, and one day, one day soon, you’ll see, that pup on the throne will come here. For me, his Queen. You, whore, you’re nothing-the House is not for you. You blind Rhulad to the truth, but his vision will clear, once,’ her voice dropped to a whisper and she leaned forward, ‘we are rid of you.’
‘I came,’ Nisall said, ‘to see if you needed anything-’
‘Liar. You came in search of allies. You think to steal him away. From me. From our true master. You will fail! Where’s my son? Where is he?’
Nisall shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s still alive-there are those in the court who claim he is, whilst others tell me he is long dead. But, Empress, I will seek to find out. And when I do, I will return. With the truth.’
‘I don’t believe you. You were never my ally. You were Ezgara’s whore, not mine.’
‘Has Turudal Brizad visited you, Empress?’
For a moment it seemed she would not answer. Then she managed something like a shrug. ‘He does not dare. Master sees through my eyes-tell Rhulad that, and he will understand what must be. Through my eyes-look closer, if you would know a god. The god. The only god that matters now. The rest of them are blind, as blind as you’ve made Rhulad, but they’re all in for a surprise, oh yes. The House is big-bigger than you imagine. The House is all of us, whore, and one day that truth will be proclaimed, so that all will hear. See me? I am on my knees, and that is no accident. Every human shall be on their knees, one day, and they will know me for their Queen. As for the King in Chains,’ she laughed, a sound thick with phlegm, ‘well, the crown is indifferent to whose skull it binds. The pup is failing, you know. Failing. There is… dissatisfaction. I should kill you, now, here. Come closer, whore.’
