Instead, Nisall backed away a step, then two, until she was once more in the doorway. ‘Empress, the Chancellor is the source of Rhulad’s… failings. Your god should know that, lest it make a mistake. If you would kill anyone, it should be Triban Gnol, and, perhaps, Karos Invictad-they plot to usurp the Edur.’
‘The Edur?’ She spat. ‘Master’s almost done with them. Almost done.’
‘I will send servants down,’ Nisall said. ‘To clean your chamber, Empress.’
‘Spies.’
‘No, from your own entourage.’
‘Turned.’
‘Empress, they will take care of you, for their loyalty remains.’
‘But I don’t want them!’ Janall hunched lower. ‘I don’t want them… to see me like this.’
‘A bed will be sent down. Canopied. You can draw the shroud when they arrive. Pass out the soiled bedding through a part in the curtain.’
‘You would do this? I wanted you dead.’
‘The past is nothing,’ Nisall said. ‘Not any more.’
‘Get out,’ Janall rasped, looking away. ‘Master is disgusted with you. Suffering is our natural state. A truth to proclaim, and so I shall, when I win my new throne. Get out, whore, or come closer.’
‘Expect your servants within the bell,’ Nisall said, turning and walking from the grisly chamber.
As the echo of the whore’s footsteps faded, Janall, Queen of the House of Chains, curled up into a ball on the slick, befouled floor. Madness flickered in her eyes, there, then gone, then there once more. Over and over again. She spoke, one voice thick, the other rasping.
‘Vulnerable.’
‘Until the final war. Watch the army, as it pivots round, entirely round. These sordid games here, the times are almost past, past us all. Oh, when the pain at last ends, then you shall see the truth of me. Dear Queen, my power was once the sweetest kiss. A love that broke nothing.’
‘Give me my throne. You promised.’
‘Is it worth it?’
‘I beg you-’
‘They all beg me, and call it prayer. What sour benediction must I swallow from this eternal fount of dread and spite and bald greed? Will you never see? Never understand? I must find the broken ones, just do not expect my reach, my touch. No-one understands, how the gods fear freedom. No-one.’
‘You have lied to me.’
You have lied to yourself. You all do, and call it faith. I am your god. I am what you made me. You all decry my indifference, but I assure you, you would greater decry my attention. No, make no proclamations otherwise. I know what you claim to do in my name. I know your greatest fear is that I will one day call you on it-and that is the real game here, this knuckles of the soul. Watch me, mortal, watch me call you on it. Every one of you.’
‘My god is mad.’
‘As you would have me, so I am.’
‘I want my throne.’
‘You always want.’
‘Why won’t you give it to me?’
‘I answer as a god: if I give you what you want, we all die. Hah, I know-you don’t care! Oh, you humans, you are something else. You make my every breath agony. And my every convulsion is your ecstasy. Very well, mortal, I will answer your prayers. I promise. Just do not ever say I didn’t warn you. Do not. Ever.’
Janall laughed, spraying spit. ‘We are mad,’ she whispered. ‘Oh yes, quite mad. And we’re climbing into the light…’
For all the scurrying servants and the motionless, helmed guards at various entrances, Nisall found the more populated areas of the Eternal Domicile in some ways more depressing than the abandoned corridors she’d left behind a third of a bell past. Suspicion soured the air, fear stalked like shadows underfoot between the stanchions of torchlight. The palace’s name had acquired a taint of irony, rife as the Eternal Domicile was with paranoia, intrigue and incipient betrayal. As if humans could manage no better, and were doomed to such sordid existence for all time.
Clearly, there was nothing satisfying in peace, beyond the freedom it provided to get up to no good. She had been shaken by her visit to the supposedly insane once-empress, Janall. This Crippled God indeed lurked in the woman’s eyes-Nisall had seen it, felt that chilling, unhuman attention fixing on her, calculating, pondering her potential use. She did not want to be part of a god’s plans, especially that god’s. Even more frightening, Janall’s ambitions remained, engorged with visions of supreme power, her tortured, brutalized body notwithstanding. The god was using her as well.
