Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(27)

“My father went to the Temple of Light,” Adare said, enumerating the facts on her fingers. “He met with Uinian the Fourth in secret. He was murdered during that secret meeting.” She would have paid dearly to know why her father was meeting with the priest, why he had left behind the protection of his Aedolian Guard, but the outlines of his assassination were nonetheless clear. “Uinian will have his trial, and then he will die.”

A deep bass tolling of drums halted the conversation. Again those drums came, and again, stately and solemn, as though the earth itself were reverberating. The funeral procession remained out of sight beyond a bend in the canyon, but it approached.

“Five hundred white bulls were sacrificed at the funeral of Santun the Second,” Bilkun Hellel observed. The Azran Councillor was pink, oily, and grossly fat. His robes, cut of the finest cloth, fit him poorly. His small, shrewd eyes missed little, however, especially in the political realm. “It’s a shame we could not have made a similar show for your father.”

Adare waved the suggestion aside. “Five hundred bulls at ten suns apiece—five thousand suns. The coin is needed elsewhere.”

A smile creased the corner of the councillor’s mouth. “While I admire your mathematics, I’m not sure you realize the effect of such spectacle on the minds of the people. It glorifies your father and by extension your house.”

“My father would have hated this. The ostentation, the frippery.”

“It was your father,” Baxter Pane observed archly, “who ordered it in the first place.”

Adare opened her mouth to reply, then shut it firmly. She was here to mourn, not to trade barbs with old men who would never really listen to her anyway.

A hush fell over the valley as the first columns of Annurian foot marched into view, rank upon rank upon rank of soldiers, spears held at the same sharp angle, flashing points reflecting in the afternoon sun. A standard-bearer marched at the center of each line, flying the bold, rising sun of Annur on white silk cloth while to either side of him drummers beat out the procession on huge skins drawn taut over wooden drums.

Aside from their standards the legions were identical: the same steel armor, the same half helms, the same long spear in every right hand, the same short sword hanging from each hip. Only the pennants streaming in the wind identified them: the Twenty-seventh, called the Jackals; and the Rock (the Fifty-first) from the northern Ancaz; the Long Eye from the Rift Wall; the Red Eagle and the Black; the Thirty-second, who called themselves the Bastards of Night; even the legendary Fourth Legion—the Dead—from deep in the Waist, where the fight to subdue the jungle tribes had never really ended.

Next came the regional militias—militarily insignificant, but more varied and colorful: The Raaltans carried ludicrously long broadblades and must have worn their own weight in gleaming steel plate, their standard, a windmill with whirling swords in place of vanes. Storms, Our Strength, read the words emblazoned beneath the emblem. Then a contingent of fourscore men in boiled black leather, each carrying a pitchfork.

“Fools,” Pane snorted. “Upjumped peasants with their farm implements.”

“Two hundred and twelve years ago,” Adare pointed out, “Maarten Henke carved out an independent kingdom with one of those farm implements. For fifty-four years, he defied Annurian rule effectively enough with his pitchfork.”

“Good weapon, a pitchfork,” il Tornja observed idly. “Reach. Penetrating power.”

“Henke was crushed,” Hellel said. “Another failed rebellion.”

“And yet, the man was hardly a fool,” she insisted, irritated that they seemed to be missing her point.

As the next group marched into view, her stomach seized.

“The Sons of Flame,” she muttered, grimacing. “After what Uinian did, they should not be here. They should not be.”

“While I happen to agree,” Hellel replied, passing a hand over his thinning hair, “what is to be done? The people love Intarra. Our esteemed regent,” he continued, nodding toward il Tornja, “has already imprisoned their Chief Priest. Take away their legion, and you might well have a riot.”

“It is a complex matter, Adare,” Pane added, raising his palms as though to placate her. “A subtle matter.”

“I understand the complexity,” she shot back, “but complexity is no excuse for inaction. Uinian’s trial may give us leverage in the weeks to come, leverage to disband their militia.”