Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(51)

Phoran thought it was the prisoners' gags that were responsible for the murmurs he heard echoing in the cavernous chamber. Gorrish, he saw, was not among those talking. A Sept's honor was considered above the need for bindings. Practicality, however, would have excused the tied wrists - the gag was an insult. Phoran didn't mean the insult, but he needed those men silenced to complete his task.

The Emperor's Own led their prisoners to the center of the floor, facing the ranks of seats where their peers watched them. Once they were in, Phoran stepped down from his podium and walked to the accused Septs.

The murmurs in the room quieted as the Septs waited to see what Phoran had planned.

"The Sept of Jenne," Phoran said, standing in front of the accused and meeting his eye before stepping to the next. "Sept of Seal Hold." There were thirteen of them in all. "Sept of Vertess." Some of them were old men, men who had known Phoran's father as he had not. Had known him and seen him assassinated as they'd assassinated also the uncle who had raised Phoran. Some of them were young men who had drunk his wine and eaten his food, thinking him a fat dupe - as he had been.

One by one he named them all.

This day, Phoran knew, he'd have to pay for the years he had allowed himself to be made into a fat capon. Phoran hoped the final cost of his sins would be something less than the price these men would pay for theirs.

"Your hands are bound," he said, "because this day you are powerless before Us. Your tongues are stilled because you have had the chance to defend yourselves and We no longer hear your words."

He turned to the rest of his Septs, letting his eyes roam the chamber. "We find these men, Septs all, guilty of murder and treason. We find this crime is more heinous than the crimes of lesser men, because the trust they betrayed was greater. We find their crimes dictate that the inheritance of their Septs will be Ours to do with as We choose."

That caused rustles among his audience. Oh, there had been emperors who had interfered with inheritances before - but not in the last two centuries, not even in cases of treason. He would allow most of the heirs to keep their Sept, but that wasn't the point. He wanted all the Septs to remember the power of the Emperor and set aside the memory of the fool they had believed him to be. He had to make them understand, viscerally, that their power came from him, and not the other way around.

"For their crimes We find that these former Septs shall be condemned to death."

There was, on the floor of the Council of Septs, a raised stone, where a statue of a rearing stallion, the symbol of the Empire resided. Phoran rather thought that most of the Septs had forgotten the raised stone had originally been something other than a base for the statue.

He held out his hand and Toarsen, First Captain of the Emperor's Own and former Passerine, stepped away from his honor guard position. Held at chest height and balanced upon his gloved hands was a rather large sword they'd tucked out of sight against the Emperor's podium.

It was not Phoran's own sword. They'd had to go into the storeroom and sort through dozens of weapons until they'd found something suitable.

Phoran took it from Toarsen and raised it, almost five feet of newly sharpened steel jutting out from a magnificently ornate two-handed grip. It was an awesome weapon - though not something he'd have cared to carry into a real battle against lighter, quicker blades.

Phoran let them all look their fill. A few Septs frowned or sat up, but most of them looked bored. They were waiting for a speech, he knew. Rhetoric was a common occurrence - even if the sword was a little more extreme than the usual props.

"We do not have a list of all the deaths these men are responsible for - though Our father and uncle are among them: emperor and regent to emperor. So We tell you instead the names of those who died fighting for Our life." These names he had memorized long before he decided to use them here. A man, it seemed to him, ought to know the names of people who died for him. He gave them the names of fifteen Passerines. Then ten men who'd belonged to Avar, the Sept of Leheigh, who had come to Phoran's rescue. "And of the Clan of Rongier the Librarian - " Eight names, and it took most of the Septs all eight before they realized the names belonged to Travelers.

Two of his counselors, Gerant and Avar, Septs both, had told him to leave those names off. Eliminating the "scourge" of Travelers had been a policy of the Council for generations. But those men had died for him also, and Phoran had decided their names should speak to the guilt of the accused.

"The first person to fall that night gains no justice from this. Lady Myrceria of Telleridge, daughter of the former Sept of Telleridge, died under torture, which was conducted by her own father. She died to keep Our secrets so We could bring about the fall of the Path. I would that Telleridge could be here to answer for his crimes, but he died that day, and he died much too easily."

While he was speaking, two guards, chosen especially for the duty, removed the statue of the rearing horse from its place of honor and pulled off the embroidered covering beneath it to reveal the cold granite stone that lay beneath.

Phoran nodded, and Jenne's guards led him to the stone. They jerked him off his feet and held his shoulders down against the granite, his head hanging over the end, with the smoothness of three days spent practicing that move on each other in preparation for this moment.

A Sept convicted of treachery had to shed his blood in the Council chambers. Traditionally the emperor would cut the Sept's hand and let the blood fall. A beheading would follow, usually the same day, in a courtyard of the palace reserved for such things. But, there were exceptions to that tradition.