He came out into the lower part of the Attenine Palace again, below ground. A wide staircase led up, the corridor ran both ways to other hallways, other stairs. No guards. No one at all. Tertius Daleinus had already run upstairs. Somewhere. A trivial, meaningless man, Pertennius thought. Not a thought to be written now, of course, or not in any… public document.
He took a breath, smoothed his tunic, and prepared to go up, outside, and back across the gardens, and then down in the other palace to tell Leontes what had happened.
It proved unnecessary, that walk.
He heard a clatter of sound from above and looked up, just as, from behind him in the tunnel, there came a muffled, distant cry, and a last blast of heat came down, all the way to the hallway where he stood alone.
He didn't look back. He looked up. Leontes descended the stairs, moving briskly as he always did, soldiers behind him, as there always were.
"Pertennius! What in the god's holy name is keeping you, man? Where's the Emperor? Why is the door… where are the guards?
Pertennius swallowed hard. Smoothed his tunic. "My lord," he said, "something terrible has happened."
"What? In there?" The Strategos stopped.
"My lord, do not go in. It is… terrible." Which was nothing but truth.
And generated the predictable response. Leontes glanced at his guards. "Wait here." The golden-haired leader of the Sarantine armies went into the tunnel.
So, of course, Pertennius had to go back in. This might never be recorded, either, but it was impossible for a chronicler not to be present for what would happen now. He closed the door carefully behind him.
Leontes moved quickly. By the time Pertennius had retraced his steps down the tunnel and come to the curve again, the Strategos was on his knees beside the blackened body of his Emperor.
There was a span of time wherein no one moved. Then Leontes reached to the clasp at his throat, undid it, swept off his dark blue cloak and laid it gently over the body of the dead man. He looked up.
Pertennius was behind him, couldn't see his expression. The smell of burnt flesh was very bad. Ahead of them, motionless, stood the other two living people in this place. Pertennius stayed where he was, at the curve of the tunnel, half hidden against the wall.
He saw the Strategos stand. Saw Styliane facing him, her head high. Beside her, Lysippus the Calysian seemed to become aware that he was still holding the nozzle of the fire device. He let it fall. His face was strange now, too. There were three dead bodies beside him, all charred and black. The two guards. And Lecanus Daleinus, who had first burned all those years ago, with his father.
Leontes said nothing. Very slowly he moved forward. Stood before his wife and the Calysian.
"What are you doing here?" he said. To Lysippus.
Styliane was as ice, as marble. Pertennius saw the Calysian looking at the Strategos as though unsure where he'd come from." What does it look like?" he said. A memorable voice. "I'm admiring the floor mosaics."
Leontes, commander of the armies of Sarantium, was a different sort of man than the dead Emperor behind him. He drew his sword. A gesture repeated more times than could ever be numbered. Without speaking again he drove the blade through flesh and into the heart of the man standing beside his wife.
Lysippus never even moved, had no chance to defend himself. Pertennius, coming forward a step, unable to hold back, saw the astonishment in the Calysian's eyes before the blade was pulled out, hard, and he fell, thunderously.
The echoes of that took time to die away. Amid a stench of meat and the bodies of five dead men now, a husband and a wife faced each other underground and Pertennius shivered, watching them.
"Why did you do that?" said Styliane Daleina.
The slap took her across the face, a soldier's blow. Her head snapped to one side.
"Be brief, and precise," said her husband. "Who did this?"
Styliane didn't even bring a hand up to touch her cheek. She looked at her husband. She had been ready to be burned alive, the secretary remembered, only moments ago. There was no fear in her, not the least hint of it.
"My brother," she said. "Lecanus. He has taken his revenge for our father. He sent word to me this morning that he was coming here. Had obviously bribed his guards on the island, and through them the Excubitors at the doors here."
"And you came?"
"Of course I came. Too late to stop it. The Emperor was dead, and the two soldiers. And the Calysian had already killed Lecanus."
The lies, so effortless, so necessary. The words that might make this work, for all of them.
She said, "My brother is dead."
"Rot his evil soul," said her husband flatly. "What was the Calysian doing here?"
"A good question to ask him," Styliane said. The left side of her face was red where he'd hit her. "We might have an answer had someone not blundered in waving a sword."
"Careful, wife. I still have the sword. You are a Daleinus, and by your own statement your family has just murdered our holy Emperor."
"Yes, husband," she said. "They have. Will you kill me now, my dear?"
Leontes was silent. Looked back, for the first time. Saw Pertennius watching. His expression did not change. He turned to his wife again. "We are on the very eve of war. Today. It was to be announced today. And now there are tidings that the Bassanids are across the border in the north, breaking the peace. And the Emperor is dead. We have no Emperor, Styliane."
Styliane Daleina smiled then. Pertennius saw it. A woman so beautiful it could stop your breath. "We will," she said. "We will very soon. My lord."
And she knelt, exquisite and golden among the blackened bodies of the dead, before her husband.
Pertennius stepped away from the wall and went forward a few steps and did the same, falling to both knees, lowering his head to the floor. There was a long silence in the tunnel.
"Pertennius," said Leontes, at length, "there is much to be done. The Senate will have to be called into session. Go to the kathisma in the Hippodrome. Immediately. Tell Bonosus to come back here with you. Do not tell him why but make it clear he must come."
"Yes, my lord."
Styliane looked at him. She was still on her knees. "Do you understand? Tell no one what has happened here, or about the Bassanid attack. We must have order in the City tonight, to control this."
"Yes, my lady."
Leontes looked at her. "The army is here. It will not be the same as… the last time there was no heir."
His wife looked back at him, and then at her brother, beside her on the ground.
"No," she said, "Not the same." And then she said it again, "Not the same."
Pertennius saw the Strategos reach out then and help her to rise. His hand went to her bruised cheek, gently this time. She did not move, but her eyes were on his. They were so golden, the two of them, Pertennius thought, so tall. His heart was swelling.
He stood and turned and went. He had orders to obey.
He entirely forgot there was blood on his dagger, neglected to clean it all that day, but no one paid any attention to him so it didn't matter.
He was so seldom noticed; an historian, a recorder of events, hovering and grey, present everywhere, but not ever someone who ever played any kind of role in events.
Going up the stairs swiftly, then hurrying through the palace towards an upper staircase and the enclosed walkway that led to the rear of the kathisma, he was already casting his mind after phrasings, a way to begin. The proper tone of detachment and reflection at the outset of a chronicle was so important. Even the most perfunctory study of past events teaches that Jad's just retribution for the godless and evil may be long in coming but…