Estrada had been right. Out stepped Panchessa, dressed lavishly, and even wearing a sword at his hip. The riders that were still mounted hurried to shield their monarch from attack — not that anyone on our side was showing much interest in making one. This would be the first time the majority of Altapasaedans had ever seen their king, and despite what his arrival portended, the mood seemed more curious than fearful.
Panchessa waited until silence fell. It didn’t take long, and when it came it was a hush deep as an ocean, in which a mouse’s flatulence would have sounded like a house collapsing. Amidst that unnatural calm, Panchessa’s voice sounded stronger and more commanding than it had the night before. “Altapasaedans,” he said, “open your gates to me.”
“The day the frozen hells catch fire,” muttered Navare, close to my ear. Estrada said nothing.
And me? I was caught by a single, overpowering thought. It had seemingly come from nowhere — yet as soon as it had arrived, I’d realised it had been building for days. “This doesn’t make sense,” I whispered.
No one responded — but then I hadn’t been speaking to anyone except myself. Now that it was out however, now that my brain was working, I felt as if I’d woken from a long stupor.
“We have to do what he says,” I said, “we have to open the gates.”
Estrada’s head snapped round. Her expression was somewhere between surprise and infuriation. “We have to do nothing of the sort.”
“Listen to me,” I told her, and this time my voice was urgent. “Estrada, listen to me now, if it’s the only time you ever do. There’s one way left we can save this city — and it relies on you opening those gates right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“If we open the gates,” Estrada said, “there may never be another chance to listen to anything you say, Damasco.”
“No! Don’t you see?” I was growing frantic; I strove to check myself. “Estrada, it’s the only way.”
I knew what I said was true. Because as I’d looked at Panchessa, there in the street with his vast army at his back, I had tried to see a terrifying despot, a bloody-handed warlord intend on tearing down our city brick by brick — yet all I’d actually seen was an ailing old man.
With that realisation, memories of the last night’s conversation had come back clearly into my mind. Malekrin might not have been able to hear what Panchessa had said, but I had — and though I hadn’t understood at the time, I did now. Panchessa could have levelled Altapasaeda a dozen times, had he wanted to; if he’d been determined enough, there was no punishment he couldn’t have inflicted, no enemy he couldn’t have revenged himself upon.
“Estrada,” I said, “what were you plotting with Ondeges, back when we were fleeing from the Shoanish fleet? No… don’t tell me, I know.”
“But it wouldn’t have worked,” she said, exasperated. “Panchessa would never have agreed, let alone Kalyxis. And Malekrin?”
“They will now,” I told her. “Because there’s no other choice. It’s the only thing Panchessa cares about anymore, don’t you see? Estrada, please, trust me on this… Give the order or we’re all going to die here.”
For a long moment, her dark eyes held mine, and I could read every emotion there, clear as day. I saw trepidation, doubt, even fear — not for herself, but for those who had gathered here, the people who had placed their lives in her care. I could see what the gamble I was so glibly arguing for actually meant to her, the hideous burden of it. And with that, all my certainty vanished.
I was about to tell her I was wrong, that I was the last person she should be listening to — but I was too late. “Do what his highness says!” she cried ringingly. “Unbarricade the gates!”
There was surprisingly little resistance to our dramatic about-face from the gathered folk of Altapasaeda. No one commented on the fact that one minute Estrada had been ready to fight for this gate to the last man, woman or child, and now here she was opening it simply because Panchessa had asked her to. I put it down to the fact that none of them had much wanted to fight, and certainly not against their king; whatever was happening now, it at least offered the slim hope of an alternative.
With a crowd of Altapasaedans working in concert, it took mere minutes before the last scrap of barricade was wrenched away. Beneath, the heavily patched gates looked like a patchwork quilt of wood. They creaked in grating protest as they were hauled wide.
I’d assumed Panchessa would climb back into his palanquin, and enter accompanied by his full escort. Instead, he crossed the short distance on foot, with a mere dozen men at his back. It might not stop his army pouring after in his wake, but it seemed a small concession at least.
Estrada responded in kind. She’d called Malekrin over and, despite the resistance obvious in his face, he had hurried to join us. Though many of Mounteban’s former cronies had made efforts to catch her eye, however, she had carefully overlooked them. Kalyxis, too, she’d studiedly ignored, and I couldn’t but notice how Navare and his men had moved to discreetly bar her path.
Thus it was that the party waiting just beyond the gatehouse consisted of three people only: Estrada, Malekrin and me. I’d never felt so conspicuous in my life; the expectation of the nearby crowds was like a weight pressing from all sides.
“Good morning, your highness,” said Estrada, as Panchessa stepped from the shadow of the gatehouse. She gave a deep bow that Malekrin and I hurried to emulate.
“Is this a fit delegation to welcome a king?” asked Panchessa. “A woman, a bastard and,” — he eyed me — “some sort of street vagabond?”
“I felt,” replied Estrada calmly, “that when we have so little to offer and even less to negotiate with, this was appropriate. A show of weakness, if you like.”
“At least you appreciate your position,” Panchessa observed.
“We do,” Estrada agreed. “If you choose to pit your armies against ours, we can’t hope to win. But this man, Easie Damasco, has an alternative to offer, and I hope for all our sakes that you’ll hear it.”
Before I could sputter that I’d never intended to do any talking, let alone alternative-offering, Panchessa’s gaze had swung to consider me — and every thought froze in my head. “You were with my grandson last night,” he noted. “And haven’t I seen your face before that?”
Actually, it’s not so long ago that you ordered my death, I managed to refrain from saying. “I seem to have a knack for finding myself in the wrong places at the wrong times,” I pointed out instead.
Panchessa nodded. “I’ve known such men,” he said. “Trouble, every one of them. Go on then, Easie Damasco, speak your proposal.”
I gulped thickly. Everything that had seemed so clear a few minutes ago was now just a soup of half-formed ideas, each foolish in its own right. I tried to hone on in something definite, something I felt sure of. “King Panchessa,” I said, “I don’t believe you came here to punish the people of Altapasaeda.”
“Is that right?” Panchessa asked. “Will you tell me, then, why I marched my armies across two lands, if not to put down a rebellion?”
“I think you came because you’re afraid of what your legacy will be.”
It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, or how I’d meant to say it, but it was too late — and Panchessa’s expression was blacker than thunderclouds. “Afraid?” he said.
“Your sons are dead; you have no heir,” I told him, wincing at each word. “The Senate in Pasaeda is close to rebellion, Shoan is openly at arms, and now the Castoval is slipping away too. I think that’s why you came here… to make sure you left a mark on the world, even if it was stamped in blood.”
Panchessa’s face was contorted with fury now. He raised a trembling hand, beckoned to one of his men. I heard an all-too-familiar hiss — the snake’s breath of steel slipping free of a scabbard.
I was supposed to be stopping a massacre. All I’d done was hasten it. I would be first to die, and it might even be a relief — because for whatever brief time remained to me, the deaths of thousands would be on my conscience.