Jubilation surged through Tol, but he kept his voice respectfully low. “I will bring Mandes to justice, Majesty.”
Ackal IV’s brow furrowed. “No, there is a more pressing matter. I want you to search out Enkian Tumult and learn his intentions. It’s said he built a fortified camp at Verdant Isle. Go there in my name and find out what he’s up to.”
Tol nodded, but his disappointment was obvious. Egrin said quickly, “We’ll go at once, Majesty.”
Valdid cleared his throat significantly, and Ackal said, “No, Marshal. You shall remain. I would not send every loyal commander I possess into the hands of a possible usurper.”
“How many hordes shall I take?” Tol asked.
“None,” was Valdid’s surprising reply.
“That’s crazy!” Kiya exclaimed.
The imperial bodyguards stirred, moving closer to the brawny forester woman. Tol signaled her to hold her tongue.
“You must go alone, my lord,” Valdid said. “Yours is a mission of diplomacy, not combat. Enkian knows you, knows your fame and abilities. He will not dare deny you audience.”
“And if he does?” Kiya blurted angrily.
The chamberlain rapped his gold-capped staff smartly on the floor and glared at her but directed his response to Tol. “Should there be any trouble, we will send Lord Egrin with ten hordes to crush the rebel!”
Kiya continued to grumble, but there was shrewdness in the plan. If Enkian intended violence against the throne or had some less overt scheme in mind, Tol’s great popularity with the ordinary warriors of Ergoth made him the ideal candidate to persuade (or intimidate) the warden into abandoning his plans. The only problem was that Tol had slain Pelladrom Tumult, Enkian’s son.
All eyes were on Tol. If he refused the mission, what could they do?
For a long while he didn’t reply. The tension in the silent chamber had built to such a level that when Tol snapped his heels together the chamberlain and guards visibly flinched.
“I shall go at once, Your Majesty!” he said, saluting.
Ackal smiled at his champion. “I know the hazards you face,” he said quietly. “In token of a great task, I will give you a great reward.” He did not say what that reward would be.
The emperor asked Egrin to make ready ten hordes of the city garrison. Valdid rehearsed with Tol the exact questions the emperor wanted him to ask Enkian. When the finicky chamberlain was finally satisfied, Ackal dismissed the group.
No one spoke until they were outside the palace. On the broad steps, with the torchlit imperial plaza before them and stars above, Kiya could contain herself no longer.
“I’m going with you,” she stated.
“A fine idea,” said Egrin immediately. “Someone should guard your back. I am forbidden to go, but Kiya is a foreigner. She may do as she likes.”
As he descended the steps a little ahead of the other two, Egrin added, “I shall rest easier knowing Tol doesn’t enter this deathtrap alone.”
Tough soldier that he was, Tol was pleased to know the marshal’s affection hadn’t dimmed with time and distance. Having Egrin standing by with ten thousand men ready to sweep into Verdant Isle was a great comfort-almost as much as the presence of Kiya at his side and the nullstone in his pocket.
Dawn was still far distant when Tol and Kiya mounted up outside Rumbold villa. The air was crisp with a presentiment of autumn. A tapestry of stars glittered overhead. The white moon, Solin, was just setting among the rooftops and towers of the New City.
Kiya was unhappy, not because of their potentially dangerous mission, but because Miya still had not returned home.
“She’s a grown woman,” Tol said gently. “She has the right to be happy with the man of her choice.”
Kiya shook her head stubbornly. “Our father would be angry if he knew. She dishonors you, Husband.” She lowered her chin to her chest and added, “I will not desert you.”
Tol blinked. After all this time, had he acquired a wife in Kiya without noticing it?
Now was not the time for such thoughts, so he set them aside. Egrin and a handful of men from the Eagle horde had come to see them off.
“Watch your back,” Egrin said.
“Ah, I have a pair of eyes back there,” Tol answered, smiling toward Kiya.
They mounted. When their farewells were said, Tol touched heels to his mount’s sides.
“What happens after?” Kiya asked suddenly.
He pulled back on the reins and regarded her in confusion. “After what?”
“After we come back. The emperor is crowned, the old emperor sleeps with his ancestors. What happens to us after that?”
It was a question none of them had considered yet. With the great coronation ceremony concluded, and Pakin III buried, the warlords gathered in Daltigoth would soon disperse. Tol had been on campaign for ten years. His home had been a tent, pitched in field or forest. If there was no war to fight, what would he do? What about Valaran? Could he bring himself to leave her again?
The more he thought about it, the more bereft he felt. Struggling for an answer, he said, “Maybe I’ll travel-visit Juramona or the Great Green. Would you like to see the forest again?”
Kiya only shrugged and looked away.
One of the Eagle horde men overheard them and said, “If I were you, my lord, I’d ask for a foreign posting. Tarsis, maybe. With you in command of the garrison there, I’m sure the syndics would behave themselves.”
“All but one,” Kiya replied dryly, still looking toward the horizon.
“Let’s go.” Tol spurred his horse forward before Kiya revealed anything more.
The two clattered through the sleeping city, leaving the Quarry district for the New City. Here they found the first stirrings for the new day-vendors rolled out pushcarts or opened stalls, servants and housewives scrubbed their stoops. Since the death of Pelladrom Tumult in the market square riot, there had been markedly fewer disturbances in the streets, and the coronation of Ackal IV had diminished tensions over the succession still further. Of course, the arrival of Enkian Tumult had created a new cause for worry.
They left the city by the north gate, called Kanira’s Door by most folk. The eccentric Empress Kanira had built an elaborate ceremonial gate as the starting point of the great paved road she envisioned reaching all the way to the empire’s northern territories. The gate and fifty leagues of road were completed, then a bankrupt treasury had halted the entire enterprise. Such wild extravagance had precipitated her fall at the hands of her stepson, Ergothas II, widely considered one of the empire’s greatest rulers.
Kanira’s Door comprised columns of red granite, alternating with lofty cylinders of pink marble. The columns were placed so close together a sword blade could not fit between them. The line of columns curved outward from the city wall in a great half-circle to the gate proper: a massive slab of sculpted granite that hung over a deep pit in the road. The slab pivoted vertically, and when open, it rested flat on the ground, making a bridge over the pit. In the closed position, the vertical slab left a gaping chasm before it. Although a formidable defensive position, such a gate was so complex and expensive to build it had never been duplicated.
An ingenious mechanism lowered the ponderous stone platform while Tol and Kiya waited. Two ogres, legs shackled and bodies joined at the waists by another weighty chain, cranked furiously at a monstrous stone flywheel. The motion of the wheel turned pulleys and gears, and the gate swung down and open without the slightest scrape. Both horses cantered across the granite bridge, iron-shod hooves clattering loudly.
The land beyond Kanira’s Door was more hilly than the southern or eastern approaches to the capital. In the final bloom of summer, the fields and orchards were heavy with fruit and sparkled with dew. The fecund smell of ripeness was strong in the still morning air.
Kiya remarked it was not the warrior hordes of Ergoth but its fields that had first impressed her with the empire’s power.