Empress Adirn 10: A Change of Pace
Weeks passed in the wake of Empress Adirn’s council-wide blackmail. In and of itself this wasn’t a surprise to anyone; even Empress Tempora Chronosbane’s significant efforts to rob her subjects of time had failed to stop the days going by. Many of Tempora’s subjects didn’t live to see those days pass, of course, but that didn’t change the fact that it was happening. What was remarkable, however, was how the light of Adirn's reign began to slowly filter into the blackness of imperial life.
Repeated attempts to dress the empress in something that didn’t glorify evil, constrict her bodily functions, or do both simultaneously, had gradually teased Gwen away from fearing every look and word from the empress. Any negative feedback regarding Adirn’s choice of colour combinations was still wrapped in a thick layer of diplomatic cotton wool, but at least that wool wasn’t soaked in fearful tears. Mary the Skullery Maid too had been softened by Adirn’s consistent attitude towards verbal and physical assault, in as much as she’d not once thrown a coal scuttle at the girl for polishing the skulls until they were too shiny. Eye contact could now be established, and she’d even let slip that she did think it unusual to have quite so many skulls in one building. Baby steps though they might have been, Adirn couldn’t help feeling like she was making progress.
Whether by the spectral machinations of Chamberlain Greysoul or otherwise, the empress’ requests regarding modifications to her palace were also being carried out, despite the many protests and tantrums that Katherine the Mistress of Records chose to throw. When the enormous ‘Imperial Malignancy Chambers’ plaque had been levered from the wall above Adirn’s living quarters, Katherine had insisted on having it stored in the Sin Archive, ready for restoration as soon as the empress saw reason. There was no resistance to having a door re-fitted to Adirn’s office, such that the long walk would no longer be an awkward slog, but when it came to having the ceremonial throne in the Stone Garden removed, the Mistress of Records drew a hard and crotchety line.
“It’s a testament to the greatest moment in our history! The very founding of our empire, you petulant child!” She’d cried upon hearing the news.
“It’s a would-be empress burning down a peaceful village and then drowning a sack of birds!” Countered the empress. Katherine nodded vigorously in agreement.
“Exactly! Exactly! The very foundation on which the City of Torment is built! We stand atop the ashes of Hope, and the Stone Garden is roughly on top of the very pond in which those birds met their demise.” She explained, beaming with patriotic pride.
Adirn sighed. “Of course the village was called Hope.”
“Empress Kegyetlen was a visionary.”
“She was a lunatic. Those are not events to be celebrated, whether they led to the founding of an empire or otherwise. It’s going.”
“Erasing our history won’t change the past. It won’t change what gave you your power.”
“And moving a bench won’t change it either, but at least I won’t have to address my people with a message of mercy whilst standing in front of a celebrated massacre.” Adirn snapped. “I’m not intending to have the bench destroyed; you can keep it in your library in the Sin Archive if you love it so much but the orders have been given. Greysoul’s ghost, which I’m still not sold on the existence of, by the way,” she added, mostly to wind up the Mistress of Records “has received its orders.”
So it was that Katherine’s library had to make space for an enormous piece of antique garden furniture. Although she would never have admitted it to the empress, the Mistress of Records took boundless joy from the sound of a gigantic stone throne being slammed into bookshelves and occasionally dropped on the drum-skin floorboards of the Sin Archive. Or, more accurately, from the degree to which it tortured her archivists to hear it happening but be unable to shush it.
Meanwhile, in a display of subversion which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the empress, the Dark Council had taken her decrees and blackmail to heart the only way they knew how. Since her declaration that no-one in the empire needed to pay tithes or taxes if it would leave them in poverty, not a single member of her Dark Council, nor many of the lesser nobles, had yielded a single coin to the throne in settlement of their own dues. It seemed that all of them, in words that sounded suspiciously close to something that Lord Tabius Lloyd would say, had concluded that paying any further dues to the crown would leave them in poverty, as they themselves defined the term. The situation, they claimed, was further exacerbated by the peasantry not paying any coin in taxes or dues themselves. It was a vicious and inescapable cycle, they claimed solemnly.
After the daily circus of tax refusal, and in front of ever-growing crowds, Empress Adirn would recount the breaches or manipulations of the rules fed back to her from Almighty Virum’s confession boxes, and the nobles would find some way of trying to justify themselves.
Baron Infernus insisted that charcoals needed to be harvested while the embers still glowed, so that they could ensure the highest quality products; so, he argued, it therefore wasn’t torture or illegal burning to send his workers into the ovens before they were cold. As to why those same workers could not, under any circumstances, wear gloves or use tools to pick up the red-glowing logs, he fell short of an explanation. It was a similar story with Lady Vipus’ newfound policy of roping her workers together for safety while they dismantled the gallows; Adirn had found herself unconvinced by the argument that ‘only neck-worn safety ropes can guarantee that no-one gets lost in the fields’. It was sheer coincidence, Lady Vipus assured the crowd, that so many of the workers had tripped and fallen. No-one could have foreseen that tripping in a neck-worn safety rope would lead to the tragic and unfortunately hanging-adjacent deaths of a dozen peasants. The Lady’s position that such a calamity was a mere dozen-in-a-lifetime event, and changing the system would not bring any benefit, failed to convince the Empress.
Once again, Countess Lascera showed a suspicious amount of compliance to Adirn's edicts. Every time she failed to argue, or seemed to do exactly as requested, or made no effort to flay anybody, it played on the empress’ mind. It was only her who acted this way. Everyone else resisted her in any way they could, but the knife-flinger toed the line to perfection. Despite it being exactly what she had wanted from everyone else, the unquestioning obedience of Countess Lascera had proven to be even less pleasant than outright defiance, until finally the empress could stand it no longer.
“Captain Toxis…” she’d said after another suspiciously uneventful audience. “I have a request.”
“We’ve been over this, eminence. You can issue orders to me instead of requests.”
“And we’ve been over the fact that orders aren’t polite.”
“It is not impolite, I assure you, your eminence. It is, in fact, your right.”
“Well just because it’s my right doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.” Argued Adirn. “Anyway, I would like for one of your more subtle guards to follow Countess Lascera and find out what she’s up to. Almighty Virum’s confessions aren’t bringing me anything untoward about her, and I can’t trust this amount of good behaviour from someone who tried to murder me at literally the first chance they got.”
“Certainly, eminence.” He’d replied after a short pause. “They do have rather little to do these days. I hadn’t realised how much time they spent on sorties against the townsfolk at Emperor Tyrannick’s behest.” It had been a strangely damning admission for the Captain of the Guard to make; one of his duties was to know the movements and activities of the guards he captained, after all. Adirn had, however, learned not to worry too much about the problems which weren’t directly related to the maiming or execution of the innocent.
“Wonderful. I would really like to emphasise that I want them to be subtle, Keto.”
“Yes, eminence.”
“More subtle than they were when the White Alliance’s delegation visited.” She clarified.
“As you wish, your eminence.” Confirmed the captain, his typical casualness still on full display. The empress chewed her tongue and wrung her fingers.
“At the risk of sounding like I’m fixated on this detail, because I am, it would be impossible for the guard to be less subtle than they were with the delegation. I really, really would like the guards not to be noticed by the Countess or her people. This is stealth. Not being seen.”
“I understand, your eminence.” Captain Toxis told her, raising his voice and both hands slightly.
“Please be sure that they do as well.” She’d said, finally.
“It will be as you order, your eminence.” He replied, with the specific kind of satisfied inaction that Adirn had come to recognise.
“Oh yes, of course. Greysoul will be carrying the message as we speak.” She’d said flatly, while Captain Toxis nodded impassively.
Once again the empress was treated to a display of spectral efficacy, and a contingent of Keto’s guards had departed the Imperial Palace that same day to provide whatever intelligence Virum’s eyes were failing to see. All she could do was wait for them to bring something, anything, back to her, and wait she did. Right up to the day of her departure for Serenitas.
“Your eminence!” Called the voice of Count Rott, echoing along the corridor outside of her dressing room. The empress scrunched her eyes closed and cursed under her breath, as Gwen packed the least xenophobic clothing from the imperial wardrobe into Adirn’s travelling case. All around her dressing room was the carnage of trying to pack appropriately; parlaying with a serial defender and conqueror of one’s own empire didn’t have a clear dress code, but the Adirn’s clothes were certainly on the wrong side of it. The ‘Hanged White-Alliance’ motif of Almighty Virum’s church was right out of the question, as was the dress of many guillotines. Despite the efforts of the Onyx Empire’s finest tailors, very few had managed to grasp the concept of a garment without embroidery, and that meant that several of the best choices still featured prominent skulls, amputations, or lesser atrocities.
“I do not have the energy to spare for him right now…” Adirn groaned. Laid on the bed in front of her were two dresses, one with a burning farmer and an elaborate smiley face underneath, the other simply embroidered with “Execution for all”. Distressingly, the empress felt compelled to move both into the ‘maybe’ pile.
“Should I hold him at the door, your eminence?” Keto asked. He stood at one corner of the imperial dressing table, arms held out in a wide ‘T’ to act as a makeshift clothes horse for some potential travelling trousers.
“No, no. I’ll go and meet him in the corridor. If his attitude to meeting me is like his attitude to invading the White Alliance then he won’t take no for an answer. Not the first few tens… dozens… hundreds of times.”
Keto shrugged, then his eyes widened; his shoulder motion had disturbed the equilibrium and some of the trousers started to slip. His gaze flitted from arm to arm, each one laden with a modest wardrobe’s worth of legwear and neither one capable of reaching for the sliding garment.
“N… no, your… eminence…” He stammered distractedly, making tentative yet ambitious attempts to rotate his arm back underneath the trousers’ centre of mass without upsetting the others.
Like soil cracking under the heat of the Sun in a long, dry summer, Adirn’s mouth started to split into an involuntary grin. Panic’s overwhelming waves were crashing against the shores of Keto’s unbreakable composure in a way that the empress hadn’t seen before, and it was comforting to know that the guard captain was human enough to be capable of drowning within those murky waters.
Before the escaping legwear could be stopped, Keto felt the majority of the clothing start to slip the other way. His flawed arm-rotating technique was failing him, so he tried to employ a bend at the knees in a futile attempt to contort himself into a more stable platform. This too was doomed to failure, and he felt it immediately, but shifting himself back would only cause more disruption. The falling trousers’ waistband was almost at the point of no return. It would succumb to gravity soon.
“Gwen,” he started in a strangled voice “I fear that I may require assistance.”
Adirn knew that she herself could step in and help Keto, but she instead savoured the moment a little longer. Her satisfaction in finally seeing the captain of the guard wrong-footed, not merely awkward as he had been whenever he dined with her but fully challenged, was unaccountable but undeniable. It was a beautiful tonic to her anxiety at the impending departure.
“With what, Captain Toxis?” Gwen said, looking up. A gasp left her lips as she saw the problem, and she snatched up the clothing before it could drop. Keto exhaled heavily in relief.
“Thank you.” He said earnestly.
“Gwen, would you please fully unburden the captain? I would appreciate him being able to accompany me as I speak to Count Rott, and I don’t think my packing list needs to be on display.”
With a suitably unpacked guard captain the empress stepped from her dressing room and into the corridor, where Count Rott was marching towards them purposefully. Clutched in his hand was a long roll of paper. It immediately filled Adirn with pre-emptive disappointment.
“Eminence! I’m glad to catch you before you departed.” He called out, determined to pin her in place using social norms while he hurried towards them. “There’s something about which we need to speak urgently.”
“So I gather. I don’t have long though, Count, so please be as brief as you can.”
“Oh this won’t take long, your eminence.” He beamed. “This idea is so ingenious that it sells itself.”
“Be honest with me now Count; are you suggesting the same surprise attack yet again? I won’t be angry if you are” the empress said, knowing full well that her last claim was a lie “but I can tell you know that I will be refusing it. I will always refuse that plan.”
“No! No it’s not my perfectly fine surprise attack plan.” He said, scowling. His expression immediately brightened again when he looked down at his paper. “It’s something even more devious, and that even you won’t be able to find flaws in. It’s perfect.”
“And it doesn’t involve any armies, militias, strike forces, advance legions or other battalions marching over the border to steal gold?”
The count paused and thought for a moment.
“Not even one, your eminence.”
“Nor any phalanxes or platoons?”
“Neither are involved, your eminence.”
With pursed lips and narrowed eyes the empress looked Count Rott dead in the face and tried to think of more synonyms, but her vocabulary failed her. He stared back with barely contained excitement.
“Fine. What’s this plan?”
“It’s brilliant!” The count said, hurrying to the wall with enormous paper. “It will deliver us all the riches and power the Onyx Empire could possibly desire, and will show that pathetic White Alliance what a real nation looks like! I present you with my masterstroke for finally overthrowing Serenitas and tossing Thomas Dove into a pyre!”
“Wh- Count! There was to be no-”
“I give you the First Onyxian Navy!” He shouted over her, spreading the plans out against the stonework.
Unveiled on gridded technical paper were shockingly detailed blueprints for a series of galleons, frigates, galleys, battleships and various smaller vessels. Ornate figureheads of hanging Illuminators adorned the larger ships, along with crow’s nests in the shape of braziers and metal serpents running the length of the hull. Dragon’s mouth cannons were drawn up and shown leering from each of the broad sides. There appeared to be so many that the hull was more cannon than timber, and Adirn’s admittedly poor grasp of hydrodynamics suggested numerous problems with buoyancy. These were, however, the more trifling of her concerns.
“Harrowing, aren’t they? I can taste the timber and sea air already. Just imagine how many sailors, admirals and yes even fishing boats we’ll send to watery graves with these engineering masterworks!”
“Count Rott-“ Adirn interrupted, but he raised his voice further and interrupted right back.
“We’ve planned it all out. Lady Vipus has ample lumber for dozens of galleons from her disused hanging fields; rather than letting Baron Infernus burn it all, we can set about constructing our flagships. Meanwhile, the Baron’s existing coal supplies will be hoarded and set into the vanguard fleet, such that they may be set ablaze and rammed directly into any enemy warship or pleasure dinghy we should happen to come across.” He pointed to one of the drawings which, now that Adirn looked closely at it, was more like a wooden bathtub full of burning coals than a ship. A razor-like ramming prow in the shape of a bony finger was affixed to the front, and fearful, screaming crewmates were shown sailing it directly into a target. For the purposes of the drawing, the target was shown, improbably, as a sleeping kitten. “Of course there will be some piffling extensive losses of Onyxian seafarers in delivering these payloads of torment, but I’m willing to send a hundred Onyxians to their graves if it means destroying a single White Alliance oar.” He proudly declared. “Or even if they didn’t really.”
“Count Rott this madness and I won’t-“
“But you’ve not heard the whole plan! Tabius Lloyd will be penning sea shanties and war-cries to instil fear in the enemy before any one of them has been burned along with a ship full of Onyxians. Baroness Asphyxia will be made head of militarised drowning, since it is so closely related to her expertise with throat-denial tactics. It all just falls perfectly into place, and it took you to force us into working together to allow us to see that. We’re finally going to deliver the killing blow!”
“Count Rott listen to-“
“Our frigates will speed in on the prevailing night wind under cover of darkness and burn down their lighthouses, and any patrolling boats will be boarded and sunk by Viscount Sinistere’s Sea-Slug fleet of oiled raiders. There will be no warning when our fleet of burning Onyxians crashes into the docked fleet in Serenitas’ foul moorings, and they will be left powerless to defeat us in the water. The White Alliance will be caught with their shirts around their ankles when we storm into their harbour amid full broadside volleys from our gunnery platforms! The war will be over long before our twelfth surprise attack gets underway across the land.”
“Count Rott!” Adirn screamed. With wide eyes the count finally stopped talking and looked at her, with an optimism that, in itself, was dreadfully optimistic. “You seem to be overlooking some vital problems in your plan, do you not think?” Panting through her nose like a bull ready to charge, the empress scowled at the moron of a count and waited for the cogs to turn in his head.
“Uh… I… no. Everything is accounted for. Tabius’ shanties, Vipus’ lumber, Infernus’ coals. We’ve plenty of souls to crew the vessels and ample chains to make sure that there’s no disembarking the flaming vanguard fleet before it burns completely. Our unemployed gallows-builders, those who still remain alive anyway, can be turned into shipwrights before they’re locked in among the coals… there are no flaws at all, as I said!” He insisted.
“The. Onyx. Empire. Is. Landlocked.” Adirn growled through clenched teeth. Count Rott looked back blankly. “We have no coast! No docks, no harbours, no seas! How could you possibly think we’re going to launch a naval assault on anything when there’s no sea! By the gods of course it’d be the First Onyxian Navy, because no-one else would be stupid enough to build ships without water in which to float them!”
“That’s why it will come as such a surprise!” He beamed, while the empress felt her soul dying. “We carry them over the border and then put them in the water when we find a beach. And it brings me to the next part of the plan too! When you’re in Serenitas you can scope out their naval defences, and also a good launching point for our own fleets. You’re instrumental in our success, eminence.”
Empress Adirn closed her eyes and began to inhale. She felt the cold morning air flowing up into her nostrils and passing down her throat. Lungs expanded in her chest and her stomach began to push outwards, pressing the inside of her doublet against her body. Still she kept going, sucking in air until her torso began to ache and burn. Crying muscles pleaded with her to stop; her lungs were full to capacity and still she strained in futility to pull more air inside. Eventually however, under the confused and scared gaze of Count Rott and the quiet concern of Captain Toxis, Adirn exhaled with the deepest sigh of her life and times. It spilled from her mouth like a waterfall of enough disdain to make even Katherine proud, vibrating her diaphragm, flooding warmth back up her throat, and drying the insides of her teeth. Once again she opened her eyes.
“There will be no naval assault of the White Alliance. It is still an invasion, whether by land or by land and sea, and that is something I feel I have been quite explicit in outlawing, Count Rott. Now if you will please excuse me I have some packing to do.”
One of Count Rott’s squashy hands clenched into a fists, while the other removed his naval blueprints from the wall.
“And you won’t even consider providing us with intelligence about Serenitas?”
“I will provide an account of my visit and a description of the city, but it shall not be used to facilitate an invasion. They are to be our allies, our trade partners. Or, at least, they’re not to be provoked into overthrowing yet another Onyxian regime. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly.” The count said with a dark look. As he turned and walked away, he added “Have a pleasant trip, your eminence.”
“Thank you, Count Rott.” Adirn replied. It was a few minutes before she realised that he’d meant the phrase to be offensive.
“Why would anyone need a gate that big?” Adirn asked. Standing in the front courtyard of the Imperial Palace, at the centre of the City of Torment, she faced the looming, cyclopean black iron gates that kept the rest of the population locked out and her locked in. Each one was formed from dozens of vertical bars, styled into ropes that rose several storeys into the air and had solid nooses at the bottom. About half way up, where the vertical bars met one of the many horizontal cross-pieces, they transformed into long pikes. So deadened was she to the stylings of the Onyx Empire that having just the one skull topping each of the bars seemed decidedly subtle.
“Empress Kegyetlen herself requisitioned them, your eminence. She feared that the people would try to bombard her with sacks of their own birds by throwing them over the gates once she’d entered, so she had them built taller than anyone in the city could throw.”
Adirn scanned her eyes from left to right. The gates rose a clear storey higher than the walls on either side did.
“She didn’t think they’d bother with the walls.” Keto added when Adirn made this observation.
Shaking her head, the empress approached her awaiting carriage. It was standing at the centre of the courtyard and formed the centre of all attention and activity. Bustling household staff were hurrying back and forth, carrying trunks of the empress’ travelling supplies, polishing the wheels, and checking that everything was in order for her journey. Six jet black horses were harnessed to the front and looking about themselves with disinterest; their ears flicked this way and that when someone dropped a box or stepped heavily, but none of them seemed overly concerned with anything other than standing still.
In a ring around the carriage was the imperial mounted-escort, looking far more imposing than the vehicle itself and comprising the palace guard whom Keto had personally selected for the task. They were the best riders and combatants that Captain Toxis had available, however the pool of candidates was not a broad one and so they didn’t all necessarily possess both skill sets. He therefore had all four of his guard who had ridden previously, and a further four of his best combatants who might never have seen a horse, let alone sat upon one. He had hoped that the empress wouldn’t be able to notice the difference, but those hopes were destined, unfortunately, to be dashed against the cruel rocks of reality.
“Keto, is that swordswoman alright?” She asked gently. Captain Toxis watched with a sinking heart as one of his best tried to strap herself to the side of her horse, making ingenious misuse of several bridles and a belt to do so.
“One of the grooms will get to her, your eminence.” He said, with the slightly strangled voice of one wishing to erase what he was seeing. “But in light of that assistance being required…”
“Keto, I know you have your concerns, but eight is enough. Too many, if anything.”
“The White Alliance could easily overwhelm us with so few soldiers, your eminence. We must march in greater numbers.”
“This isn’t an invasion and the White Alliance must have no reason to believe otherwise. My visit is the first that any Onyxian has made for centuries without it being a military strike or a spy’s infiltration. If we march in with a whole army then who could blame the local militia for thinking that we were on the warpath?”
“None, your eminence.” Captain Toxis said, reluctantly.
“Besides which, I don’t think I really trust the army to remember they’re not invading either. This is the way things have to be. If the White Alliance is half as honourable is it pretends to be then they won’t move against us during this diplomatic visit.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“Well… then we’re probably no worse off than if we didn’t visit them.”
Captain Toxis looked his empress in the eye, then shrugged.
“It’s going to be bad enough arriving in this monstrosity anyway.” Adirn said, steering the subject away again and pointing towards the imperial travelling carriage.
“I think that the wheel blades are decorative in purpose, eminence.”
“As are the demon carvings on the roof, but that doesn’t stop them all being a bit much. At least they levered off all the skulls like I asked.” She said, looking at the row of divots running along the side of the carriage where decorative bone used to be. It was just a shame that the columns of femurs running from the floor to the roof were, reportedly, structural.
“I understand that Katherine has them in her library already, your eminence.”
“Wonderful.” She said flatly. “I suppose that’s the best for which I could hope.”
Resigned to having made her travelling company as pleasant as was practical with the resources available, Adirn refused to allow anyone to help her climb the steps into the carriage and then took her seat. At the very least her predecessors hadn’t insisted on having the padding stripped from inside, so she was able to sit in physical, if not emotional, comfort. Heavy black curtains were tied back to either side of the doors, so that what little view of the outside the empress had could be closed off at a moment’s notice. She presumed it to be so that a previous ruler wouldn’t have to look upon the lower classes or some such nonsense.
Settled into her cushioned seat, Adirn scanned her eyes around the decadently velvet-coated interior of the carriage for a few moments. A lattice of obsidian studs, shaped into skulls because what else would they ever be, held the deep, dark purple lining in place against the ceiling and the walls, giving the whole compartment the look of an ostentatious tomb. As she ruminated on the interior of her travelling vehicle being yet one more thing the White Alliance mustn’t see, the thought struck the empress that Captain Toxis hadn’t embarked with her. Set well back from the door in her soft reclined seat, what little external light that could enter was being consumed by the dark fabrics, plunging her into shadow. As ever, when not in Keto’s company, the cold dread of being exposed and vulnerable started to creep up the back of her neck.
“Keto? Is everything alright?” She called out.
“Just checking that everyone knows their positions, your eminence.” He shouted back a moment later.
Adirn didn’t like that answer, despite its general positivity. A sense of dependence on Captain Toxis had quickly formed in her, mostly on account of the assassinations he so often thwarted, and his absence was a major source of anxiety. Unaccustomed to being so pathetically needy, the empress tried to tell herself that being worried was entirely irrational; after all, her whole escort was just outside the carriage. A broken line of sight didn’t make her any less safe. Repeated mantras to that effect swam through her mind until she finally heard boots on the carriage steps.
“Good. I assume everything is in order.” Adirn said, allowing relief rinse away the unpleasant odour of needless worry.
It didn’t last long.
“Perfectly in order.” Sneered a voice she didn’t recognise. Clad in the livery of her house-servants, a man with a face that was more scar tissue than normal skin loomed into the carriage. “And I’ll be carrying out mine.”
Beneath a nose that apparently spent more time broken than not, a ravaged excuse for a mouth pulled itself up into the kind of grin that the empress had come to fear in her nightmares. Specifically, it was the kind of grin that looms a foot or so above a glinting dagger.
Reflexively the empress tried to back away, but she was already pressed into the rear of her padded seat and encasing herself in cushions did little to make her feel more comfortable. Dread boiled sickeningly in her stomach as the white-hot clutch of panic clasped itself around her brain. There was no way to spring powerfully from a seat so soft and even if she could, the assassin and his blade were directly between her and the door. Her mind fired in a frenzy but couldn’t find a way out.
Trapped and cornered animals, she’d heard it said, would fight and claw in hysterics before going down. As the blade-arm rose, preparing to commit the first regicide that the Onyx Empire had experienced in months, Adirn sat frozen in place and cursed herself for having fewer survival instincts than a wild boar. But, she told herself, she was an empress; going down with shrieks and pleas wasn’t a fitting end to what she’d sought to achieve.
“Would you please stop! It is not well mannered to advance on someone like this!” She commanded from nowhere, surprising herself and, apparently, the assassin. He paused for a moment, his scar tissue grin scrunching up into curiosity.
“Well… I know that. It’s not meant to be well mannered.” He replied, as if rationalising the thoughts as he went. “But it’s a bloody royal welcome compared to what comes next, so I’d appreciate it while it lasts.”
“I order you not to kill me!” Adirn shouted, emboldened by the dialogue that had opened up between them, despite the polarising differences in their attitudes towards the impending murder. The shock on the assassin’s face was also plain to see, although on closer inspection that had more to do with Captain Toxis’ hand grasping the back of his head. In a single swift yank the assassin was hauled skull-first from the carriage and out of Adirn’s sight. A heavy thud half a moment later informed her of his landing. By the time the empress had managed to stand up and peer through the door, Captain Toxis had taken custodianship of the dagger and standing with one foot on each of the assassin’s wrists. There was enough yelping to confirm that the would-be killer didn’t appreciate this development.
“Were you harmed, your eminence?” He asked, without looking away from the apprehended killer.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Would you like for him to be harmed?”
“No. Of course not. He is to apologise for his wrong-doing and promise not to try this murdering business ever again.”
Where previously there had been a nervous, tense silence from the servants and palace guard around the carriage, there now came a collective groan. Even the assassin seemed to be feeling underwhelmed by the empress’ answer.
“As you wish, your eminence.” Keto said, doing a remarkable job of masking any disappointment he felt while securing the dagger on his belt. As the empress stepped down from the carriage and moved towards him, he leaned more of his weight on the assassin’s wrists to make a point.
“Well?” Adirn said, looking down stonily at the restrained and rather disadvantaged man. “I asked you to stop and you refused. I told you it wasn’t polite to try to assassinate me and you ignored it. It took Captain Toxis here dragging you out by the scalp to stop you. Do you have anything to say?”
“Erm… please let me go?”
“When you apologise and promise to give up your life as an assassin.” The empress said, with a tone that was yet stonier.
“Alright… I’m sorry and I won’t kill people anymore?” He tried, the words tumbling uncertainly from the craggy ruins of his scar-tissue mouth.
The empress sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
“It’s Arthur.”
“Well, Arthur, I’d prefer a little more sincerity and confidence than that in your apology.”
“And I’d prefer not to have someone standing on my arms.” He replied. Adirn’s face had gone right the way through stony and blown entirely past rocky. There were mountain ranges, many of them surrounding the Onyx Empire, that seemed fleshier than the empress’ expression, and the assassin felt suddenly and acutely aware of it. “I’m sorry. I won’t kill people anymore.” He repeated.
“Thank you. You will leave immediately, your dagger will remain with us, and you will not return here. Do we have an understanding?”
“We do.”
“Good. Captain Toxis, would you please let the man up?”
Captain Toxis shrugged, and removed his feet from Arthur’s wrists.
For a few seconds, the assassin laid still on the floor, looking from the guard captain to the empress and back again with wide, distrusting eyes as he awaited the betrayal.
“And that’s it then? I can just leave now?”
“Yes, that’s it as long as you don’t break your word.” The empress confirmed.
“So I could have just lied to you and I’d still be able to go?”
“Yes. Unless you were give me some reason to believe that you were lying, of course. But I am running out of patience quite rapidly.”
Arthur scrabbled to his feet rapidly and then returned to staring at the pair of them.
“Could I have my dagger back?”
“No. I told you it stays here with us.” Adirn said, politely but firmly. The small crowd of servants and soldiers were standing in loose, quiet circle and all staring at the peculiarly uneventful standoff. Keto started to frown pointedly.
“Right. Well. Goodbye then, your eminence.” Arthur finally said, rubbing at his sore wrists. When no response came his way, he gave an awkward half-bow and walked away towards the front gates.
“That went… I don’t know if well is the term but… it could have been worse. He didn’t try to kill me again at least.” Adirn commented, for want of anything else to say.
“I will continue to question your insistence on accepting apologies in these cases, eminence. They will learn just to keep trying and keep apologising until they are successful.”
“Did imprisoning or executing the assassins stop the attempts on imperial lives before?” Adirn asked with the feigned curiosity of a child. Captain Toxis narrowed his eyes at her, and then shrugged. “Exactly. I’m no worse off this way. At least I don’t need to watch you cut anyone else’s head off if I let them leave unarmed.”
Captain Toxis offered no response. As they stood in silence, Adirn became acutely aware of the wordless crowd still standing around them.
“Please continue preparing for my departure. The plans are unchanged.” She announced. If anything, her plans only grew more urgent.
Metal-shod hooves clattered against obsidian and onyx cobblestones. Several scrapes gave away how slippery and unsuitable obsidian was as a flooring solution, especially one to be used underneath a hoof, but eventually it seemed that some traction could be gained and the carriage started to roll into motion. Sitting opposite her on the rear-facing seat, Captain Toxis had rested his sword across his knees in order to avoid stabbing the cushion, a move made with the benefit of experience and the ruin of much upholstery, Adirn presumed. Despite the long journey ahead of them, the captain didn’t try to settle in or get comfortable; instead he sat bolt upright and to attention as if another assassin might leap through the small window at any moment.
Through the gates the carriage rumbled and bounced on its wooden wheels. It was the first time that Adirn had been beyond the limits of the Imperial Palace in nearly two months, and only the second time ever that she’d passed through the City of Torment. Of course, on her way into the palace she’d not been able to enjoy the scenery as much. Blindfolds tend to have that unfortunate side-effect, and by the time it had been removed, she was almost at the gates. The surprise announcement that she was to be crowned had been rather unpleasant and distinctly less of an honour than the delegation who kidnapped her had led her to believe, and that had further reduced her interest in sightseeing.
This time around, living with the aftermath of that kidnapping and involuntary ascension, she had the luxury of time to peruse the state of her capitol in all its fuliginous glory. In those moments she’d snatched to peer from the windows of the Imperial Palace, Adirn had found it astounding how the light was swallowed up by endless black of the walls; down at street level the effect was even more harrowing. Bright daylight from above was visible, but to look down was to be plunged into a never-ending night. She could just about pick out the shape of cobbles and kerbs if she strained her eyes through the small carriage windows, but where street met building she couldn’t confidently say. Nor could many of the citizens who made the City of Torment their home, it seemed. More than once she saw two people try to pass each other, only for one of them to slam face-first into a townhouse that didn’t so much loom from the darkness as hide within it. Those people who tried to step out of the way of the carriage fell afoul of the same trick being played by the kerbsides, plummeting onto their shadowed buttocks by the roadside.
“How does anyone live like this? In the artifice of permanent night?”
“In poverty mostly, your eminence.” Keto answered candidly.
The empress sighed.
“There’s so much work to be done.”
“All the more reason to bring more of an honour guard, such that we minimise the risk of attack or assassination, eminence.”
Adirn gave Captain Toxis a look to remind him that the conversation on such a topic was long over. He gave a look back to demonstrate that his opinion on that matter was different to her own.
“You can’t do great works if we’re ambushed on the road or captured by the White Alliance.”
“Enough, Keto. How did they even get the buildings to be this black?”
“Katherine would know more of the details than I do, eminence. I’m just a soldier recommending that we send a rider back for more guards.”
“But in lieu of that recommendation being taken, I would be grateful to hear those few details that you do know regarding the colour of my city’s buildings.”
“As you wish, eminence. I believe that it was a writ from Emperor Obfuscator following the completion of Horizon’s Bane; he concluded that whilst bringing an early dusk was a good start, it would be even better to make the midday sun as weak as possible for the people. There was a lot of coal, obsidian, onyx and ebony involved in the retrofitting, rendering and general dirtying of the city, as I understand it.”
Adirn nodded sadly.
“Fixing that will be a future argument for myself and the Mistress of Records, I suppose.”
Through streets that might well have been broad or narrow for all that Adirn could see, the carriage wound a path towards the outskirts of the City of Torment. Every now and again Captain Toxis would point out a major landmark to Adirn and she would shudder at the thought of it, but for the most part it was just an array of identically hard to see walls. The great hanging square, where those accused of treason against the city had previously been executed, was reportedly the largest open space within the city limits, excepting the Imperial Palace. Adirn took Keto’s word for it, because aside from the sky above she could barely make out any detail at all; the homes opposite could equally have been very short and close or very tall and far away, but with the perfect blackness of everything there was no way of knowing. Of course, he had assured her, the square needed to be large because it seemed that hundreds of people were found guilty every week, and gallows took up a lot of room.
As they grew further from the Imperial Palace, the City of Torment grew less dense. The main thoroughfares were still cobbled and darkened, but side streets had scrubby weeds growing from the dirt, and doorways had been worn back to their original hues. It took the empress’ eyes a little while to adjust to being able to parse what they saw as three dimensional objects again, instead of raw shadows, but she was grateful for it.
“This is better. I can see something now.”
“We can also be seen. Bandits roam the spaces between settlements, as you must know, your eminence.” Keto said, determined to keep danger at the forefront of the imperial mind.
“Surely we were at more risk when the bandits could disappear into the shadows?”
“They gave up on that after too many twisted ankles thanks to unseen cobbles, eminence. If they can’t run away then they’re doomed to beheading by someone or other.”
“Hmm. Perhaps Emperor Obfuscator accidentally did some good. I’m sure he would have hated that.” Mused the empress.
“Perhaps so, your eminence. But he certainly didn’t lament forcing the bandits into open country, where they could prey on the roads and keep people trapped in their settlements. It’s easy to ambush a caravan when it’s in barren, open land.”
“It’s a good thing that I have you and your escort detail to keep me safe then, captain.” Adirn said with a smile, suddenly desperate for a bright side. “Although I would very much appreciate it if we could avoid any entanglement like that; arriving at our destination awash with blood, even spilled in self-defence, would be dreadful.”
“Understood, your eminence, but I fear that the decision may be more in the bandits’ hands than our own.” Keto pointed out. Adirn shrugged.
Over the course of the day the empress was treated to all the sights of her empire, from the disused hanging fields, to the dried out drowning pools, to the enormous remnants of pyres left to smoulder. Seas of gallows standing like a petrified forest stretched up the shallow slope of Mount Vipus, complete with a dedicated gallow-logging operation visible in the far distance. Lady Vipus would be out there somewhere, tucked away into the tunnels that housed her family’s ancestral home, and with her were answers as to why so very many gallows could possibly have been necessary in a whole empire, let alone a single valley.
“There must be more of them than there are people in the Vipus demesne…” Adirn speculated out loud.
“If there weren’t before then there are now.” Keto observed.
Although the nooses were empty as the imperial carriage passed by, Adirn couldn’t help wondering if they would still be so when she returned. Her Dark Council could be trusted a great deal less than the distance to which they could be thrown, as the common metric went, and without constant supervision the empress feared they might slip back into their old ways. There would have to be punishments for such misbehaviour, and she resolved to work out how on earth that could be achieved before she returned.
Once the carriage had rounded the mountainside, rolling along coarse stone tracks that meandered between hills and rocky outcrops, the forest of gallows was replaced with barren farmland. For miles upon miles the land was brown with bare dirt or yellow with dried out vegetation. Occasionally there would be a shocking flash of green, enough to catch the eye and focus the attention, but in all likelihood a close examination would reveal it to be a patch of weeds, or a poisonous plant, or something yet more harrowing that Adirn’s limited experience couldn’t yet anticipate. The beauty of the empress’ limited experience was that it frequently made new and surprising discoveries, such as the one made when she approached a rough collection of buildings a few hours ride from Mount Vipus.
“Ugh, what’s that smell?” She blurted. An aroma of such potency, such aggression, and even such texture that it surpassed mere unpleasantness and became caustic, invited itself into the imperial nostrils and made a home for itself.
“We are passing through Decaydale, eminence. A fell wind will always blow from here.”
“I thought that was just a name!” The empress said, burying her nose under layer upon layer of clothing in a futile effort to block the pungency. “I suppose that was foolishness on my part.”
“It is not my place to say, eminence.”
Not willing to risk uncovering her mouth, Adirn did not press for any further detail, and instead peered from her carriage window with a morbid curiosity. What met her vision was a calamitous heartbreak of a town, composed of the very essence of grey sadness. Under the wheels of the carriage, stony tracks had given way to a washed out and viscous clay upon which nothing even tried to grow. Facing over it, and bearing witness to wheels which dug down as much as they rolled forwards, were wooden homes; their timbers had rotted through to a mere film of plant fibres that even the woodworm considered below their budget. Daylight was visible not just between the planks but directly through them, as the ravages of time and fungus had eaten them away to crumbling paper.
“How long has the town been abandoned?” she mumbled to Keto through several strips of fabric.
“It isn’t, your eminence.”
The empress looked his way with horror.
“The people here suffer a lot of nosebleeds, to be sure, but they live here all the same. Count Rott will not allow them to leave, nor will he permit materials to be used in replacing their homes. He claims that there are years left in these structures.”
Still shielding her mouth and nose from the invasive stench, the empress looked from rotten house to decaying hovel and despaired that any could call this their home. The occupants would need to make only shallow and careful breaths lest they blow their abodes down from the inside. So much as thinking about a breeze would probably have sent half the village crumbling down to powder. Count Rott had a lot to answer for, or perhaps more accurately he had a lot more to answer for than she’d already been aware.
“The Church of Virum didn’t tell me things were this bad… I was a fool for thinking that the old witch’s blackmails would be honoured.” She clenched a fist, but chose the hand which was holding several handkerchiefs up to her nose. A sharp, crushing pain in her face made her release quickly.
After some pondering on the guard captain’s part, especially when the empress seemed to be trying to squeeze her own face for reasons unknown, he managed to interpret the empress’ muffled sentiments.
“With respect, eminence, do you really think that they know any different? To the priests of Virum who call this their parish, their lot has been much improved. This…” he said, indicating the mulch of a village “must feel like bliss to them. Rest assured that the Grand Priestess would not renege on a mutual blackmail for the benefit of Count Rott. This is ignorance, not subterfuge.”
Adirn wanted to cry. She would have preferred deception to delusion any day.
“This is to be my first priority upon returning from Serenitas, Keto. We deal with Count Rott and fix this whole situation here.”
“As you wish, your eminence.” He said simply. The carriage kept on rolling.
All told, it took three days for the imperial caravan to reach the border. Three days of all the poverty that an empire could muster. Three days of monuments to atrocities past, graveyards without a church in sight, and ineffectual bandit attacks. Although they weren’t all natural riders, Captain Toxis’ chosen guards had done a flawless job of cutting down any axe, knife or heavy book wielding miscreants who chose to lunge from the darkness of the undergrowth and demand a bounty. Keto managed to maintain his cool and commanding presence in nearly every case. It was only when bandits leapt from behind boulders, hillocks, and particularly broad cattle, outside of the Plains of Auros that he became agitated. It wasn’t out of a fear of mortal danger or any kind of righteous indignation, but because the assailants transpired to be one of the squads he’d sent out to clear the road of bandits a week earlier. Their defence that ‘a gap in the market for a team of plucky highwaymen had appeared’ did little to win him over. It was only Adirn’s intervention and insistence on her ‘apology and repentance’ policy that spared their lives, but the promise of Keto’s wrath to be delivered another day was probably worse than death anyway.
So it was that after those three days of disheartening hardship Adirn was overjoyed to see it; the divide that might be closed to save her empire. It was easy enough to see where the Onyx Empire gave way to the White Alliance, because the row of skull-laden pikes lining the road transformed abruptly into silver birch saplings. Where the road on her own side would be more accurately characterised as a few rocks pushed into the mud, a perfect tessellation of bright, clean, stone blocks led the way into the bright green and starkly healthy meadows of the White Alliance.
“Oh, come on. How is that even possible?” The empress complained, looking down at the perfect transition from blackened, dead grass to lush and healthy grazing that delineated the two nations. For as far as she could see along the boundary, before grassland gave way to the scree slope of a mountain, the line continued along in perfect reflection of the map boundary. “This must have been the work of one of the other rulers, surely?”
“I can’t say, your eminence. I don’t know of any malevolent agriculturalists in the history of the empire.” Keto answered.
“I think it was the will of Almighty Virum, such that no Onyxian should till this land and in doing so be tempted away by the White Alliance.” Called out one of the riders. Adirn turned to face them and was momentarily startled when she saw an empty saddle. A few moments later her memory caught up, and she looked at the horizontal facing poking from below the horse’s neck.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, your eminence. Almighty Virum does not tolerate the peons to gaze upon the filth of the White Alliance. Inviting such weaknesses into our empire is not his will.”
Adirn nodded slowly at the unsuspected evangelism.
“I suppose that Virum made all those clouds stop at the edge of our mountains too, did he?”
“Oh yes. So that none could see from the mountains into the forbidden lands and be tempted.” Replied the horse’s neck.
“I always thought it was to punish the mountain folk for not being in the richly taxable villages in the valley.” Called out one of the guards who understood how to sit on a horse. The fact that he was wearing the saddle on his own back did little to diminish that achievement. “Almighty Virum thrives on taxation, and avoiding it by living in a mountain cave is blasphemy.”
“Maybe that was another reason. Just like the way the rivers that approach our border from the White Alliance all curve back in instead of crossing. Virum did that to stop us relying on them, and so that none could try to sail up-stream towards Serenitas.” Added the first rider, whose head had probably accumulated a lot of her blood by this stage. Adirn thought about Count Rott’s navy and shuddered.
“Right, well whatever the reason it still all makes the Onyx Empire look pretty grim compared to the White Alliance.” Adirn said.
“Just as Virum intended!” The blood-rich horse-side enthusiast replied, proudly.
“Interesting. Thank you.” The empress replied, sounding as final as possible. Normally she would have argued that the rider’s postulate was preposterous, but arguing with someone who’d spent three days strapped to the side of a horse didn’t feel sporting. Instead she looked out over the border, the mysterious line that separated foreboding bleakness, barren soil and murderous mountains from the bucolic utopia of the White Alliance’s outlands. “And this is just it? No outpost or checkpoint to watch the approach. Nothing to fend off the next inevitable ‘surprise’ attack from Rott’s regulars?”
“Why should they need a watchtower to warn of the surprise attacks when they are so predictable? They would simply confirm what’s already expected, your eminence.” Keto pointed out, and Adirn sighed.
“That’s a fair point.” She paused for a few moments, looking across to the sunlit hills across the border. “Once I step over there, into the White Alliance, we’ll be the first Onyxians to enter their land for reasons other than invasion or looting in centuries. How long has it been since a ruler made a state visit?”
“Centuries, I would guess, your eminence.” Captain Toxis replied. “Kathrine would know more.”
“And I bet she’d say it with pride too.” Mused Adirn. “But no matter. The point is that we’re about to make history.”
“The first Onyxian empress to deliver herself to the headsman’s axe in the White Alliance would certainly be a historic memorial, your eminence.”
Adirn laughed mirthlessly. Then she stopped and chewed her lip with a pensive frown.
“They wouldn’t though, would they?” She asked. The question hung in the air for a second, dangling over the border.
Captain Toxis shrugged.
Repeated attempts to dress the empress in something that didn’t glorify evil, constrict her bodily functions, or do both simultaneously, had gradually teased Gwen away from fearing every look and word from the empress. Any negative feedback regarding Adirn’s choice of colour combinations was still wrapped in a thick layer of diplomatic cotton wool, but at least that wool wasn’t soaked in fearful tears. Mary the Skullery Maid too had been softened by Adirn’s consistent attitude towards verbal and physical assault, in as much as she’d not once thrown a coal scuttle at the girl for polishing the skulls until they were too shiny. Eye contact could now be established, and she’d even let slip that she did think it unusual to have quite so many skulls in one building. Baby steps though they might have been, Adirn couldn’t help feeling like she was making progress.
Whether by the spectral machinations of Chamberlain Greysoul or otherwise, the empress’ requests regarding modifications to her palace were also being carried out, despite the many protests and tantrums that Katherine the Mistress of Records chose to throw. When the enormous ‘Imperial Malignancy Chambers’ plaque had been levered from the wall above Adirn’s living quarters, Katherine had insisted on having it stored in the Sin Archive, ready for restoration as soon as the empress saw reason. There was no resistance to having a door re-fitted to Adirn’s office, such that the long walk would no longer be an awkward slog, but when it came to having the ceremonial throne in the Stone Garden removed, the Mistress of Records drew a hard and crotchety line.
“It’s a testament to the greatest moment in our history! The very founding of our empire, you petulant child!” She’d cried upon hearing the news.
“It’s a would-be empress burning down a peaceful village and then drowning a sack of birds!” Countered the empress. Katherine nodded vigorously in agreement.
“Exactly! Exactly! The very foundation on which the City of Torment is built! We stand atop the ashes of Hope, and the Stone Garden is roughly on top of the very pond in which those birds met their demise.” She explained, beaming with patriotic pride.
Adirn sighed. “Of course the village was called Hope.”
“Empress Kegyetlen was a visionary.”
“She was a lunatic. Those are not events to be celebrated, whether they led to the founding of an empire or otherwise. It’s going.”
“Erasing our history won’t change the past. It won’t change what gave you your power.”
“And moving a bench won’t change it either, but at least I won’t have to address my people with a message of mercy whilst standing in front of a celebrated massacre.” Adirn snapped. “I’m not intending to have the bench destroyed; you can keep it in your library in the Sin Archive if you love it so much but the orders have been given. Greysoul’s ghost, which I’m still not sold on the existence of, by the way,” she added, mostly to wind up the Mistress of Records “has received its orders.”
So it was that Katherine’s library had to make space for an enormous piece of antique garden furniture. Although she would never have admitted it to the empress, the Mistress of Records took boundless joy from the sound of a gigantic stone throne being slammed into bookshelves and occasionally dropped on the drum-skin floorboards of the Sin Archive. Or, more accurately, from the degree to which it tortured her archivists to hear it happening but be unable to shush it.
Meanwhile, in a display of subversion which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to the empress, the Dark Council had taken her decrees and blackmail to heart the only way they knew how. Since her declaration that no-one in the empire needed to pay tithes or taxes if it would leave them in poverty, not a single member of her Dark Council, nor many of the lesser nobles, had yielded a single coin to the throne in settlement of their own dues. It seemed that all of them, in words that sounded suspiciously close to something that Lord Tabius Lloyd would say, had concluded that paying any further dues to the crown would leave them in poverty, as they themselves defined the term. The situation, they claimed, was further exacerbated by the peasantry not paying any coin in taxes or dues themselves. It was a vicious and inescapable cycle, they claimed solemnly.
After the daily circus of tax refusal, and in front of ever-growing crowds, Empress Adirn would recount the breaches or manipulations of the rules fed back to her from Almighty Virum’s confession boxes, and the nobles would find some way of trying to justify themselves.
Baron Infernus insisted that charcoals needed to be harvested while the embers still glowed, so that they could ensure the highest quality products; so, he argued, it therefore wasn’t torture or illegal burning to send his workers into the ovens before they were cold. As to why those same workers could not, under any circumstances, wear gloves or use tools to pick up the red-glowing logs, he fell short of an explanation. It was a similar story with Lady Vipus’ newfound policy of roping her workers together for safety while they dismantled the gallows; Adirn had found herself unconvinced by the argument that ‘only neck-worn safety ropes can guarantee that no-one gets lost in the fields’. It was sheer coincidence, Lady Vipus assured the crowd, that so many of the workers had tripped and fallen. No-one could have foreseen that tripping in a neck-worn safety rope would lead to the tragic and unfortunately hanging-adjacent deaths of a dozen peasants. The Lady’s position that such a calamity was a mere dozen-in-a-lifetime event, and changing the system would not bring any benefit, failed to convince the Empress.
Once again, Countess Lascera showed a suspicious amount of compliance to Adirn's edicts. Every time she failed to argue, or seemed to do exactly as requested, or made no effort to flay anybody, it played on the empress’ mind. It was only her who acted this way. Everyone else resisted her in any way they could, but the knife-flinger toed the line to perfection. Despite it being exactly what she had wanted from everyone else, the unquestioning obedience of Countess Lascera had proven to be even less pleasant than outright defiance, until finally the empress could stand it no longer.
“Captain Toxis…” she’d said after another suspiciously uneventful audience. “I have a request.”
“We’ve been over this, eminence. You can issue orders to me instead of requests.”
“And we’ve been over the fact that orders aren’t polite.”
“It is not impolite, I assure you, your eminence. It is, in fact, your right.”
“Well just because it’s my right doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do.” Argued Adirn. “Anyway, I would like for one of your more subtle guards to follow Countess Lascera and find out what she’s up to. Almighty Virum’s confessions aren’t bringing me anything untoward about her, and I can’t trust this amount of good behaviour from someone who tried to murder me at literally the first chance they got.”
“Certainly, eminence.” He’d replied after a short pause. “They do have rather little to do these days. I hadn’t realised how much time they spent on sorties against the townsfolk at Emperor Tyrannick’s behest.” It had been a strangely damning admission for the Captain of the Guard to make; one of his duties was to know the movements and activities of the guards he captained, after all. Adirn had, however, learned not to worry too much about the problems which weren’t directly related to the maiming or execution of the innocent.
“Wonderful. I would really like to emphasise that I want them to be subtle, Keto.”
“Yes, eminence.”
“More subtle than they were when the White Alliance’s delegation visited.” She clarified.
“As you wish, your eminence.” Confirmed the captain, his typical casualness still on full display. The empress chewed her tongue and wrung her fingers.
“At the risk of sounding like I’m fixated on this detail, because I am, it would be impossible for the guard to be less subtle than they were with the delegation. I really, really would like the guards not to be noticed by the Countess or her people. This is stealth. Not being seen.”
“I understand, your eminence.” Captain Toxis told her, raising his voice and both hands slightly.
“Please be sure that they do as well.” She’d said, finally.
“It will be as you order, your eminence.” He replied, with the specific kind of satisfied inaction that Adirn had come to recognise.
“Oh yes, of course. Greysoul will be carrying the message as we speak.” She’d said flatly, while Captain Toxis nodded impassively.
Once again the empress was treated to a display of spectral efficacy, and a contingent of Keto’s guards had departed the Imperial Palace that same day to provide whatever intelligence Virum’s eyes were failing to see. All she could do was wait for them to bring something, anything, back to her, and wait she did. Right up to the day of her departure for Serenitas.
“Your eminence!” Called the voice of Count Rott, echoing along the corridor outside of her dressing room. The empress scrunched her eyes closed and cursed under her breath, as Gwen packed the least xenophobic clothing from the imperial wardrobe into Adirn’s travelling case. All around her dressing room was the carnage of trying to pack appropriately; parlaying with a serial defender and conqueror of one’s own empire didn’t have a clear dress code, but the Adirn’s clothes were certainly on the wrong side of it. The ‘Hanged White-Alliance’ motif of Almighty Virum’s church was right out of the question, as was the dress of many guillotines. Despite the efforts of the Onyx Empire’s finest tailors, very few had managed to grasp the concept of a garment without embroidery, and that meant that several of the best choices still featured prominent skulls, amputations, or lesser atrocities.
“I do not have the energy to spare for him right now…” Adirn groaned. Laid on the bed in front of her were two dresses, one with a burning farmer and an elaborate smiley face underneath, the other simply embroidered with “Execution for all”. Distressingly, the empress felt compelled to move both into the ‘maybe’ pile.
“Should I hold him at the door, your eminence?” Keto asked. He stood at one corner of the imperial dressing table, arms held out in a wide ‘T’ to act as a makeshift clothes horse for some potential travelling trousers.
“No, no. I’ll go and meet him in the corridor. If his attitude to meeting me is like his attitude to invading the White Alliance then he won’t take no for an answer. Not the first few tens… dozens… hundreds of times.”
Keto shrugged, then his eyes widened; his shoulder motion had disturbed the equilibrium and some of the trousers started to slip. His gaze flitted from arm to arm, each one laden with a modest wardrobe’s worth of legwear and neither one capable of reaching for the sliding garment.
“N… no, your… eminence…” He stammered distractedly, making tentative yet ambitious attempts to rotate his arm back underneath the trousers’ centre of mass without upsetting the others.
Like soil cracking under the heat of the Sun in a long, dry summer, Adirn’s mouth started to split into an involuntary grin. Panic’s overwhelming waves were crashing against the shores of Keto’s unbreakable composure in a way that the empress hadn’t seen before, and it was comforting to know that the guard captain was human enough to be capable of drowning within those murky waters.
Before the escaping legwear could be stopped, Keto felt the majority of the clothing start to slip the other way. His flawed arm-rotating technique was failing him, so he tried to employ a bend at the knees in a futile attempt to contort himself into a more stable platform. This too was doomed to failure, and he felt it immediately, but shifting himself back would only cause more disruption. The falling trousers’ waistband was almost at the point of no return. It would succumb to gravity soon.
“Gwen,” he started in a strangled voice “I fear that I may require assistance.”
Adirn knew that she herself could step in and help Keto, but she instead savoured the moment a little longer. Her satisfaction in finally seeing the captain of the guard wrong-footed, not merely awkward as he had been whenever he dined with her but fully challenged, was unaccountable but undeniable. It was a beautiful tonic to her anxiety at the impending departure.
“With what, Captain Toxis?” Gwen said, looking up. A gasp left her lips as she saw the problem, and she snatched up the clothing before it could drop. Keto exhaled heavily in relief.
“Thank you.” He said earnestly.
“Gwen, would you please fully unburden the captain? I would appreciate him being able to accompany me as I speak to Count Rott, and I don’t think my packing list needs to be on display.”
With a suitably unpacked guard captain the empress stepped from her dressing room and into the corridor, where Count Rott was marching towards them purposefully. Clutched in his hand was a long roll of paper. It immediately filled Adirn with pre-emptive disappointment.
“Eminence! I’m glad to catch you before you departed.” He called out, determined to pin her in place using social norms while he hurried towards them. “There’s something about which we need to speak urgently.”
“So I gather. I don’t have long though, Count, so please be as brief as you can.”
“Oh this won’t take long, your eminence.” He beamed. “This idea is so ingenious that it sells itself.”
“Be honest with me now Count; are you suggesting the same surprise attack yet again? I won’t be angry if you are” the empress said, knowing full well that her last claim was a lie “but I can tell you know that I will be refusing it. I will always refuse that plan.”
“No! No it’s not my perfectly fine surprise attack plan.” He said, scowling. His expression immediately brightened again when he looked down at his paper. “It’s something even more devious, and that even you won’t be able to find flaws in. It’s perfect.”
“And it doesn’t involve any armies, militias, strike forces, advance legions or other battalions marching over the border to steal gold?”
The count paused and thought for a moment.
“Not even one, your eminence.”
“Nor any phalanxes or platoons?”
“Neither are involved, your eminence.”
With pursed lips and narrowed eyes the empress looked Count Rott dead in the face and tried to think of more synonyms, but her vocabulary failed her. He stared back with barely contained excitement.
“Fine. What’s this plan?”
“It’s brilliant!” The count said, hurrying to the wall with enormous paper. “It will deliver us all the riches and power the Onyx Empire could possibly desire, and will show that pathetic White Alliance what a real nation looks like! I present you with my masterstroke for finally overthrowing Serenitas and tossing Thomas Dove into a pyre!”
“Wh- Count! There was to be no-”
“I give you the First Onyxian Navy!” He shouted over her, spreading the plans out against the stonework.
Unveiled on gridded technical paper were shockingly detailed blueprints for a series of galleons, frigates, galleys, battleships and various smaller vessels. Ornate figureheads of hanging Illuminators adorned the larger ships, along with crow’s nests in the shape of braziers and metal serpents running the length of the hull. Dragon’s mouth cannons were drawn up and shown leering from each of the broad sides. There appeared to be so many that the hull was more cannon than timber, and Adirn’s admittedly poor grasp of hydrodynamics suggested numerous problems with buoyancy. These were, however, the more trifling of her concerns.
“Harrowing, aren’t they? I can taste the timber and sea air already. Just imagine how many sailors, admirals and yes even fishing boats we’ll send to watery graves with these engineering masterworks!”
“Count Rott-“ Adirn interrupted, but he raised his voice further and interrupted right back.
“We’ve planned it all out. Lady Vipus has ample lumber for dozens of galleons from her disused hanging fields; rather than letting Baron Infernus burn it all, we can set about constructing our flagships. Meanwhile, the Baron’s existing coal supplies will be hoarded and set into the vanguard fleet, such that they may be set ablaze and rammed directly into any enemy warship or pleasure dinghy we should happen to come across.” He pointed to one of the drawings which, now that Adirn looked closely at it, was more like a wooden bathtub full of burning coals than a ship. A razor-like ramming prow in the shape of a bony finger was affixed to the front, and fearful, screaming crewmates were shown sailing it directly into a target. For the purposes of the drawing, the target was shown, improbably, as a sleeping kitten. “Of course there will be some piffling extensive losses of Onyxian seafarers in delivering these payloads of torment, but I’m willing to send a hundred Onyxians to their graves if it means destroying a single White Alliance oar.” He proudly declared. “Or even if they didn’t really.”
“Count Rott this madness and I won’t-“
“But you’ve not heard the whole plan! Tabius Lloyd will be penning sea shanties and war-cries to instil fear in the enemy before any one of them has been burned along with a ship full of Onyxians. Baroness Asphyxia will be made head of militarised drowning, since it is so closely related to her expertise with throat-denial tactics. It all just falls perfectly into place, and it took you to force us into working together to allow us to see that. We’re finally going to deliver the killing blow!”
“Count Rott listen to-“
“Our frigates will speed in on the prevailing night wind under cover of darkness and burn down their lighthouses, and any patrolling boats will be boarded and sunk by Viscount Sinistere’s Sea-Slug fleet of oiled raiders. There will be no warning when our fleet of burning Onyxians crashes into the docked fleet in Serenitas’ foul moorings, and they will be left powerless to defeat us in the water. The White Alliance will be caught with their shirts around their ankles when we storm into their harbour amid full broadside volleys from our gunnery platforms! The war will be over long before our twelfth surprise attack gets underway across the land.”
“Count Rott!” Adirn screamed. With wide eyes the count finally stopped talking and looked at her, with an optimism that, in itself, was dreadfully optimistic. “You seem to be overlooking some vital problems in your plan, do you not think?” Panting through her nose like a bull ready to charge, the empress scowled at the moron of a count and waited for the cogs to turn in his head.
“Uh… I… no. Everything is accounted for. Tabius’ shanties, Vipus’ lumber, Infernus’ coals. We’ve plenty of souls to crew the vessels and ample chains to make sure that there’s no disembarking the flaming vanguard fleet before it burns completely. Our unemployed gallows-builders, those who still remain alive anyway, can be turned into shipwrights before they’re locked in among the coals… there are no flaws at all, as I said!” He insisted.
“The. Onyx. Empire. Is. Landlocked.” Adirn growled through clenched teeth. Count Rott looked back blankly. “We have no coast! No docks, no harbours, no seas! How could you possibly think we’re going to launch a naval assault on anything when there’s no sea! By the gods of course it’d be the First Onyxian Navy, because no-one else would be stupid enough to build ships without water in which to float them!”
“That’s why it will come as such a surprise!” He beamed, while the empress felt her soul dying. “We carry them over the border and then put them in the water when we find a beach. And it brings me to the next part of the plan too! When you’re in Serenitas you can scope out their naval defences, and also a good launching point for our own fleets. You’re instrumental in our success, eminence.”
Empress Adirn closed her eyes and began to inhale. She felt the cold morning air flowing up into her nostrils and passing down her throat. Lungs expanded in her chest and her stomach began to push outwards, pressing the inside of her doublet against her body. Still she kept going, sucking in air until her torso began to ache and burn. Crying muscles pleaded with her to stop; her lungs were full to capacity and still she strained in futility to pull more air inside. Eventually however, under the confused and scared gaze of Count Rott and the quiet concern of Captain Toxis, Adirn exhaled with the deepest sigh of her life and times. It spilled from her mouth like a waterfall of enough disdain to make even Katherine proud, vibrating her diaphragm, flooding warmth back up her throat, and drying the insides of her teeth. Once again she opened her eyes.
“There will be no naval assault of the White Alliance. It is still an invasion, whether by land or by land and sea, and that is something I feel I have been quite explicit in outlawing, Count Rott. Now if you will please excuse me I have some packing to do.”
One of Count Rott’s squashy hands clenched into a fists, while the other removed his naval blueprints from the wall.
“And you won’t even consider providing us with intelligence about Serenitas?”
“I will provide an account of my visit and a description of the city, but it shall not be used to facilitate an invasion. They are to be our allies, our trade partners. Or, at least, they’re not to be provoked into overthrowing yet another Onyxian regime. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly.” The count said with a dark look. As he turned and walked away, he added “Have a pleasant trip, your eminence.”
“Thank you, Count Rott.” Adirn replied. It was a few minutes before she realised that he’d meant the phrase to be offensive.
“Why would anyone need a gate that big?” Adirn asked. Standing in the front courtyard of the Imperial Palace, at the centre of the City of Torment, she faced the looming, cyclopean black iron gates that kept the rest of the population locked out and her locked in. Each one was formed from dozens of vertical bars, styled into ropes that rose several storeys into the air and had solid nooses at the bottom. About half way up, where the vertical bars met one of the many horizontal cross-pieces, they transformed into long pikes. So deadened was she to the stylings of the Onyx Empire that having just the one skull topping each of the bars seemed decidedly subtle.
“Empress Kegyetlen herself requisitioned them, your eminence. She feared that the people would try to bombard her with sacks of their own birds by throwing them over the gates once she’d entered, so she had them built taller than anyone in the city could throw.”
Adirn scanned her eyes from left to right. The gates rose a clear storey higher than the walls on either side did.
“She didn’t think they’d bother with the walls.” Keto added when Adirn made this observation.
Shaking her head, the empress approached her awaiting carriage. It was standing at the centre of the courtyard and formed the centre of all attention and activity. Bustling household staff were hurrying back and forth, carrying trunks of the empress’ travelling supplies, polishing the wheels, and checking that everything was in order for her journey. Six jet black horses were harnessed to the front and looking about themselves with disinterest; their ears flicked this way and that when someone dropped a box or stepped heavily, but none of them seemed overly concerned with anything other than standing still.
In a ring around the carriage was the imperial mounted-escort, looking far more imposing than the vehicle itself and comprising the palace guard whom Keto had personally selected for the task. They were the best riders and combatants that Captain Toxis had available, however the pool of candidates was not a broad one and so they didn’t all necessarily possess both skill sets. He therefore had all four of his guard who had ridden previously, and a further four of his best combatants who might never have seen a horse, let alone sat upon one. He had hoped that the empress wouldn’t be able to notice the difference, but those hopes were destined, unfortunately, to be dashed against the cruel rocks of reality.
“Keto, is that swordswoman alright?” She asked gently. Captain Toxis watched with a sinking heart as one of his best tried to strap herself to the side of her horse, making ingenious misuse of several bridles and a belt to do so.
“One of the grooms will get to her, your eminence.” He said, with the slightly strangled voice of one wishing to erase what he was seeing. “But in light of that assistance being required…”
“Keto, I know you have your concerns, but eight is enough. Too many, if anything.”
“The White Alliance could easily overwhelm us with so few soldiers, your eminence. We must march in greater numbers.”
“This isn’t an invasion and the White Alliance must have no reason to believe otherwise. My visit is the first that any Onyxian has made for centuries without it being a military strike or a spy’s infiltration. If we march in with a whole army then who could blame the local militia for thinking that we were on the warpath?”
“None, your eminence.” Captain Toxis said, reluctantly.
“Besides which, I don’t think I really trust the army to remember they’re not invading either. This is the way things have to be. If the White Alliance is half as honourable is it pretends to be then they won’t move against us during this diplomatic visit.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“Well… then we’re probably no worse off than if we didn’t visit them.”
Captain Toxis looked his empress in the eye, then shrugged.
“It’s going to be bad enough arriving in this monstrosity anyway.” Adirn said, steering the subject away again and pointing towards the imperial travelling carriage.
“I think that the wheel blades are decorative in purpose, eminence.”
“As are the demon carvings on the roof, but that doesn’t stop them all being a bit much. At least they levered off all the skulls like I asked.” She said, looking at the row of divots running along the side of the carriage where decorative bone used to be. It was just a shame that the columns of femurs running from the floor to the roof were, reportedly, structural.
“I understand that Katherine has them in her library already, your eminence.”
“Wonderful.” She said flatly. “I suppose that’s the best for which I could hope.”
Resigned to having made her travelling company as pleasant as was practical with the resources available, Adirn refused to allow anyone to help her climb the steps into the carriage and then took her seat. At the very least her predecessors hadn’t insisted on having the padding stripped from inside, so she was able to sit in physical, if not emotional, comfort. Heavy black curtains were tied back to either side of the doors, so that what little view of the outside the empress had could be closed off at a moment’s notice. She presumed it to be so that a previous ruler wouldn’t have to look upon the lower classes or some such nonsense.
Settled into her cushioned seat, Adirn scanned her eyes around the decadently velvet-coated interior of the carriage for a few moments. A lattice of obsidian studs, shaped into skulls because what else would they ever be, held the deep, dark purple lining in place against the ceiling and the walls, giving the whole compartment the look of an ostentatious tomb. As she ruminated on the interior of her travelling vehicle being yet one more thing the White Alliance mustn’t see, the thought struck the empress that Captain Toxis hadn’t embarked with her. Set well back from the door in her soft reclined seat, what little external light that could enter was being consumed by the dark fabrics, plunging her into shadow. As ever, when not in Keto’s company, the cold dread of being exposed and vulnerable started to creep up the back of her neck.
“Keto? Is everything alright?” She called out.
“Just checking that everyone knows their positions, your eminence.” He shouted back a moment later.
Adirn didn’t like that answer, despite its general positivity. A sense of dependence on Captain Toxis had quickly formed in her, mostly on account of the assassinations he so often thwarted, and his absence was a major source of anxiety. Unaccustomed to being so pathetically needy, the empress tried to tell herself that being worried was entirely irrational; after all, her whole escort was just outside the carriage. A broken line of sight didn’t make her any less safe. Repeated mantras to that effect swam through her mind until she finally heard boots on the carriage steps.
“Good. I assume everything is in order.” Adirn said, allowing relief rinse away the unpleasant odour of needless worry.
It didn’t last long.
“Perfectly in order.” Sneered a voice she didn’t recognise. Clad in the livery of her house-servants, a man with a face that was more scar tissue than normal skin loomed into the carriage. “And I’ll be carrying out mine.”
Beneath a nose that apparently spent more time broken than not, a ravaged excuse for a mouth pulled itself up into the kind of grin that the empress had come to fear in her nightmares. Specifically, it was the kind of grin that looms a foot or so above a glinting dagger.
Reflexively the empress tried to back away, but she was already pressed into the rear of her padded seat and encasing herself in cushions did little to make her feel more comfortable. Dread boiled sickeningly in her stomach as the white-hot clutch of panic clasped itself around her brain. There was no way to spring powerfully from a seat so soft and even if she could, the assassin and his blade were directly between her and the door. Her mind fired in a frenzy but couldn’t find a way out.
Trapped and cornered animals, she’d heard it said, would fight and claw in hysterics before going down. As the blade-arm rose, preparing to commit the first regicide that the Onyx Empire had experienced in months, Adirn sat frozen in place and cursed herself for having fewer survival instincts than a wild boar. But, she told herself, she was an empress; going down with shrieks and pleas wasn’t a fitting end to what she’d sought to achieve.
“Would you please stop! It is not well mannered to advance on someone like this!” She commanded from nowhere, surprising herself and, apparently, the assassin. He paused for a moment, his scar tissue grin scrunching up into curiosity.
“Well… I know that. It’s not meant to be well mannered.” He replied, as if rationalising the thoughts as he went. “But it’s a bloody royal welcome compared to what comes next, so I’d appreciate it while it lasts.”
“I order you not to kill me!” Adirn shouted, emboldened by the dialogue that had opened up between them, despite the polarising differences in their attitudes towards the impending murder. The shock on the assassin’s face was also plain to see, although on closer inspection that had more to do with Captain Toxis’ hand grasping the back of his head. In a single swift yank the assassin was hauled skull-first from the carriage and out of Adirn’s sight. A heavy thud half a moment later informed her of his landing. By the time the empress had managed to stand up and peer through the door, Captain Toxis had taken custodianship of the dagger and standing with one foot on each of the assassin’s wrists. There was enough yelping to confirm that the would-be killer didn’t appreciate this development.
“Were you harmed, your eminence?” He asked, without looking away from the apprehended killer.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Would you like for him to be harmed?”
“No. Of course not. He is to apologise for his wrong-doing and promise not to try this murdering business ever again.”
Where previously there had been a nervous, tense silence from the servants and palace guard around the carriage, there now came a collective groan. Even the assassin seemed to be feeling underwhelmed by the empress’ answer.
“As you wish, your eminence.” Keto said, doing a remarkable job of masking any disappointment he felt while securing the dagger on his belt. As the empress stepped down from the carriage and moved towards him, he leaned more of his weight on the assassin’s wrists to make a point.
“Well?” Adirn said, looking down stonily at the restrained and rather disadvantaged man. “I asked you to stop and you refused. I told you it wasn’t polite to try to assassinate me and you ignored it. It took Captain Toxis here dragging you out by the scalp to stop you. Do you have anything to say?”
“Erm… please let me go?”
“When you apologise and promise to give up your life as an assassin.” The empress said, with a tone that was yet stonier.
“Alright… I’m sorry and I won’t kill people anymore?” He tried, the words tumbling uncertainly from the craggy ruins of his scar-tissue mouth.
The empress sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“What’s your name?” She asked.
“It’s Arthur.”
“Well, Arthur, I’d prefer a little more sincerity and confidence than that in your apology.”
“And I’d prefer not to have someone standing on my arms.” He replied. Adirn’s face had gone right the way through stony and blown entirely past rocky. There were mountain ranges, many of them surrounding the Onyx Empire, that seemed fleshier than the empress’ expression, and the assassin felt suddenly and acutely aware of it. “I’m sorry. I won’t kill people anymore.” He repeated.
“Thank you. You will leave immediately, your dagger will remain with us, and you will not return here. Do we have an understanding?”
“We do.”
“Good. Captain Toxis, would you please let the man up?”
Captain Toxis shrugged, and removed his feet from Arthur’s wrists.
For a few seconds, the assassin laid still on the floor, looking from the guard captain to the empress and back again with wide, distrusting eyes as he awaited the betrayal.
“And that’s it then? I can just leave now?”
“Yes, that’s it as long as you don’t break your word.” The empress confirmed.
“So I could have just lied to you and I’d still be able to go?”
“Yes. Unless you were give me some reason to believe that you were lying, of course. But I am running out of patience quite rapidly.”
Arthur scrabbled to his feet rapidly and then returned to staring at the pair of them.
“Could I have my dagger back?”
“No. I told you it stays here with us.” Adirn said, politely but firmly. The small crowd of servants and soldiers were standing in loose, quiet circle and all staring at the peculiarly uneventful standoff. Keto started to frown pointedly.
“Right. Well. Goodbye then, your eminence.” Arthur finally said, rubbing at his sore wrists. When no response came his way, he gave an awkward half-bow and walked away towards the front gates.
“That went… I don’t know if well is the term but… it could have been worse. He didn’t try to kill me again at least.” Adirn commented, for want of anything else to say.
“I will continue to question your insistence on accepting apologies in these cases, eminence. They will learn just to keep trying and keep apologising until they are successful.”
“Did imprisoning or executing the assassins stop the attempts on imperial lives before?” Adirn asked with the feigned curiosity of a child. Captain Toxis narrowed his eyes at her, and then shrugged. “Exactly. I’m no worse off this way. At least I don’t need to watch you cut anyone else’s head off if I let them leave unarmed.”
Captain Toxis offered no response. As they stood in silence, Adirn became acutely aware of the wordless crowd still standing around them.
“Please continue preparing for my departure. The plans are unchanged.” She announced. If anything, her plans only grew more urgent.
Metal-shod hooves clattered against obsidian and onyx cobblestones. Several scrapes gave away how slippery and unsuitable obsidian was as a flooring solution, especially one to be used underneath a hoof, but eventually it seemed that some traction could be gained and the carriage started to roll into motion. Sitting opposite her on the rear-facing seat, Captain Toxis had rested his sword across his knees in order to avoid stabbing the cushion, a move made with the benefit of experience and the ruin of much upholstery, Adirn presumed. Despite the long journey ahead of them, the captain didn’t try to settle in or get comfortable; instead he sat bolt upright and to attention as if another assassin might leap through the small window at any moment.
Through the gates the carriage rumbled and bounced on its wooden wheels. It was the first time that Adirn had been beyond the limits of the Imperial Palace in nearly two months, and only the second time ever that she’d passed through the City of Torment. Of course, on her way into the palace she’d not been able to enjoy the scenery as much. Blindfolds tend to have that unfortunate side-effect, and by the time it had been removed, she was almost at the gates. The surprise announcement that she was to be crowned had been rather unpleasant and distinctly less of an honour than the delegation who kidnapped her had led her to believe, and that had further reduced her interest in sightseeing.
This time around, living with the aftermath of that kidnapping and involuntary ascension, she had the luxury of time to peruse the state of her capitol in all its fuliginous glory. In those moments she’d snatched to peer from the windows of the Imperial Palace, Adirn had found it astounding how the light was swallowed up by endless black of the walls; down at street level the effect was even more harrowing. Bright daylight from above was visible, but to look down was to be plunged into a never-ending night. She could just about pick out the shape of cobbles and kerbs if she strained her eyes through the small carriage windows, but where street met building she couldn’t confidently say. Nor could many of the citizens who made the City of Torment their home, it seemed. More than once she saw two people try to pass each other, only for one of them to slam face-first into a townhouse that didn’t so much loom from the darkness as hide within it. Those people who tried to step out of the way of the carriage fell afoul of the same trick being played by the kerbsides, plummeting onto their shadowed buttocks by the roadside.
“How does anyone live like this? In the artifice of permanent night?”
“In poverty mostly, your eminence.” Keto answered candidly.
The empress sighed.
“There’s so much work to be done.”
“All the more reason to bring more of an honour guard, such that we minimise the risk of attack or assassination, eminence.”
Adirn gave Captain Toxis a look to remind him that the conversation on such a topic was long over. He gave a look back to demonstrate that his opinion on that matter was different to her own.
“You can’t do great works if we’re ambushed on the road or captured by the White Alliance.”
“Enough, Keto. How did they even get the buildings to be this black?”
“Katherine would know more of the details than I do, eminence. I’m just a soldier recommending that we send a rider back for more guards.”
“But in lieu of that recommendation being taken, I would be grateful to hear those few details that you do know regarding the colour of my city’s buildings.”
“As you wish, eminence. I believe that it was a writ from Emperor Obfuscator following the completion of Horizon’s Bane; he concluded that whilst bringing an early dusk was a good start, it would be even better to make the midday sun as weak as possible for the people. There was a lot of coal, obsidian, onyx and ebony involved in the retrofitting, rendering and general dirtying of the city, as I understand it.”
Adirn nodded sadly.
“Fixing that will be a future argument for myself and the Mistress of Records, I suppose.”
Through streets that might well have been broad or narrow for all that Adirn could see, the carriage wound a path towards the outskirts of the City of Torment. Every now and again Captain Toxis would point out a major landmark to Adirn and she would shudder at the thought of it, but for the most part it was just an array of identically hard to see walls. The great hanging square, where those accused of treason against the city had previously been executed, was reportedly the largest open space within the city limits, excepting the Imperial Palace. Adirn took Keto’s word for it, because aside from the sky above she could barely make out any detail at all; the homes opposite could equally have been very short and close or very tall and far away, but with the perfect blackness of everything there was no way of knowing. Of course, he had assured her, the square needed to be large because it seemed that hundreds of people were found guilty every week, and gallows took up a lot of room.
As they grew further from the Imperial Palace, the City of Torment grew less dense. The main thoroughfares were still cobbled and darkened, but side streets had scrubby weeds growing from the dirt, and doorways had been worn back to their original hues. It took the empress’ eyes a little while to adjust to being able to parse what they saw as three dimensional objects again, instead of raw shadows, but she was grateful for it.
“This is better. I can see something now.”
“We can also be seen. Bandits roam the spaces between settlements, as you must know, your eminence.” Keto said, determined to keep danger at the forefront of the imperial mind.
“Surely we were at more risk when the bandits could disappear into the shadows?”
“They gave up on that after too many twisted ankles thanks to unseen cobbles, eminence. If they can’t run away then they’re doomed to beheading by someone or other.”
“Hmm. Perhaps Emperor Obfuscator accidentally did some good. I’m sure he would have hated that.” Mused the empress.
“Perhaps so, your eminence. But he certainly didn’t lament forcing the bandits into open country, where they could prey on the roads and keep people trapped in their settlements. It’s easy to ambush a caravan when it’s in barren, open land.”
“It’s a good thing that I have you and your escort detail to keep me safe then, captain.” Adirn said with a smile, suddenly desperate for a bright side. “Although I would very much appreciate it if we could avoid any entanglement like that; arriving at our destination awash with blood, even spilled in self-defence, would be dreadful.”
“Understood, your eminence, but I fear that the decision may be more in the bandits’ hands than our own.” Keto pointed out. Adirn shrugged.
Over the course of the day the empress was treated to all the sights of her empire, from the disused hanging fields, to the dried out drowning pools, to the enormous remnants of pyres left to smoulder. Seas of gallows standing like a petrified forest stretched up the shallow slope of Mount Vipus, complete with a dedicated gallow-logging operation visible in the far distance. Lady Vipus would be out there somewhere, tucked away into the tunnels that housed her family’s ancestral home, and with her were answers as to why so very many gallows could possibly have been necessary in a whole empire, let alone a single valley.
“There must be more of them than there are people in the Vipus demesne…” Adirn speculated out loud.
“If there weren’t before then there are now.” Keto observed.
Although the nooses were empty as the imperial carriage passed by, Adirn couldn’t help wondering if they would still be so when she returned. Her Dark Council could be trusted a great deal less than the distance to which they could be thrown, as the common metric went, and without constant supervision the empress feared they might slip back into their old ways. There would have to be punishments for such misbehaviour, and she resolved to work out how on earth that could be achieved before she returned.
Once the carriage had rounded the mountainside, rolling along coarse stone tracks that meandered between hills and rocky outcrops, the forest of gallows was replaced with barren farmland. For miles upon miles the land was brown with bare dirt or yellow with dried out vegetation. Occasionally there would be a shocking flash of green, enough to catch the eye and focus the attention, but in all likelihood a close examination would reveal it to be a patch of weeds, or a poisonous plant, or something yet more harrowing that Adirn’s limited experience couldn’t yet anticipate. The beauty of the empress’ limited experience was that it frequently made new and surprising discoveries, such as the one made when she approached a rough collection of buildings a few hours ride from Mount Vipus.
“Ugh, what’s that smell?” She blurted. An aroma of such potency, such aggression, and even such texture that it surpassed mere unpleasantness and became caustic, invited itself into the imperial nostrils and made a home for itself.
“We are passing through Decaydale, eminence. A fell wind will always blow from here.”
“I thought that was just a name!” The empress said, burying her nose under layer upon layer of clothing in a futile effort to block the pungency. “I suppose that was foolishness on my part.”
“It is not my place to say, eminence.”
Not willing to risk uncovering her mouth, Adirn did not press for any further detail, and instead peered from her carriage window with a morbid curiosity. What met her vision was a calamitous heartbreak of a town, composed of the very essence of grey sadness. Under the wheels of the carriage, stony tracks had given way to a washed out and viscous clay upon which nothing even tried to grow. Facing over it, and bearing witness to wheels which dug down as much as they rolled forwards, were wooden homes; their timbers had rotted through to a mere film of plant fibres that even the woodworm considered below their budget. Daylight was visible not just between the planks but directly through them, as the ravages of time and fungus had eaten them away to crumbling paper.
“How long has the town been abandoned?” she mumbled to Keto through several strips of fabric.
“It isn’t, your eminence.”
The empress looked his way with horror.
“The people here suffer a lot of nosebleeds, to be sure, but they live here all the same. Count Rott will not allow them to leave, nor will he permit materials to be used in replacing their homes. He claims that there are years left in these structures.”
Still shielding her mouth and nose from the invasive stench, the empress looked from rotten house to decaying hovel and despaired that any could call this their home. The occupants would need to make only shallow and careful breaths lest they blow their abodes down from the inside. So much as thinking about a breeze would probably have sent half the village crumbling down to powder. Count Rott had a lot to answer for, or perhaps more accurately he had a lot more to answer for than she’d already been aware.
“The Church of Virum didn’t tell me things were this bad… I was a fool for thinking that the old witch’s blackmails would be honoured.” She clenched a fist, but chose the hand which was holding several handkerchiefs up to her nose. A sharp, crushing pain in her face made her release quickly.
After some pondering on the guard captain’s part, especially when the empress seemed to be trying to squeeze her own face for reasons unknown, he managed to interpret the empress’ muffled sentiments.
“With respect, eminence, do you really think that they know any different? To the priests of Virum who call this their parish, their lot has been much improved. This…” he said, indicating the mulch of a village “must feel like bliss to them. Rest assured that the Grand Priestess would not renege on a mutual blackmail for the benefit of Count Rott. This is ignorance, not subterfuge.”
Adirn wanted to cry. She would have preferred deception to delusion any day.
“This is to be my first priority upon returning from Serenitas, Keto. We deal with Count Rott and fix this whole situation here.”
“As you wish, your eminence.” He said simply. The carriage kept on rolling.
All told, it took three days for the imperial caravan to reach the border. Three days of all the poverty that an empire could muster. Three days of monuments to atrocities past, graveyards without a church in sight, and ineffectual bandit attacks. Although they weren’t all natural riders, Captain Toxis’ chosen guards had done a flawless job of cutting down any axe, knife or heavy book wielding miscreants who chose to lunge from the darkness of the undergrowth and demand a bounty. Keto managed to maintain his cool and commanding presence in nearly every case. It was only when bandits leapt from behind boulders, hillocks, and particularly broad cattle, outside of the Plains of Auros that he became agitated. It wasn’t out of a fear of mortal danger or any kind of righteous indignation, but because the assailants transpired to be one of the squads he’d sent out to clear the road of bandits a week earlier. Their defence that ‘a gap in the market for a team of plucky highwaymen had appeared’ did little to win him over. It was only Adirn’s intervention and insistence on her ‘apology and repentance’ policy that spared their lives, but the promise of Keto’s wrath to be delivered another day was probably worse than death anyway.
So it was that after those three days of disheartening hardship Adirn was overjoyed to see it; the divide that might be closed to save her empire. It was easy enough to see where the Onyx Empire gave way to the White Alliance, because the row of skull-laden pikes lining the road transformed abruptly into silver birch saplings. Where the road on her own side would be more accurately characterised as a few rocks pushed into the mud, a perfect tessellation of bright, clean, stone blocks led the way into the bright green and starkly healthy meadows of the White Alliance.
“Oh, come on. How is that even possible?” The empress complained, looking down at the perfect transition from blackened, dead grass to lush and healthy grazing that delineated the two nations. For as far as she could see along the boundary, before grassland gave way to the scree slope of a mountain, the line continued along in perfect reflection of the map boundary. “This must have been the work of one of the other rulers, surely?”
“I can’t say, your eminence. I don’t know of any malevolent agriculturalists in the history of the empire.” Keto answered.
“I think it was the will of Almighty Virum, such that no Onyxian should till this land and in doing so be tempted away by the White Alliance.” Called out one of the riders. Adirn turned to face them and was momentarily startled when she saw an empty saddle. A few moments later her memory caught up, and she looked at the horizontal facing poking from below the horse’s neck.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, your eminence. Almighty Virum does not tolerate the peons to gaze upon the filth of the White Alliance. Inviting such weaknesses into our empire is not his will.”
Adirn nodded slowly at the unsuspected evangelism.
“I suppose that Virum made all those clouds stop at the edge of our mountains too, did he?”
“Oh yes. So that none could see from the mountains into the forbidden lands and be tempted.” Replied the horse’s neck.
“I always thought it was to punish the mountain folk for not being in the richly taxable villages in the valley.” Called out one of the guards who understood how to sit on a horse. The fact that he was wearing the saddle on his own back did little to diminish that achievement. “Almighty Virum thrives on taxation, and avoiding it by living in a mountain cave is blasphemy.”
“Maybe that was another reason. Just like the way the rivers that approach our border from the White Alliance all curve back in instead of crossing. Virum did that to stop us relying on them, and so that none could try to sail up-stream towards Serenitas.” Added the first rider, whose head had probably accumulated a lot of her blood by this stage. Adirn thought about Count Rott’s navy and shuddered.
“Right, well whatever the reason it still all makes the Onyx Empire look pretty grim compared to the White Alliance.” Adirn said.
“Just as Virum intended!” The blood-rich horse-side enthusiast replied, proudly.
“Interesting. Thank you.” The empress replied, sounding as final as possible. Normally she would have argued that the rider’s postulate was preposterous, but arguing with someone who’d spent three days strapped to the side of a horse didn’t feel sporting. Instead she looked out over the border, the mysterious line that separated foreboding bleakness, barren soil and murderous mountains from the bucolic utopia of the White Alliance’s outlands. “And this is just it? No outpost or checkpoint to watch the approach. Nothing to fend off the next inevitable ‘surprise’ attack from Rott’s regulars?”
“Why should they need a watchtower to warn of the surprise attacks when they are so predictable? They would simply confirm what’s already expected, your eminence.” Keto pointed out, and Adirn sighed.
“That’s a fair point.” She paused for a few moments, looking across to the sunlit hills across the border. “Once I step over there, into the White Alliance, we’ll be the first Onyxians to enter their land for reasons other than invasion or looting in centuries. How long has it been since a ruler made a state visit?”
“Centuries, I would guess, your eminence.” Captain Toxis replied. “Kathrine would know more.”
“And I bet she’d say it with pride too.” Mused Adirn. “But no matter. The point is that we’re about to make history.”
“The first Onyxian empress to deliver herself to the headsman’s axe in the White Alliance would certainly be a historic memorial, your eminence.”
Adirn laughed mirthlessly. Then she stopped and chewed her lip with a pensive frown.
“They wouldn’t though, would they?” She asked. The question hung in the air for a second, dangling over the border.
Captain Toxis shrugged.