Empress Adirn 7: Promises and Compromises
Water dripped in the silence with which the Grand Priestess’ words had filled the Cathedral of the Deep. In the flickering light of a hundred candles, mounted improbably into chandeliers that seemed all but unreachable, her face was cast in the sombre yellows and dark shadows of judgement itself. Silently she stared down at Adirn and Captain Toxis. Long strings of dripped wax ran along the carved features of Almighty Virum on either side of the priestess, which implied that although the clergy of the Cathedral of the Deep could climb sufficiently high to replace candles, they weren’t willing to do it for the purposes of cleaning. Their machinations were mysterious indeed.
“Well, your eminence? Harder to find your tongue in the house of Almighty Virum? Wise you must be, but not as brave as you thought.” She taunted. In one of her clawed, sanctified hands she clutched a sceptre of wood and silver.
“I have come to make amends and to speak to you, grand priestess.” The empress replied, but her voice rang thin and weak compared to the booming that came from above.
“What? You’ll have to speak up; I’m holding a sceptre!”
Adirn frowned and looked at Captain Toxis for any clue as to the relevance of that statement. He shrugged.
“All who wish to be heard by Almighty Virum from down so low must speak very loudly indeed.” The Grand Priestess added.
“I said I’ve come to make amends and speak to you!” Adirn shouted. For all of the acoustic focusing that the natural auditorium had provided before, it seemed to dampen and mute whatever came from below. The empress wondered to herself how deliberate that was.
“Ha! I knew that seeing Almighty Virum’s blessings and icons disappearing from the palace would get your notice. Well you cannot pick and choose which edicts you follow and simply disregard the rest. However eminent you feel yourself to be, Almighty Virum’s all-embracing eminence makes it look shameful and broken.” Came the preaching from above. Around the cathedral from balconies and alcoves unseen came a low murmuring of agreement. Voices in the darkness assented and muttered along to the Grand Priestess’ words.
“Quite so. I did come to speak to you about the priests who are ferrying golden ornaments from my palace, but you are welcome to keep them.” Shouted Adirn.
“You want to keep them?” The Grand Priestess called back.
“No, you’re welcome to!”
“Speak up! Almighty Virum will never heed you when your faith is so weak.”
“I need you to hear me, not Virum!”
“Everyone needs Almighty Virum to hear them. And they’d best hope that he likes what they’re saying, or more than a few golden gallows will go missing from their chapels and altars.”
“Look, I just wanted to find out if this this is all over those bloody robes?” Adirn called up, changing the subject before they misheard one another into a deeper argument. “It’s not even an ecumenical matter!”
“And who are you to tell me what does or does not matter to the church of Almighty Virum? Do you even know why the Dark Council originally started wearing the robes?”
“Probably because it makes them look more evil.” Guess the empress with confidence.
“And the other reason?”
“Erm… to not be recognised? Even though they all go to the Skull Chamber together and then get dressed…”
“Heathen! It is to be hidden from Almighty Virum, for they stand in God-Gouger Tower. He is a terrible and mighty god, and any attempt to gouge him will be met with a most demonic rebuke. Those who do not wear their robes are standing inside the implement which gouges at Him in full view. What could be more heretical than that?” Preached the Grand Priestess. With every few sentences she would swing her sceptre for emphasis, occasionally striking the statues of Virum and sending a spray of fragmented wax to the floors below.
“If Almighty Virum can see through the roof, then I’m pretty sure that some black cloth won’t stop him.” Adirn snapped back.
“Heresy!” Cried the Grand Priestess. Urgent whispers, shouted so that Adirn could hear them, rang around the cathedral.
“Heretics have come into the church!”
“The new empress is a heretic!”
“Is heresy going to become the law? I have a few good ideas for ways to be heretical. I thought of them while cleaning wax from the chandeliers.”
“Oh this is ridiculous! I’m coming up there to speak to you. We’ll not have this whole conversation by shouting for everyone to hear.” An increasingly hoarse Adirn replied. “Which way do you think it is to get up there?” She asked Captain Toxis.
“We’ll find the way, eminence.”
“Heresy!” The Grand Priestess wailed a second time. “She seeks to tread on the consecrated ground of Almighty Virum while speaking blasphemy of his robe-blindness! Stop them, lest the swift and merciful death granted to you by Almighty Virum be made longer and crueller!”
At once the busy milling and artefact re-distribution going on around the Cathedral of the Deep transformed into a theological panic. With a cacophonous fluttering of robes the priestesses, priests, lesser bishops, greater vicars and more besides abandoned their stations and began rushing to obey the Grand Priestess’ orders.
“Do not try to stop me.” The empress countermanded, marching up the nearest ramp, but the Cathedral once again made her words small and faint. “I just want to speak to the Grand Priestess without bellowing.”
“None may tread on the consecrated grounds without Almighty Virum’s blessing!” The Grand Priestess called down, fury etched onto her face. It wasn’t an atypical expression for her.
“Then come down here and speak to me.” Adirn suggested.
“This is my domain and none will tell me where to tread, what to wear, or how to conduct myself within these walls! You will address me from the pit or not at all.”
“Right, that’s it. I’m definitely coming up now.” Snapped the empress, resuming her determined march along what she hoped would be the right path.
“Stop the heretics at any cost! Almighty Virum demands it!” Shrieked the Grand Priestess by way of reply. She pirouetted with a huge swirl of her robes and disappeared into the blackness at the back of her balcony.
“We are going to need to have very stern words with her.” Adirn told Captain Toxis as they hurried across a broad rocky shelf. It was filled with pews that faced the bust of some unknown cardinal. Candles had been set into the eye sockets, so that their gaze could quite literally burn into the flock.
“Every word the Grand Priestess says is stern, your eminence. I have doubts as to whether any words could possibly intimidate her.”
“She must be a relative of Katherine’s.” Adirn mumbled.
Jogging along because the situation felt urgent, even though they couldn’t really identify any tangible need to hurry, the empress and the captain wove around candelabras and oddly placed parapets until they reached another natural slope in the floor of the cavern. It rose in a broad, sweeping curve towards a railed outcropping, and its obsidian tiles were slick with drip-water from above. The empress couldn’t fathom why every ascent or descent in the Cathedral of the Deep needed to have an inflated risk of falling to one’s death, until she remembered that this was the church of Almighty Virum. What little she knew of the dread deity that presided over the Onyx Empire seemed to be consistent with making his cathedral a death trap, even to his own followers. It was a wonder they hadn’t all sacrificed themselves for his approval.
“You may step no further.” Declared a man dressed in the typical ‘hanged-White Alliance’ robe, holding one arm out with the hand up. From the outlandishly tall hat he wore, Adirn supposed that he must have either been blessed with high rank, or cursed with a forehead the height of a medium sized dog. “These floors have been desecrated, consecrated, and desecrated again in the name of Almighty Virum. You commit blasphemy by stepping here before receiving your incarceration in Almighty Virum’s baleful embrace.”
“You’re using ‘incarceration’ wrong.” The empress accused with a withering look.
“No, your eminence. He means what he says.” Captain Toxis murmured in her ear. Adirn shook her head.
“Fine. Then bring the Grand Priestess to me and I shall step no further.” She offered.
“You have already walked too far. Empress or not you must be cleansed of your trespasses in his cataclysmic name. As a bishop of Almighty Virum I shall do his bidding and safeguard his charnel house on his earth.”
“It’s more ‘in’ his earth than ‘on’ it at this stage, and the earth it happens to be in belongs to my palace.” Growled Adirn. “When are people going to start respecting that?”
“I’m fairly sure the house staff respect that, your eminence. Well, they fear it but it’s all the same.” Keto said.
“Whereas I fear nothing but Almighty Virum. I prostrate myself in terror to his limitless spite every day, and have no room to be scared by the pitiful machinations of mortals.” Said the bishop, rolling up his sleeves. One of the priests nearby stepped forwards, reverentially handed the bishop a heavy silver candelabra, and bowed away again. “In his name I will cleanse you of the insult you have paid to Almighty Virum.”
Hefting the candelabra like a burning mace, the bishop gave it a few test-swings and then strode purposefully down the slope, eyes focused intently on Adirn.
“I feel like this cleansing may not involve holy water and blessings…” Adirn said to Captain Toxis, slowly stepping backwards.
“Accurate, empress. As Almighty Virum has decreed, only the sacramental bludgeoning, delivered by an instrument imbued with his cruel will, may cleanse one of trespass.”
The bishop tensed his arm and tightened his grip on the candlestick. When the familiar sound of steel being unsheathed rang next to Adirn, the bishop did not halt his approach. Captain Toxis stepped in front of the empress as she continued retreating, and said nothing.
“Stand down, Captain of the Guard. Almighty Virum’s will must be done.”
Captain Toxis remained silent and held his sword loose by his side.
“We don’t want to spill blood here. Everyone remain calm and by no means beat me with a candlestick.” Adirn requested, for what she hoped would be the only time in her reign.
The bishop kept walking and tried to move around Captain Toxis, who sidestepped casually to remain in his path.
“You were cleansed many years ago, Captain, and need not feel the bite of this candlestick again. We have no quarrel with you. Do not stand in the way of Almighty Virum’s will.”
“Wait, I didn’t know that.” Adirn blurted. Thinking about it, she didn’t know much about Captain Toxis at all.
Still, he did not speak or raise his sword. He simply stood calmly, neutrally, and passively in the bishop’s way.
“Do you forget the vows we have all made to Almighty Virum, Keto Toxis? Exacting his punishments on those who have yet to be choked by his dreadful darkness is within the terms of our eternal servitude. He owns us and his mark must be made on those who trespass into his domain.”
Adirn had paused her retreat, nervously watching Keto and the bishop. They stood a few feet apart, the bishop towering over Captain Toxis by virtue of standing further up the slope but seemingly failing to intimidate the guard. At the top of the incline a small crowd of lesser clergy were assembled in what the scriptures of Almighty Virum referred to as the Rector’s Guard; a human wall of the fearful, through which heretics could not penetrate without spilling desecrated blood.
“There’s no need for this to escalate. As your empress I order you to either fetch the Grand Priestess or allow us to pass. Nobody needs to come to harm.” She said, acutely aware that Captain Toxis was just one man, and the priests of the Cathedral of the Deep were massing.
“Silence, heretic! Speak no more until you are cleansed, for your words offend Almighty Virum. Keto, drop your sword and submit to the cleansing of this heretic!”
Keto did not drop his sword.
“Fearful of Almighty Virum, subjugate these blasphemers.” Commanded the bishop, his face grave and stony. The Rector’s Guard began to advance.
“You order for my empress to be attacked?” Asked Captain Toxis, finally, looking the bishop dead in the eye.
“She cast the first stone by-” he started. He was unable to finish on account of the sword passing through his neck.
Adirn shrieked as the bishop’s head toppled onto the ground and started rolling down the slope, while Captain Toxis held his weapon towards the advancing clergy.
“I have spilled the blood of the fearful who were too weak to defend themselves. We may walk with the authority of the one we purged from Almighty Virum’s unholy rank.” Keto recited, as the body of the bishop started to slide away on a blood-slickened path. With one foot he stepped on the deceased bishop’s wrist, so that he could stoop to confiscate the candlestick. “I am not afraid to cleanse any who blaspheme by denying us passage, nor am I afraid to defend my empress.”
The Rector’s Guard halted in their path.
Quivering behind her captain of the guard, who wielded a sword in one hand, a candlestick in the other, and the attention of a dozen clergy of Almighty Virum with his words, Adirn was terrified.
“You killed him!” She said, just in case anybody was unclear on that point.
“It was in defence of my empress. He meant to set the fearful of Almighty Virum upon us, and that made him an assassin, eminence.”
“But you could have disarmed him or knocked him out or… I don’t know, just injured him.”
“That would not have completed the rite of unholy authority by murder, your eminence. We would have remained heretics in the eyes of Almighty Virum’s fearful, and they would have continued trying to stop us. I have secured us safe passage and an audience with the Grand Priestess, with the least possible blood being spilled.”
As a whole bishop’s worth of blood cascaded down the slope, Adirn felt that the least possible amount was still far too much.
“The bishop-by-murder speaks true. Almighty Virum will be appeased by this bloodshed and removal of a weak bishop from his ranks.” Said one of the vicars in the Rector’s Guard. “You may proceed.”
The wall of clergy broke their impenetrable line and started to walk carefully back to the top of the slope. Captain Toxis turned to face the empress and held one hand out to indicate that she may proceed.
“Th… thank you Captain Toxis.” She said, not feeling certain of quite how grateful she was in this instance.
“It is my duty to keep you safe, your eminence.”
“I appreciate your efforts. It sounds like there may be some aspects of your past that I would like to understand more about, when we have the time.”
Captain Toxis shrugged.
Adirn kept her eyes up as she ascended. Although it gave her the bearing of an empress to keep her head high and her steps even, her motivations lay more in not having to look at the bloodied mess that Captain Toxis had created of the bishop. Various members of the church of Almighty Virum nodded their heads respectfully as the empress passed, but all she could think was that the Dark Council would give her an earful over what had happened here. It was inevitable that they’d find out. Murdering those who stood in her way wasn’t the approach she’d wanted to take at all; it stank of regimes past. Then again, she thought with a shudder, they’d probably respect her more for it. And for the hypocrisy of having murder committed in her name after banning it.
With so much to unpack from the slaughter of a bishop, Adirn found herself walking idly across another flat platform of sacramental idols and statues before her attention returned to the present.
Most of the iconography surrounding her was fairly familiar; golden gallows resting on stone plinths, vicious daggers on display stands, and human skulls inlaid with carved pieces of obsidian. Cluttering the floor in between the purposefully displayed objects were piles of other, similar items that had been liberated from her palace over the course of the day, and there was something sad about seeing a beautifully crafted, if macabre, flaying dagger lying on the floor.
“Your eminence?” Called out a priestess who had recently broken away from the Rector’s Guard. The empress looked her way expectantly. “The ascension to Almighty Virum’s Plateau of Judgement is over this way, your eminence. You’re heading towards the infernal privy, and there are horrors in there that none should see on their first visit to the Cathedral of the Deep.”
Adirn shuddered and reversed her course.
“Thank you, priestess.” She said quietly, trying not to think about the privy or the decapitated bishop. There wasn’t much joy to be found on either front.
“Allow me to lead you the rest of the way, just as Almighty Virum leads us into the desecration of our pathetic mortal souls.”
“How about you just lead us like a helpful priestess leads lost people towards where they need to go. We’ll leave desecration of our souls for another time.”
“As you wish, your eminence.” Agreed the priestess reluctantly. She wrinkled her nose at the idea as if she’d gone head first into the infernal privy.
With a priestess of Almighty Virum ahead and Captain Toxis behind, Adirn was escorted through the Cathedral of the Deep. They led her up a series of ramps, through more chambers of pews and altars, around a couple of vast dripstone pillars, and up several sets of rough-hewn stairs, until they finally came to a series of iron rungs set into a vertical rock face.
“This ladder will lead you up to Almighty Virum’s Plateau of Judgement, your eminence. Would you wish for me to remain here to lead you back out?”
“That’s very kind, thank you.” Replied the empress. A look of abject horror passed over the priestess’ face and Adirn sighed. “I mean that’s despicable and Almighty Virum will slaughter us all or something. Whatever expresses that I would like to accept your request.”
The priestess narrowed her eyes.
“I shall wait.” She said simply.
“After you, Captain.”
With a nod, Keto sheathed his sword and mounted the ladder. After he had ascended a few rungs, Adirn took a grip on the cold steel and followed.
“What’s this I hear? Who dares to approach this sacred platform?” Cried the Grand Priestess from above. Given the events of the previous few minutes, it felt like she was playing dumb for dramatic effect, especially when her head appeared at the top of the ladder and sported an expression of theatrical shock. “Heretics ascend to me! Almighty Virum will not be pleased.”
“I have his unholy authority by murder.” Captain Toxis called back, still climbing.
“What?! But this…” She stuttered and stammered. By the time Captain Toxis reached the top, the Grand Priestess was standing on the very lip of the platform and looking furiously down. “You must be lying. You’ve tried to cheat your way up here, but Almighty Virum will see through you.”
“See through us like he can’t see through cloth?” Adirn shouted up.
“Silence heretic. You shall not step here with me.”
“Excuse me please, Grand Priestess.” Keto asked calmly, his hands on the top rung and his head level with her ankles.
“Almighty Virum excuses nothing, and neither will I.”
Had he not been on a ladder, Adirn assumed that Captain Toxis would have shrugged at that moment. Instead, he just continued climbing. Threading his head between the Grand Priestess’ calves he pushed upwards until she was lifted clean off the ground and sitting on his shoulders. Effortlessly Keto dismounted the ladder at the top and carried the Grand Priestess out of the way.
Whether preaching the word of Almighty Virum, chastising those who failed his challenges, or berating the unbelievers, the Grand Priestess was gifted with a voice that carried a decadent overabundance of anger. Sitting unwillingly on Keto’s shoulders, however, her silence and tightly pinched face spoke of an apoplexy that was seldom employed outside of warfare. It held firm while Adirn climbed up to the plateau of judgement, and broke only once Captain Toxis had placed her as respectfully as possible next to a ceremonial garrotte.
“So. You show your true colours once again with your disrespect for Almighty Virum’s vessel on this plane.”
“We earned our right to be here as Captain Toxis has told you. The rite of authority by murder, or whatever it’s called, was completed for better or worse.” The empress declared. “And we simply wish to have a civil discourse with you.”
“You wish for civility? Then you understand nothing of Almighty Virum! I will not speak to you.” She pouted, folding her arms.
“I came here in good faith to speak with you, Grand Priestess.”
“You killed my bishop!”
“Circumstantial. It was self-defence.”
“A pitiful excuse.”
“Look, I wanted to be able to settle our differences amicably. Declaring your empress a heretic and having her attacked doesn’t exactly curry favour.” Warned the empress.
“Favour from you is worthless. I need favour from Almighty Virum alone and can stand against all others without fear. Can you say the same?”
“I don’t know why my predecessors allowed you to get away with speaking to them like this,” Adirn growled “because frankly you are being very rude. The church of Almighy Viurm neither needs nor deserves favours from the crown, least of all when it throws tantrums over clothing!”
Adirn scolwed at the Grand Priestess, the priestess scowled back defiantly, and Keto casually wiped blood from his sword. It looked a lot like he was using the Imperial Announcer’s sleeve.
“This was useless. I should have known that trying to find common ground with you was futile. Come along captain; the Grand Priestess may keep her buried church and beheaded bishop. She’ll have tithes no longer.”
Obediently, Keto followed once the empress had started her haughty descent. It was a masterpiece of spite on the Grand Priestess’ part to wait until both Adirn and Toxis were half way down before speaking again.
“The populace worships Almighty Virum, eminence.” She sneered. “You can fight the Dark Council all you like, and maybe you’ll even make them listen, but the people will fear Virum no matter what their idiot lords and ladies decide for their daily tortures.”
Adirn paused on the ladder, looking up at Keto’s boots while her forearms burned.
“Torture has been outlawed. We don’t rule by fear any longer.”
“Your lords and ladies will continue with their pleasures no matter what they promise you. Almighy Virum prohibits reporting the crimes of one’s lord, did you know that? The church is there to hear transgressions against Virum’s will, and your puppets are nowhere to hear transgressions against your law. Who will the people obey, I wonder?”
The empress cursed, both from the priestess’ words and her aching arms.
“I can send loyal troops out. Enforce the laws.”
“I already have loyal followers in place; enough to be sure that nothing will carry on behind closed doors. How many are loyal to you, I wonder? How many could there be if we reached an understanding?”
Silence filled the ladder recess.
“Climb back up please, captain.” Adirn ordered with an attempt to muffle her resignation.
This time there was no need for Keto to carry the Grand Priestess out of the way, and so he leant down to respectfully offer the empress a helping hand. Once hauled onto the plateau again she looked to the Grand Priestess expectantly.
“An understanding, you say?”
“You need me to keep control of your empire, and I do not wish to see traditions that are sacred to Almighty Virum being case aside.”
“Traditions like tithes and having the population under your thumb, I suppose?” The empress asked.
“Almighty Virum’s dues and Almighty Virum’s thumb, not mine.” The Grand Priestess’ furious eyes tried their best to stab at Adirn’s own. “If you want to be sure that fear of the nobles doesn’t outweigh respect for your law then you need fear of Almighty Virum’s on your side.”
“Must it always be fear and torture and subjugation? Why can’t it be sense, or appealing to the common benefit? Replacing one fear with another only works until something scarier comes along; I need their support and respect.”
“Untried, untested, and doomed to failure. They are all the tools of weak fools like the White Alliance.” Spat the Grand Priestess, whose clothing still made her feelings towards the Onyx Empire’s neighbour perfectly clear.
“Only because everyone around here betrays everyone else as soon as they can.” Adirn grumbled. Images of Tabius Lloyd and Viscount Sinistere drifted through her mind. “You claim I need you, and clearly you need me to keep this all funded, so what will it take to stop this public display of contempt?”
“I propose a mutual blackmail.” Said the Grand Priestess. Adirn couldn’t help rolling her eyes at the term. “Reinstate the robes of theistic deceit in the Skull Chamber, or I will continue showing the empire that this regime does not have the favour of Almighty Virum.” The Grand Priestess demanded. She then gave Adirn an encouraging look and a prompting nod.
The empress thought for a moment, partially about her demands and partially about how ludicrous an exchange of blackmails felt.
“If you are willing to…” she stopped. That sounded like a deal, which was the sort of thing that normal, rational people made. “I mean, if you don’t support my laws to ban murder and torture, including whatever brands of sacrifice and suffering Almighty Virum has hitherto demanded, then I will cut off all state support of the church. There’ll be no tithes, no titles, no influence in my court, and no access to the Cathedral of the Deep through my palace’s grounds.”
The Grand Priestess gasped, and Adirn finally felt like she’d got the hang of communicating in her own empire.
“You would deny me access to our most desecrated place of worship over something as petty and meaningless as the slaughter of peasants?”
Adirn stared, unwilling to engage with the question directly.
“What a small and insignificant price to pay to protect what is rightfully mine.”
“You were going to try to destabilise my whole rule over some robes!”
“Yes! A petty request for a petty price. Just like you were willing to behead my bishop in order to climb a ladder. It’s all the same as far as I can see.”
“No, that was self-defence. He would have beaten me with a candlestick, and I don’t think he would have known when to stop.”
“Ah, the rite of cleansing… yes, many are found to be fatally unclean.” The Grand Priestess agreed, a wistful look entering her eyes for a moment.
“No more shall be. No deaths or beatings, or you lose your tithes and your cathedral.” Repeated Adirn, trying to steer things back on course.
The Grand Priestess scowled.
“How would any new members of the fearful prove themselves worthy if authority by murder and the rite of cleansing are both prohibited, hm?” Challenged the priestess.
“Consult your scriptures. Find another interpretation.”
“Ha! Foolish child. Almighty Virum does not stoop to writing scriptures for the worthless to read. He speaks to us directly and we carry out his will.”
The empress placed both hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side, fixing the Grand Priestess with an appraising stare.
“Does his will tend to change quite a lot from one Grand Priestess to the next?” She asked drily. She got a dark smile in return, and learned all she needed to know. “I’m sure that Almighty Virum will think of something that doesn’t involve killing or torturing anyone this time around, then.”
From below a wet thudding sound echoed, suspiciously like someone slipping on a carelessly spilled cascade of bishop blood. Self-defence or not, Adirn didn’t want his death to have been in vain.
“What will it be then? Do we have a deal?”
“No, not a deal!” Snapped the Grand Priestess. “You are blackmailing me!”
Adirn pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned.
“Fine. You have heard my demands, then?”
“Yes.” The Grand Priestess said, lifting her head to look down her nose. “I yield to your frankly weak demands and will support your pathetic notion of ceasing our traditions of murder and torture.”
“And I yield to yours. The robes will be put back in their place.”
The Grand Priestess nodded conspiratorially. Adirn had managed to buy back the lives of countless people for the meagre price of a few scraps of cloth, but she couldn’t help feeling just a little bit dirty.
“You want me to what?!” Seethed Katherine. Sitting on the enormous onyx Ox head that Lawrence had dragged up and down the corridor to the empress’s office, she stared straight into Adirn’s soul.
“I appreciate that it’s frustrating, I’m not happy about it either, but…”
“I’ll just undo everything I’ve worked on furiously, what I’ve done to implement your hare-brained robe scheme, just because you changed your mind on a whim, shall I? Any other requests of yours that I should ignore? It’ll save me the time of entirely reversing them later on.” The Mistress of Records quivered with indignant rage.
“I’m sorry Katherine.”
“Put all of the robes back indeed! And now you’re showing weakness, actually apologising, on top of it!”
“I’m being blackmailed.” Adirn defended weakly.
“Doing business, I understand perfectly.” Katherine snapped back, having none of it.
“Well… yes, I suppose. But it’s to save lives.”
“It’s to more thoroughly undermine our heritage, you mean.”
“Putting the robes back would be reinstating one of our traditions, albeit a ridiculous one, and you know that perfectly well.”
The Mistress of Records narrowed her eyes at Adirn.
“Hmph. I suppose that much is true, even if we are simply undoing your previous assault on our culture.”
“And the empress is using mutual blackmail, rather than a naïve and primitive contract. If you do not mind my interjection, your eminence.” Captain Toxus added. Adirn did not mind at all.
“Yes, I suppose she is. And really, making me write and re-write the laws like this could be taken as a form of unnecessarily personal torture…”
Not daring to speculate on the thought processes which drove Katherine, much less interrupt them, Adirn allowed the Mistress of Records to make her own peace with returning the robes.
“I will need to make arrangements with the house staff and fetch the official protocol documents. Again.”
“Thank you Katherine.” Adirn said. “While you’re among the records though, there are some other documents I’ll need. I’d like a full account of the imperial finances, any summary of the edicts passed by each of my predecessors that you might have, and if you have details of the demesnes and industries of my Dark Council then they would also be most appreciated.”
“Oh, is that all? While I’m amongst the records…” Katherine muttered, but she was fighting a smirk. The Mistress of Records was made for this. However, the other thing she was made for, as Adirn had learned very well, was arguing. “No, I won’t bring them.”
The empress barely restrained a despairing, growling wail.
“It’s too much to fetch. I will meet you in my library within the Sin Archive instead. You may view any records you please there, without my needing to carry scroll cases all the way through the palace.”
Adirn couldn’t even try to argue. For once, the crone was actually being reasonable.
“Fine. I can work with that. How long do you need?”
“Give me an hour to deal with your robe mess, and then I’ll be ready for you.” Katherine said. Standing up stiffly, she gave a curt nod and began shuffling away.
“I thought she’d be thrilled to put the robes back.” Keto observed once Katherine was safely out of earshot.
“The Mistress of Records doesn’t seem like she’ll ever be thrilled about anything I do. At least it’ll keep the tailor’s guild happy, I guess…”
Keto nodded.
“But I guess this is how it feels to break my word. Maybe this is how all the rulers before me fell; a compromise makes a lie out of a promise, and then you’re using dark clothes to prevent ear-pushings somehow.” Adirn said, looking down at the floor. It seemed that she and Toxis had managed to track bishop blood all the way back up into her office. From places unseen, her disgust at the dirtied floor was noticed.
“I don’t know about that, eminence. I never had to explain to Emperor Tyrranick why we had skulls everywhere. Nor did Empress Vivisecta struggle with the notion of opening up her house staff to see if they could be trusted.” Keto said, with an alarming neutrality. “They were cruel and malicious long before they took the crown, and they never compromised with anybody. I’d say that no matter how far you slip down that slope, you’ll always end up higher than they started.”
Adirn smiled slightly but offered no reply. They stood together in silence for a few moments, staring out of the window and watching the City of Torment’s expansive corvid population patrol the rooftops with heavy wingbeats.
“What do you seek among the records, your eminence?” Captain Toxis asked, finally.
“Understanding . Every day seems to bring a new set of painful surprises about how the empire is ruled, or what happens within its borders, or how it got that way in the first place, and it’s time I stopped being surprised by it all. You’ve heard the phrase that knowledge is power?”
“Yes, your eminence. Lord Infernus’ ancestors lived by it; they burned down any library they could find so that none might gain power over them.”
Adirn shuddered. The loss of books and knowledge was a terrible thing. Then again, she thought, that rule might not hold for books written by the authors of the Onyx Empire.
“Right, well knowledge is also leverage.”
“Blackmail?”
“Mutual blackmails, yes.” Sighed the empress, resigning herself to what passed for reality in the high court of the Onyx Empire. “Throwing my inconsiderable weight around with the Grand Priestess achieved nothing, and I’ve not fooled myself into thinking that the rest of the Dark Council will prove any different. Sure the hanging fields are gone, but that was only because they feared me as an unknown. Now that they know I really won’t have them killed…”
Keto nodded.
“But once I know what they need, or what they can do, then we can make some mutual blackmails to enforce my rule. With the Church of Virum behind me and the Dark Council working with me…”
Captain Toxis gave Adirn a dubious look.
“Well, maybe not working with me but at least arguing less, then maybe I can get some work done. And once I know what they get up to in the shadows I’ll be able to stop it.”
“Ambitious, your eminence.”
“So was asking Countess Lascera to apologise.”
“You won’t be able to withhold privies from all of the Dark Council, your eminence.” Warned Captain Toxis.
“Thank you for clarifying, Keto.” She said flatly. “Ambitious or not, it’s the only option I can see before me to get things in order and make a lasting peace with the White Alliance. We’ve got to spend the next two months keeping my promises and enforcing the laws I’ve passed.” Adirn paused. “Apart from the robes one, I mean.”
“Are you sure you want that to happen? You are Oathbreaker Adirn Deepgrave after all, your eminence.”
Adirn shot him a dark look. It quickly faded into a darker smirk.
“I could have you executed for that.”
“It’d be illegal, eminence, by your own law. You’d be executed too, and you’d prove yourself to be an oathbreaker.”
“Without you around to protect me I think my death would follow soon after whatever happened. That’s twice in two days you’ve stopped an assailant who would have taken my life.” She said, looking back down at the floor.
“Thrice in two days, eminence.”
Adirn’s eyes widened.
“Thrice? What was the third one?”
“I intercepted an assassin in the Imperial Malignancy Chambers just after dinner yesterday evening. She was trying to sneak in via a top floor window. She found that the way down was much faster than the way up.”
“You threw someone out of my window!? Why didn’t you say anything?” The empress stared at Toxis’ eternally calm expression.
“It’s part of my job, your eminence. In truth, this is a gentle rate of assassination attempts for a ruler of the Onyx Empire. You’re no less safe than you believed yourself to be before you knew about this.”
Adirn looked at Toxis with narrowed eyes, and didn’t find those words as comforting as he seemed to think she would. As much as he’d proven himself to be capable over the previous few days, he had also seen several rulers die on his watch; that did cast a certain level of doubt over his reliability. Then again, after the display his team of palace guards had put on when tailing the delegation Captain Toxis was definitely the best available. She’d have to trust him.
“Fine. But if I get assassinated then I’ll be expecting an apology from you in very strong and sincere terms.” She said.
Captain Toxis shrugged.
“When we are gone, only our sins will be remembered.” Adirn read aloud. The words were carved above the simple wooden door to the Sin Archive in heavy gothic script. “Is that meant to be a good or a bad thing? I can never tell anymore.”
Captain Toxis shrugged.
“I’m no scholar, your eminence. But knowing your predecessors, I would have expected sins to be a matter of pride.”
Glass display cases sat to either side of the door, displaying the death certificates of two people whose names Adirn didn’t recognise. One of them had perished at the hands of the other, it seemed.
“Any idea why this needed to be commemorated?” She asked Keto. He gave the names a scan and then shook his head.
“The Mistress of Records will know, your eminence. I am sure she’ll be all too glad to tell you.”
“And I’m sure I’ll regret coming to know the answer. Come on then, let’s head in.”
Keto pulled the door open for the empress, and unleashed upon her a dry, stale wind of old parchment and dust. Knowledge from a thousand minds and the crimes of a hundred rulers had stained the air with ink and paper, and it all washed into Adirn’s airways. Despite the horrors she would inevitably find recorded there, however, the smell immediately wrapped her in comfort; this was written history and old books. It was the closest she’d felt to home in what felt like forever.
Aside from the powerful aroma of an empire’s history, what struck Adirn about the Sin Archive was how very dark the enormous, vaulted library of blasphemies seemed to be. For a place where reading was supposed to happen, it seemed like a counterintuitive design choice. Dark wooden shelves that stretched upwards for two, or perhaps even three, storeys loomed in tightly packed rows over the empress, even at the doorway. They towered together in a gang and bullied out the light of high-set glass windows, so that it was channelled into single, straight sunbeams between the cliffs of scrolls and books.
Apparently feeling acutely aware of the solemnity of the library as well, Keto pulled the door softly closed behind them. Adirn stood still for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the depth of the gloom and her nose adjusted to how thick the scent of paper was.
“The Mistress of Records’ library is at the other end.” Captain Toxis whispered.
Adirn nodded and started to walk. With her first step, her boot thudded against the floorboards like a war-drum being beaten before a final charge, and from dark crevices unseen there erupted a chorus of ‘shh’ sounds that forcibly stopped her in her tracks.
“This is a most vitally silent library!” Hissed a voice from a row of scrolls nearby. “As silent as the grave, or we find ourselves in one.”
Adirn looked towards the voice with her best imperial frown and saw a grey-robed young man with a small trolley of scrolls.
“I apolo-” she managed, before more hisses and shushes assailed her. The young man had placed a finger to his lips.
With a shake of her head, the empress decided she didn’t need this argument in her life. She lifted her booted foot softly into the air and then, with all the subtle delicacy that she could muster, placed it down on the floor ahead of her. Another beat of the enormous drum echoed out and shook the bookshelves, before the shushing rained down again.
Captain Toxis tapped the empress softly on one shoulder, and then pointed down at their feet. Once she’d looked, he knelt and began to unlace her boots.
Neither Countess Lascera’s flying daggers nor the malignantly approaching bishop of Virum had made Adirn feel as uncomfortable as she did in that moment. Standing there like an impotent child, being admonished by shushing from all around and having her boots taken off for her, all she could do was look upwards to avoid eye contact with anyone. She desperately wanted to slap Keto away and snap that she was quite capable of unlacing her own boots, but the thought of another tidal wave of chastisement from the library assistants stayed her tongue. Instead, she simply lifted her foot obediently when the laces were fully undone and allowed her socked foot to touch softly down onto the boards again.
Once both her feet and Keto’s were liberated, Captain Toxis stood back up and waited patiently. Adirn couldn’t make herself look at him; she just resumed her careful, and now bootless, walk through the forest of books. Other assistants would be faintly visible among the shade of the shelves now and again, but there didn’t seem to be enough of them to account for the number and volume of shushes to which she’d been subjected. The only reasonable explanation was that Katherine’s indignant judgement was so strong, so arcane and so occult, that it had leeched into the very scrolls and books themselves. She truly was the Mistress of the Records, and they obeyed her will when it came to raining disappointment onto Adirn. It set her teeth on edge.
Through age and regular patrols by Mistresses and Masters of Records, as well as their assistants, shallow channels had been worn in the floorboards. The imperial toes, unshielded from harsh reality, could feel every smooth-worn undulation forged by aeons of overburdened scholars of sin. The overbearing mass of scrolls documenting which emperor had been assassinated by which of their trusted advisors, and the particular flavours of suffering they each liked to inflict, had pressed flesh into wood until the latter had yielded permanently. The empress wondered why exactly it all needed to be documented. Katherine probably knew why, she reasoned, and it was likely to be some misplaced sense of pride in doing wrong. Or, equally, an incredibly well placed and novel method of making a small group of people suffer for centuries to come.
Ahead of Adirn, resolving into view through the dimness of the archive, was the end of the rows of shelving. Beyond them was a broader antechamber with low writing desks, partitioned reading desks, and a third type of desk of indeterminate use. The empress squinted, succumbing to the popular delusion that partially closing the eyelids might make things somehow brighter or clearer, and after some effort managed to identify dark shapes sitting and working. How they were managing to read or write or indeterminate verb anything in the absence of adequate, or even inadequate, light eluded her. As with all of the things that eluded her, it gave way to a great internal debate over whether or not it would be worth asking.
Despite her best efforts, the imperial feet still beat the archive floor like drum. Every now and again there would be a peripheral shush, or one of the seated shadows at the desks would look up in a manner that would have suggested admonition, had their faces been visible. Keto behind her, by contrast, glided along in absolute silence. Even his chainmail had stopped clinking, and his sword didn’t rattle in its scabbard. He was like a ghost, which was probably an aesthetic that played very well among most people in the Onyx Empire. The empress herself was more like the shambling corpse that a ghost had left behind, and the glares of all others in the library made her all too aware of it.
“Sorry.” Adirn mouthed to the figures as she stepped through them. The sound of her moving mouth seemed about as loud as her paces, and still the disappointed judgement rained upon her. All she could do was press on to the carved wooden door beyond, and hope that Katherine heard the knocking before the footsteps.
As delicately as she dared but without going so far as to just be stroking the door, Adirn rapped her knuckles against the wooden door for attention and then stepped backwards softly. The unmistakable sounds of Katherine, from irritable muttering to shuffling movement, met the empress’ ears from the opposite side of the door before it swung open with a piercing creak. Instinctively Adirn flinched and shrunk away, fearing another salvo of shushes, but nothing came. No heads moved and not even an eye flickered in the direction of the Mistress of Records as she appeared. Making a noise, it seemed, was her privilege.
“You didn’t need to knock. I could hear your elephantine clomping the whole way.” She said by way of greeting. By Katherine’s usual standard it was a fairly warm one. The Mistress of Records stepped to one side, allowing space for Adirn and Toxis to pass.
It hadn’t been an exaggeration on Katherine’s part to call her office a library. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with rows of scrolls, papers and books, in a patchwork quilt of colours and styles. Not a single space was allowed to escape its duty of containing the written word; every shelf had clearly begun with a neat line of books, but slowly devolved into a carefully tessellated arrangements of texts which had been coerced to fit using any orientation that worked. Then there was the floor or, more accurately, the single, broad bookshelf on which one was forced to walk to reach Katherine’s desk. A series of narrow gullies allowed passage between stalactites of literature and recorded history, some of them ending at shelf units and one making its way over to a desk that was similarly buried in parchment. In one final insult to good sense, a pair of tall and precarious oil lamps stood behind the desk to provide reading light; their flames were open and mere inches from the tinderbox of imperial accounting that towered alongside.
“I have gathered a few of the materials that you requested, eminence, but there is precious little room in here as it is. I suggest that you begin reading those that I have procured already, and then I shall have further documents fetched as required. That is, unless you’d like to immediately supersede this request with its exact opposite in the meantime?”
“No, thank you Katherine. This is perfect. I appreciate your efforts on this, and in all other tasks.” Adirn replied. A flash in Katherine’s eye told the empress that she’d laid it on a bit thick.
“Please, take a seat at my desk. It has the best light for reading.”
“It looks like the best place to accidentally burn to death as well.”
Katherine chuckled wistfully.
“Yes, the Onyx Empire has lost more than one Mistress of the Records that way.” She said. As she laughed again, she took up a seat that had been hidden among the stacks. “It’s a lesson in keeping still and respecting the records; those who got fidgety and agitated knocked the lamps and sealed their own fates. Pay dues to the patience this role requires, and you will be perfectly safe.”
“Another laudable tradition.” Adirn said flatly. Under Katherine’s mistrustful gaze she took up a seat at the desk regardless, taking highly deliberate steps in order to keep the candelabras upright. “Alright, let’s start with finances, please.”
“They’re on your right, your eminence.”
The empress glanced to the right of the desk and saw a whole stack of scrolls, nestled among a pile of other papers, with a few ledgers acting as the base of the tower.
“Which one?”
“All of them, girl. This is an empire, not an apple stand in the market.”
“But… this is going to be a nightmare to search through.”
Katherine beamed.
“The Mistress of Records knows where to look, and all others must find their own way. Just as Emperor Obfuscator decreed.”
With a resigned sigh, Adirn lifted the top parchment from the stack. It was going to be a long night.
“Well, your eminence? Harder to find your tongue in the house of Almighty Virum? Wise you must be, but not as brave as you thought.” She taunted. In one of her clawed, sanctified hands she clutched a sceptre of wood and silver.
“I have come to make amends and to speak to you, grand priestess.” The empress replied, but her voice rang thin and weak compared to the booming that came from above.
“What? You’ll have to speak up; I’m holding a sceptre!”
Adirn frowned and looked at Captain Toxis for any clue as to the relevance of that statement. He shrugged.
“All who wish to be heard by Almighty Virum from down so low must speak very loudly indeed.” The Grand Priestess added.
“I said I’ve come to make amends and speak to you!” Adirn shouted. For all of the acoustic focusing that the natural auditorium had provided before, it seemed to dampen and mute whatever came from below. The empress wondered to herself how deliberate that was.
“Ha! I knew that seeing Almighty Virum’s blessings and icons disappearing from the palace would get your notice. Well you cannot pick and choose which edicts you follow and simply disregard the rest. However eminent you feel yourself to be, Almighty Virum’s all-embracing eminence makes it look shameful and broken.” Came the preaching from above. Around the cathedral from balconies and alcoves unseen came a low murmuring of agreement. Voices in the darkness assented and muttered along to the Grand Priestess’ words.
“Quite so. I did come to speak to you about the priests who are ferrying golden ornaments from my palace, but you are welcome to keep them.” Shouted Adirn.
“You want to keep them?” The Grand Priestess called back.
“No, you’re welcome to!”
“Speak up! Almighty Virum will never heed you when your faith is so weak.”
“I need you to hear me, not Virum!”
“Everyone needs Almighty Virum to hear them. And they’d best hope that he likes what they’re saying, or more than a few golden gallows will go missing from their chapels and altars.”
“Look, I just wanted to find out if this this is all over those bloody robes?” Adirn called up, changing the subject before they misheard one another into a deeper argument. “It’s not even an ecumenical matter!”
“And who are you to tell me what does or does not matter to the church of Almighty Virum? Do you even know why the Dark Council originally started wearing the robes?”
“Probably because it makes them look more evil.” Guess the empress with confidence.
“And the other reason?”
“Erm… to not be recognised? Even though they all go to the Skull Chamber together and then get dressed…”
“Heathen! It is to be hidden from Almighty Virum, for they stand in God-Gouger Tower. He is a terrible and mighty god, and any attempt to gouge him will be met with a most demonic rebuke. Those who do not wear their robes are standing inside the implement which gouges at Him in full view. What could be more heretical than that?” Preached the Grand Priestess. With every few sentences she would swing her sceptre for emphasis, occasionally striking the statues of Virum and sending a spray of fragmented wax to the floors below.
“If Almighty Virum can see through the roof, then I’m pretty sure that some black cloth won’t stop him.” Adirn snapped back.
“Heresy!” Cried the Grand Priestess. Urgent whispers, shouted so that Adirn could hear them, rang around the cathedral.
“Heretics have come into the church!”
“The new empress is a heretic!”
“Is heresy going to become the law? I have a few good ideas for ways to be heretical. I thought of them while cleaning wax from the chandeliers.”
“Oh this is ridiculous! I’m coming up there to speak to you. We’ll not have this whole conversation by shouting for everyone to hear.” An increasingly hoarse Adirn replied. “Which way do you think it is to get up there?” She asked Captain Toxis.
“We’ll find the way, eminence.”
“Heresy!” The Grand Priestess wailed a second time. “She seeks to tread on the consecrated ground of Almighty Virum while speaking blasphemy of his robe-blindness! Stop them, lest the swift and merciful death granted to you by Almighty Virum be made longer and crueller!”
At once the busy milling and artefact re-distribution going on around the Cathedral of the Deep transformed into a theological panic. With a cacophonous fluttering of robes the priestesses, priests, lesser bishops, greater vicars and more besides abandoned their stations and began rushing to obey the Grand Priestess’ orders.
“Do not try to stop me.” The empress countermanded, marching up the nearest ramp, but the Cathedral once again made her words small and faint. “I just want to speak to the Grand Priestess without bellowing.”
“None may tread on the consecrated grounds without Almighty Virum’s blessing!” The Grand Priestess called down, fury etched onto her face. It wasn’t an atypical expression for her.
“Then come down here and speak to me.” Adirn suggested.
“This is my domain and none will tell me where to tread, what to wear, or how to conduct myself within these walls! You will address me from the pit or not at all.”
“Right, that’s it. I’m definitely coming up now.” Snapped the empress, resuming her determined march along what she hoped would be the right path.
“Stop the heretics at any cost! Almighty Virum demands it!” Shrieked the Grand Priestess by way of reply. She pirouetted with a huge swirl of her robes and disappeared into the blackness at the back of her balcony.
“We are going to need to have very stern words with her.” Adirn told Captain Toxis as they hurried across a broad rocky shelf. It was filled with pews that faced the bust of some unknown cardinal. Candles had been set into the eye sockets, so that their gaze could quite literally burn into the flock.
“Every word the Grand Priestess says is stern, your eminence. I have doubts as to whether any words could possibly intimidate her.”
“She must be a relative of Katherine’s.” Adirn mumbled.
Jogging along because the situation felt urgent, even though they couldn’t really identify any tangible need to hurry, the empress and the captain wove around candelabras and oddly placed parapets until they reached another natural slope in the floor of the cavern. It rose in a broad, sweeping curve towards a railed outcropping, and its obsidian tiles were slick with drip-water from above. The empress couldn’t fathom why every ascent or descent in the Cathedral of the Deep needed to have an inflated risk of falling to one’s death, until she remembered that this was the church of Almighty Virum. What little she knew of the dread deity that presided over the Onyx Empire seemed to be consistent with making his cathedral a death trap, even to his own followers. It was a wonder they hadn’t all sacrificed themselves for his approval.
“You may step no further.” Declared a man dressed in the typical ‘hanged-White Alliance’ robe, holding one arm out with the hand up. From the outlandishly tall hat he wore, Adirn supposed that he must have either been blessed with high rank, or cursed with a forehead the height of a medium sized dog. “These floors have been desecrated, consecrated, and desecrated again in the name of Almighty Virum. You commit blasphemy by stepping here before receiving your incarceration in Almighty Virum’s baleful embrace.”
“You’re using ‘incarceration’ wrong.” The empress accused with a withering look.
“No, your eminence. He means what he says.” Captain Toxis murmured in her ear. Adirn shook her head.
“Fine. Then bring the Grand Priestess to me and I shall step no further.” She offered.
“You have already walked too far. Empress or not you must be cleansed of your trespasses in his cataclysmic name. As a bishop of Almighty Virum I shall do his bidding and safeguard his charnel house on his earth.”
“It’s more ‘in’ his earth than ‘on’ it at this stage, and the earth it happens to be in belongs to my palace.” Growled Adirn. “When are people going to start respecting that?”
“I’m fairly sure the house staff respect that, your eminence. Well, they fear it but it’s all the same.” Keto said.
“Whereas I fear nothing but Almighty Virum. I prostrate myself in terror to his limitless spite every day, and have no room to be scared by the pitiful machinations of mortals.” Said the bishop, rolling up his sleeves. One of the priests nearby stepped forwards, reverentially handed the bishop a heavy silver candelabra, and bowed away again. “In his name I will cleanse you of the insult you have paid to Almighty Virum.”
Hefting the candelabra like a burning mace, the bishop gave it a few test-swings and then strode purposefully down the slope, eyes focused intently on Adirn.
“I feel like this cleansing may not involve holy water and blessings…” Adirn said to Captain Toxis, slowly stepping backwards.
“Accurate, empress. As Almighty Virum has decreed, only the sacramental bludgeoning, delivered by an instrument imbued with his cruel will, may cleanse one of trespass.”
The bishop tensed his arm and tightened his grip on the candlestick. When the familiar sound of steel being unsheathed rang next to Adirn, the bishop did not halt his approach. Captain Toxis stepped in front of the empress as she continued retreating, and said nothing.
“Stand down, Captain of the Guard. Almighty Virum’s will must be done.”
Captain Toxis remained silent and held his sword loose by his side.
“We don’t want to spill blood here. Everyone remain calm and by no means beat me with a candlestick.” Adirn requested, for what she hoped would be the only time in her reign.
The bishop kept walking and tried to move around Captain Toxis, who sidestepped casually to remain in his path.
“You were cleansed many years ago, Captain, and need not feel the bite of this candlestick again. We have no quarrel with you. Do not stand in the way of Almighty Virum’s will.”
“Wait, I didn’t know that.” Adirn blurted. Thinking about it, she didn’t know much about Captain Toxis at all.
Still, he did not speak or raise his sword. He simply stood calmly, neutrally, and passively in the bishop’s way.
“Do you forget the vows we have all made to Almighty Virum, Keto Toxis? Exacting his punishments on those who have yet to be choked by his dreadful darkness is within the terms of our eternal servitude. He owns us and his mark must be made on those who trespass into his domain.”
Adirn had paused her retreat, nervously watching Keto and the bishop. They stood a few feet apart, the bishop towering over Captain Toxis by virtue of standing further up the slope but seemingly failing to intimidate the guard. At the top of the incline a small crowd of lesser clergy were assembled in what the scriptures of Almighty Virum referred to as the Rector’s Guard; a human wall of the fearful, through which heretics could not penetrate without spilling desecrated blood.
“There’s no need for this to escalate. As your empress I order you to either fetch the Grand Priestess or allow us to pass. Nobody needs to come to harm.” She said, acutely aware that Captain Toxis was just one man, and the priests of the Cathedral of the Deep were massing.
“Silence, heretic! Speak no more until you are cleansed, for your words offend Almighty Virum. Keto, drop your sword and submit to the cleansing of this heretic!”
Keto did not drop his sword.
“Fearful of Almighty Virum, subjugate these blasphemers.” Commanded the bishop, his face grave and stony. The Rector’s Guard began to advance.
“You order for my empress to be attacked?” Asked Captain Toxis, finally, looking the bishop dead in the eye.
“She cast the first stone by-” he started. He was unable to finish on account of the sword passing through his neck.
Adirn shrieked as the bishop’s head toppled onto the ground and started rolling down the slope, while Captain Toxis held his weapon towards the advancing clergy.
“I have spilled the blood of the fearful who were too weak to defend themselves. We may walk with the authority of the one we purged from Almighty Virum’s unholy rank.” Keto recited, as the body of the bishop started to slide away on a blood-slickened path. With one foot he stepped on the deceased bishop’s wrist, so that he could stoop to confiscate the candlestick. “I am not afraid to cleanse any who blaspheme by denying us passage, nor am I afraid to defend my empress.”
The Rector’s Guard halted in their path.
Quivering behind her captain of the guard, who wielded a sword in one hand, a candlestick in the other, and the attention of a dozen clergy of Almighty Virum with his words, Adirn was terrified.
“You killed him!” She said, just in case anybody was unclear on that point.
“It was in defence of my empress. He meant to set the fearful of Almighty Virum upon us, and that made him an assassin, eminence.”
“But you could have disarmed him or knocked him out or… I don’t know, just injured him.”
“That would not have completed the rite of unholy authority by murder, your eminence. We would have remained heretics in the eyes of Almighty Virum’s fearful, and they would have continued trying to stop us. I have secured us safe passage and an audience with the Grand Priestess, with the least possible blood being spilled.”
As a whole bishop’s worth of blood cascaded down the slope, Adirn felt that the least possible amount was still far too much.
“The bishop-by-murder speaks true. Almighty Virum will be appeased by this bloodshed and removal of a weak bishop from his ranks.” Said one of the vicars in the Rector’s Guard. “You may proceed.”
The wall of clergy broke their impenetrable line and started to walk carefully back to the top of the slope. Captain Toxis turned to face the empress and held one hand out to indicate that she may proceed.
“Th… thank you Captain Toxis.” She said, not feeling certain of quite how grateful she was in this instance.
“It is my duty to keep you safe, your eminence.”
“I appreciate your efforts. It sounds like there may be some aspects of your past that I would like to understand more about, when we have the time.”
Captain Toxis shrugged.
Adirn kept her eyes up as she ascended. Although it gave her the bearing of an empress to keep her head high and her steps even, her motivations lay more in not having to look at the bloodied mess that Captain Toxis had created of the bishop. Various members of the church of Almighty Virum nodded their heads respectfully as the empress passed, but all she could think was that the Dark Council would give her an earful over what had happened here. It was inevitable that they’d find out. Murdering those who stood in her way wasn’t the approach she’d wanted to take at all; it stank of regimes past. Then again, she thought with a shudder, they’d probably respect her more for it. And for the hypocrisy of having murder committed in her name after banning it.
With so much to unpack from the slaughter of a bishop, Adirn found herself walking idly across another flat platform of sacramental idols and statues before her attention returned to the present.
Most of the iconography surrounding her was fairly familiar; golden gallows resting on stone plinths, vicious daggers on display stands, and human skulls inlaid with carved pieces of obsidian. Cluttering the floor in between the purposefully displayed objects were piles of other, similar items that had been liberated from her palace over the course of the day, and there was something sad about seeing a beautifully crafted, if macabre, flaying dagger lying on the floor.
“Your eminence?” Called out a priestess who had recently broken away from the Rector’s Guard. The empress looked her way expectantly. “The ascension to Almighty Virum’s Plateau of Judgement is over this way, your eminence. You’re heading towards the infernal privy, and there are horrors in there that none should see on their first visit to the Cathedral of the Deep.”
Adirn shuddered and reversed her course.
“Thank you, priestess.” She said quietly, trying not to think about the privy or the decapitated bishop. There wasn’t much joy to be found on either front.
“Allow me to lead you the rest of the way, just as Almighty Virum leads us into the desecration of our pathetic mortal souls.”
“How about you just lead us like a helpful priestess leads lost people towards where they need to go. We’ll leave desecration of our souls for another time.”
“As you wish, your eminence.” Agreed the priestess reluctantly. She wrinkled her nose at the idea as if she’d gone head first into the infernal privy.
With a priestess of Almighty Virum ahead and Captain Toxis behind, Adirn was escorted through the Cathedral of the Deep. They led her up a series of ramps, through more chambers of pews and altars, around a couple of vast dripstone pillars, and up several sets of rough-hewn stairs, until they finally came to a series of iron rungs set into a vertical rock face.
“This ladder will lead you up to Almighty Virum’s Plateau of Judgement, your eminence. Would you wish for me to remain here to lead you back out?”
“That’s very kind, thank you.” Replied the empress. A look of abject horror passed over the priestess’ face and Adirn sighed. “I mean that’s despicable and Almighty Virum will slaughter us all or something. Whatever expresses that I would like to accept your request.”
The priestess narrowed her eyes.
“I shall wait.” She said simply.
“After you, Captain.”
With a nod, Keto sheathed his sword and mounted the ladder. After he had ascended a few rungs, Adirn took a grip on the cold steel and followed.
“What’s this I hear? Who dares to approach this sacred platform?” Cried the Grand Priestess from above. Given the events of the previous few minutes, it felt like she was playing dumb for dramatic effect, especially when her head appeared at the top of the ladder and sported an expression of theatrical shock. “Heretics ascend to me! Almighty Virum will not be pleased.”
“I have his unholy authority by murder.” Captain Toxis called back, still climbing.
“What?! But this…” She stuttered and stammered. By the time Captain Toxis reached the top, the Grand Priestess was standing on the very lip of the platform and looking furiously down. “You must be lying. You’ve tried to cheat your way up here, but Almighty Virum will see through you.”
“See through us like he can’t see through cloth?” Adirn shouted up.
“Silence heretic. You shall not step here with me.”
“Excuse me please, Grand Priestess.” Keto asked calmly, his hands on the top rung and his head level with her ankles.
“Almighty Virum excuses nothing, and neither will I.”
Had he not been on a ladder, Adirn assumed that Captain Toxis would have shrugged at that moment. Instead, he just continued climbing. Threading his head between the Grand Priestess’ calves he pushed upwards until she was lifted clean off the ground and sitting on his shoulders. Effortlessly Keto dismounted the ladder at the top and carried the Grand Priestess out of the way.
Whether preaching the word of Almighty Virum, chastising those who failed his challenges, or berating the unbelievers, the Grand Priestess was gifted with a voice that carried a decadent overabundance of anger. Sitting unwillingly on Keto’s shoulders, however, her silence and tightly pinched face spoke of an apoplexy that was seldom employed outside of warfare. It held firm while Adirn climbed up to the plateau of judgement, and broke only once Captain Toxis had placed her as respectfully as possible next to a ceremonial garrotte.
“So. You show your true colours once again with your disrespect for Almighty Virum’s vessel on this plane.”
“We earned our right to be here as Captain Toxis has told you. The rite of authority by murder, or whatever it’s called, was completed for better or worse.” The empress declared. “And we simply wish to have a civil discourse with you.”
“You wish for civility? Then you understand nothing of Almighty Virum! I will not speak to you.” She pouted, folding her arms.
“I came here in good faith to speak with you, Grand Priestess.”
“You killed my bishop!”
“Circumstantial. It was self-defence.”
“A pitiful excuse.”
“Look, I wanted to be able to settle our differences amicably. Declaring your empress a heretic and having her attacked doesn’t exactly curry favour.” Warned the empress.
“Favour from you is worthless. I need favour from Almighty Virum alone and can stand against all others without fear. Can you say the same?”
“I don’t know why my predecessors allowed you to get away with speaking to them like this,” Adirn growled “because frankly you are being very rude. The church of Almighy Viurm neither needs nor deserves favours from the crown, least of all when it throws tantrums over clothing!”
Adirn scolwed at the Grand Priestess, the priestess scowled back defiantly, and Keto casually wiped blood from his sword. It looked a lot like he was using the Imperial Announcer’s sleeve.
“This was useless. I should have known that trying to find common ground with you was futile. Come along captain; the Grand Priestess may keep her buried church and beheaded bishop. She’ll have tithes no longer.”
Obediently, Keto followed once the empress had started her haughty descent. It was a masterpiece of spite on the Grand Priestess’ part to wait until both Adirn and Toxis were half way down before speaking again.
“The populace worships Almighty Virum, eminence.” She sneered. “You can fight the Dark Council all you like, and maybe you’ll even make them listen, but the people will fear Virum no matter what their idiot lords and ladies decide for their daily tortures.”
Adirn paused on the ladder, looking up at Keto’s boots while her forearms burned.
“Torture has been outlawed. We don’t rule by fear any longer.”
“Your lords and ladies will continue with their pleasures no matter what they promise you. Almighy Virum prohibits reporting the crimes of one’s lord, did you know that? The church is there to hear transgressions against Virum’s will, and your puppets are nowhere to hear transgressions against your law. Who will the people obey, I wonder?”
The empress cursed, both from the priestess’ words and her aching arms.
“I can send loyal troops out. Enforce the laws.”
“I already have loyal followers in place; enough to be sure that nothing will carry on behind closed doors. How many are loyal to you, I wonder? How many could there be if we reached an understanding?”
Silence filled the ladder recess.
“Climb back up please, captain.” Adirn ordered with an attempt to muffle her resignation.
This time there was no need for Keto to carry the Grand Priestess out of the way, and so he leant down to respectfully offer the empress a helping hand. Once hauled onto the plateau again she looked to the Grand Priestess expectantly.
“An understanding, you say?”
“You need me to keep control of your empire, and I do not wish to see traditions that are sacred to Almighty Virum being case aside.”
“Traditions like tithes and having the population under your thumb, I suppose?” The empress asked.
“Almighty Virum’s dues and Almighty Virum’s thumb, not mine.” The Grand Priestess’ furious eyes tried their best to stab at Adirn’s own. “If you want to be sure that fear of the nobles doesn’t outweigh respect for your law then you need fear of Almighty Virum’s on your side.”
“Must it always be fear and torture and subjugation? Why can’t it be sense, or appealing to the common benefit? Replacing one fear with another only works until something scarier comes along; I need their support and respect.”
“Untried, untested, and doomed to failure. They are all the tools of weak fools like the White Alliance.” Spat the Grand Priestess, whose clothing still made her feelings towards the Onyx Empire’s neighbour perfectly clear.
“Only because everyone around here betrays everyone else as soon as they can.” Adirn grumbled. Images of Tabius Lloyd and Viscount Sinistere drifted through her mind. “You claim I need you, and clearly you need me to keep this all funded, so what will it take to stop this public display of contempt?”
“I propose a mutual blackmail.” Said the Grand Priestess. Adirn couldn’t help rolling her eyes at the term. “Reinstate the robes of theistic deceit in the Skull Chamber, or I will continue showing the empire that this regime does not have the favour of Almighty Virum.” The Grand Priestess demanded. She then gave Adirn an encouraging look and a prompting nod.
The empress thought for a moment, partially about her demands and partially about how ludicrous an exchange of blackmails felt.
“If you are willing to…” she stopped. That sounded like a deal, which was the sort of thing that normal, rational people made. “I mean, if you don’t support my laws to ban murder and torture, including whatever brands of sacrifice and suffering Almighty Virum has hitherto demanded, then I will cut off all state support of the church. There’ll be no tithes, no titles, no influence in my court, and no access to the Cathedral of the Deep through my palace’s grounds.”
The Grand Priestess gasped, and Adirn finally felt like she’d got the hang of communicating in her own empire.
“You would deny me access to our most desecrated place of worship over something as petty and meaningless as the slaughter of peasants?”
Adirn stared, unwilling to engage with the question directly.
“What a small and insignificant price to pay to protect what is rightfully mine.”
“You were going to try to destabilise my whole rule over some robes!”
“Yes! A petty request for a petty price. Just like you were willing to behead my bishop in order to climb a ladder. It’s all the same as far as I can see.”
“No, that was self-defence. He would have beaten me with a candlestick, and I don’t think he would have known when to stop.”
“Ah, the rite of cleansing… yes, many are found to be fatally unclean.” The Grand Priestess agreed, a wistful look entering her eyes for a moment.
“No more shall be. No deaths or beatings, or you lose your tithes and your cathedral.” Repeated Adirn, trying to steer things back on course.
The Grand Priestess scowled.
“How would any new members of the fearful prove themselves worthy if authority by murder and the rite of cleansing are both prohibited, hm?” Challenged the priestess.
“Consult your scriptures. Find another interpretation.”
“Ha! Foolish child. Almighty Virum does not stoop to writing scriptures for the worthless to read. He speaks to us directly and we carry out his will.”
The empress placed both hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side, fixing the Grand Priestess with an appraising stare.
“Does his will tend to change quite a lot from one Grand Priestess to the next?” She asked drily. She got a dark smile in return, and learned all she needed to know. “I’m sure that Almighty Virum will think of something that doesn’t involve killing or torturing anyone this time around, then.”
From below a wet thudding sound echoed, suspiciously like someone slipping on a carelessly spilled cascade of bishop blood. Self-defence or not, Adirn didn’t want his death to have been in vain.
“What will it be then? Do we have a deal?”
“No, not a deal!” Snapped the Grand Priestess. “You are blackmailing me!”
Adirn pinched the bridge of her nose and frowned.
“Fine. You have heard my demands, then?”
“Yes.” The Grand Priestess said, lifting her head to look down her nose. “I yield to your frankly weak demands and will support your pathetic notion of ceasing our traditions of murder and torture.”
“And I yield to yours. The robes will be put back in their place.”
The Grand Priestess nodded conspiratorially. Adirn had managed to buy back the lives of countless people for the meagre price of a few scraps of cloth, but she couldn’t help feeling just a little bit dirty.
“You want me to what?!” Seethed Katherine. Sitting on the enormous onyx Ox head that Lawrence had dragged up and down the corridor to the empress’s office, she stared straight into Adirn’s soul.
“I appreciate that it’s frustrating, I’m not happy about it either, but…”
“I’ll just undo everything I’ve worked on furiously, what I’ve done to implement your hare-brained robe scheme, just because you changed your mind on a whim, shall I? Any other requests of yours that I should ignore? It’ll save me the time of entirely reversing them later on.” The Mistress of Records quivered with indignant rage.
“I’m sorry Katherine.”
“Put all of the robes back indeed! And now you’re showing weakness, actually apologising, on top of it!”
“I’m being blackmailed.” Adirn defended weakly.
“Doing business, I understand perfectly.” Katherine snapped back, having none of it.
“Well… yes, I suppose. But it’s to save lives.”
“It’s to more thoroughly undermine our heritage, you mean.”
“Putting the robes back would be reinstating one of our traditions, albeit a ridiculous one, and you know that perfectly well.”
The Mistress of Records narrowed her eyes at Adirn.
“Hmph. I suppose that much is true, even if we are simply undoing your previous assault on our culture.”
“And the empress is using mutual blackmail, rather than a naïve and primitive contract. If you do not mind my interjection, your eminence.” Captain Toxus added. Adirn did not mind at all.
“Yes, I suppose she is. And really, making me write and re-write the laws like this could be taken as a form of unnecessarily personal torture…”
Not daring to speculate on the thought processes which drove Katherine, much less interrupt them, Adirn allowed the Mistress of Records to make her own peace with returning the robes.
“I will need to make arrangements with the house staff and fetch the official protocol documents. Again.”
“Thank you Katherine.” Adirn said. “While you’re among the records though, there are some other documents I’ll need. I’d like a full account of the imperial finances, any summary of the edicts passed by each of my predecessors that you might have, and if you have details of the demesnes and industries of my Dark Council then they would also be most appreciated.”
“Oh, is that all? While I’m amongst the records…” Katherine muttered, but she was fighting a smirk. The Mistress of Records was made for this. However, the other thing she was made for, as Adirn had learned very well, was arguing. “No, I won’t bring them.”
The empress barely restrained a despairing, growling wail.
“It’s too much to fetch. I will meet you in my library within the Sin Archive instead. You may view any records you please there, without my needing to carry scroll cases all the way through the palace.”
Adirn couldn’t even try to argue. For once, the crone was actually being reasonable.
“Fine. I can work with that. How long do you need?”
“Give me an hour to deal with your robe mess, and then I’ll be ready for you.” Katherine said. Standing up stiffly, she gave a curt nod and began shuffling away.
“I thought she’d be thrilled to put the robes back.” Keto observed once Katherine was safely out of earshot.
“The Mistress of Records doesn’t seem like she’ll ever be thrilled about anything I do. At least it’ll keep the tailor’s guild happy, I guess…”
Keto nodded.
“But I guess this is how it feels to break my word. Maybe this is how all the rulers before me fell; a compromise makes a lie out of a promise, and then you’re using dark clothes to prevent ear-pushings somehow.” Adirn said, looking down at the floor. It seemed that she and Toxis had managed to track bishop blood all the way back up into her office. From places unseen, her disgust at the dirtied floor was noticed.
“I don’t know about that, eminence. I never had to explain to Emperor Tyrranick why we had skulls everywhere. Nor did Empress Vivisecta struggle with the notion of opening up her house staff to see if they could be trusted.” Keto said, with an alarming neutrality. “They were cruel and malicious long before they took the crown, and they never compromised with anybody. I’d say that no matter how far you slip down that slope, you’ll always end up higher than they started.”
Adirn smiled slightly but offered no reply. They stood together in silence for a few moments, staring out of the window and watching the City of Torment’s expansive corvid population patrol the rooftops with heavy wingbeats.
“What do you seek among the records, your eminence?” Captain Toxis asked, finally.
“Understanding . Every day seems to bring a new set of painful surprises about how the empire is ruled, or what happens within its borders, or how it got that way in the first place, and it’s time I stopped being surprised by it all. You’ve heard the phrase that knowledge is power?”
“Yes, your eminence. Lord Infernus’ ancestors lived by it; they burned down any library they could find so that none might gain power over them.”
Adirn shuddered. The loss of books and knowledge was a terrible thing. Then again, she thought, that rule might not hold for books written by the authors of the Onyx Empire.
“Right, well knowledge is also leverage.”
“Blackmail?”
“Mutual blackmails, yes.” Sighed the empress, resigning herself to what passed for reality in the high court of the Onyx Empire. “Throwing my inconsiderable weight around with the Grand Priestess achieved nothing, and I’ve not fooled myself into thinking that the rest of the Dark Council will prove any different. Sure the hanging fields are gone, but that was only because they feared me as an unknown. Now that they know I really won’t have them killed…”
Keto nodded.
“But once I know what they need, or what they can do, then we can make some mutual blackmails to enforce my rule. With the Church of Virum behind me and the Dark Council working with me…”
Captain Toxis gave Adirn a dubious look.
“Well, maybe not working with me but at least arguing less, then maybe I can get some work done. And once I know what they get up to in the shadows I’ll be able to stop it.”
“Ambitious, your eminence.”
“So was asking Countess Lascera to apologise.”
“You won’t be able to withhold privies from all of the Dark Council, your eminence.” Warned Captain Toxis.
“Thank you for clarifying, Keto.” She said flatly. “Ambitious or not, it’s the only option I can see before me to get things in order and make a lasting peace with the White Alliance. We’ve got to spend the next two months keeping my promises and enforcing the laws I’ve passed.” Adirn paused. “Apart from the robes one, I mean.”
“Are you sure you want that to happen? You are Oathbreaker Adirn Deepgrave after all, your eminence.”
Adirn shot him a dark look. It quickly faded into a darker smirk.
“I could have you executed for that.”
“It’d be illegal, eminence, by your own law. You’d be executed too, and you’d prove yourself to be an oathbreaker.”
“Without you around to protect me I think my death would follow soon after whatever happened. That’s twice in two days you’ve stopped an assailant who would have taken my life.” She said, looking back down at the floor.
“Thrice in two days, eminence.”
Adirn’s eyes widened.
“Thrice? What was the third one?”
“I intercepted an assassin in the Imperial Malignancy Chambers just after dinner yesterday evening. She was trying to sneak in via a top floor window. She found that the way down was much faster than the way up.”
“You threw someone out of my window!? Why didn’t you say anything?” The empress stared at Toxis’ eternally calm expression.
“It’s part of my job, your eminence. In truth, this is a gentle rate of assassination attempts for a ruler of the Onyx Empire. You’re no less safe than you believed yourself to be before you knew about this.”
Adirn looked at Toxis with narrowed eyes, and didn’t find those words as comforting as he seemed to think she would. As much as he’d proven himself to be capable over the previous few days, he had also seen several rulers die on his watch; that did cast a certain level of doubt over his reliability. Then again, after the display his team of palace guards had put on when tailing the delegation Captain Toxis was definitely the best available. She’d have to trust him.
“Fine. But if I get assassinated then I’ll be expecting an apology from you in very strong and sincere terms.” She said.
Captain Toxis shrugged.
“When we are gone, only our sins will be remembered.” Adirn read aloud. The words were carved above the simple wooden door to the Sin Archive in heavy gothic script. “Is that meant to be a good or a bad thing? I can never tell anymore.”
Captain Toxis shrugged.
“I’m no scholar, your eminence. But knowing your predecessors, I would have expected sins to be a matter of pride.”
Glass display cases sat to either side of the door, displaying the death certificates of two people whose names Adirn didn’t recognise. One of them had perished at the hands of the other, it seemed.
“Any idea why this needed to be commemorated?” She asked Keto. He gave the names a scan and then shook his head.
“The Mistress of Records will know, your eminence. I am sure she’ll be all too glad to tell you.”
“And I’m sure I’ll regret coming to know the answer. Come on then, let’s head in.”
Keto pulled the door open for the empress, and unleashed upon her a dry, stale wind of old parchment and dust. Knowledge from a thousand minds and the crimes of a hundred rulers had stained the air with ink and paper, and it all washed into Adirn’s airways. Despite the horrors she would inevitably find recorded there, however, the smell immediately wrapped her in comfort; this was written history and old books. It was the closest she’d felt to home in what felt like forever.
Aside from the powerful aroma of an empire’s history, what struck Adirn about the Sin Archive was how very dark the enormous, vaulted library of blasphemies seemed to be. For a place where reading was supposed to happen, it seemed like a counterintuitive design choice. Dark wooden shelves that stretched upwards for two, or perhaps even three, storeys loomed in tightly packed rows over the empress, even at the doorway. They towered together in a gang and bullied out the light of high-set glass windows, so that it was channelled into single, straight sunbeams between the cliffs of scrolls and books.
Apparently feeling acutely aware of the solemnity of the library as well, Keto pulled the door softly closed behind them. Adirn stood still for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the depth of the gloom and her nose adjusted to how thick the scent of paper was.
“The Mistress of Records’ library is at the other end.” Captain Toxis whispered.
Adirn nodded and started to walk. With her first step, her boot thudded against the floorboards like a war-drum being beaten before a final charge, and from dark crevices unseen there erupted a chorus of ‘shh’ sounds that forcibly stopped her in her tracks.
“This is a most vitally silent library!” Hissed a voice from a row of scrolls nearby. “As silent as the grave, or we find ourselves in one.”
Adirn looked towards the voice with her best imperial frown and saw a grey-robed young man with a small trolley of scrolls.
“I apolo-” she managed, before more hisses and shushes assailed her. The young man had placed a finger to his lips.
With a shake of her head, the empress decided she didn’t need this argument in her life. She lifted her booted foot softly into the air and then, with all the subtle delicacy that she could muster, placed it down on the floor ahead of her. Another beat of the enormous drum echoed out and shook the bookshelves, before the shushing rained down again.
Captain Toxis tapped the empress softly on one shoulder, and then pointed down at their feet. Once she’d looked, he knelt and began to unlace her boots.
Neither Countess Lascera’s flying daggers nor the malignantly approaching bishop of Virum had made Adirn feel as uncomfortable as she did in that moment. Standing there like an impotent child, being admonished by shushing from all around and having her boots taken off for her, all she could do was look upwards to avoid eye contact with anyone. She desperately wanted to slap Keto away and snap that she was quite capable of unlacing her own boots, but the thought of another tidal wave of chastisement from the library assistants stayed her tongue. Instead, she simply lifted her foot obediently when the laces were fully undone and allowed her socked foot to touch softly down onto the boards again.
Once both her feet and Keto’s were liberated, Captain Toxis stood back up and waited patiently. Adirn couldn’t make herself look at him; she just resumed her careful, and now bootless, walk through the forest of books. Other assistants would be faintly visible among the shade of the shelves now and again, but there didn’t seem to be enough of them to account for the number and volume of shushes to which she’d been subjected. The only reasonable explanation was that Katherine’s indignant judgement was so strong, so arcane and so occult, that it had leeched into the very scrolls and books themselves. She truly was the Mistress of the Records, and they obeyed her will when it came to raining disappointment onto Adirn. It set her teeth on edge.
Through age and regular patrols by Mistresses and Masters of Records, as well as their assistants, shallow channels had been worn in the floorboards. The imperial toes, unshielded from harsh reality, could feel every smooth-worn undulation forged by aeons of overburdened scholars of sin. The overbearing mass of scrolls documenting which emperor had been assassinated by which of their trusted advisors, and the particular flavours of suffering they each liked to inflict, had pressed flesh into wood until the latter had yielded permanently. The empress wondered why exactly it all needed to be documented. Katherine probably knew why, she reasoned, and it was likely to be some misplaced sense of pride in doing wrong. Or, equally, an incredibly well placed and novel method of making a small group of people suffer for centuries to come.
Ahead of Adirn, resolving into view through the dimness of the archive, was the end of the rows of shelving. Beyond them was a broader antechamber with low writing desks, partitioned reading desks, and a third type of desk of indeterminate use. The empress squinted, succumbing to the popular delusion that partially closing the eyelids might make things somehow brighter or clearer, and after some effort managed to identify dark shapes sitting and working. How they were managing to read or write or indeterminate verb anything in the absence of adequate, or even inadequate, light eluded her. As with all of the things that eluded her, it gave way to a great internal debate over whether or not it would be worth asking.
Despite her best efforts, the imperial feet still beat the archive floor like drum. Every now and again there would be a peripheral shush, or one of the seated shadows at the desks would look up in a manner that would have suggested admonition, had their faces been visible. Keto behind her, by contrast, glided along in absolute silence. Even his chainmail had stopped clinking, and his sword didn’t rattle in its scabbard. He was like a ghost, which was probably an aesthetic that played very well among most people in the Onyx Empire. The empress herself was more like the shambling corpse that a ghost had left behind, and the glares of all others in the library made her all too aware of it.
“Sorry.” Adirn mouthed to the figures as she stepped through them. The sound of her moving mouth seemed about as loud as her paces, and still the disappointed judgement rained upon her. All she could do was press on to the carved wooden door beyond, and hope that Katherine heard the knocking before the footsteps.
As delicately as she dared but without going so far as to just be stroking the door, Adirn rapped her knuckles against the wooden door for attention and then stepped backwards softly. The unmistakable sounds of Katherine, from irritable muttering to shuffling movement, met the empress’ ears from the opposite side of the door before it swung open with a piercing creak. Instinctively Adirn flinched and shrunk away, fearing another salvo of shushes, but nothing came. No heads moved and not even an eye flickered in the direction of the Mistress of Records as she appeared. Making a noise, it seemed, was her privilege.
“You didn’t need to knock. I could hear your elephantine clomping the whole way.” She said by way of greeting. By Katherine’s usual standard it was a fairly warm one. The Mistress of Records stepped to one side, allowing space for Adirn and Toxis to pass.
It hadn’t been an exaggeration on Katherine’s part to call her office a library. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with rows of scrolls, papers and books, in a patchwork quilt of colours and styles. Not a single space was allowed to escape its duty of containing the written word; every shelf had clearly begun with a neat line of books, but slowly devolved into a carefully tessellated arrangements of texts which had been coerced to fit using any orientation that worked. Then there was the floor or, more accurately, the single, broad bookshelf on which one was forced to walk to reach Katherine’s desk. A series of narrow gullies allowed passage between stalactites of literature and recorded history, some of them ending at shelf units and one making its way over to a desk that was similarly buried in parchment. In one final insult to good sense, a pair of tall and precarious oil lamps stood behind the desk to provide reading light; their flames were open and mere inches from the tinderbox of imperial accounting that towered alongside.
“I have gathered a few of the materials that you requested, eminence, but there is precious little room in here as it is. I suggest that you begin reading those that I have procured already, and then I shall have further documents fetched as required. That is, unless you’d like to immediately supersede this request with its exact opposite in the meantime?”
“No, thank you Katherine. This is perfect. I appreciate your efforts on this, and in all other tasks.” Adirn replied. A flash in Katherine’s eye told the empress that she’d laid it on a bit thick.
“Please, take a seat at my desk. It has the best light for reading.”
“It looks like the best place to accidentally burn to death as well.”
Katherine chuckled wistfully.
“Yes, the Onyx Empire has lost more than one Mistress of the Records that way.” She said. As she laughed again, she took up a seat that had been hidden among the stacks. “It’s a lesson in keeping still and respecting the records; those who got fidgety and agitated knocked the lamps and sealed their own fates. Pay dues to the patience this role requires, and you will be perfectly safe.”
“Another laudable tradition.” Adirn said flatly. Under Katherine’s mistrustful gaze she took up a seat at the desk regardless, taking highly deliberate steps in order to keep the candelabras upright. “Alright, let’s start with finances, please.”
“They’re on your right, your eminence.”
The empress glanced to the right of the desk and saw a whole stack of scrolls, nestled among a pile of other papers, with a few ledgers acting as the base of the tower.
“Which one?”
“All of them, girl. This is an empire, not an apple stand in the market.”
“But… this is going to be a nightmare to search through.”
Katherine beamed.
“The Mistress of Records knows where to look, and all others must find their own way. Just as Emperor Obfuscator decreed.”
With a resigned sigh, Adirn lifted the top parchment from the stack. It was going to be a long night.