They took the steps down the dais, blasted on every side by the trumpets, showered with red flower petals. Nika would've dearly liked to press a hand to his forehead, to clear the sweat, and remind himself that he was here...
...and not on the painful march of memory, the flying and twisting of the red petals like fat drops of bloody rain. The cold he felt under his uniform, under his skin – that was the flow of old fear, kept too long in his veins, running all the colder because it had begun by running hot. The weapons of the guards, and the shouting and the trumpets, the flash of the sun – all together they brought frightful flashes of battle to his mind, to his eyes. He needed to clear the worrisome fantasy, but he could not move suspiciously, or he would be attacked.
He hadn't been around this many people – this many untrained people – in five years. He had forgotten what it was like to hear the roar of public spectacle.
God, but the dungeons were starting to sound peacefully secluded. And all too near. He yet had some business to be about before he took ‘refuge’ there.
Next to him, however, Guy’s posture was easing. Clearing the sweat from his brow, Guy took a deep, obviously relief-filled breath.
“General Guy!” Nika snapped.
Guy jumped, back coming straight, but after a sullen, sideways glance at Nika, he started to relax again.
Nika stopped walking and glared.
Guy also stopped, awkwardly, mid-step – it was stop or reveal that he wasn’t as concerned about Nika as he should be.
“But –” Guy whispered, glancing at the far-too-many people around them. When Nika still didn’t move, he pulled himself straight again, slapping an authoritative frown across his face.
“Clear the way, General Guy,” Nika said softly, eyes flicking to the Royal Guard who had subtly surrounded them to act as 'escorts'.
“Leave us,” Guy intoned.
The foremost guard began to open his mouth, his comrades flanking their path ready to back his refusal, but Guy raised a hand, giving a sharp whistle. Heary, Lo, and two more of their company appeared, shoving through the crowd. There was – in a moment – a crisis of command. of exactly the sort the authority of the Captain of the Capitol Guards was supposed to avoid.
But, alas – the Captain of the Capitol Guard was attending on the Prince Regent – technically the primary charge of these guards – on the other side of the dais.
“Let the Palace attend to the Palace,” Guy said, “and the army, the enemies of Ainjir.”
“With respect, sir,” the Guard replied, significantly less impressed by superior rank in separate forces, “do you know where you're going?”
“Don’t worry,” Nika smiled his sharp smile, “I do.”
Guy began to walk, Nika after. Lo tapped the Royal guardsman's spear as he passed, muttering, “I mean, they call it 'Traitor's Gate'.”
As they turned away, Guy whispered, “But I don’t–”
“Left ahead,” Nika whispered back.
The guards pushed them through the crowd gathered as close as they would be allowed to the Royal Dais, enforcing a spear-length bubble around them. Once clear of that crowd, however, the press of people eased – and the final council could begin.
“Guy – it is Cole's way to seem approachable, to show relief – I understand it is what you have been taught – but I believe now is not the time for Cole's appearance of geniality. He knows,” Nika grumbled, sharp edge of worry to his voice. “The Prince is much sharper than we thought. Cole does not usually misjudge a character...”
“General Cole doesn't misjudge characters, si-ahhuhhhhGalen.” Guy pulled his tongue back in, closing his mouth with a snap. The question of who knew what couldn't make it past his teeth. Nika gave him a rough, but approving, smile.
“By the way, that was a good line, but be wary of open hostility to the Palace. You’ll want them behind you, if you can get them.”
Guy frowned. “You just said… the Prince, though...”
“You never spent very long in the Capitol, did you?” Nika failed to put the force of amusement in his voice he meant to. Even he didn't feel much like joking. The walk to Traitor's Gate would not be long. The growing fear in his mind was not brevity, but that he had all the time in the world, once he got there.
That in mind, he pulled the rope off his own hands, stuffing it into Guy’s – probably a bad thing to do, but nobody around really cared about watching them, and he would be unbound while he could be. “Or, I would guess, Cole handled much of it for you. The Palace and the Prince are two different entities, until he is King. The Palace is the household, the Royal Family, the lineage – the Prince is merely the current mouthpiece to that lineage, more powerful, maybe than usual because he is Regent, but also limited, because he is only Regent.”
“Well, the rumor is that the Prince will be King any second.” Guy shrugged.
Above them, passing in the distance on their right, rose the Palace Tower, battlements hooked like fingers in the sky. Traitor's Gate wasn't in the Palace.
“Which is why it shall be best to tread carefully between them. The Prince doesn't know you – right now that is your largest advantage – but he will know you, when he has the time. When he is sure he cannot move his other pieces efficiently without taking you into greater account.”
“Who are his other pieces, though? This isn't a military operation. He doesn't have units and clear divisions of men to turn into an account of strength.”
Nika had an answer, but he didn't give it. Planning the invasion of the Capitol had given him nightmares for months – nightmares he couldn’t explain, because how to say, ‘I saw my friends and familiar streets and seeing them was enough for screams, before I planned their deaths and ruins.’ It was all too clear this was no longer a military operation; they mounted the Dais as stepped on a stage, and now there was no stepping off again. If here it seemed clearer – if they could no longer see the other players and the audience – it was only because they were backstage, now.
“You should talk about that with Cole,” Nika muttered. “He was always better at politics.”
Guy turned away from his contemplation of the sky, but as soon as he looked, looking seemed impolite. Nika had begun his final walk; though Guy was hardly company, he would not let him do it alone.
As if feeling Guy’s eyes on him, Nika shook free of his melancholy. “Everyone is one of the Prince's pieces Guy – and he knows it. The only exception might be the woman on the dais.”
“...The Princess?” Guy ventured.
“No,” Nika said. “The woman from Adineh. Your messenger said there was an ambassador from Adineh here; it is probably her. Your messenger did us a disservice in not discovering who the ambassador from Adineh was. Adineh knows that Ainjir is not used to women with political power like that. If she has been sent as Adineh's ambassador, she is probably a Hawath.”
Guy found the other woman's face difficult to remember versus the Princess', but he nodded along.
They had taken several turns, passed through a narrow, winding close, and emerged again into an older, open market street. The Palace tower still clawed the sky somewhere behind and to the right, but the Academy tower not strove out, above the buildings ahead of them. Traitor’s Gate law between the two.
“At Academy,” Nika continued thoughtfully, “they taught us there were two kinds of diplomats that Adineh would send to Ainjir; an ambassador and a Hawath.”
“They teach diplomacy at the Academy?” He was starting to wonder what they didn’t teach.
“Durante does,” Nika answered.
A narrow city block, squeezed by the spillover supply buildings of the Academy and extra Palace Guard quarters, filled the space between the two great buildings’ grounds. Low-level civil servants and Academy warrant-officer lived in this slightly gloomy, self-contained neighborhood, along with a low stone wall, cut into the last curve of the Palace hill, running straight across. Traitor’s Gate was a low hole in the middle of this wall, a lone vein connecting the two great structures of the Capitol, always shrouded in the shadow of one or the other. To those who lived by it, walked by it daily, it was just another door. Traitor's Gate couldn't even be seen unless sought.
Guy nodded. “So what's a Hawath?”
“It's a clan,” Nika replied, shrugging. “A family name. And a sign that all is not well in the Six Nations. The Six Nations balance on a beam stretched between Adineh and Ainjir. If Adineh sends a Hawath to Ainjir, there is something amiss between them. There are no better diplomats than the Hawath. The clan has acted as diplomats since before there was an Emperor in Adineh. She alone will be not be a tool of the Prince; she will work always and only for Adineh. She is the one most assured to be independent of the Prince's influence, more so even than Cole, even than you.
“Guy,” Nika turned a hard glare on him, “you must be wary of the Prince's power; the ground will never be level between you. You cannot contest with the Prince equally anymore than... any more than...” Nika struggled a moment, throwing out his hands, “... any more than I could ever fight on equal terms with Durante.”
Guy snorted. “You did. At Haywood. Beneford. You beat him, too.”
Grimacing, Nika waved his hand over the matter, a passing-off gesture. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don't,” Guy said, his tone tighter than he meant it to be. He shrugged at back at Nika's reproachful glare. “Everything you're saying is just making it clearer I'm out of my depth. I don't know anything about Adineh, the Prince, the Hawath. I wasn't trained at the Academy. I don't understand how you and Cole treat General Durante. How am I supposed to understand him as the unimpeachable teacher when he never taught me anything?”
And how was he supposed to be here, be having this conversation, when – for a thousand reasons – it should be Cole?
The iron gate was covered in a thick black paint. Traitor’s Gate was invisible because it was nondescript. The gate looked like a hundred other gates, any of a dozen doors to halls buried in the hill. Come went to courts, or jails, to basements, to offices people had forgotten the purpose – and probably the existence – of, to storerooms and the occasional old-fashioned ale hall. But Traitor’s Gate was a sort of back door. The Palace Dungeons proper had many front doors, more open, more accessible to courts and public places, but Traitor’s Gate was the back door, and no one who went in the back door would exit again, except to die.
Guy had only the length of a city block left, in their walk, to understand, to say something, to prove his worth or comfort his friend in the face of the inconsolable future...
“Galen...” Guy began, but couldn't figure out how to go on.
“Did you know, Cole's father is here?” Galen said. “His only near family, but for his mother’s sister, his aunt. He doesn’t talk about it, but his family is here; Cole turned away from his father – or, he would say, his father did so first – it’s not my place to say which. But when he joined the Academy, Durante became Cole's father, the military his family. Durante has taught you more than you know, because he taught Cole.”
“Well,” Guy said, “…and held him back, if what General Cole has said is to be believed.”
To Guy's surprise, Nika smiled. “Can you imagine Cole if he had not been held back? Some need to be held back, and some need to be pushed forward.”
“What did you need to be?” Guy asked.
The Gate came into view. A member of the Dubh Sciath stood on each side, in their gray and black uniforms, still and vague as the shadows of statues.
Guy's step faltered.
“My father was my father,” Nika said, forcing Guy to keep his pace or fall behind. “Not Durante.” Nika cleared away a pained expression with the flash of smile at Guy. ”But Cole is your teacher – the question is which does he do? Which do you need?”
Lo and Heary and the others had set their shoulders, put on their best and most rigid expressions, using their sharpest steps and gestures before these seldom-seen guardsmen. Perhaps it was just instinct – they were, at heart, Provost soldiers, and therefore of the same profession. But still, Nika wished he had a reason to put on a show. He only frowned.
They could see the guards' faces now, dour and quiet as one could expect a group of executioners to be. The plumes on their low caps, the lack of gilding to their uniforms – it was all part of the costume, the character. Yellow was the color for the maiden death, white for the aged; these men wore mottled, faded black because in shadow they wouldn't be seen. At night they would pass silently, and steal people from their beds. They raised traitors from their rest, delivering the uneasy minds of betrayers from their sleep and into the waking hands of nightmares. That they bore no sign, insignia, or color; they carried nothing with them but fear and quiet.
It was a waste of time to fear them, and Nika was too tired for it. All they would do was take him to place, and then, maybe, he would start feel fear. Hard to say. He tried not to make assumptions about things he had never done before. But he was tired, and even more so for having been a part of the show, and now it was hard not to feel as if he sloughed off a great weight. For, if nothing else, everything here on out would be honest.
There. That was some relief. Once he went into the dark, there would only be truth. Pain, and truth.
Guy had started to sweat again.
“Ni–” Guy swallowed, meeting Nika's sideways glance at him, “Galen...”
“Stay away from the Palace, Guy, and the Prince. It does you no good to be snared.” Nika turned his attention back to the waiting Gate. “Mind the living – and you’re the living – at the expense of the dead. They certainly won’t argue the point. And I’m afraid your defense won’t work.”
That brought Guy's frown back. He set his jaw. “What do you mean? Nobody even knows yet what we intend to do.”
“The Prince does.”
Guy made a noise – something not quite certain enough of itself to be a scoff. He didn’t know what he was going to do – not really – so how could the Prince?
“You should pay attention,” Nika said, something like his teasing, teaching smile returning. “It’s not so hard, is it? 'Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea',” he quoted, “The act is not guilty unless the mind is guilty also. 'Audere est facere' – To dare is to do. 'Verbis ad verbera, autem vincere est ratio ultima' – From words to deeds, but victory is the final argument. He recites like reading from a book, but I presume he means what he says.”
Nika grinned, as if participating in a wholly different, entirely less horrible conversation than Guy, and then made it worse by laughing. “He is set against us. Or me. Or the Comids as a general thing. Alas, we are the fools for all his buffoonery! After all, speaking Midraeic is a sign of intelligence.”
No one else had the heart to even smile at his joke. As there was now a danger that they could be overheard by the Dubh Sciath, Guy switched from opening his mouth to grinding his teeth.
Nika didn't care. Who would they tell that mattered now?
“It isn't your fault, General Guy. Remember, sometimes even a good general can be out-thought.” Nika smiled again – it wasn’t that it wasn’t true, but it was hard to see the joy in it. “I've been trying to think of something to tell you that would be helpful, but... perhaps it is not surprising I haven't thought of anything.”
They had reached the Gate. Their professionalism established in the crisp perfection of the their approach, now Heary and Lo abandoned all pretense of it. They glared at the stoic guards of Traitor's Gate as if ready, any second, to fight. Maybe – and God bless them for it – they actually thought there would be one. That something would be done. That it could be stopped, last second.
Nika turned and offered Guy one of his clean, Academy-perfect salutes. “You are truly on your own, now, Guy. I trust you will do well.”
He smiled at the Dubh Sciath as he had smiled at his own grim jokes. One opened the Gate, and Nika stepped forward alone. The other slid a pair of heavy manacles from his belt, and secured Nika’s hands behind his back.
He almost laughed, one last time, looking at Heary and Lo’s resentful faces, hateful and confused as to why they hated this whole affair, but the chill of the metal on his wrists and the heady flow of blood – leaden but light, fast and choking – told him that if he laughed, it would only be embarrassing. It would only be laughing to stave off fear, which had come like lightening through the dark.
Once through the Gate, they had to stop to shut it – Guy had one last moment to say something – perhaps the last thing, the only thing he might hear in a friendly voice before they announced his death – the last light, the last face, the last person who should be here, a poor stand-in for the one who should be, a facsimile, who made Guy all that he was and what he was was not the one who should be here for the parting words. But Guy was here.
And his throat caught. The Gate closed. Nika nodded, a slight smile cast over his shoulder, and disappeared in the dark.
The royal fanfare – though loud as a strumpet’s bedsprings – had a rolling, unfolding pattern to it. It sounded something like 'Your Roy-al High-ness, I–,” and then it sort of faded, in a grandiose but somehow still… depressing way. Only to rise again, like a swarm of cursed spirits, shouted from every corner.
“Your Royal Highness, I–” sounded from every corner as soon as the fanfare quit assaulting their eardrums. Except, of course, from Ambassador and Princess. They remained silent, and they remained watched.
The courtiers stood as the Prince stood, and swarmed as the Prince moved, keeping in mind the wide physical bubble he was due, and that a half-dozen well-armed guards would get very insistent about. Turning towards the back edge of the dais, the dignitaries could exit through curtains rigged for just such a symbolic purpose as separating the public from the private.
The Prince waved his hand at so many flies, and let the plebeians jostle amongst themselves. He found usually, if he refused to take any part in the sorting, things got sorted quite naturally, and it saved him undue work. This time was no exception.
“Your Highness,” said one man, who the Prince believed hadn't been on the dais at all. The Prince frowned at this and gestured for someone to pick him up some dates (there was a gesture for that, amongst the complex sign-language of the Prince's coterie).
“Your Highness,” he said again, pushing (with admirable and unflapping rudeness to those around him) close enough that the Royal Guard frowned at him, and the Prince was forced to admit to noticing him with a glance. He had on palace clothes, though more somber than a messenger's would be – striped gray and blue. The Prince was pretty sure that made him some sort of justicer – not really his sort of people, the justicers. “There is a man down at the Execution Square insisting the proceedings are illegal. He's produced an exceedingly convincing writ and General Cole's forces have refused to carry out orders until the issue is settled.”
“How did he even get close enough to interfere?” the Prince asked, with a genial smile, causing an inappropriate eruption of similar smiles and accompanying giggles from the courtiers that had re-descended as soon as they had passed the curtain. Sometimes it was just funny to do that sort of thing.
“It's a triumphal parade, your Highness – all ceremonies are conducted in view of the public. And he's recognized worker for the Law. Very good reputation. The master of ceremonies apparently knew him as something of a friend.”
The Prince received his bowl of dates and paused in his walk to listen, watching the bubble of people distort around him, though the little law-man kept up well enough. He had a very earnest face.
“Well, that's not very friendly,” the Prince said. Oh, Blood and Glory, how they laughed at pale wit.
“Your Highness,” the justicer went on, real concern on his face, “we have several hundred enemy soldiers and officers in the city at the moment, and over a thousand if we include those detained outside. If any… violence, or undue… contest should erupt, especially between Ainjir’s forces…”
See? Didn't things just naturally sift themselves? The most important floating to the top, the trivialities sinking to the bottom. The Prince ate a date.
“What in the world would I do about this? Violence, contests... writs... It sounds as if it's a military matter.” He looked over to General Hammerlyn, whose purple face indicated he was about to go on another tirade. At the shifting attention of the court, however, his face drained to white like a tub with its stopper out.
“General Hammerlyn,” the Prince said, as if noticing him for the first time, “it sounds as if there is something for you to do, after all. My plans all fell through.” He gave a general smile which so confused the courtiers it looked as if everyone's grandmother had just pinched their cheeks into place. “The execution, however, was your idea, was it not? We are sure you'll want to see it through.”
General Hammerlyn's eyes shifted, uncomfortably close to actually looking at the Prince, before darting to meet the unbearable focus of every other eye in the court. He cleared his throat and straightened up. “Your Royal Highness, there is only one thing I must say before I go to–”
“Yes, yes,” the Prince said, “not to trust the wily Midraeic. We assure you, a trip to the dungeons is very far from appearing trusting. The Dubh Sciath don't tolerate nonsense.”
No doubt, Hammerlyn had his uses, but his hatred for the Comid General made using him like following the trail of a duck-hunting dog, who for the sake of the killing would leave off finding the one already killed. Just one of many features that made Hammerlyn both useful and tiresome. There was a reason The Prince had only hunted ducks five or six times in his life.
While Hammerlyn tried to come up with something else defaming to say about the Comid General, the silence pressed on them. The Prince made sure that in that silence was the heavy weight of his expectation that Hammerlyn would do everything in his power to not lose face.
The delay of the return of the Prince's affable smile was like a skip in time – like the whole court had frozen, only to thaw at its return. He dug in his bowl of dates for a good one. “We are delightfully unprepared to handle the intricacies of military law, General Hammerlyn. And anyway, we've too much respect for our victorious defenders to want to overstep our bounds in this matter – the separation of Military and Nobility, after all, is important. And today is a day for celebrating the Military!” He held his date aloft to a little huzzah from a smattering of courtiers whom the Prince immediately moved up in his mental roster. Smiling victoriously, the Prince examined his prize. “We wouldn't want the Nobility messing it up. We shall leave it all to you, General Hammerlyn.”
Give him credit (the Prince did so as he held his hand out, watching the servant who had come with the dates clean his fingers with a wet cloth held just for the purpose), General Hammerlyn was no idiot. His bow to the Prince was stiff, his 'of course' as troubled as it should be. If the Prince wasn't mistaken, he had been relying on nobody challenging him in the matter of the execution.
And that was his fault. Know thy enemy, after all.
The Prince removed his cleaned hand, holding it to his lips as it he had just thought of something (it smelled of lavender – another good man, that servant).
“That reminds me,” he snapped to the Royal Guard standing in for his messenger. The Gaurd sidled uncomfortably towards the Prince to listen, weapon held away in awkward compliance to his doubled duties. “Go to the Lord Chamberlain and secure an invitation for Brigadier Cole to attend the festivities this evening – we won't have our noble commander left un-honored.”
The guard mumbled his assurance, but the Prince delayed him, the mere promise of a touch to his shoulder enough to root him to the spot. The Prince didn't touch anyone he didn't have to.
“Insist. Tell the Lord Chamberlain he is commanded to issue invitation.”
The guard looked uncomfortable, eyes shifting, lips working as if checking to make sure he had all of his teeth before he put them into use. The Prince smiled acceptingly and moved a little closer to him so he could speak.
“Your Highness – won't... what would you have us do about General Guy? May we... may we issue both invitations politely?”
The Prince waved, permitting the bubble of courtiers and officials to wander ahead of him. An unusually direct question, but it was an unusually direct day, even as regards the blasted hot sun. The Prince made a show of considering, putting on an air of bored officialism so the court would know they were missing nothing, but he spoke low and precise.
“My loyal man, may I remind you that We are Politesse. General Guy is, of course, invited so he may receive all honors we could possibly shower upon him on this occasion – Brigadier Cole is attendant at our request, as a means of showing our appreciation. Issue our invitation directly to let him know his concern over his honor is not our concern, for this evening.”
The Prince paused – normally he could rely on the Lord Chamberlain to handle such messages with their proper weight, but normally his own herald conveyed the meaning. He spoke very clearly, “Circumvent Guy. If you cannot find Cole, my dear man, to present the invitation, go to the lawyer making trouble at the execution square. We have a feeling he will know where to find him.”