The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 21: Moonrise over Vilais, Part 2

 Vos stared into the firepit. When he spoke, he did so haltingly. "Senrich and Renelle had been in custody for months. The plot against the Emperor had been disrupted almost a year before, and in that year the dissolution began. First the Imperial College, then the Maathinhold, then the other Academies, one by one. If the arcane brethren had been more scattered I suppose it would have looked like a civil war. But they had no supporters outside their walls, not once the stories of how they were planning to depose your father started to spread. Except for Senrich, all the conspirators had been beheaded or hanged long before. He was a special case, since he was Overseer of the Grand Curia, and arguably in line for the Malachite Throne himself."

"I never knew that," Carala murmured. "Ammas might have been Emperor?"

"It would have been only a regency until the Imperial Council decided which of your siblings would inherit the title, as deposing the Emperor would have voided his will." Vos smiled without much humor. "But the Mourthia brothers were very popular, especially Gratham, and there was little rivalry between them. Who's to say a Mourthia regent might not have become a Mourthia Emperor? The people feared Senrich, but they liked how he treated criminals. Begging your pardon, Carala, but the Curias after Senrich died remained just as harsh but not as fair."

"Criticize my father all you wish, Vos. Just speak plainly."

Carala might have claimed she would not order him to speak, but Vos knew a command when he heard one. With that humorless smile, he continued. "Such a high ranking conspirator had to be made an example of. So the Emperor ordered his arms and legs removed."

Denisius looked sickened. Barthim was very white. Carala's stomach did a slow flip, even the rousing wolf inside her seeming to blanch. "He was torn apart?"

"No," Vos said. "That was not the way of it. The Emperor employed a chiurgeon to sever each of his limbs carefully enough that he would survive each removal. It took months, and I have heard that several times he nearly died." Vos was staring at the firepit again, unable to meet any of their horrified gazes. "If so he was nursed back to health every time, only to lose another limb when he was well enough to survive the chiurgery. I have heard other rumors. That his tongue was cut out. That his -- his manhood was removed. That the chiurgeries did not remove an entire limb, but rather a portion at a time, so first he lost a hand, then his arm to the elbow and -- and so forth." Vos looked ill himself now. "I have even heard that Renelle was brought from her cell in the Chalcedony Palace to witness each amputation. I do not know if it's true."

"In the Palace?" Carala said, her voice hoarse. The back of her throat was as dry as a desert. She swallowed with an audible click. "They held Ammas's mother in the Palace?" While she was not clear on the timing of these terrible events, she knew she had been born in the waning months of the dissolution. The idea that Ammas's mother had been held prisoner in the Palace while Carala was swaddled in her own mother's arms roiled her stomach as though she were on a storm-tossed ship.

"They held them both there, milady," Vos said softly. "There are torture chambers and prison cells carved all through the Palace's foundations."

"I have never seen them." She nearly told Vos she wanted to hear no more. But something compelled her to listen. Whether it was out of mere morbid fascination or some deeper sense of obligation to the man who had sworn himself to her, she could not say.

"When it was done," Vos said in a low voice, "the Emperor ordered the nobility of Talinara to gather at the Silverlamp Theatre." Carala, already pale, turned ghostly white. The Silverlamp was an open-air arena, as suited for gladiatorial displays or sporting contests as it was for theatre and opera, and one of her favorite places in the capital. "He was in the high seat. The Empress-Consort was not there. She isn't one to deny the Emperor, but I don't think she approved. She was old friends with Renelle from the time before either of them were married."