Madness of Flowers

Book : City Imperishable

by Jay Lake

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter. When a beautiful mountebank arrives in the City Imperishable, offering to lead an expedition to uncover the lost tomb of the Imperator Terminus, she stirs up the mob with promises of treasure and imperial power... but what will her quest unleash? Political intrigue, adventure, and all-out war await the principles and inhabitants of the City Imperishable. Through it all, the City may endure, but none will remain untouched by the Madness of Flowers... Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Release date: December 1, 2008

Publisher: Night Shade

Print pages: 300

Sample

BIJAZ

He had quickly tired of divinity. There was a soul-satisfying warmth in opening his empty hand to find a flax seed or gaming chip. The trick never failed to amuse at dinners. But he had not been prepared for the expectation of spiritual purpose that accrued around him like flies on a street drunk.

Bijaz had always taken pride in being his own dwarf. Now he seemed to belong to everyone in the City Imperishable. Especially the Numbers Men, those strange gods who had gifted him with these powers and since remained obstinately absent from his life and his dreams.

“It’s not so bad,” he told his drinking glass. Bijaz sat in a café on the lower slopes of Heliograph Hill. The place smelled of steam and the mild spices of Rose Downs cooking. The chair was comfortable, perhaps too much so. The vintage, a straw-colored wine from beyond the Sunward Sea, tasted of dusk and romance and the warmth of distant shores.

Idly, he opened his left hand to dribble pale sand to the floor. The flow sparkled as it fell, catching the late afternoon sunlight.

“Building castles, are we?”

Kalliope. Tokhari war mistress, with spirals tattooed upon her cheeks and teeth stained blue from some ritual drug. Once she had been a child in the household he had managed. Sister to Jason the Factor, the dead man of winter who was now in hiding. Kalliope was a sandwalker, a desert mage, more than a month’s ride from the edge of her domain.

And a friend to him, of sorts.

These days they were both strange, in a stranger land. Her camel riders had gone home, save for a lingering rearguard and a few would-be immigrants.

She, like Bijaz, had been touched by the noumenal. Also like him, she had been left wanting.

“Is this your desert I have grasped?” he asked politely.

She sat in the velvet chair next to his, reached to draw her fingers across the pale spray on the polished wooden floor. “No. Our sand is yellow as a coward’s liver, harder than the flat of a sword. This was made for dancing or lovemaking, not fighting.”

“I should hope.” He signaled for more wine. He had paid for nothing in months. Somehow that was bothersome, too. “Drink?” he asked, as the waiter approached, stiff in his formal whites.

“Water,” Kalliope said. “Filtered through cork and silk. Nothing from the river.” She looked back at Bijaz. “No wine. It brings dreams.”

He let that pass. Far too many people asked him to interpret their dreams.

Will my number be lucky now?

Why does the elephant stalk my sleep?

My grandmother won’t quit shrieking.

The answers were always too easy. He had no idea if they were true, but people seemed satisfied. Then, once or twice a week, someone brought him a dream which lit white fire in his head.

That was when he cursed the Numbers Men. He might have died peacefully if not for their meddling.

Another wine was set before him, a tall blue goblet in front of Kalliope. The latening sun made the entire table glow. Drops beading off her glass were tiny diamonds, each a swelling reflection of the room. His wine swirled with motes from a distant harvest. Dampened, the table wood discharged the memory of forests.

“Trees,” said Kalliope, stepping into his thoughts. “They walk. Not two-legged, like bark-clad men, but scrabbling on a thousand woody toes. Masts sliding with purpose through the soil.”

“You dream of the timber harvest,” Bijaz said almost automatically. He stared at the water-spattered tabletop. “The wealth of softwood come down the river from the Pilean Hills, the hardwoods carved out of the swamps along the Jade Coast.”

“No.” Palms flat on the table, disturbing the tiny droplet worlds, she leaned forward. “I am a sandwalker. My dreams are borne on the wind. I do not spend my sleeping hours considering economics, or the petty anxieties of foresters.”

He looked up. Kalliope’s eyes were storm gray, exactly the shade her brother Jason’s had been before she’d killed him and brought him back. The same as their father, torn apart by a mob so many years before. Lenses, doors, opening in succession across the years. If he just stared hard enough into the black pool at the center of her gaze, he could see—

“You’re glowing,” she said.

Bijaz gripped the table’s edge so hard his fingers ached. “I hate this.”

“You would have died, otherwise.”

“That was the idea. I only lacked the courage to do it all at once.”

Her fingers brushed his, desert brown on city pale. “It takes more courage to live.”

“Perhaps.” He looked at the water droplets. Forests stood in each tiny lens, rippling like wheat in a summer field. “I know your dreams are real.”

“You know too much.”

“Yes.” He released his hold on the past and took up the wine. The vintage seemed sour now. “We all gave too much.”

They followed little streets and alleys toward the Limerock Palace. With the Imperator Restored cast down, being a wanderer was more-or-less safe again. No more monsters in the dark, sniffers or water fetches—the noumenal world had returned to the interplay of night and shadow.

The City Imperishable’s usual run of beggars, pickpockets, footpads, and drunks abounded. They were as inevitable as head lice on a dockside whore.

“I’ve been wondering,” Bijaz said. White rose petals fluttered from his fingertips toward the cobblestones, so many pale butterflies in evening’s encroaching shade.

“Yes?”

Kalliope still moved with the bandy lope of an old Tokhari. She wasn’t tall, for a full-woman, but Bijaz was still very conscious that his head barely came to the level of her breasts.

Almost six decades a dwarf in the City Imperishable and he still measured himself against those around him. Enough, he thought, though his gaze lingered on her body a moment longer.

“The last of your camel riders left the Sunrise Gate this past week. Yet you remain in the City Imperishable.”

“My rearguard abides.” He could hear the smile bending her voice. “I am not convinced they will ever leave.”

It was a small force, but Bijaz knew that Lord Mayor Imago had his concerns. For example, the possibility of a more substantial Tokhari force lurking in the Rose Downs so long as their sandwalker remained in the City Imperishable. “And yourself?”

“The sand calls me back,” she admitted.

They found themselves on Roncelvas Way. Downhill, the pale bulk of the Limerock Palace shone almost orange with the last of the daylight. Wind off the River Saltus carried the scent of spring from the Pilean Gardens within the palace walls.

“Do you wait for Jason?” asked Bijaz.

Kalliope had wrought a terrible sandwalker rite on her brother during the abortive Tokhari invasion of the City Imperishable, at the time of the Trial of Flowers. Between her death magick and the power of the Numbers Men, Jason had become sula ma-jieni na-dja, the dead man of winter. Since the overthrow of the Imperator Restored, he had gone into hiding.

“No, not him. I would see Jason again, but that is not need enough to keep me away from the sand.”

“What then?” They passed two men pinned to the trunk of a linden tree in passionate embrace.

“We are not an order. Not like the philosophick doctors with their sworn convocations and bone-swallowing. Each sandwalker answers only to the spirits of her desert.”

“Mmm?” A fig dropped from Bijaz’s fingers. It glistened with dew from some distant morning. He snatched the fruit before it hit the ground, and sniffed. Rich, almost meaty. Riper than anything ever come in an oil-packed barrel.

He offered the fruit to Kalliope, who took it with an absent-minded murmur of thanks. She had become accustomed to his strange little miracles, unwanted and uncontrolled.

“The City Imperishable…” Her voice trailed off.

“She eats her children,” said Bijaz softly, “this city of ours; eats them and spits them out again.”

“I am Tokhari, skin and sweat.” Kalliope sighed. “I have ridden the seven trials. I have seen three buried sunrises. I have prayed in each of the Red Cities. The sand took my spirit, and the sand gave it back to me.”

She broke her stride. “I can do this.” Kalliope closed her eyes and tightened her fist around the fig. She swayed slightly, focusing on some inward point. With a sizzling, crackling noise, a green tendril shot from each side of her hand.

The fig was sprouting. The cobbles at her feet smoked.

Bijaz was surprised. The magicks of the priests and petty arbogasters had always seemed mere sleights. His own experience of the Numbers Men had convinced Bijaz of the deep and abiding power of the noumenal, but that power did not lie in the hands of men. Or women.

He took the sprouted fig from her trembling grip. “I’d always thought sand-walkers a sort of tribal elder.”

“And so we are.” Kalliope resumed walking, with only a slight stumble. “But our deserts stretch a greater distance than a man can ride in a lifetime. Some are interrupted by oceans or forests or blackland farms, but there is always more desert. Between sky and sand, there is little room to mistake what one sees for what one wishes.”

Bijaz laughed. “A man who walks far enough will find anything.” That proverb was chiseled above the entrance to the old Messengers’ Guild Hall.

She gave him a sidelong glance, her face almost puckish in the guttering of a corner gas light. “You of all people should understand the price and purpose of power.”

“I maintain a firm hope in the segregation of the noumenal from the ordinary.”

Kalliope laid a hand on his muscled forearm. He felt a crackle where she touched him, though her fingers were cool. Bijaz wondered when the tiny hairs curling across his skin had silvered.

“Power follows its own paths, my friend,” she said. “The sand bids me stay awhile.”

How long had it been since he’d simply made love? Perversions and miseries loomed in recent memory, but years had passed since Bijaz had laid his head upon his wife’s breasts.

This woman could have been his granddaughter.

“I feel it, too,” she told him. “I need it, too.” She dropped her hand away. “But I fear the power more than I feel the need.”

Bijaz felt regret mixed with relief. “I fear your dreams of trees, sandwalker.”

“You should.”

They walked on, sharing nothing more than each other’s company.

ONESIPHOROUS

Big Sister paced his office. The floor creaked with her step. Onesiphorous had barely gotten used to the space himself—a wooden structure slung from the bottom of an arched stone bridge connecting two of the myriad islands that made up Port Defiance. Axos and Lentas, in this case. The interior plastering and door-high coastal-style windows made the room seem normal until a strong wind or a heavy step disturbed the balance. Then it felt like a giant cradle.

His cradle was being rocked by a woman as iron-gray as any senior Tribade, but rather more plump than normal for the sisterhood. Not so much maternal, which would have been strange enough, but matronly. Yet it was she who Biggest Sister had sent with him to Port Defiance.

Bells rang outside, a complex code concerning the harbor traffic. She stopped, cocked her head. “Sails sighted, inbound from the Sunward Sea, not a local flag.”

The dwarf was amazed that Big Sister had picked it up so quickly. They’d arrived on the same riverboat nine days ago. He’d brought gold and commissions and official seals. She had brought a knife. Each of them was sent to step into the dissent fermenting beneath a thin crust of despatches wending up and down the Saltus.

To a dwarf from the City Imperishable, Port Defiance was as alien as the moon. To the south the sea climbed toward a horizon which could never quite be discerned for haze and the long slope of the world. North across the muddy waters of the Saltus delta lay the jungles of the Jade Coast, a viridian wall where moss-green monkeys and parrots brighter than the tears of demons shrieked. East and west, the coast was an endless maze of swamps and jungles occasionally punctuated by the weathered stone outcrops on which the Jade Rush had been founded. Plantations rotted there as well, in water meadows or on cleared land.

Port Defiance was quite strange, with its close-crowded islands and rope bridges and stands of swamp-bound hardwoods. Too many city dwarfs lived here, most sent by Onesiphorous himself when things had been different in the City Imperishable. Too many disaffected scions of fallen houses, younger sons of Burgesses and trade factors brought by the Jade Rush half a generation past and now settled into louche disarray. Too many local families, stiff with contempt for the naïve parvenus disrupting their ancient prerogatives.

Worst of all were the fights. Not between settlers and locals, but amongst the dwarfs themselves. Demagoguery and sheer incitement mixed dangerously with the hardest question to come to his people in half a thousand years.

“You have a better ear than I,” Onesiphorous admitted.

She quirked him a smile as she spun on her heel for another pass across his office. “Men never learn to listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

“No you’re not. You’re thinking. You’re wondering, What’s she want today? Why has she come into my office with that look in her eye? That’s not listening, little man, that’s looking ahead.”

“And what would listening be?”

She stopped, the smile lingering a bit this time. “A listener might use his eyes as well as his ears. Have you ever seen me walk with a limp? Where is the copper butterfly I wear in my hair? Why is my right boot stained brown? What would bring me here in such haste, yet be so difficult to discuss that I would comment on the bells rather than simply arrive at the point?”

“You and I listen differently.”

“We learned in different schools,” she said. “You’d best lesson yourself in my ways if you plan to survive here.”

“As I am a fool, please do me the courtesy of enlightenment.”

“I came to report one thing, but on the way found cause for my loss of courage. There are two dwarfs floating out to sea right now who tried to permanently interrupt my trip.”

“You were attacked.” He managed to make it a statement rather than a question.

“Indeed.”

“By singularly stupid dwarfs, I would think.” Onesiphorous marveled at the foolhardiness of anyone attempting assault against a senior Tribade sister.

“I would also think.” She stopped in front of his desk. “Lord Mayor Imago sent you here to act as his deputy. Neither of you understood what that would mean. Today it meant two dwarfs tried to kill me. Tomorrow they could be after you.”

“Slashed or Sewn?”

Big Sister leaned forward. “Both. One of each.”

Onesiphorous’ heart skipped a cold, slow beat. “You jest.”

“Would that I did.”

Back in the City Imperishable, Slashed and Sewn had been implacable opponents, albeit through debate rather than murder. The Slashed were in a sense his. Onesiphorous had led the movement of discontented dwarfs who cut away their traditional lip stitches, abandoned fingertalk, and struggled for social and legal recognition. The Sewn clung to old ways, fighting to preserve the quiet power their kind had always wielded in the City Imperishable.

The two groups had come together only in the autumn of the past year, as the politics of the City Imperishable had for a while turned fatal. Onesiphorous and Bijaz, a leader of the Sewn, reluctantly cooperated to evacuate dwarf families from danger. Rather to his surprise, many of those then sent downriver to Port Defiance had since been in no hurry to return.

Now the dwarfs had found a new passion to divide them in novel and terrible ways.

“Do you know why they tried to kill you?”

She shrugged. “A message, perhaps. They shouted no slogans when they attacked, and had no dying words when I was finished with them.”

“Will you exact further vengeance?” The Tribade was known for slow and thorough punishment.

“I would be forced to chastise half the dwarfs in this miserable place,” Big Sister said. “I scarcely see the point. It should be enough that they do not return to their plotting. Let their fellows wonder.”

“Wonder, indeed. My thanks for your restraint. What errand were you about before your interruption?”

She tapped her lips with an index finger. “There is a citizens’ council forming. I was asked to participate.”

“Ah.” Port Defiance had been under the control of the City Imperishable since before the days of the long-vanished empire. Local lore held that the port had once been the seat of a mighty thalassocracy—something Onesiphorous found doubtful.

Various forms of governance had pertained over the centuries, ranging from a Judge-Intendant to a Board of Visitors to a Commissioner. In recent years, one local syndic or another had served by appointment as Harbormaster, who also stood as chief executive on behalf of the City Imperishable’s Assemblage of Burgesses. That post was currently held by Borold Sevenships.

More to the point, administration of Port Defiance was not part of the Lord Mayor’s responsibilities. Onesiphorous was here purely as a representative. He had no power over the affairs of this city. The Assemblage of Burgesses being in continued disarray, as a practical matter there was no higher authority attending to affairs here.

Hence, someone had dreamt up a citizens’ council. “They intend treason?”

“They would scarcely name it that.”

“Are dwarfs involved in this idiocy?”

“Yes. Slashed and Sewn alike.”

Affairs in Port Defiance definitely needed tending to. He asked the next logical question. “Boxers?”

She nodded.

And there hung the crux of the thing. Should the traditional growing boxes be reduced to kindling and burned for a sacrifice? Or was there significance in being a dwarf of the City Imperishable once beyond those ancient, crumbling walls?

That was the crucial temptation here in Port Defiance: In a single generation, dwarfs could end their kind’s time under the sun. Let the children grow freely. Once they were all full-men, no one would ever think to box a child again. Without the customs of the City Imperishable to constrain them, why would anyone subject their children to that terrible pain?

So said the Openers.

The Boxers decried the death of their race, the loss of their power, the melting of the dwarf families into the sea of full-men which covered the endless length of the world.

It was not a question of Slashed and Sewn, of politics and tradition. People would kill for tradition, but they would die for their children.

“Boxers.” Onesiphorous drummed his fingers. He’d always detested the practice of boxing. Given all that business with the Old Gods after the Trial of Flowers, the purpose of dwarfs was so much more important: harbingers of the power and fortune of the City Imperishable.

Even though he’d spent years promoting the Slashed cause, he found himself in sympathy with the Boxers. He didn’t want to imagine a world without dwarfs. The pain of the box was a price. What they gained for it could be debated endlessly, but his people did gain. Their home, the center of all things dwarf, was the City Imperishable.

And the City gained all the more. Civitas est.

“Why break away?” Onesiphorous let his line of thought drift loose.

“Control? Perhaps they fear reform at home.” Big Sister leaned close. It was like being leered at by a homicidal grandmother. “I told them I’d meet with the council.”

“Perhaps that was why someone sought to kill you.”

One last smile. “See? You can listen if you put your mind to it.”

With that, she was gone.

Onesiphorous let himself feel the gentle sway of the room a while as he watched the windows for the inbound vessel. Port Defiance was like a ship filled with unknown cargo, every crate a volatile surprise. He had no authority here, but neither did any council which might form.

And it galled him to trust the Tribade in this matter. Onesiphorous barely understood their ambitions, and he could imagine any number of advantages they might see in an independent Port Defiance.

He watched awhile, until even his untrained eyes could espy the sail visible beyond the curve of Barlowe’s Finger.

IMAGO

“You are to be having an army as I am to be having a parade of washerwomen,” said Captain Enero of the Winter Boys.

They were in Lord Mayor Imago’s wedge-shaped office on the topmost level of the Rugmaker’s Cupola. He’d moved two floors up from the tower’s third level after the fall of the Imperator Restored to better his view and make a point about his oversight of the City Imperishable.

The floor was covered with hand-woven rugs, the walls papered over with maps, charts, and great running lists. Morning sunlight made a bright glare of his view south and west toward the river. He had not yet found time, or sufficient commitment, to relocate to the Limerock Palace. Besides, here he was under no one’s control but his own.

Imago growled, a wordless mumble of frustration. He turned his remade chain of office over in his fingers, feeling the cool solidity of the new-cut gems. Finally: “I am well aware of that problem, my friend.”

To say the training of the City Men had gone poorly would have been a kindness. The bailiffs had to a man refused transfer into the new force. Green Kelly’s so-called Restorationists were disbanded, and no one sane wanted them under arms again. Most of Imago’s early recruits had returned home to their jobs and families.

As a result, the walls of the City Imperishable continued to be guarded by the Winter Boys, a company of southern freeriders originally hired by the twice-late Imperator Restored prior to his accession to the Bladed Throne. Technically mutineers, Enero’s men had acquitted themselves well opposing that brief, bloody reign.

Now they wanted to go home.

“I am to be receiving ever more pointed letters from the south,” the mercenary commander added. “Higher authority is to be calling me home.”

“Though the Tokhari have mostly departed, there are still several hundred Yellow Mountain tribesmen camped outside the River Gate.” Imago rubbed his eyes—he was still troubled by the newly odd proportions of his body. “They seem in no hurry to return to their peaks.”

“Men from the upper valleys. Until the high passes are clearing, there is being no point in their departure.”

“I suppose they’d just fight if they rode home with the others.”

“To be taking their women and horses, yes. This is being sport for them while awaiting the thaw.”

A diffident knock echoed gently. Imago nodded and Enero tugged the handle.

It was Marelle, a pale dwarfess and one of the endless round of people seemingly needed to accomplish anything. “There is an incident in the street,” she said. “At Little Loach Close, near the Spice Market.”

“Fighting?” Imago and Enero shared a startled look.

“Not exactly. Arguing, I think.” She glanced at a piece of paper clutched in her hand. “A runner came, from the Water Captain’s office. They’re worried.”

Imago stumped across the room, each shortened footfall still a bit of a surprise, and took the despatch. The note was simple enough, written in a swift copperplate hand.

I urgently wish to inform the Lord Mayor of a disturbance in the Spice Market, requiring his full and immediate attention. Respectfully, Moraine Simpkins, Associate Water Captain, Northern Districts.

“No detail?”

“How would I know?” she asked with asperity. “A boy brought it in. He wanted two orichalks for his trouble. A runner, nothing more.”

“I trust you tipped him?” Imago turned the note over. An ordinary piece of foolscap. The City bought the stuff by the wagonload from the Paper and Card Cooperative. Nothing to be learned from that.

“Boys are a city’s best friend,” she said.

Enero leaned over Imago’s shoulder to look more closely at the letter. “You are to be going to the Spice Market now?”

“I’ve had a hankering for ginger all morning.”

The curtained carriage rolled to a stop amid the racket of a crowd—not the full-throated roar of riot, but more like a festival out of place. Enero placed a finger on his lips and slipped a pistol from his belt. “Being a moment,” he whispered, then pushed open the door and rolled out in a smooth, rapid motion.

Imago waited, bouncing impatiently on the leather bench. It would be beneath his dignity to draw the curtains and peer out.

How things have changed, he thought. During the desperate days of the Trial of Flowers, he would have been with Enero, sword in hand. But the Old Gods had made him over—now he was only four feet tall, with stumpy legs that pained every step. The wealth of the City Imperishable had been gleaned on the backs of the City’s dwarfs, almost all of them specially grown so in their boxes. Being made short, on the other hand, galled him.

The pain was another matter. Jason might have reveled in it, but Jason had his own troubles now, grave-deep. Imago could hardly complain in the face of that.

The noise outside dissolved to raucous laughter. Enero opened the carriage door. “To be coming, then?”

“Of course,” Imago said smoothly. He allowed the freerider to help him down.

There were hundreds here, if not more, spilling into the streets around the Spice Market. Someone was performing from the sound of it—another wave of laughter flowed across the crowd.

“To be following.” Enero found his way to a wall.

They walked along the slimed brick, behind a series of stalls which reeked of roots and soil and dark things beneath the earth, before reaching a rickety wooden stair. Enero led the way up to a landing.

There Imago could see.

The Spice Market had ceased operation. At this hour there should have been buyers from the restaurants and chophouses, not to mention guildhalls, temples, and every other place with a kitchen. A great many people were going to be disappointed tonight if this gathering did not soon disperse.

From here he could see people crowded in around the market tables and standing amid the racks and barrels of peppers, herbs, and powders. Everyone watched a stage set up atop a large wagon, parked on the far side of the market from the landing Imago occupied. A white bear danced upon planks, wearing a harness of silver bells and blue silken cords. Three dark men with bone flutes played its tune. The only rhythm was the pounding of the bear’s feet upon the wood.

Imago could not decide whether to be amused or irritated. “I was called out to see a dancing bear?”

“To be taking note of the men with flutes.”

“I see,” said Imago.

“From the north, I am to be thinking.”

“You figure north because of the white bear?”

“I am thinking north because the Spice Market is being close to the River Gate.”

The music came to a close in a skirling disharmony foreign to Imago’s ears. The bear thumped its right foot three times on the planks and bowed. A shower of coins rose from the crowd to rattle onto the stage. The bear plucked a single bell from its harness and threw the bauble in a high overhand toss that seemed very human.

Imago watched hundreds of faces lift as the glittering bit flew in a great arc. He held out his hands. With the inevitability of prophecy, the bell landed there.

Enero grunted.

When the Lord Mayor looked back at the stage, the bear was gone, as were its pipers. A woman stood there now. She was of middling height, pale as any native of the City Imperishable, with chestnut hair. Not of Northern blood, despite Enero’s assertion, though she wore Northern garb—a blue silk cloak matching the bear’s harness, richly trimmed with pale fur. She did not appear to have any weapons about her. What she did have was the crowd’s undivided attention.

“You have seen a spectacle.” Her voice was ordinary, yet it carried across the expanse of the market square as firmly as if she were standing beside Imago. She turned and began to pace. The motion threw her cloak out in a billowing cloud the color of the sky. “Did it please you?”

The crowd roared their approval.

She stopped, the noise stopping with her. “Your city is nothing but spectacle. Your lives are a diversion. Madness came and went in your streets, and they called it flowers. I come to bring you a true spectacle. Worthy of your great City Imperishable and its timeless history. Worthy even of empire.”

Her voice made that last word a spell and a curse at the same time, raising Imago’s hackles.

The crowd roared once more. This time she waited them out. Impassive. Radiating cool power.

“She missed her calling,” Imago said quietly. “The Burgesses could never stand before her.”

“Your Burgesses are never being women, I am thinking.”

“There is that. Thank the Old Gods she doesn’t make her home here, or I’d be out of a job.”

“I know something.” The woman leaned forward slightly. The entire crowd leaned toward her in response. “I know where your secrets are buried.” She straightened, threw her arms wide. “I know where your Imperator Terminus fell, to be entombed with his jeweled gods and his gold and silver treasures and coin enough to fund an army marching across half the world.”

This brought a ragged cheer. “With your help, I can bring the power and the glory back to the City Imperishable.” Her gaze locked with Imago’s.

“By Dorgau’s syphilitic paps,” said the Lord Mayor.

Enero nodded.