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The sun beat down.
That was a phrase Rhodin had read recently. Last week, perhaps, when everything in the Palace of Stars had been comfortably under his Radiancy's control.
It was lodged somewhere at the front of his mind, a key for the mask he had drawn over his emotions. It fit: the hour was nearly noon, and he stood looking across the sandy floor of the old amphitheatre, watching the dark mouth of the opening closest to the condemned cells.
It was centuries since the guard's training pitch had been put to this use. Where there had once been ranks upon ranks of seating for the Emperor of Astandalas and all his Starry Court, there was now only one narrow section a few rows high.
The gallery was packed with lords and ladies in their finery. He noted them. Conspirators and gawpers alike. They moved and muttered to one another.
Rhodin had at least two agents in the crowd, and more unwitting informants. He would learn what they said, sooner or later, and more choices would open up before him, and all of them would be terrible.
The side of the Emperor's Tower was a cliff of massive pale stones, reflecting the heat mercilessly against his back.
His promotion was discreet. There was no visible distinction for the commander in either the greater or the lesser panoply.
The guards were wearing the greater panoply today, as he had been informed that this was a direct order of the Sun-on-Earth. He could feel the weight of his hidden responsibility in the way Elish's eyes rested on him. In the blank expression that could not entirely hide the desperate hope that he might... that they could...
The sun beat down.
The priest-wizards had informed him that the Lord of Zunidh might choose to descend in person to witness the cleansing of his realm. Rhodin had not been able to confirm their report, nor their orders.
They had underestimated Ludvic, he thought. Ludvic had resigned in protest when Lord Iprenna informed him that the Ouranatha now spoke for the Glorious One. Ludvic had been allowed to leave the Palace unhindered, taking with him those members of his Radiancy's inner guard who also chose to leave.
Ludvic had, Rhodin was fairly sure, underestimated the priest-wizards more. They all had. They had assumed that the greatest danger of this coup was to his Radiancy directly. Rhodin and Cliopher had discussed it in hurried terms that first night: who might pursue Ludvic. Whether to extract Conju, who was under arrest in his chambers.
Ludvic was clear from the mess, and Rhodin had been promoted, and it was no easy matter to displace the undisputed master of the court. Conju had already been gathering supporters among the nobles; as long as Rhodin could ensure his guard was loyal, they had concluded that he would be protected.
The Groom of the Chambers was no doubt at his window, somewhere above Rhodin, his eyes fixed on the same bright scene, on the same dark opening.
The sun beat down.
The rituals managed by the priest-wizards had always been a weakness in his Radiancy's security. Rhodin had on some level grown used to the risk. Complacent. He had expected some warning before they made a move; he had been confident that the Lord of Zunidh could sweep them away if they tried.
He had not known it was possible to deprive the Lord Magus of a world of his magic.
He still had no idea how it had been done. He had his contacts in the Ouranatha, at every level. If the high council had discussed this in advance, he should have heard of it.
His best guess was that Lord Bavezh had tried something without warning his colleagues in advance and had succeeded beyond any of their wildest dreams.
Rhodin's dear imposter was wise about magic beyond the rigid and incomplete structures of Astandalas. If he had ever dared write to her again, she might...
It would be hard to write naturally to her after this failure. It would be impossible to pretend that he had survived it. He would have to spin up a new mask, a Rhodin-mask, and protect it from knowing what he was about to...
The sun beat down.
A glint appeared in the darkness of the passage, and then another, and then the brightness resolved into the panoply of the guards who were escorting Cliopher Mdang.
New recruits, all of them, or promoted from the provinces in the name of the Sun-on-Earth and without further explanation. Rhodin had been informed that the commander no longer need concern himself with the structure of the inner guard; the emperor's loyal priest-wizards had verified their loyalty.
Cliopher looked very small, between them. Smaller still for the lack of a robe. His pale underclothes were smeared with.
Rhodin watched, and did not look away. He owed…
Cliopher was walking steadily but with a distinct limp, favouring his right side.
The sun beat down.
The amphitheatre fell silent, scattered gasps fading into a deathly hush.
Now, Rhodin thought, was Ludvic's moment. The scene was set for a dramatic rescue. Or perhaps his Radiancy would—if he knew, surely no power on Zunidh could prevent him—it was an obscenity, that whatever the priest-wizards had inflicted had smothered the sympathetic vibrations between—
The sun beat down.
In the quiet the clank of chains was clearly audible when Cliopher stumbled. The four guards holding the ends of the links kept walking, so that he had to claw his way back up to avoid being dragged.
They were close enough that Rhodin could see the stubborn lack of expression on Cliopher's face.
"I think you should have guards too," he had said, in that first frantic discussion after the dawn ritual went so horribly wrong. "In fact, I've brought them with me. Actually, they're not going to let you out of their sight."
Ludvic had already been on his way out of the Palace; there had been precious few members of the old inner guard with the initiative to stay with Rhodin. He had had no doubt where they were most needed.
Cliopher had tried to argue, because of course he had. "We don't want to escalate this any further. They'll suspect you, and—”
"They already suspect me," Rhodin had pointed out. "They're not stupid. And as for escalation, what do you think it will do to the crisis of confidence in the Solaaran government if the Hands of the Emperor is found dead in a stairwell?"
He had known that Cliopher would be the next target. He just hadn't expected them to move this fast, or do this openly.
They must be very, very confident that his Radiancy's magic was not coming back.
The sun beat down.
The four guards with the chains had closed in around their prisoner. Another two were attending to the whipping posts.
Even if Ludvic had found the Grand Duchess—the one person they could trust to intervene, whose right to demand an audience the priest-wizards could not easily refuse—it was far too soon for her sky ship to appear on the horizon. Rhodin was aware that he was hoping for it anyway. Stupid.
The arrest warrant had been copied to his office, but the page charged with delivering it had apparently got lost in the passages. It had arrived ten minutes after Cliopher was secured.
Cliopher had made him promise not to intervene, if anything happened. "His Radiancy needs you," he had said, earnestly.
Rhodin hadn't said then that his Radiancy would not need anything from him, if anything happened to Cliopher. It hadn't been the kind of thing he could convince Cliopher about.
He had tried to get access to the condemned cells.
He had failed.
He had known then that it was over.
He had determined that this was a better use of his last day than orchestrating a bloody counter-coup, which would not succeed.
He recognised in himself the spike of jealousy when he thought of Pikabe and Ato, whose instinct had been to fight to prevent the new inner guard from taking Cliopher. They had died... well. Cleanly.
The sun beat down.
The heavy white doors to the Emperor's Tower hadn't opened since the days of Emperor Eritanyr. They didn’t open now.
The whipping post was a massive affair, made of two crossed staves that leaned back at an angle. Cliopher's light brown shoulders hung limply between the guards as they lifted his feet to clamp them in at the top of the structure. He made no move to struggle.
Iprenna and Bavezh had full control of his Radiancy. If they had threatened...
They might not have needed to. Cliopher had half-implied to Rhodin that his death would be preferable to the dissolution of good order in the Palace. Rhodin wished he had been able to extract Conju, who was the only man who might possibly have been able to get through to the Hands of the Emperor in one of his mulish moods, and convince him otherwise.
The sun beat down.
It should not be possible to dangle the entire weight of an adult man from his toes. Rhodin watched, his face fixed, and welcomed the first low flood of nausea sliding cold and oily into his guts.
The guards, satisfied with their work, let go and stood back. Cliopher cried out once as he swung forward, the strange moaning sound cut off as if he were determined to control it.
His short dark hair dangled just above the sandy ground. His arms were loose. As Rhodin watched, he reached out and hugged the scaffold to him. Trying to relieve some of the pressure on his feet, most likely. His bare shoulders bunched and his body hitched in against the rough wood.
An odd guttural ripple of sound from the crowd deepened the sense of theatre.
The sun beat down.
Cliopher Sayo Mdang was not a popular man with the nobles, and they tended to judge everybody else by their own narrow views. Rhodin and Elish, standing either side of the Tower door, might well be the only two people present who recognised this for the self-defeating idiocy it was. When word got out there would be riots in the streets.
They might be the only two people present who could witness for Cliopher. If Rhodin's body survived, the mask could give him that.
The sun beat down.
The whip cracked.
Cliopher screamed.
There was no prevarication. A traitor to Astandalas was flayed alive; Rhodin doubted that Guard Hurravik had the skill to do the order justice, but he had the tools to make it so.
The blood ran in rivulets. The screams burst out from early attempts to stifle them, becoming general, broken only by shuddering pants. Cliopher convulsed, and screamed, and convulsed.
Rhodin did not throw up.
The sun beat down.
All his choices were terrible.
The screams grew weaker. Blood pooled in a dark mess on the sand.
By the time the guards twisted the ropes at his feet to rotate his body, Cliopher's arms had loosened their grip. His eyes were wide open, staring blindly up at the heavy blue sky. His mouth was red and raw and gaping wide—he might or might not have still been breathing.
Rhodin's brief hope that Cliopher's great heart had given out was dashed as the whip lashed down again. Cliopher jerked as he screamed, as though it might be possible to curl up protectively around the agony at his groin, at his belly.
The guard waited patiently for the scream to pass into wheezing sobs, for the broken mess hanging in front of him to fall back limp and open again for another blow.
Elish started forwards.
Rhodin snapped, "No!"
Elish stopped and stared at him, fury and fear cracked open across his face.
Rhodin lifted his chin, assumed the commander's expression. "Guard Elish, you are dismissed."
Everybody on the floor of the amphitheatre had turned to watch. Rhodin had nothing left, and so he grinned. He could ignore the snarling hatred in that glare; he would not survive to discuss it. And perhaps Elish would. He seemed aware enough of his surroundings to -
Elish saluted crisply and turned as if to march away. Rhodin saw what was about to happen.
To intervene? To hope? This was Elish's chance, and so he held his tongue.
The young guard cut across towards the nearest exit, letting the route take him closer to the wretched bleeding prisoner. He timed it well, reducing the distance, breaking into a charge at the last possible moment, flinging his whole self behind his spear.
One of the new guards closer to Sayo Mdang went down under his thrusting shoulder, but Elish had kept his spear free for the mercy blow that he did not, quite, manage to deliver. The guard beneath him tackled his legs, tripping him.
They dragged him away.
As the shouting was muffled by distance, the chatter of the crowd died down. The only sound left was a keening moan coming from the pitiful remnants of Cliopher Mdang.
Hurravik brought the whip back in with a vicious crack. Too vicious, if he wanted to draw this out. Cliopher shuddered and spluttered and shook and then stopped making any noise at all.
He didn't flinch as the broad-bladed knife dug into the red glistening flesh of his belly, spilling loops of dark entrails over his face to steam on the sand. His body twitched in reaction as the blade hooked under his genitals, slicing them away.
His face was slack and pale, between the rivulets of blood. Rhodin suspected—hoped—that he had lost consciousness before the end.
The sun beat down.
It took the guards several minutes to knock down the scaffold and detach his body. The crowd was growing restless by the time the horses were led in.
The edict had stipulated a traditional execution, but these were war horses, from the barracks, wearing the sun-in-glory blinkers that came with their full tack. Wild horses would no doubt have been difficult to source at such short notice.
(Rhodin could have found them, if his Radiancy asked).
The guards stepped around and over the pitiful gory heap that had once been Cliopher Mdang, as though it were nothing more than another prop for the performance that had been demanded of them.
Rhodin was aware of the tight hot pressure where the emotions built up against the emptiness behind his mask. He would need it, sooner or later.
The sun beat down.
The horses took some coaxing into position. The chains were attached. The guards washed their hands afterwards, in a basin that had been pulled in on the cart attached to the fifth horse.
Hurravik rinsed his whip and laid it on the cart. He took the bowl of water and unceremoniously sloshed it over Cliopher's corpse.
Those light brown eyes did not blink. They stared starkly up at the empty sky.
Different whips cracked. The horses started moving. It was loud, messy, heated. The crowd began to shout encouragement. The body swung up between the chains, loose rags of skin and guts trailing beneath it.
The sun beat down.
Rhodin did not look away, not even when he heard the creak of the hinges behind him.
The High Priests of the Sun and the Moon proceeded past the place where he was standing. The crowd cheered at the sight of them; there was a scattering of applause.
It broke off as the Emperor's litter came into view.
Rhodin felt the bile hot in his throat. That they had dared. That they believed their control to be so absolute. That they had brought his Radiancy out to witness...
The emotion flooded through him as he turned and made his salute.
The Lord of Rising Stars was seated at the centre of his covered litter, his face grey and horrified, his knuckles paler than they should be where they gripped the arms of the travelling throne. The curtains had been pulled back to ensure his view.
There was magic on him, and it was not his magic. Silver bands holding his arms and legs to the chair. Silvery stitches across his mouth. They would not be visible from any distance, or to anyone without sensitivity to magic.
Rhodin felt his chest constrict. This was why they couldn't permit anybody to get close.
It meant that they had decided to kill Rhodin too. Perhaps now, if he made a move, perhaps later.
He didn't think anybody had told his Radiancy what he had been brought out to witness.
Dizzyingly, desperately, he wished for the world to stop. For another Fall, whatever the damage. For the universe itself to reject the realisation that was dawning—
Another crack of the whips and a roar from the crowd and a full-body writhe against his Radiancy's bonds. Rhodin glanced back: yes, Cliopher's head had tilted back, his swollen face was clearly visible, his body was—
There was a sickening squelch. Rhodin ignored it. He wasted another scarce minute scanning up and down his Radiancy's slim imprisoned form, hoping against hope that he could see something that would—anything to explain how—
There was no sign of whatever had stolen his lord's magic, but the emperor was fighting in earnest now against his bonds, tears spilling from wild bulging eyes.
Rhodin slid up beside the litter in one smooth movement, not with the angry thrusting attack that Elish had tried but with the confident air of a man about to make a report.
He lifted his spear as though it was an offering.
He looked, as only the household had ever truly looked, into the lion eyes.
They were pleading.
His Radiancy's hands were bound.
He turned the spear, waited a breath for the nod, and drove it in.
His Radiancy thrust his narrow chest forward into the blade.
The sun beat down.
The clamour became pain as the guards reached him, but it was too late.
He was sorry that Ludvic would be left to clean up this mess—
He hoped Conju had seen, and would be able to explain—
He hoped surviving would not hurt his friends too much—
He hoped—