The Throne Room of the Sun Emperor was called the Golden Cavern, and the name was earned.
It had been built by an Emperor with more gold than sanity, in the belief that a room which reflected enough light would come to contain its own sun. Today the high windows were cracked. Smoke drifted through the gaps. The golden light was dirty amber-brown, filtered through a city on fire, making the room look like something still trying to be beautiful while in the process of burning.
The Sun Emperor Caldris was dead.
He lay at the base of his own throne. His crown had rolled four feet away and settled against the leg of a decorative brazier with almost theatrical precision.
"Resistance?" Leonard asked.
"He was found this way, My Lord," said the scout at the door. "The palace guard surrendered at the outer gates. None of them fired a bolt. They opened the inner doors, dropped their weapons in the corridor, and sat on the floor."
"And the Emperor took his own life rather than kneel."
"That would appear to be the case, My Lord."
Leonard looked at the dead man for a moment. Then at the man standing beside the throne, the man who had been standing there for four hours, patient as furniture, waiting to be acknowledged.
Drevus. Tall, thin, impeccably dressed in robes that had somehow survived six days of chaos without a single stain. Long, clever face. The particular manner of someone who has spent decades perfecting the impression of harmlessness.
Leonard was not fooled.
"My Lord Emperor," Drevus said, bowing low. His accent was perfectly Northern. He had been practicing. "I am Drevus, Chancellor of the Southern Court. I have been working to ensure the city's orderly transition. I believe I can be of considerable service—"
"I know what you are," Leonard said.
Drevus straightened. The smile did not waver. It was a professional smile, long since separated from its owner's actual emotional state.
"You are a man who has survived three reigns," Leonard said, "by positioning yourself to be the most useful thing in the room when the room changes hands. You are loyal to no one. You are loyal to your own continued survival, which you pursue with a dedication I find, frankly, admirable."
"My Lord is perceptive," Drevus said.
"You will serve as my regent here until the Emperor's Brother arrives with his forces. You will collect taxes, maintain order, and send quarterly reports to Ironhold." Leonard paused. "If you steal from me, I will find out. If you plot against me, I will find out. I find out everything. It is the only thing I am truly good at."
"I understand completely, My Lord."
"Good. Get someone to move the Emperor. He deserves a burial that reflects his station."
Drevus snapped his fingers. A servant emerged from behind a pillar, one who had apparently been hiding there some time and had hoped not to be noticed, with the expression of a man who was going to be telling this story for the rest of his life.
Leonard turned away. He looked around the room.
He had a feeling. The specific feeling he had learned to trust over thirty years: he was not alone.
someone else was there.
a boy.
The boy had been behind the throne for nine hours.
He had run out of places to go. He had chosen this place — the dais behind his father's throne, in the shadow of the massive carved sun that formed the chair's crest — as the place where he would wait out whatever happened next.
Alexander was ten years old.
He had spent six days watching his city die through the narrow window of the room his father had locked him in, and had then climbed out on a rope made of bed linens, a plan more elegant in theory than execution and made his way through the servant corridors to the Golden Cavern. He had arrived four hours before the Northern soldiers. He had been present when the last of his father's guard filed out. When the palace priests argued about whether to flee or stay.
When his father had stood alone in front of his own throne and made a decision.
He had watched his father die.
He was not going to cry in front of the man who had killed his city.
He heard the footsteps. Multiple sets of heavy boots on marble, rhythmic, disciplined. Then one set underneath that was different: heavier, slower. The footsteps of a man who has learned that if you move at your own pace, the world adjusts to you.
Alexander pressed flat against the back of the throne.
He heard Drevus's voice. Smooth and practiced and entirely without shame. It did something that grief had not managed to do: it made him angry. Drevus had been in the throne room when his father had made his choice. He had watched. Then he had straightened his robes and waited to be useful.
The anger was useful. He held onto it.
The footsteps moved around the room. A single pair, slow, deliberate. A man looking at something.
They stopped.
On the other side of the throne.
A long silence. The specific silence of someone who has stopped moving to simply listen.
Alexander held his breath.
"Come out," said the Northern voice. No urgency. No threat. The way you state a mathematical fact: this is what is true, and we both know it.
Alexander did not move.
"I can hear you breathing. You are doing it very quietly, which suggests training. Someone taught you to control your body under pressure. That is an expensive education. Which means you are not a servant."
A pause.
"You can come out as yourself, or you can stay there until my soldiers find you, at which point you will come out as a prisoner. The first option preserves your dignity. I suspect you have opinions about your dignity."
Alexander came out.
He stepped around the side of the throne and stood in the smoke-filtered golden light and looked at the man who had conquered his city.
Emperor Leonard was taller than he had seemed from the window. Campaign armor — black steel, northern make, undecorated. His face was not cruel. It was something worse than cruel: it was reasonable. The face of a man who arrived at conclusions through logic and enacted them without personal animus. Nothing to appeal to. You cannot soften a blade by weeping at it.
They looked at each other.
Alexander kept his face still. He had been practicing stillness for three years. He was ten years old and not very good at it yet, but he was better than most adults. He did not look away.
"You are the heir," Leonard said. Not a question.
Alexander said nothing.
"The Chancellor told me the Emperor had a son who had been evacuated. He was lying, which is interesting — I was not aware he knew the boy well enough to lie for him." Leonard paused. "He doesn't know you're here, does he."
Still nothing.
"How old are you?"
"Ten," Alexander said. The word came out flat and clean. He had not meant to answer. The question had been so direct that some automatic part of him had responded before the rest of him could decide not to.
Leonard nodded.
"Your father chose not to surrender," Leonard said. The way you state a mathematical fact.
Something moved in Alexander's chest. He locked it down.
"I know," he said.
"Your uncle. Varkas your father's brother, the Lord of the Eastern Provinces has also proposed, in a postscript he apparently believed would escape my notice, that the Southern heir be 'secured' to prevent future challenge to the arrangement."
Alexander understood what 'secured' meant. His hands, held at his sides, closed into fists.
Leonard watched this.
"Your uncle is afraid of you," Leonard said. "Fear makes men do ugly things. I intend to accept his governance proposal. I do not intend to accept his postscript."
"Why not?" Alexander asked.
"Because," Leonard said, "a boy who can watch what you have watched today and still stand up straight is not someone I am prepared to waste."