The Acolyte lowered her gloved fist from the massive iron door of the Storm Chamber, and stepped back to leave Ché standing alone as it swung open.
Confronting Ché stood an old priest that he did not recognize. He’d heard that the previous portal attendant had been executed for mistakenly allowing the Rōshun into the Storm Chamber during their recent breach of the tower. It was said that the long crawl over the Crocodile had been his fate, and then the slow press of the Iron Mountain.
With a moment’s hesitation, Ché stepped through the threshold into the chamber within.
The Storm Chamber was much the same as the last time he had been summoned here, all of – what – one month, two months ago? He couldn’t recall. He’d found that his linear memory of time had become oddly scattered since his return from his diplomatic mission against the Rōshun, as though he no longer wished to remember the order of his everyday life. The chamber was empty tonight, though every lamp glowed with a bright, sputtering flame within a shade of green glass.
‘The Holy Matriarch will be with you shortly,’ declared the old priest, and then he bowed and retreated into a room next to the entranceway. Ché folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe, and there he waited.
The pulsegland had slowed to the pace of his own heart now.
Through the windows that wrapped the circular space, he could see Holy Matriarch Sasheen standing outside on the balcony amongst a small gathering of priests; a tall woman, wearing an uncharacteristic plain white robe, staring out over the rail at the black skies of Q’os as they conversed, their voices muted to murmurs by the thickness of the glass.
Coals crackled in the stone fireplace in the middle of the room, the smoke drawn up through an iron chimney that disappeared through the floor of the bedrooms above it. Next to the fireplace stood another map of the Empire, the same in fact that had stood there during his previous visit: a sheet of paper pinned to a wooden easel, printed with black ink, still marked with the rough pencil strokes denoting proposed movements of fleets for the forthcoming invasion of the Mercian Free Ports. A semicircle of leather armchairs faced this cosy space; elsewhere in the room were other chairs, and long settles covered in throws of fur, and low tables with bowls containing fruits, burning incense, pools of liquid narcotics.
This is where they made it to, Ché suddenly thought. This is how far the R shun made it when they tried again. Right here to Kirkus, her son.
He could hardly picture it. The Rōshun, one of them a farlander by all accounts, striding through this very room in search of their victim, their route marked by a trail of dead and wounded leading all the way down to the lowest floor of the Temple of Whispers. He doubted if even Shebec would never have made it this far – Shebec, his old Rōshun master, more skilled than any other save for one.
Ash, he thought with an intuitive certainty. It had to be Ash.
But then Ché considered it. Was it even possible? Ash would be in his sixties by now if he still lived at all. Could he have managed something like this at such and age?
Whoever it had been, Ché could not help but admire them. He had always been drawn to ventures of risk and audacity, and he found a sly smile creeping onto his face. The Temple of Whispers breached by an army of rats, of all things, and three Rōshun intent on vendetta.
Without warning, deep laughter bubbled in his chest, and he stopped it only by biting his inner cheek until the sensation passed. Ché cleared his throat and composed himself.
The map on the easel drew his eye towards it.
Another venture of audacity that – a sea invasion of Khos no less. Ché glanced through the windows once more at the gathered priests, then found himself stepping up to the map for a closer inspection.
It had been modified with various additions since last he had seen it, though the main details remained the same. Two arrows swept south-east across the sea of the Midèrēs to range along the islands of the Free Ports; two diversionary fleets, both of which had departed the week before to engage the fleets of the Free Ports, hoping to lure any defending squadrons away from Khos. Next to these, in fine