And it was a relief that made Oliver feel bolder. “If you mean to endear me to you, calling me a ‘whore’ isn’t effective.”
“Stand up,” Romanus ordered, and offered a hand. “Walk with me.”
Oliver wanted to refuse on principle, but he was more curious than fearful at this point. If he was in the company of the emperor, he reasoned, he wasn’t being poked and prodded into a dungeon cell by guards.
He slipped his hand into Romanus’s much larger one and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. He was weak-kneed, light-headed, and unsteady, so he didn’t protest when Romanus looped their arms together, a bracing, solid presence at his side, and helped him to the door.
It opened before Romanus could reach for the handle, and two gilded guards stepped back, bowing deeply, spear butts braced on the floor.
“Your imminence,” they greeted in perfect unison.
Romanus didn’t acknowledge them, and led Oliver through an even larger, more lavish chamber. The bed was massive, swagged in purple and perched on a dais elevated four stairs high. Not one, but three crystal chandeliers depended from the ceiling. The fireplace could have held four men as broad as Romanus, without having to duck. There was a map table, and a tub set into the floor, lined with mosaic tile and gemstones.
Though he’d never seen it before, Oliver knew straight away that this was the king’s chamber.Had beenthe king’s chamber. The blinding amounts of purple and gold marked it now as a space for Romanus.
Which meant the chamber in which Oliver had awakened was directly off the emperor’s private quarters, with no other exits save a balcony that was doubtless hundreds of feet off the ground.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked, as they crossed a small keeping room, and then two antechambers, guards opening every door as their footfalls neared. Oliver was barefoot, and the cool flagstones quickly went from pleasant, to bitingly cold. His fever might have broken, but he was far from ready to be up and about.
He clutched at Romanus’s sleeve more tightly, and hoped he didn’t swoon.
“I’m going to show you something,” Romanus said, tone peaceable. The wildest aspect of their relationship—gods, but he had arelationshipwith the emperor of Seles—was howpoliteRomanus was. “I’m going to show you what could be, if you’d lay aside your stubbornness.” A dark note of satisfaction entered his tone. “Itwillbe. But I worry you won’t make it easy.”
“I rarely do,” Oliver muttered. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved, or furious that Romanus slowed his pace to keep upwith his unsteady wobbling. “Don’t be kind to me,” he warned. “It won’t help your cause.”
“I’m never kind. Only practical. It doesn’t benefit me if you fall and injure yourself.”
Oliver gritted his teeth and shuffled along, scanning the walls as they finally left the royal chambers and started down a long corridor. There were windows, and closed doors: heavy carved wood. And there were guards. Far more guards than had ever stood watch inside the palace at Aeres.
Bollocks.
The hallway ended in a fork. Romanus steered them to the right, and then descended three wide steps and they were in the solarium that Oliver had seen so often in the Between.
Romanus paused halfway across the colorful tiled floor, as if giving Oliver a chance to examine the space.
It looked smaller in person. When he dreamwalked, the arches looked taller, the space beyond them black and star-studded, fathomless, so the solarium seemed an island unto itself. But now, the impressive domed structure and the intricate mosaic tilework was overshadowed by the view through the arched openings on the far side. Oliver was drawn to it, and it wasn’t until they walked across the center of the floor, where the same chairs, and small tables, and decanter of ruby-colored wine awaited, just as in the Between, that he realized he’d been the first one to move; that Romanus was letting him lead.
A semicircular balcony jutted off from the solarium, mirroring its shape. Oliver swayed up to the railing, clinging to Romanus, and gazed down upon the capital of Aquitainia.
The city was doubtless breathtaking at any time of day, but the golds and pinks of sunset brushed its curves and points to staggering effect.
Surrounded on three sides by mountains, and bordered by the half-moon, white sand beach of the bay on the other, thecity lay nestled in a vast bowl. The palace sat perched atop a natural hill that had been narrowed by men, its stone carved into a steep, spiraling ramp that wound up and up to the gates that let into the yard. Oliver could see only a portion of it from this vantage point: its pale stone walls rising and rising like the tiers of a cake, ivy tendrils crawling and clinging to balconies, roses beginning to bud in the lavish gardens below. At its feet, the city itself was structured in square blocks, the streets made of tight cobblestones that gleamed gold in the sunset light, the shops and houses tidy and roofed in thick, gray slate. He spied the town square he’d only seen in book sketches, and its tall, ornate belltower.
His father had always described Aquitaine as a bustling, thriving place, the streets choked with citizens, and merchants, and nobles, the open-air markets tumultuous with sellers hawking their wares, and goats bleating, and geese honking. He’d talked of the gardens, tucked away behind houses, dense and lush, with secret grottos in which he’d, according to his own boasting, fucked many a willing woman.
The walls, and the gardens, and the elegant three-story houses were all still there. The pale stone gleamed in the fading light; the manmade sluices and creeks glittered like silver ribbons as the sunset washed over them. But the city itself was still. Oppressively quiet. Soldiers in gold armor patrolled the streets, but there was no open-air market, no hawkers, no goats, no geese. Not an Aquitainian in sight. Smoke wafted up from the chimneys, proving the houses were inhabited—but not by their owners, Oliver knew.
“I see a conquered city,” Oliver said. “Where are its people? Have you killed them? Or crammed them all in the dungeons?”
“Look up,” Romanus instructed, instead of answering.
Oliver did…and gasped.
Drakes swarmed the skies.
They were high, too high to throw shadows along the ground, but even from a distance, he could see the variety in size and shape, in the structure of the wings, and the number of legs. Some had four, like Percy and his family, like Amelia’s fire-drakes. But others had two hind legs, their forelegs built into their wings. He thought he glimpsed spikes on the tips of some tails, and a club on several. Maybe even aspikedclub.
They flew in spirals, circling one another, skirmishing occasionally. Though distant, he could hear their shrieks and cries, faint as songbird calls all the way down on the balcony. It was difficult to discern color, but the sunset winked off a dozen shades of purple, of gold, even cream.
