Free Path of Revenge by Russell Kirkpatrick Page B

Emperor!’ Jau said companionably to the nearer of them, and made to approach the gate.
    ‘Wait, ma sor,’ the Omeran said in a soft voice, stepping a pace forward. A gelding, then. The Emperor was rumoured to have a number of them in his employ, and here stood the evidence. Two legs they had, and two arms, but no Amaqi would mistake an Omeran for human. This one had soft features to match the voice, but was menacing enough to keep Jau from questioning the order.
    ‘And that is good health to the Emperor,’ said the other guard, and his voice was definitely not soft.
    ‘Good health, yes, that is what I mean,’ Jau said, more politely than he felt. Where had they learned to speak like this? He had put Omerans to death for lesser slights, but these were the Emperor’s trained guards. Who knew what latitude they were allowed? He wanted to ask how long he must wait, but the guards seemed ready to turn aside any question he might ask. He would not lower himself to be refused by an Omeran, even one in the Emperor’s employ.
    They were mind readers too, it appeared. ‘Until the shadow of the stick touches the gate, ma sor,’ the first guard said, pointing to a slender pole stuck in the ground to his left. ‘You wait.’ The words sounded as much threat as command.
    Jau judged he had about a sunwidth to endure. Frankly, he was unsure why he should wait at all. Appointments with the Emperor were by necessity punctual affairs, involving as they did the Corridor ofRainbows, and the timing of his arrival was important. The functionary who delivered his summons explained all this to him, though he knew much of it anyway; it appeared members of the lesser Alliances knew more than the Emperor suspected.
    The Emperor’s Palace, the functionary had told him, the Talamaq after which the city was named, was one of the world’s wonders, with pillars of gold and glass fingering the sky. Well, everyone knew that. Prisms and mirrors took the sun’s light and shepherded it into the Corridor of Rainbows, where those Amaqi graced by an appointment with the Emperor approached the throne. The colours displayed in the corridor depended on one’s status and the level of regard in which one was held. This was also widely known. Subject to constant rumour and gossip, in fact. The corridor reflected the ineffable will of the Emperor, the court official told him, but Jau was aware how it really worked: the path of the sun was known for every day of the year, charted by cosmographers, and cunning machinery altered the mirrors and prisms to break up the light into the colours of the rainbow. The operators, Omerans painstakingly trained for the task, could flood the Corridor of Rainbows with any combination of colours the Emperor dictated, depending only on the weather—though clouds seldom obscured the sun above Talamaq—and the time of day. A triumph of Amaqi science, and a powerful political tool.
    The functionary had left Jau in no doubt about the honour being done him. In fact, the tedious man had coached him for the better part of an afternoon on how he was to behave. What he was to say, where he was to stand, where he was—and was not—to look. Jau listened attentively, his nervousness increasing with every word, but comforted himself with the knowledge that this was exactly the effect the instructions were designed to produce.
    Jau Maranaya expected the green, perhaps, or maybe even the yellow. He dreamed of the red, glorious red, of course; everyone did. Red meant the highest favour of the throne. Indigo and violet were not to be countenanced: these seldom-used colours usually heralded some form of punishment. And there were rumours of an eighth colour. Black, the sentence of death. No one in the lesser Alliances knew about the black. It was something Jau heard once, no more, from a street-seller. He assigned it no credibility.
    Clearly, then, punctuality was critical to the colour of the corridor. So why the wait? His time had been