Read Online Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton - Free Book Online

city beyond. “My people.”
    “But it’s not your fault an ice age is starting. There’ve been hundreds of years of accurate predictions, you were merely the Emperor to face the challenge. There’s always stocks of wood—”
    “But I have to look after them. It means four hundred thousand responsibilities. You wouldn’t have a clue what that’s like.”
    “They know you try to look after them,” Brynd insisted. “Your Imperial lineage has always been popular.”
    “The ones already living here, perhaps. But any other idiot arriving from whatever benighted corner of this Empire they inhabit will be surprised when we can’t let them enter. Then they’ll hardly love me, will they?”
    Johynn’s voice started to falter. His fingers were drumming the sill as he stared out of the window again. Every movement suggested an increasing sense of panic.
    Johynn said. “But I’m their savior, oh yes. It is my right, before the Dawnir, before the movements of Bohr and Astrid.
I’m their savior.”
    “My Emperor, perhaps this isn’t the best time to ask, but do you know who else was aware of our mission?”
    “What mission?”
    “The one from which we’ve only just returned,” Brynd said patiently, looking to Apium, who raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and mouthed the word “nuts.”
    “Only a few of our Council members—Ghuda, Boll, and Mewún. Chancellor Urtica, too. Only those four, no one else. No one else. No, absolutely nobody.”
    “Is it possible that any of them could’ve informed an enemy? Is it possible one of them didn’t want us to succeed?”
    Johynn spun around, approached Brynd. “Are you saying we’ve a traitor within our own halls now? For the love of Bohr, what next? Are you quite sure, Commander Lathraea, that such accusations have good foundation?”
    “Our force was almost wiped out. You say no one outside the Council knew of our mission, yet we were ambushed. Sire, I’m only trying to find out who might threaten the Empire.”
    “You’re a good man, Commander Lathraea. A good man. Youwere all good men, you Night Guards.” He leaned closely to Brynd, then whispered, “I can
trust
you, can’t I?”
    Brynd straightened up, bowing fractionally. “Beyond my life, your Majesty.”
    Johynn came closer still, the smell of alcohol on his breath now as intense as a bad perfume. “It’s over.”
    “I’m not sure I follow,” Brynd said.
    “I’ve had increasing suspicions that someone in here is after me. They all are, maybe. They want to take my life, my existence. They want this.” Johynn indicated the halls, the furnishings. “They want it all before the ice comes. I’ve heard them whispering in their chambers, making decisions for me. Doing my job for me.”
    “My Lord,” Brynd said, “they’re your Council. That’s what they’re supposed to do. No one is out to get you.”
    Brynd considered his own words, because perhaps that wasn’t altogether the case. There was usually something devious going. This was government, after all.
    Jamur Johynn took a step away from Brynd and looked him up and down as if judging his character in one simple gesture. A childlike gesture. Brynd began to feel self-conscious again. Johynn opened his mouth, but the door opened just then.
    A welcome break as the Emperor’s daughter walked into the room.
    When he had first joined the Night Guard, he remembered seeing her, in her younger days, when she seemed confined in this building like a butterfly in a net. Hers seemed a delicate energy waiting to be restrained. Serious meetings would be interrupted by her childish conversations with her older sister, Rika, the heir to the Imperial seat, and their joyful shrieks filled the corridors with warmth. But those days were soon gone, departed at about the same time their mother was killed. Johynn had tried to replace parental love with treats and indulgences, something the little girl never seemed to desire, but altering her in some remote