Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

carefully. “Besides, think of the billions of lives that would be lost. There’s a limit to what the people of the Empire will accept.”
    “Is there?” said Finn. Joseph couldn’t meet the Emperor’s gaze. He started to change the subject, but Finn pressed on. “Let us understand each other, First Minister. I protect the Empire because it’s mine. Mine to play with, mine to enjoy, mine to destroy when I’m tired of it. Not the Terror’s. I’ll find a way to destroy the Terror, and then . . . Oh, the things I’ll do. The people will wish the Terror had taken them.”
    “Perhaps you need . . . a distraction,” said Joseph, just a little desperately. “Something to take you out of yourself. I’ve been talking with some of your other advisers, and it occurred to us that since you are the Emperor now, you really have a duty to wed, and produce an heir to carry on your line. If you would allow us to . . .”
    “No,” said Finn. “That won’t be necessary. After me, there will be nothing.”

    The Rookery had become the last safe haven for rebels on Logres. As a result, that rogues’ paradise and city within a city had become impossibly overcrowded, and was actually threatening to burst at its seams. The Rookery had become the last place you could run to where Finn’s agents wouldn’t pursue. For the moment, at least. The hidden rotten heart of the Empire’s most famous city was now an incredibly dangerous, violent place. The original occupants of the Rookery were finding it increasingly difficult to prey on outsiders, as of old, due to the Emperor’s murderously strict martial law, and so they had taken to preying on each other. And most especially on the newcomers, who quickly learned that the only safety lay in numbers. The Rookery had become a bad place to be a man alone. And yet still the people came, because as bad as the Rookery was, everywhere else was worse.
    Everyone in the Rookery had lost someone to Finn’s people, or knew someone who had. There was a lot of sullen anger in the crowded streets, and in the smoky overpriced taverns, but as yet it had little focus. The Emperor was just too strong, too big a target for their beaten-down spirits. Its only expression so far had been the Rookery’s turning against all those who had helped Finn in his rise to power. The agents provocateur had been burned out of their clubs and sent running through the streets, to be hunted down like dogs. Everyone else who’d worked with or for Finn Durandal was now being very quiet about it, for fear of being denounced as a spy or informer. Just the rumor was enough to raise up a mob baying for blood, and broken bodies soon blocked the gutters. Everyone expected the Emperor to order an invasion of the Rookery at some point, but no one was doing anything about it. There were no meetings, no plans, no defenses. No one trusted anyone.
    Douglas Campbell, who had once been a King, and Stuart Lennox, who had once been a Paragon, now worked as masked bravos for hire, protecting the flea-trap hotel they were staying in from all the many predators of the streets. Masked bravos were a common sight in the Rookery these days. Lots of people had good reason to conceal their identities. Douglas and Stuart wore simple leather masks, and cheap but serviceable clothing. They’d sold the better clothes they arrived in to raise the money to acquire the single hotel room Douglas and Stuart and Nina Malapert now lived in.
    The Lantern Lodge was one of the oldest surviving hotels in the Rookery, and looked it. The squat ugly building was dark, damp, and extremely run-down, and no one had spent money on it in generations. The outer stone walls were blackened with layers of soot and grime, the windows did little more than let the light in, and there hadn’t been any lead on the roof in living memory. It was sweltering hot in the summer and bitter cold in the winter, and every room came with hot and cold running rats. Not to mention bedbugs. (At first, Douglas had thought the single bed came with a built-in vibrating mechanism, and was seriously and loudly upset when the truth was made clear to him.) But it was a room, and rooms were hard to come by, so no one complained.
    Douglas and Stuart worked as the hotel’s bravos for free bed and board. It wasn’t much, but it was better than a lot of people had. There were those who had to fight every night to protect their place in a doorway, or a cardboard box. Nina was doing