The Drone Who Claimed the Marshal novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Empty Throne

The Empress walked up the steps of the Victory Day dais alone.

Nobody stopped her, and nobody followed.

From the booth window Linus watched her cross the high platform in her plain white coat, where the medals had been handed out two days before.

The screens carried her to every wall in the city.

She stood at the rail and looked down at a hundred thousand faces.

"You have seen a ledger," she said.

Her voice was thin in the open air, but the amplifiers caught it.

"You have seen my seal on a dead man's collar. You have heard a duke say the throne paid him. All of it is true."

The square made a sound, low and ragged.

"I kept a boy's fire from him and I kept my Marshal ill, because a sick man stays close and a well one has choices." She said it flatly. "I would do it again if I thought you would let me. You will not. So I will answer to the council, and the council will decide."

She took the crowned-wing seal from her collar, a gold disc on a chain, and set it on the rail.

Then she came down the steps, and the guards around the dais opened a path for her without being told.

The council sat that afternoon in the old stone hall behind the palace, twenty-one lords in a half circle under a cracked dome.

Linus stood at the back with Ambrose and Wystan.

Perrin was in the palace infirmary, grey and sleeping, with the physician beside him and gold still moving faintly under his skin.

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