Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 785 - 433: The State of the Imperial Capital

Dusk hung over the wilderness outside the Empire’s northern gate like a veil of dirty gold.

Two skinny horses blended into the sparse stream of people entering the city, their hooves crushing the frozen mud churned by wagon ruts, making a dry creaking sound.

On the horse in front sat a middle-aged man wrapped in a linen cloak; the edges of the cloak were worn to fuzz and caked with dust from the road.

He pressed his hood very low, as if unwilling to let any gaze linger on his face.

His name was Valerius, and he was a Viscount.

Riding beside him, the Knight Cassian wore no cloak, only buttoned his outer coat tight.

The man had been silent all the way, even suppressing his coughs; his gaze never left the edges of the crowd and the road.

Valerius knew Cassian did not believe in those soothing words that eased the heart; he believed only in the sword in his hand.

As for Valerius... he preferred to put his faith in other things.

He laid one hand against his chest.

There, wrapped in oiled paper, was a sheaf of documents—more than one.

On top lay one of the revised drafts of the New Imperial Charter.

During the Fourth Prince’s regency, he had been summoned to the palace’s legal office, charged with revising and compiling the original draft.

Line by line he had checked and weighed every clause, pressing idealistic phrasing back toward reality, breaking apart and rewriting any article that might lead to chaos.

When the great Burst broke out, he was not in the Imperial Capital.

At that time he was in one of the Empire’s most remote territories, investigating the implementation of local courts.

The roads were blocked; by the time he heard the news, the Imperial Capital’s gates were already flying a different banner.

He did not dare return; the scraps of information that trickled in afterward grew more terrifying each time.

The legal office had been raided, its archives sealed; most of his colleagues who had remained in the Imperial Capital were likely already hanging from the city gate or the public square.

Valerius stopped in that border province, lying low to wait out the storm.

And now, nearly a year had passed.

No matter how bloody the Empire became, someone still had to write documents, collect taxes, and pass judgment. Even the most brutal rule could not dispense with Civil Servants.

And he... at the very least, wanted to come back and see whether his family still lived; if they did not... then at least he needed to see it with his own eyes.

The horses rounded a bend.

The city walls of the Imperial Capital loomed into view.

Valerius’s pupils tightened sharply; even his breath stopped for an instant.

The walls in his memory were a work of art built from white sunstone.

Reliefs of the founding epic were carved into their surface: ranks of Knights, farmers at harvest, the oath of alliance among all races, all etched into the light by the stonecutters’ delicate strokes.

On festival days, the reviewing stands would be draped in colored cloth, and the scent of spices and incense would ride the wind all the way beyond the city.

But the wall before him looked as though someone had taken a hammer to it in a rage.

Those reliefs had been crudely chiseled flat, leaving jagged white scars, like a face ruined beyond recognition.

A layer of black molten iron had been poured over the outer side of the wall; once cooled, it formed a rough, scale-like texture.

Above, barbed wire was strung tight as a drawn bowstring.

The original reviewing stands were gone.

In their place stood dozens of heavy ballistae; their arms as thick as tree trunks, their bolt-heads shrouded in black iron, cold and utterly lightless.

What truly made Valerius’s stomach sink was that those bolts were not aimed at the barren plains and enemies outside the city.

Their targets were the road leading into the city—people like him, common folk.

The wind blew from the direction of the moat.

There was no spice on it, only the reek of rust and horse dung, and a faint tang of blood that would not disperse.

The waters of the moat shimmered dark red, as if polluted with alchemy waste; fine black scum floated on the surface.

A few crows perched on the barbed wire, heads lowered as they pecked at something, then lifted them again, their eyes like drops of lacquer.

Valerius’s hand trembled beyond his control; the oiled paper bundle in his cloak rustled faintly.

He forced himself to swallow the dryness in his throat, only to find he could not shape a single complete sentence.

"This is no Imperial Capital..." he said inwardly, "this is plainly a vast prison, ready at every moment to slaughter."

Cassian reined in his horse beside him, his gaze sweeping over the ballistae above the gate and the patrolling armored soldiers.

There was little expression on his face; only his hand clenched more tightly around the hilt of his sword.

The line at the gate inched forward.

Someone ahead was called to a halt; a gate guard used his spear to hook open the man’s bundle, fished out a piece of silver jewelry, and tossed it straight into the iron chest at his feet.

The man began to protest, and was immediately kicked face-first into the mud.

When it was Valerius’s turn, the inspection was not a whit more lenient.

The soldiers rifled through his baggage, tossing every trinket he had brought along the road into the iron chest. A few Silver Coins he had meant to keep for "greasing palms" were struck on the spot to test their metal, then confiscated without a second thought.

Even an old ring—a family keepsake of little monetary value—earned only a cold sneer before the soldier threw it into the chest.

Then someone’s gaze fixed on Cassian. "Sword."

Cassian’s hand tightened reflexively for a heartbeat, then relaxed.

He unbuckled his Knight’s Sword and laid it flat on the ground.

The blade had been dulled by years of use; old oath-marks still scarred the guard.

A soldier kicked the sword aside with his boot, as if shoving away a piece of useless iron.

The line moved on. No one spoke.

Valerius looked at that city gate; now the world beyond it was like an iron cage cinching shut.

He tried to find some familiar order in the shadow of the walls, but saw only black iron and barbs.

Beyond the gate lay another kind of order.

The inner-city streets had been widened and straightened, yet there was nothing of openness about them.

The stone slabs had been pried up and relaid again and again, their gaps filled with dark pitch; the horses’ hooves rang on them with a dull echo.