A Sword for a Dragon (17 page)

“Why thank you, my dear. Do please remember me to your father, I knew Tommaso very well once. You know he spent five years in Bea when he was a young man.”

“I will, lady.”

Inula put a hand through her husband’s arm and breathed in the spicy night air.

“Ah, the city, once it gets in your blood it’s hard to ever let it go. Do you know on my last visit home, I felt quite unhappy? Bea is a small place, not even as big as Marneri. All those cramped little houses inside the walls, the closeness, the tightness. The smell of fish!”

She laughed. “We have become too used to this great city perhaps.”

Lagdalen compressed her lips and spoke carefully. “But how do you cope with all the wickedness? We passed a slave market today. They were buying and selling people by the hundreds.”

The merchant harrumphed. The Lady Inula spoke quickly.

“The ways of Ourdh are cruel. They are an ancient people, civilized when the lands of Veronath were still peopled by bears and wolves.” She fluttered her hands.

“They have been this way for aeons. It’s hard to understand at first, but you cannot escape the fact that under the cruelty, there flourishes a rich and vibrant culture. This is one of the greatest cities of the world. There are arts and skills here that are unknown elsewhere. You must visit the new exhibition at the Galleries of Palmook. The trompe l’oeil work of the new school of painters is absolutely wonderful. Amazing skill and very droll at times.”

“And they leave the corpses of the condemned to hang on the gibbets of the Zoda,” said Lagdalen.

Merchant Irhan gripped the rail of the balustrade and spoke in a calm voice as if reciting something he had said many times before.

“The Ourdhi believe that life means pain and sorrow as much as joy and pleasure. They believe they must celebrate all aspects of life. Even death. Their criminal justice system is brutal but effective. They pay for information, they investigate, and they convict. Those convicted of serious crimes go to the gibbet.”

Lagdalen glanced down into the teeming street below. This was Kasfaar Street, a busy avenue for carriages, wagons, and a swarm of rickshas driven by slaves chained to their seats. Passengers in these rickshas commonly carried long, thin whips with which to urge on the ricksha men.

Irhan observed her for a moment.

“Ah yes, the ricksha system. Well, there you see the other chief aspect of their criminal justice system. Ricksha men are convicts of crimes of violence and thievery that do not merit execution. They serve their times between the shafts and are released, usually in much better physical shape than when they were first clapped into service.”

Merchant Irhan seemed to approve of the system. Lagdalen was not sure.

“How do they know that the men are justly convicted, especially those who die upon the gibbet?”

The merchant laughed indulgently. “There are trials, there are courts. The thing is done officially. There is justice.”

His wife gave a little snort and turned away. Lagdalen understood. Inula was not completely in agreement, but she would not contradict her husband. Her message was plain, though. There was justice and there was also corruption. Justice was muddied here by blood.

And here were the merchant and his wife, living in a house two or even three times as large as they would have had in Bea or Marneri. Four floors and twenty-four rooms, including a ballroom and heated bathing pools. It was lavish even to a Tarcho who had grown up in the best accommodations of the Tower of Guard. But for Irhan and Inula, it had become their way of life.

For this life they had abandoned their homeland, trading its austerity and purpose for a hedonic decadence. Irhan owned no slaves, or so he said. Inula claimed that the servants in the kitchens of the house were free, but Ribela had explained that they were bonded, part chattel, tied to the house itself. They were under threat of corporal punishment, and they were not paid above meals and maintenance or their part of the house. Lagdalen guessed that neither the merchant nor his wife were unduly upset by the notion of slavery. They had accepted the evil along with the great in Ourdh.

Suddenly she felt a familiar presence nearby, and she turned. Ribela of Defwode had joined them. Ribela wore her customary dark clothing, arrayed with silver mouse skulls.

“Lady,” said the merchant, bowing. Inula bent one knee.

Ribela bowed politely in return.

“Brother Irhan, Sister Inula, a pleasant evening I believe.”

“Most pleasant, my lady, and we thought we might take you and Lagdalen to visit the Street of Spices, one of the wonders of the world. After your long voyage, you must be ready for some more interesting food.”

Ribela’s frozen visage cracked momentarily in a tight smile. The merchant’s wife actually thought that the Queen of Mice was interested in what she ate, other than its nutritional qualities? She snorted, amused.

“Perhaps on another evening. Tonight, I am afraid we have work to do.” Her gaze shifted to Lagdalen.

“We are expected at the palace. I wish to visit with the emperor. You will accompany me and take notes if required. Bring stylus and pad.”

Inula was most disappointed. “Then tomorrow night perhaps?”

“Yes, perhaps, if we are still here.” Ribela turned away with a tiny bow.

Merchant Irhan put a hand out to his wife’s shoulder.

“Say nothing, madam,” he muttered. “Say nothing.”

Ribela and Lagdalen were gone.

“She is the Queen of Mice, dear, you must remember that. She is more than six hundred years old.”

Inula nodded, “How could one forget? All those silver skulls. It seems quite barbaric somehow.”

And Irhan pondered on the differences in which the world was seen by the Argonath and the Ourdhi.

The coach clattered smartly through the temple district on the Imperial Avenue. The traffic here was restricted to carriages and coaches, with just a handful of rickshas in the service of the administrative bureaucracy.

They passed under the mass of the Temple of Gingo-La, a mound fifty feet high and a half a mile long on which sat a small pyramid and a massive temple. Atop the pyramid glittered the statue of the goddess, who was depicted in flowing maternal clothing holding a baby in her arms.

Then to their left, they passed the much more massive ziggurat of Auros Colossus. Smaller temples and ziggurats lined the way, most of them devoted to one aspect or another of Auros. Auros Perfection was decorated in sea green tile; Auros Tranquility was a chilling white.

At last they left the temples behind and crossed the wide-open space known as the Zoda, “the open place” that served as parade ground and execution ground. Along the northern side of the Zoda there were rows of gibbets on which hung criminals slowly decomposing in the open air. Streams of ravens and carrion crows flocked in and out of that section.

Lagdalen glanced that way and then turned away with a shiver. Ahead stretched the great wall of the Imperial City, the city of the Fedafer, which was literally a city within a city.

The great Fedafer Gate loomed above them at last. A guard came forward and was fixed by Ribela’s gaze. The gate was opened without further ado.

Inside, Lagdalen gazed at the seven palaces and the private temple to Auros, Emperor of the Universe. Every building was exquisite, even the barracks for the Fedafer’s guard. Gardens lush with flowers, fruit trees, and topiary encircled the buildings. Great trees, already in flower, grew along the inner roads. Little carts, pulled by miniature donkeys, rolled along the roads, carrying shaven-headed eunuchs of the bureaucracy.

Finally they stopped outside the imposing gate of the Imperial Palace itself, a vast structure of white brick with towers and turrets in profusion above.

Inside, in a huge pale green entry hall with heroic paintings on a vast scale, they came to a stop by a red desk at which sat a eunuch in white robes with a polished skull on which a geometric pattern had been painted in red.

The eunuch avoided looking directly into Ribela’s eyes, indeed he kept his head down, bobbing over his desk. He refused to look up at her at all. In his hand he held charms, and he mumbled charm spells to ward off the powers of the witch.

A messenger, a tiny little man, another eunuch in white robes, was sent through an inner door. The eunuch at the desk took out a pair of earplugs and ostentatiously inserted them.

Ribela sniffed.

They waited. Lagdalen could sense the mounting impatience in the lady. Ribela was not used to dealing with the world of men, she lacked the Grey Lady’s skills in managing people.

They waited and occasional parties of eunuchs in the white garb of their caste would pass through the hall. At the sight of the Queen of Mice, they cast their eyes to the floor, put their fingers in their ears, and murmured prayers to Auros.

Ribela’s anger was stoked further by these demonstrations. Lessis had warned her emphatically about losing her temper with the Ourdhi. “Men will react badly to such a display. You cannot win their hearts thus. Hear me Ribela.”

Ribela had heard, but she cautioned herself that Lessis, in fact, had little experience with the Ourdhi. Lessis had never sought duty in the corruption of the southland. What the Ourdhi did in their festivals, especially those of the old river goddess Oona, horrified her too much.

The work of the Office of Unusual Insight in Ourdh had been carried out by others, by Vleda, Witch of Standing from Talion and Crissima, who was now Great Witch in Kadein.

So perhaps Lessis’s advice about how to work with the Ourdhi was wrong. Perhaps more direct methods were necessary. Ribela glanced toward the eunuch at the desk. If those earplugs were removed, she could use her voice on him. He could be made to convey her directly to the emperor.

Lagdalen was looking at her. Ribela looked away with a stab of annoyance. The girl judged her by Lessis’s standard the entire time. It was very difficult to follow in the Grey Lady’s path, since Lessis of Valmes was the closest thing to a saint in existence. Ribela was not a saint; she could never stomach the way human beings mismanaged their affairs. It always made her want to shake them.

Now she, Ribela of Defwode, was supposed to wait here on the whim of this wretched little emperor, Banwi Shogemessar. She was supposed to wait, as if her time were not extremely valuable. She had left the entire Escopus project in the hands of her subordinates. Mother help them all if someone made any serious mistakes. She had to get back quickly. Already she had spent more than a week away from Defwode. She must finish this work and then return at once via the Black Mirror. That way she could be back in time to rejoin the Escopus project before the Solstice crisis.

Ribela looked back to the eunuch’s earplugs. She itched to rip them out.

Lagdalen bit her lip.

A pair of double doors opened, and a small party of high officials was carried in sedan chairs.

Exiting the chairs were two nobles with full heads of hair, long and unkempt. They wore elaborate garments of emerald green silk. With them were a pack of bald-headed eunuchs in white.

The eunuch at the table was bowing low before the new eunuchs.

“The Monstekir of Kwa and the Monstekir of Canfalon do greet you, Lady of the Isles,” said one of the new eunuchs, who wore a purple cap on his shaven skull.

Everyone but the monstekirs now bowed low to Ribela.

Lagdalen was grateful that she had managed to learn so much Ourdhi in just the few days of their journey. Ribela had of course been the inspiration. Ribela had said that it was possible to learn much of a language in seven days if one applied oneself to the maximum. And Ribela had been right. They had spoken nothing but Ourdhi, and done nothing but studied it together every waking hour aboard ship.

“My dear, your mind is still young, still relatively elastic. You must stretch yourself, discover all your capabilities. You cannot know them until you seek them out.”

Now Lagdalen found she could follow much of what was said and make deductions about the rest. It was amazing.

“We thank you,” said Ribela. “Now, take me to the Fedafer.”

The monstekirs twirled their batons and shook their heads.

“The Fedafer sent us to say that he is indisposed and must beg you to cancel your audience with him. Inquire tomorrow as to when a new meeting can be set up.”

Ribela went rigid. Lagdalen tensed. One did not trifle with the Queen of Mice.

“In such dangerous times, it is sorrowful to hear of the Fedafer’s illness. What is the cause? I am, of course, trained in the healing arts.”

The monstekirs paled at the sound of Ribela’s fluent but barbarously accented Ourdhi.

“It will not be necessary to trouble yourself,” they said hastily. “The doctors have been working with the Fedafer for hours.”

Ribela’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “But only an hour ago my messenger brought me word that the. Fedafer was ready to see me. How can this be? There is some inconsistency here.”

The monstekirs squirmed. The eunuchs babbled among themselves.

Ribela’s patience snapped, audibly. With a hiss, she took a deep breath. The eunuchs clapped their hands to their ears, but the monstekirs were too slow.

Ribela used a set of snap spells to hold them and murmured another small spell. Within a minute, they were all walking through the inner doors behind the monstekirs. The eunuchs trailed along behind muttering to themselves.

They proceeded through a series of rooms, each slightly smaller than the last and more like a jewel box.

Finally they stopped at a set of double doors with guards outside.

The monstekirs fluttered their hands and the doors were opened.

The Fedafer of Ourdh, lord of the well-watered land, master of the great river, provider for the mouths of the millions, favored first son of Auros, living consort of Gingo-La, august excellence of the south wind, bringer of rain, sower of seed, king of Ajmer, king of Bogra, king of Patwa, high lord of Shogemessar, Emperor Banwi the Great, was crouched, shivering with fear, on a blue silk couch in the apartment of his Aunt Haruma.