Compleat Traveller in Black (17 page)

To look on Lady Luck was the one gamble no lord of Teq would risk. Why should he? Was not affluence itself proof that the Lady bent her enigmatic smile continually on the person who possessed it?

Lord Fellian, on his chair of inexplicable bones cramped with pure gold, robed in satin dyed with the purple of the veritable murex, shod with sandals of the softest kidskin on which had been stamped, again in gold, a series of runes to guide him in the most prosperous of paths; his foppish locks entwined with green ribbons, his nails painted with ground pearls, his weak eyes aided with lenses not of rock-crystal such as his rivals must make do with but of diamond, his lobes hung with amber, his girdle glittering with sapphires: he, Lord Fellian, the greatest winner among all the past and present lords of Teq, laughed, and laughed and laughed again.

His mirth drowned out the soft rattling from the table on which a trained monkey, tethered by a velvet leash, kept spilling and gathering up a set of ivory dice, their values after each throw being recorded by a slave on sheets of parchment; likewise, the humming of a gaming-wheel turned by an idiot – both these, with bias eliminated, to determine whether after fifty thousand throws or spins there would be some subtle preference revealed, that he might exploit in his ceaseless rivalry with Lords Yuckin and Nusk. Furthermore his hilarity drowned the chirrup of two gorgeous songbirds in a gilded cage which he had won last week from Nusk in a bout at shen fu, and the drone of musicians playing on a suite of instruments he had won – along with their players – from Yuckin a year or more past. Those instruments were of eggshells, ebony, and silver, and their tone was agonizingly sweet.

Facing the chair of bones, Achoreus – who had committed himself to the service of Lord Fellian when he was but seventeen and keep complimenting himself on his farsightedness – grinned from ear to ear at the brilliant inspiration of his master.

“Before those fools learn that winning from me costs me nothing,” Fellian declared, “I shall have taken the very roofs from over their heads! They will be shamed if they refuse to match my stakes, and I may climb as high as I wish, while they – poor fools! – struggle to clamber after me. Oh, how I look forward to seeing Yuckin’s face when tonight I bet him a hundred skillful servants, including girls fit for a royal bed! You’ve done well, Achoreus. Torquaida, come you here!”

From among the gaggle of retainers who by day and night attended Fellian, subservient to his slightest whim, there shuffled forward the elderly treasurer whose mind encompassed, so he bragged, even such detail as how many of the copper coins in store had been clipped around the edge, instead of honestly worn, and were therefore reserved to pay off tradesmen.

In no small part, Fellian acknowledged, his victories in the endless betting matches with his peers were due to Torquaida instructing him what they could or could not stake to correspond with his own wagers. He had rewarded the old man suitably, while those who served his rivals in like office were more often punished for letting go irreplaceable wonders on lost bets, and grew daily bitterer by consequence.

“Young Achoreus here,” the lord declared, “has performed a signal service. Thanks to him, we now have one hundred or more extra servants, surplus to the needs of the household, and additionally many children who can doubtless be trained up in a useful skill. How, say you, should this service be repaid?”

“This is difficult to estimate,” mused Torquaida. His ancient voice quavered; Fellian scowled the musicians into silence that he might hear the better. “There are two aspects of the matter to be considered. First, that he has brought a hundred servants – that is easy. Let him have dirhans to increase his stake in the wager he has made with Captain Ospilo of Lord Yuckin’s train; our privy intelligence states that bet is won on odds of nine to four, whereas Ospilo is yet in ignorance of the result. Thereby the winnings may be much enlarged. I’d say: one coin for every healthy servant.”

Fellian slapped his thigh and chortled at the ingenuity of the deceit, while Achoreus preened his mustachios and basked in the envy of those around.

“Beyond that, however,” Torquaida continued in his reedy tones, “it remains to be established what the true value of these servants is. As one should not wager on a horse without inspecting both it and its competition, thus too one must begin by looking over the captives.”

“Let them be brought, then!” Fellian cried. “Clear a space sufficient for them to parade!”

“Sir,” ventured Achoreus, “there were not a few among them who resented the – ah – the invitation I extended to enter your lordship’s service. It will be best to make space also for the escort I detailed to accompany them.”

“What?” Fellian leaned forward, scowling. “Say you that a man on whom Lady Luck smiles so long and so often is to be injured by some stupid peasant, by some village boor? Or is it that you neglected to disarm them?”

Seeing his newfound fortune vanishing any second, Achoreus replied placatingly, “My lord! There was hardly a weapon in the whole of Wantwich, save rustic implements whose names I scarcely know, not having truck with country matters – scythes, perhaps, or hatchets … Which, naturally, we deprived them of! But all of those we brought are able-bodied, and hence remain possessed of feet and fists.”

“Hmm!” Fellian rubbed his chin. “Yes, I remember well a gladiator whom Lord Yuckin set against a champion of mine in years gone by, who lost both net and trident and still won the bout, by some such underhand trick as clawing out his opponent’s vitals with his nails.” He gave an embarrassed cough; he hated to refer to any wager he had lost. “Well, then, bring them up, but keep a guard around them, as you say.”

Relieved, Achoreus turned to issue the necessary orders. Accordingly, in a little while, to the music of their clanking fetters, a sorry train of captives wended its way out of the grand courtyard of the palace, up the lower slopes of the ramp leading to the gallery – which were of common granite – and stage by stage to the higher levels, where the parapets were of garnets in their natural matrix, and the floor of cat’s-eye, peridot, and tourmaline.

Refused food on the long trudge from Erminvale to Teq to discourage the energy needed for escape, granted barely enough water to moisten their lips, they found the gradual incline almost too much for them, and their escorts had to prod them forward with the butts of spears.

At last, however, they were ranged along the gallery, out of the shade of the dragon-hide awning, blinking against sunlight at their new and unlooked-for master. At one end of the line was Leluak, his left eye swollen shut from a blow and testifying to his vain resistance; as far distant from him as possible, Viola, nearly naked, for her struggle against Achoreus had caused much ripping of her clothes. And between them, every villager from Wantwich barring Granny Anderland, from grey-pated patriarchs to babes in arms.

Accompanied by the proud Achoreus, Torquaida passed along the line peering into face after face, occasionally poking to test the hardness of a muscle or the flab of a belly. He halted before one bluff middle-aged fellow in a red jerkin, who looked unutterably weary.

“Who are you?” he croaked.

“Uh …” The man licked his lips. “Well, my name’s Harring.”

“Say ‘so please you’!” Achoreus rasped, and made a threatening gesture towards his sword.

Harring muttered the false civility.

“And what can you do?” Torquaida pursued.

“I’m a brewer.” And, reluctantly after a brief mental debate: “Sir!”

“You learn swiftly,” Achoreus said with mocking approval, and accompanied Torquaida onward. “You?”

“I’m a baker – sir.”

“I? Oh, a sempstress!”

“And I’m a bodger, turner, and mender of ploughs.”

The answers came pat upon the questions, as though in naming their trades the captives could reassure themselves they still retained some dignity by virtue of their skill. At Torquaida’s direction a clerk made lists of all the names and crafts, leaving aside the children under twelve, and finally presented them with a flourish to Lord Fellian.

Scrutinizing them through his diamond lenses, the lord addressed Achoreus.

“And of what standard in their callings are these louts? Competent? Shoddy?”

“As far as I could judge, sir,” Achoreus answered, “they might be termed competent. Of course, their criteria fall far short of our own; still, their houses seemed sturdy, they kept their fences mended, and their byres and folds were sound enough to keep their livestock in.”

“I see.” Fellian scratched the tip of his nose with the facets of a gemstone ringed to his left middle finger. “Then there might be something to be said for keeping them instead of staking them. We have no brewer in the palace that I know of. Some scullery drab or turnspit would be less useful than that man – what’s his peasant’s name? Harring? Therefore do thus, Torquaida: take away their brats and put them to nurse or be apprenticed, then sort the rest and for each one you judge worth adding to my staff select one servant we already have, who’s lazy or sullen or deformed, and set him at my disposal to be staked tonight. Hah! Was this not an inspiration that I had?” He rubbed his hands and gave a gleeful chuckle.

“Oh, how I long to see the faces of those dunderheads when I wager fifty servants against each of them! I simply cannot fail to gain by this affair! If they win, which Lady Luck forfend, they will merely clutter up their households with extra mouths to feed, while I have acquired new useful tradesmen, and should I win – which I don’t doubt I shall – I’ll have plenty of spare overseers to cope with the servants those two stake! Ho-ho! We must do this again, Achoreus.”

Achoreus bowed low, and once more stroked his mustachios.

“Take them away,” Fellian commanded, and leaned back in his throne, reaching with fat pale fingers for the mouthpiece of a jade huqqah nearby on a lacquered table. An alert slave darted forward and set a piece of glowing charcoal on the pile of scented herbs its bowl contained.

Frightened and angry, but too weak to resist, the folk of Wantwich turned under the goading of the soldiers and filed back to the courtyard. Fellian watched them. As the tail of the line drew level with him, he snapped his fingers and all glanced expectantly towards him.

“That girl at the end,” he murmured. “She’s not unhandsome in a rustic way. Set her apart, bathe, perfume and dress her, and let her attend me in my chamber.”

“But – !” Achoreus took a pace forward.

“You wish to comment?” Fellian purred dangerously.

Achoreus hesitated, and at last shook his head.

“Let it be done, then.” Fellian smiled, and sucked his huqqah with every appearance of contentment.

VI

Furious, Achoreus turned to superintend the final clearance of the captives from the gallery, and thought the task was done, but when he glanced around there was one stranger remaining, who certainly was neither a household officer nor a slave: a man in a black cloak leaning on a staff.

“Achoreus!” Fellian rasped. “Why have you not taken that fellow with the rest?”

Staring, Achoreus confessed, “I have not seen him before! He was not with the villagers when we assembled them – Ah, but I
have
seen him, not at Wantwich. Now I recall that when we were on the outward leg from Teq he stood beneath a tree to watch our army pass, having that same staff in his hand.”

“And he’s come to join the captives of his own accord?” Fellian suggested with a laugh. An answering ripple of amusement at what passed for his brilliant wit echoed from his sycophants. “Well, then, we shall not deny him the privilege he craves!”

Faces brightened everywhere. Fellian was a capricious master, but when he spoke in this jovial fashion it was probable that he was about to distribute favors and gifts at random, saying it was to impress on his retinue the supreme authority of luck.

“So, old man!” he continued. “What brings you hither, if not the long chain linking those who have been here a moment back?”

“A need to know,” said the traveller in black, advancing across the multicolored floor.

“To know what? When the gaming-wheel of life will spin to a halt for you against the dire dark pointer of death? Why, you may ask that face to face of Lady Luck, and she will tell you instanter!”

At that, certain of his attendants blanched. It was not good taste – or wise – to joke about the Lady.

“To know,” the traveller responded unperturbed, “why you sent armed raiders to the village Wantwich.”

“Ah, yes,” Fellian said ironically. “I can see how a stranger might put a question of that order, lacking proper comprehension of the priorities in life. Many think that all they need ever do is act reasonably, meet obligations, pay their debts … and then some random power intrudes on their silly calm existence, perhaps with a lash, perhaps with a sword, and all their reasoning is set at naught. That then is their opportunity to learn the truth. Not sense but luck is what rules the cosmos, do you hear me?
Luck!”

He leaned forward, uttering the last word with such intensity that a spray of spittle danced down to the floor.

“See you that idiot who turns a gaming-wheel for me? Ho, you! Bring the creature here!”

Retainers rushed to obey. Fellian peeled rings from his fingers, decorated with stones that might bring the price of a small farm or vineyard, and flung them on the soiled hem of the idiot’s robe.