The Ships of Merior (21 page)

Laughing as he ducked through an arbour of flowering vines, Medlir unlatched a side gate that let into the gutter behind the court house. ‘Mind the horse piss.’

‘Or not,’ Halliron commented. ‘If I stink enough to
turn heads, do you guess the mayor’s wife would throw me out?’

‘She’d doubtless roast Dakar for the lapse, then sidestep sensibility by giving you a replacement pair of shoes, fancy ones with satin ruffles.’ Medlir offered an arm to steady his master across the puddle. Through his thin sleeve, the old man trembled shockingly. ‘It’s not much further. We can cut through the guards’ barracks.’

‘That’s not necessary.’ Halliron squared trim shoulders. ‘I need the walk to cool my temper.’

Companionably silent, the pair passed sights grown unwontedly familiar through the course of their enforced stay in Jaelot: the scarred stalls of the butcher’s sheds, and fishmonger’s baskets stacked like nested eggs in the starlit gloom of the alley. Halliron broke step to fling silver into a beggar’s bowl. The mournful, deep bells in the guard tower chimed the hour, rousting up a flapping flock of pigeons. The birds wheeled above the city’s muddled skyline, smudged into soot from coal fires lit to cut the sea damp.

‘It’s hard to believe this place was once the site of Paravian mysteries,’ Halliron commented over the clop of horses and the grind of gilt-striped carriage wheels. Foot traffic crowded the road, couples cloaked and masked and laughing as they hurried to dance at the festival fires in light-hearted contrast with hawkers trudging homeward with handcarts of unsold pastries. ‘The sixth lane resonance once channelled through this headland. At solstice, you’d think I’d feel the pulse of the earth’s song through my very boots. Everywhere else the unicorns danced, at least a ghost echo lingers.’

Medlir shook his head, what sensitivity he had once possessed struck mute by forces less forgivable than Jaelot’s tasteless arrogance. Smells of jasmine and lavender warred with the mess some lady’s lapdog had excreted in the gutter. In some cranny beyond reach of
lamplight, a rat cluttered through the patter of a street waif’s running footsteps. Farther off, the surf from the bay boomed in tireless refrain against the breakwater.

From the corner of Broadwalk Way, wreaths of climbing roses strewed a Utter of leaves and petals that the wind chivvied across the pavement. The pillared façade of the mayor’s palace loomed at the end of the cul-de-sac like some layered, white-iced confection, the rondeled mullions of its bow windows spangled in reflected candleflame.

‘With luck, we’ll have missed the silly dinner.’ Halliron mounted the stair like a man about to face his executioner. His steps sank soundless into the black and gold carpet runner spread for the occasion, each riser bearing like soldiers on parade an array of bronze urns crammed with peonies.

One of the footmen on duty by the door reached to take the lyranthe. Medlir sidestepped the offer as though a viper had struck at him, to the servant’s acrimonious displeasure. A chubby, bald butler scurried out to quell the disturbance. He nearly bowled over the Masterbard, who topped him by a head, and who waited to the right of the threshold in the unveiled elegance of his topaz studs and roped chains.

‘Ath, it’s yourself,’ the butler snapped. ‘My Lord Mayor’s vexed. Come inside. Quickly, quickly! Most awkward you’ve arrived so late, they’re nearly finished with dessert.’

Medlir and Halliron suffered the man’s proprietary prodding across a vestibule banked with cut flowers, and on through the doubled doors into the grand hall. From the bowl of a recessed mosaic floor to the spans of its vaulted ceiling, the enormous chamber lay rinsed in dazzling brilliance. Wax candles and overdressed bodies pressed the air to steaming warmth. The reek of rich meats, fine sauces and expensively perfumed humanity stifled the senses in a wave.

Halliron ran a jaundiced glance over fake kiosks of gilded pillars, streamered in ribbon and decorated with cast-plaster orchids that dripped in swagged archways over tables packed to sagging capacity. The drone of too many voices stewed into punishing roulades of echoed noise.

Divested of feathered masks for their feasting, the aristocrats of Jaelot lounged on cushions, arguing stylishly, or exchanging sharp-witted jokes. Gilt cosmetics and jewels stung the eye in spattered flecks of light. The tinselled ruffles of discarded finery lay rowed like a milliner’s wares under silk and paper arbours crammed with sprites, whose rosy cheeks and blush-tinted bare buttocks were presented on display with the same artless candour.

A statement of brute contrast, a cleared space in the centre of the floor held a scaffold transfixed by a post. There, the miserable figure of Dakar languished, chained hand and foot in his laddered, striped hose and soiled shirtsleeves. The scuffle to retake him into custody had apparently cost him his garish orange garment sleeved with ribbon.

‘Well, the doublet’s gone, I’m glad to see. Somewhere in Jaelot, there’s a guardsman with a natural sense of elegance.’ Halliron’s dry sarcasm gave way to outrage as he added, ‘The chains are an offence beyond forgiveness.’ He never once glanced at the painted stool, waiting in vacant anticipation before the dais that raised the head table.

Behind him, moved by unsettled instinct, his apprentice loosed the lyranthe’s wrappings and softly started tuning silver strings. Since Medlir’s adroit placement in the doorway forestalled the butler’s entrance, no one announced their arrival. The still form of the Masterbard in his stark black and gold raised no stir, until, cued by the whispers of a table servant, a guest in the back rows pointed. Conversation in her presence flurried and
flagged, and stillness fanned outward like ring ripples cast by a flung stone into a trout pool.

The Mayor of Jaelot froze with a bite of confection halfway into parted lips. Elbowed by his wife, whose dark, painted eyes acknowledged Halliron’s presence over her pink-feathered fan, he lowered his spoon and rearranged himself to begin a pompous speech.

The Masterbard seized his moment, lifted the unsheathed gleam of his instrument from Medlir, and outmatched the mayor’s blustering introduction. ‘I play nothing for your guests until the bonds are struck from the man I’ve pledged to redeem.’

Satiated diners stirred to languid interest as he bade his apprentice to wait, then descended the inner stair. His steps were marked by stifled whispers, while several ladies the worse for fine wine tittered behind hands laced with rings. Halliron paid no notice. Bare-headed, his silver hair combed in waves over his gold-bordered collar, he advanced through the gallery of plaster arches and presented himself before the dais.

The Mayor of Jaelot smiled at him. ‘The prisoner will be freed when your word is made good. I don’t indulge impertinence in my hall, or before my lady wife and her guests. Have a care for propriety. Oath-breakers by law can be executed.’ He signalled with one finger.

Liveried halberdiers advanced from behind the plaster kiosks. Others joined them from the side doors and vestibule. Poised at the stair head, Medlir found himself flanked by the ungentle prick of bare weapons. He turned not a hair in response. His attention stayed riveted on his master, while the leather and cord wrappings lately stripped from the lyranthe wrung and twisted into knots between his hands.

Halliron wasted no voice in pointless argument, but spun on his heel to a fire-caught flash of topaz. He set his boot on the cushioned stool, cradled a lyranthe the last of its kind in five kingdoms, and snapped off a run
to test the pitch. His apprentice’s touch at tuning was never less than perfect; reft by circumstance from his customary love of theatrics, Halliron clapped down his palm, silenced his strings, and flung back his head in vivacious challenge.

Melody erupted under his hands. The notes were fast-paced, keyed to major, and led off in tripping, drunken joy through the brash lilt of a dance tune. Guests grown torpid with rich food turned jaded faces in surprise. Whatever they had expected, this spree of cheerful melody fell incongruous as a slap dealt in anger with a feather.

In sheer, provocative genius, Halliron Masterbard drew them in. The happy jinking melody stroked air and grabbed heartstrings and softened the best blood of Jaelot to smile and neglect fashion and tap their feet.

Stone-still between the shafts of two halberds, Medlir shut his eyes against anguish. Alone in awareness, consumed by crawling dread, he knew this was the ballad written for Jaelot that Halliron had refused to let him hear.

A chord pattered out, and another, soaring and quick as a swallow’s flight. Somebody began to clap in rhythm. The Lord Mayor was smiling fatuously. His wife’s purse-string lips hung open behind laced fingers, while her fan drooped like a wing-broken bird over the rim of her cake plate. Another moment, and decorum would give way to dancing; except that Halliron tipped back his chin and opened his throat in song.

The words were all nonsense, syllables strung together for their resonance and rhythm. Against the superlative weave of the lyranthe, the counterplay of consonant and vowel sparked like gems in a tapestry. The heart leaped in step for pure wonder. Ladies laced tight in quilted bodices began to sway in their seats like tavernmaids. Husbands by their sides whooped and stamped and applauded, while the song unreeled in merry measures
that had even the mayor’s guardsmen tapping weapon butts in time against the tile.

The change came with such masterful subtlety, Medlir alone could name the moment when senseless strings of syllables converged into order and meaning. Carried on exuberant melody, three stanzas passed before any guest of the mayor’s noticed the first prick of satire; another appalled interval before they connected the tales in the balladry to familiar names and faces. Distilled from six months of gleaned rumour, Halliron’s art exposed with rib-tearing viciousness the secrets of boudoir and council chamber, affairs of the heart and affairs of ambition that flaunted the rank lust and incompetence that riddled the channels of city government.

The foot stamping faltered and quieted. Husbands glared at unfaithful wives, or elbowed each other aside to glower and curse at rivals who had made them dupes and cuckolds. Society listened, transfixed by the sick fascination of seeing their neighbours reviled; and breathless in dread lest their own reputations become next in line to be sullied. For the corruption exposed within his precinct, and for his laughably faithless marriage, the city alderman squirmed as if he sat nude on live coals. Paralysed, silent, held spellbound by the song’s provocative suspense, the best blood of Jaelot hung on each verse while one after another, their best-respected families were raked over by Halliron’s gilded tongue.

A masterbard’s enmity could call down an unkind legacy. For a city that ignored codes of justice, for the slights and denigration of his station, Halliron laid bare explosive internal hatreds that would either heal themselves swiftly by cautery, or else linger on, to malign and poison lives and factions unto generations yet unborn.

The last ecstatic measures laced the air to shimmering harmony and trailed away into quiet. The bard dropped his leg from the cushion. He swept down his instrument, stepped smoothly forward and bowed. The. chatter of
chair legs as the Jaelot’s Lord Mayor sprang upright stuttered like a rip across silence.

‘How dare you,’ he gasped in strangled outrage. ‘How dare you dishonour my guests so!’

‘You’ve had a song to epitomize your city’s hospitality,’ said Halliron, his beautiful voice harshly dry. He held his dignity and his ground as the mayor slammed his fists on the trestle, and pink-ribboned tablecloths ruffled by the force jolted platters and clinked with slipped crystal. ‘My art is no coin to be coerced and exposed to public ridicule. I have matched to the letter the measure of your demands.’

His statement snapped away the song’s last veil of poisoned, hypnotic fascination. Citizens stabbed raw in the throes of betrayal shoved from their seats, gesticulating and fired to angry talk.

Spurred by the temper of their fury, hampered from action by two halberds, Medlir cursed in despair from the stair head. Any use of his shadow mastery to extricate Halliron would force full exposure of his identity. Constrained by horror, unwilling to seed broadscale bloodshed by letting his name draw Lysaer’s armies, he snapped the leather and cord he had twisted like a whip across the eyes of the left-hand guardsman. The man fell back. Medlir side-stepped the blind thrust of his weapon. The other halberdier assigned to hold him had been a friend he had sparred with; aware he was unarmed, that one dropped his polearm, rushed, and locked arms in a vice-grip to pin him.

The savagery of their scuffle passed unnoticed as the men at arms near the mayor converged to seize the Masterbard. Before they could close, their heavyset captain dealt a brute-fisted swing launched solidly out of his shoulder.

Halliron twisted by reflex to shield his priceless lyranthe. The blow struck him behind the temple, flung him staggering backward. Tripped by the stool, he
overbalanced and fell. The crack as his frame smashed through split rungs entangled with Medlir’s wordless cry.

Splintered wood spun across tiles, for the suspended span of a heartbeat the only motion in the room. Then the packed ranks of guests erupted into noise and pandemonium; except for Halliron, who lay stunned and still, his jewels like flecks of dropped flame. A streak of scarlet meandered through his silver hair, while the lyranthe his fragile flesh had shielded nested unharmed in the silk-clad hollow of his shoulder.

Blanched and distraught in his chains, Dakar alone held an untrammelled view as Medlir pitched free of the guardsman. He arrowed through the pack of outraged bystanders, jabbing knuckles, elbows and knees into velvet-padded flesh with a viciousness jarringly out of character. More than one dandy sprawled moaning in his wake; weeping ladies nursed bruised arms or wrists.

Bent to his knees beside his master barely seconds after the injury, Medlir unpinned Halliron’s ribboned collar and probed with shaking hands for a pulse. ‘Hurry. Send a man for a healer and a litter.’