by Matthew Ward
Josiri shook his head. “Viktor needs me. The Republic needs me. Especially now.”
“And what of your needs?” she demanded. “Or mine? Must they wait until I’m a stranger to you?”
“Nothing could make me forget you, Ana. Nothing.”
“You’ll never know it if you do. The loss will be mine alone.” Sorrow quickened to anger. “This city? This Republic? They tried to take everything from you. You owe them nothing.”
Josiri told himself she didn’t mean to sound so selfish. There was, after all, simple pragmatism to her words. A man was his memories, and his were flaking away. He couldn’t mourn what he didn’t know he’d lost. Anastacia wasn’t the only one becoming an echo of herself.
The study walls crowded closer, the woodsmoke-scented air suffocating.
“It’s not about what I’m owed, Ana, but what I can do for others. I thought you understood that.” Slowly, gently, he unpicked her embrace and held her hands tight. “Maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems. Maybe it is, but I need to be myself as long as I’m able. Otherwise, the man who elopes with you isn’t truly any longer the one you love.”
She stepped away, lips pursed. “You’re a fool, Josiri Trelan.”
“Could be.” Was there anything harder than arguing with a loved one who sought only to save you from yourself? “But I promise you, for once, I’ll do nothing out of stubbornness. Let me think on it.”
Twenty-Six
The solitude of a walk helped – if any excursion through the busy streets could be truly said to offer solitude. So long a prisoner behind Branghall’s gates, Josiri had learned to treasure the freedom of setting forth from Stonecrest’s door and wandering, hands deep in pockets and one foot in front of the other across cobble and flagstone, through alleyway and checkpoint, wherever whimsy bore him.
Yet there was no outpacing the black cloud in his thoughts. At best, the prospect of failing memory was set aside.
Perhaps he should speak to Sidara. He too often thought of her as a child to be guarded, rather than a woman growing into her own. He’d given reluctant blessing for her to join Viktor’s campaign – distant though the prospect had seemed. Did he keep her distant out of concern for her well-being, or his own pride? He’d never been good at telling the two apart. His life with Calenne had been full of such false nobility, anchored by the certainty that amends could always be made. There was always tomorrow.
Until there wasn’t.
Of course, Sidara wasn’t the only member of his family who possessed talents beyond the mundane. Perhaps Viktor…? But Viktor would take Anastacia’s side, and insist on a temporary – or permanent – leave of absence. And then there’d be no one left Viktor considered a peer. No one to steer him away from the bleakness that so often overtook him.
And if I’m not a man any longer, but his after-image in the Dark?
Then I’ll stop you. Whatever it costs me.
A promise made years before in a moment of hopelessness, but its power remained. With war looming, Viktor needed support more than ever. Better to let him believe it was overwork. Time for Lieutenant Raldan to receive overdue promotion. Let the constabulary tend to itself. Focus on being the Lord Protector’s advisor… his conscience.
Josiri ambled to a halt, the crowd flowing on about him. Across the square, a pair of Drazina goaded a woman, face dark with fresh bruises, towards the watch house on Renner Square. A lone kraikon stood vigil beside the fountain, light crackling through a poorly patched rent in its left side.
Better to speak with Sidara soon, before war called her east. A brisk walk would bring him to the Panopticon soon enough.
As Josiri started away, his eyes lingered on the crooked street sign. Highvale. It took a moment to chase the name down. Shalamoh, who’d bedevilled Sevaka with questions, and thus courted disaster at Rosa’s hands. A promise to warn him off had fallen by the wayside. Another victim of failing memory? Josiri didn’t believe so, but supposed he’d better grow accustomed to asking that question.
That oversight, at least, he could put right.
Cutting across the traffic’s flow – and almost ending up beneath the hooves of a dray horse for his trouble – Josiri struck out beneath Highvale’s well-to-do townhouses. Asking around sent him to a doorstep flanked by a pair of Ocranza guardian statues. Hewn in the likeness of warriors from the Age of Kings, they were less fashionable – but in better repair – than the more refined examples of the craft that haunted the gardens of Shalamoh’s neighbours, or those in Stonecrest’s grounds, and Josiri wondered where he’d found them.
The door opened on the knocker’s third strike. From Sevaka’s account, Josiri had expected a fussy, awkward fellow – the invariable tendency of scholars and seekers. But the rake-thin man who offered Josiri a thoughtful look was something else. Aquiline brow and steely hair could never have belonged to one uncertain in word or deed. Only grey garb offered hint of the insubstantial – it was somehow less colour’s absence than its opposite, as if both raiment and wearer touched the world lightly. His only obvious eccentricity lay in a pair of polished glass discs set in a metal armature resting upon nose and ears. Peculiar affectation for one otherwise bereft of jewellery.
“I’m well served for spiritual guidance.” The voice was twin to appearance: seemly without warmth. “Ply your doggerel elsewhere.”
Josiri narrowed his eyes, uncertain whether to be amused or affronted. “I’ve none to offer you, Master Shalamoh. I’m Lord Trelan.”
Shalamoh blinked. The clipped voice grew friendlier. “Why, of course you are. Humblest apologies.”
“I’d hoped to speak with you. I can come back if it’s inconvenient?”
“I won’t hear of it. Please, come inside.”
The furniture of Shalamoh’s drawing room was rather finer and better preserved than usually the case when cared for by an absent and solitary mind. Books, boxes and sheaves of scrollwork were immaculately shelved – a place for everything, and everything in its place. Even the low desk set beneath the rear window displayed mania for order. An old, leather-bound book was spread wide upon it, mouldered edges in line with the desk’s edges and a small notebook to one side. Not for Shalamoh the practice of hurried jottings – every line was laid down in an elegant copperplate hand as perfect as any serene-copied illumination.
Refusing the offer of a drink, Josiri took up station beside a mantelpiece decked with golden figurines. Above, hung a map he tentatively identified as part of the vanished Kingdom of Tressia, though the borders and names meant little.
“I regret my confusion,” said Shalamoh. “Certain of my neighbours have mistaken me for a sinner and task themselves to my salvation. They don’t approve of my interests.”
“You’re a historian, I gather?”
“The Republic’s official record reminds me of a garden, adroitly pruned.” He offered a humourless smile. “Take your mother. For all the effort Ebigail Kiradin and her ilk bent to erasure, traces of Katya Trelan’s works remain. She ended the Indrigsval border skirmishes, did you know? Hadon Akadra took the credit, of course. He was always canny when it came to opportunity.”
“She never spoke of it.”
Shalamoh nodded. “The archives are clear, if one reads the spaces around the words. What isn’t spoken is often more powerful than what is. Facts can be erased, but the void echoes with the loss. A shame I never met your mother. I’m sure she could have given shape to many echoing voids.”
“I’m sure,” said Josiri, politely, though he’d little sense of Shalamoh’s meaning.
“Perhaps you might spare me a little of your time? Preserve a morsel of your thoughts for posterity?”
Josiri bit back a growl. Shalamoh couldn’t know his poor timing. “I doubt it’d be as illuminating as you think.”
Shalamoh arched an eyebrow. “My thoughts, and my time, are my own. You need have no fear of disappointing.” He strode to the desk and tapped the book. “There’s little I find unenlightening. Take th
is, for example. What do you make of it?”
Josiri squinted at the yellowed pages, but the penmanship blurred and shifted whenever he bent his gaze upon it. “Very little. My eyes are tired.”
“Are they indeed?” Shalamoh peered at him. “A passing weakness, or a persistent one?”
He hesitated, but saw no harm in the admission. “The latter.”
Shalamoh tutted. “I thought so. I see it in how you hold your brow. Try these.” He unhooked the metal and glass armature from his ears and held it out. “They don’t bite.”
After a couple of false starts, Josiri wrestled the eyeglasses into place across the bridge of his nose and the hooked arms over his ears. The room shifted. Shelf and cornice fuzzed at the edges, but the immaculate handwriting snapped into something approaching focus. “I don’t believe it.”
“Ithna’jîm work,” said Shalamoh. “The curvature of the lens compensates for weakness in the eye. An artisan over on Delver Row said it was ‘quite advanced for a heathen’, though he’s yet to replicate the technique. ‘Heathen’ is so often a word deployed by jealous minds, don’t you find?”
Josiri regarded him with renewed respect. “You’ve travelled to Athreos?”
“Itharoc,” Shalamoh corrected. “Athreos is merely the desert that lies in the way. So much easier to feel superior if foreigners scurry about in a wasteland rather than dwell in cities finer than this one. But yes, I lived there for a time… but we’re talking about this book.”
He stared pointedly at the desk.
With a guilty start, Josiri remembered that they weren’t supposed to be talking about the book at all – nor the Ithna’jîm – but Sevaka. Shalamoh’s enthusiasm had swept him away. But maybe that was for the best. Shalamoh’s eyeglasses still in place, he pored over the text. Tressian formal tongue, more or less, and familiar.
“The Saga of Hadar Saran?” he asked. “In Tressian?”
“A piece. I’m afraid the front half is quite illegible.” Shalamoh offered a thin, pleased smile. “Remarkable, isn’t it? You wouldn’t know from that passage, but it’s quite complimentary. Less so about Konor Belenzo. If the author’s to be believed, our blessed saint escaped Darkmere by offering the First Emperor in his place. But then, it is a wicked world. That’s why the populace cheered when Malatriant seized the throne. They didn’t care that she was cruel. She was better than what had come before.”
Josiri flicked through a handful of pages. “Where did you find this?”
“Where else? Darkmere.”
The thought of someone like Shalamoh surviving the haunted ruins was quite impossible, unless…“You were with the Lord Protector’s expedition?”
Again the smile, though this time more distant. A man concerned he’d tripped over his own tongue. “I was.”
“At his invitation?”
“You’re free to draw your own conclusions, of course, but I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly comment. Discretion is all.”
Affirmation, or merely its appearance? Claiming to have Viktor’s ear would open plenty of doors for a man like Shalamoh. “You were fortunate to make it home.”
“Indeed,” agreed Shalamoh. “But I’ve always led something of a charmed life.”
“On that note…” With a pang of reluctance, Josiri slid the eyeglasses from his nose and folded them shut. “You should cease pestering Governor Orova.”
“Pestering?” Shalamoh’s tone trembled with affront. “A few letters?”
“A few letters that might feed hurtful rumour.”
“Ah. I see.” Shalamoh steepled his hands and tapped his fingers together. “Can I assume that in declining your request I may not live a charmed life much longer?”
“I’m but the messenger. I said I’d discuss the matter with you, and I have.”
“Ah. But another might be more… colourful in their disapproval?”
“You’re free to draw your own conclusions, of course, but I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly comment.”
Shalamoh chuckled softly. “Very good, Lord Trelan. I do wish we’d met long ago. We might have learned much from each other. I might, for example, have taught you to offer incentives.”
Josiri eyed him carefully. “Such as?”
“An hour with your good lady. Oh, nothing licentious, of course. But there are so many perplexing gaps in the Books of Astarria. I’m sure she could help me make sense of them. Over tea, perhaps?”
Anastacia had no shortage of opinions about how her mother’s words had been captured by ephemerals. She might even welcome the opportunity. How much Shalamoh would enjoy the encounter remained an open question. If nothing else, he might have insights to offer regarding her recent transformation – if indeed it was as mysterious to Anastacia as she claimed. “I’ll ask, but no promises.”
“Naturally.” The thin smile returned. “I’m indebted. Let me offer something in return. Four years ago, I found myself at Vrasdavora. Do you know it?”
Vrasdavora. Where Sevaka had died. “Only by reputation.”
“It’s not a happy fortress, little more than a graveyard nowadays. But graveyards – like old churches – so often hold traces of the divine. I spent a week there – sketching, copying down names from our headstones and the memorial the Hadari raised to their dead.” He shrugged. “But one particular grave fascinated me. I simply had to glimpse inside.”
Where was he going with this? “What did you find?”
“The grave was indeed occupied. The woman within not at her best, but recognisable enough.” The corner of Shalamoh’s lip twitched. “A man might be forgiven sending a few polite letters in light of that discovery.”
The words provoked a new, unpleasant thought. Josiri had readily believed the tale the ladies Orova had spun of the Raven’s mercy, for the word impossible had long since lost currency in his life, but Shalamoh’s story offered a new explanation. “So you claim Governor Orova is an imposter?”
He’d worried about that himself at first – fears fed by nursery tales of markhaini spirits that stole the form of the deceased and feasted on the grieving. But such Cowled were said to betray their true form beneath moonlight, and he’d seen Sevaka many times thus since her death.
“I do hope not,” Shalamoh replied. “That would be so very disappointing. The books of Astarria – at least the early copies – make no claim that a portion of the soul resides in the body after death, as we are told now. That came later. No doubt some priest had a sideline in selling shovels and tombstones. All that waiting around in the dark, waiting for Third Dawn. All a fiction. The entire soul is freed at the moment of death. All it needs is a new body… Governor Orova’s apparently found one. Isn’t that a wonder?”
“I’d be very careful about sharing your theory,” Josiri said coldly, hearing blackmail in the story.
“You may depend upon it. The provosts may be disbanded, but any fool with a stout rope and a mob can arrange a hanging. Governor Orova has nothing to fear from me. Please tell her so.” Shalamoh shrugged. “After all, she doesn’t answer my letters.”
Josiri nodded, still unsure what to make of Shalamoh. Plainly a clever man, but with no clear objective for that cleverness beyond its proclamation. A coveter of knowledge where others hoarded coin. But there seemed no malice in him.
And if blackmail was in the offing? Well, there was always Rosa.
He held out the borrowed eyeglasses. “Here. Very enlightening.”
Shalamoh waved a dismissive hand. “Keep them.”
“I can’t possibly—”
“No, please. I insist. I’ve others. You’re no use to anyone if you’re not seeing things clearly.” He chuckled. “Just don’t forget your promise. Afternoon tea with a serathi. My father would never have believed it.”
Twenty-Seven
Even with afternoon fading towards evening, Tregard’s grand market remained alive with scent and sensation, the tantalising aromas of dry spices and cured meats mingling with the mellow bitterness of woodsmoke. Folk fl
owed beneath bright canopies, haggling, flirting or simply passing the time in conversation.
Melanna’s father had once claimed that anything truly valuable could be found within Tregard’s market – and always far cheaper than elsewhere – but so far as she knew he’d never stooped to shopping. For Kai Saran, such unwarriorlike tasks belonged to servants. Melanna had always found the market fascinating. The facets of a thousand lives on display, unguarded. And yet she’d seldom strayed among the stalls since ascending to the throne. The daughter who’d always yearned to become her father now resented the small ways in which her wish had come true.
All the more reason to walk the market now, and set Kaila a different example.
She gestured at a baker’s wares. “Well, essavim? Which should we buy?”
Kaila stepped past Apara and rose up on tiptoes, brow furrowed and top lip fractionally overlapping the lower – a puzzled expression learned from her father. “The kitchen servants fetched bread this morning.”
Which meant she’d been wandering the palace again. Not that there was danger so long as she was watched, and the lunassera had held unceasing vigil ever since Jack’s attempted abduction. A handful of the sisterhood remained in sight even now, islands of white and silver as the crowd flowed respectfully around them.
Tavar Rasha and three of his guard stood closer still, visibly unhappy about even that small distance. But Melanna had insisted. Certainly, there were other Immortals in the crowd, bodyguards to distant cousins or other worthies, but there was no sense drawing attention. For those with malice of mind she’d a dagger at her belt and another concealed beneath her simple black skirts. And should the worst befall, Kaila had Apara to whisk her away. The thief’s eyes saw more than Rasha’s ever would.
“It’s not good to depend on servants.” Melanna crouched, bringing her eyes level with Kaila’s. “Sometimes you will be alone. You must rely on your own eyes, your own ears and your own good sense. So I ask you again: which should we buy?”