‘Thank you kindly, your Lordship.’ Laska’s reply held no trace of irony. ‘I must admit to some surprise at being summoned to your gracious presence immediately upon arrival. It was an unlooked-for honour.’
The Governor shrugged, his earlobes clicking.
‘I had to tell you myself,’ he continued in a syrupy whisper. ‘I was disturbed — nay, aghast — to hear of the travails of your people in recent months. That Argos should send its ships to invade a sovereign state with whom they had a prior agreement — I find it shameful, and not a little worrying. The Argosian Council has shown itself to be arrogant and greedy, not content with its current vast holdings in the Eastern Canopy. Lantria is unimpressed by this new evidence of belligerence on the part of her neighbour.’
‘That we should have recourse to warfare even in self-defence is most unfortunate,’ remarked Laska shortly. He seemed unwilling to give the Governor more than was strictly necessary.
Omni Salassi pressed together the tips of his dainty fingers. They sparkled with polished rings of rare, petrified sap.
‘It intrigues me,’ he simpered. ‘Thirty of the best warships of the Argosian fleet, defeated by one tiny village. Quite a blow to Argosian pride. Believe me, the story made its way around the canopy faster than wings can fly. How did you do it?’
His greedy gaze alighted once more on the young Grafters. Tymon could not rid himself of the impression that the Governor guessed their errand in Cherk Harbour. Jedda was right, he thought with a shiver: Omni Salassi had come into contact with Grafters, or at least sorcerers before.
‘We did not need to defeat them. We were able to negotiate,’ Laska answered carefully. ‘We were lucky enough to find a reasonable opponent in Admiral Greenly. I do not think he set out to annihilate or even annex us. He only wished to send a warning.’
‘Without doubt,’ sniffed the Governor, the shimmy of his robes implying complete dismissal of the idea. ‘Negotiations may be held between two parties on a roughly equal footing. But I hear you brought your people back from the brink of destruction. They had already abandoned their homes, had they not, when the Argosian Envoy’s ship was destroyed? Not even your new-fangled flying machine was able to save them before that.’
‘Your Lordship’s information is both extensive and correct,’ replied Laska. He gave the Lantrian a hard look. Jedda stirred next to Tymon with suppressed impatience. ‘We were extremely fortunate. Circumstances played in our favour.’
There was a moment of pregnant silence in the room; Tymon found the atmosphere suffocating. The brazier sent up heat as well as perfumed incense and the latticed windows were filled with transparent panes of hardened sap, shutting out the breeze. His winter cloak weighed on his shoulders but he dared not disrupt the conversation by taking it off. Beads of sweat glistened on the bare back of the scribe.
‘You understand,’ breathed the Governor, ‘that my superiors would be extremely interested — you would find a grateful and powerful ally in Lantria — should you care to share with us the secret of your success. Should you care—’ his eyes slid unctuously over Jedda and Tymon— ‘to participate in a program of exchange, perhaps. Our water and goods in return for your specialised expertise.’
Laska rose abruptly from the couch, surprising them all.
‘I regret to inform you that we must turn down your proposal, my Lord,’ he snapped. His voice had grown harsh, a display of emotion so unusual for the well-mannered captain that Tymon stared at him in shock. ‘We are not interested in any exchanges. We prefer to look to our own. Thank you for your time and interest.’
Omni Salassi stood up slowly to face him, his silk rustling against the edge of the desk. Only the twitch of his fingers as he spread out his hands in a gesture of mock defeat betrayed his anger at Laska’s response. The scribe’s pen hung poised over the transcription as he waited to take down his master’s bidding. The Governor’s ears tinkled. He shook his head.
‘In that case, I can do nothing more to help you, Judge Laska of the Freehold Sheb,’ he sighed.
‘It’s a shame, really a shame. We could have been of great help to one another. Guard.’
The palace guard bobbed immediately through the door. The last word was a sharp command, causing both Tymon and Jedda to jump in response to the order, as if he had been spying on them through the keyhole. The one word was enough to communicate the Governor’s intentions as well as his mood: the soldier’s silence as he escorted the Freeholders from the room was a measure of their disgrace. Tymon hurried out on his companions’ heels, his ears burning.
When his guests had left, Omni Salassi dispensed with the services of his naked scribe with a peremptory gesture. The man bowed and scuttled out of the door himself, clutching his copy to his thin chest. The Governor heaved a sigh, walked to an alcove in the back wall of the office and replaced a spent hour-candle in the aperture. Then he returned to his desk, sat down and shuffled through leaves and parchments in a desultory fashion.
Minutes passed, weeping painfully through the wax, while the afternoon shadows crept over the city nestled in the fissure. The Governor pushed aside the official parchments, flicked a while through a planting almanac then simply slumped in his chair, chewing his nails. At last he could stand it no longer, and rose again with restless impatience to check the candle. It was half spent.
The sound of voices in the lobby outside brought his peregrinations to a stop. He hesitated, then hurried to open the door.
Two new arrivals approached through the palace lobby, accompanied by the guard whose deferential attitude differed markedly from the one he had displayed to the Free holders a half-hour before. One of the newcomers was an Argosian, and might have taken priestly orders at some stage in his life, for his tunic still bore a faded tinge of green. His appearance however was slovenly, and his hair far longer than regulation length for a priest. His smile was loose-lipped and dissipated under the unkempt locks. He looked completely out of place in the fussy palace.
The second visitor was equally extraordinary. Massive in both girth and beard, he walked with a heavy limp, leaning on the lapsed priest’s arm. He wore the double-breasted coat of a Lantrian sailor, black as night. His gaze as he stumped toward the Governor’s office was also black and fathomless, lost under beetling brows.
Two more unlikely candidates for the Omni Salassi’s consideration could not be imagined; yet the Governor hurried out of his office to meet them in person as if they were royalty.
‘Good sir — this is a great privilege,’ he exclaimed, bobbing respectfully to the large man before nodding in greeting to his dishevelled companion. ‘And friend Gowron — a real pleasure. Please, do come in. I trust your latest voyage was both confortable and profitable.’
‘It was neither,’ rumbled the cripple. ‘The villages were wiped clean by drought long before we arrived. Everyone’s gone. The Fringes are squeezed dry: my ships return empty after every voyage.’
‘Is that so, my friend?’ The Governor herded them into his office, peering nervously over his shoulder at the empty lobby. ‘That’s terrible. Awful. A real problem.’ He did not once address the crippled man by name, as if the mention of it were taboo, or displeasing to him.
‘It is, for you,’ pointed out the sailor. He lowered himself with a grunt onto the divan beside the man named for Gowron. ‘No pickings means no profits, Lord Governor. No profits means no income for our respected shareholders.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Omni Salassi, hastily. He shut the door and fled to the safety of his own chair, barricaded behind the desk.
‘We need,’ said the ogre, his bulk causing the upholstery on the divan to shriek, ‘the board’s authorisation to expand our operations.’
‘That’s going to be difficult,’ cautioned the Governor. ‘The Argosian Council won’t stand for it, as you can well imagine.’ He grinned obsequiously. ‘They won’t like us infringing on their assets—’
‘Council be damned,’ growled the lame man. ‘Make a d
eal. That’s what you’re good at, ain’t it, moneybags? Buy the priests.’
‘You don’t quite appreciate the arts of diplomacy—’ began Omni Salassi.
‘We appreciate enough,’ interrupted Gowron, speaking for the first time. His voice was soft, lethal. ‘We’re well aware of your lying diplomacy, Lordship.’
‘Lying?’ The Governor laughed, a high falsetto. ‘I assure you, friend Gowron, that I harbour no ill will toward you. As your master points out, I stand to profit—’
‘Which does not prevent you from making your own arrangements on the side,’ put in the ex-priest. He sat quite still on the couch, in the place Jedda had occupied a short while before. ‘I can smell them,’ he murmured, his eyelids half-closed. ‘I can smell the sweet young Grafters, poised on the edge of becoming. Delicious. I told you they would be here. Did you not try to gobble them up, Lordship? Did you not wish to keep them to yourself, a private feast?’
The Governor’s lips lost all colour and he eyed the sorcerer askance. It took him a moment to gather the courage to speak.
‘The Grafting students did come here, yes,’ he gulped. ‘I assure you I was going to appraise the Company of it. The only reason I didn’t arrest them on the spot was that I couldn’t be sure that would be what the Company wanted, first off.’
The black-bearded ogre gave a bark of laughter. He gestured to Gowron, who helped him up from the divan. Omni Salassi cowered behind his desk. The sailor planted his great hairy fists on the table, crackling paperwork, and loomed over the shivering politician like a cloud.
‘You speak of the Company, Lordship,’ he leered, his eyes as blank and dark as two holes. ‘We are the Company. Wouldn’t try any fancy tricks, if I were you. Not with Gowron here spoiling for some fun. I suggest you apprehend the young Grafters. Yes, that’s what the Company wants. They’re worth selling to the priests in Argos. Maybe we’ll buy ourselves a new stake in the Domains, eh?’
There was an unfathomable quality about the crippled sailor, a dangerous profundity Omni Salassi shrank from defining. He had the panicky sense that another person lay beneath all that growling bluster: the man’s accent did not sound quite Lantrian as he spoke his last piece. His eyes were wells of disconcerting darkness. His companion, the one named Gowron, had the reputation of a callous murderer. The Governor’s complacency vanished completely as he trembled before the barbarous pair.
‘Whatever you say,’ he whispered.
‘What now?’ Tymon gasped, out of breath. ‘Where are we going?’
He hurried down the ramp from the palace after Laska, shards of bark scattering at his heels. He had thought, for a brief and terrifying moment, when they were first dismissed from the Governor’s presence, that the guard would escort them straight to Omni Salassi’s dungeons. But the soldier had done no more than take them to the front door. It might as well have been an arrest, judging from Laska’s reaction. The captain stared grimly ahead, striding at a tremendous pace down the ramp. Even Jedda was hard-put to keep up with him.
‘To the Nurian temple in the main market,’ he answered Tyman. He glanced over his shoulder, though he did not slow his pace. ‘We’ll be able to find the Oracle there, if we’re not too late.’
‘What about the Governor?’ asked Jedda. ‘Is he going to punish us?’
The captain’s laughter was defiant. ‘Probably. Who knows? I don’t know what to tell you, my friends. I’m sorry we had to see that man today and listen to his lies. He wasted our time. We should have been with the Oracle — we have tarried far too long already. The Governor will do as he wills and no amount of worrying can change that.’
He stopped briefly by a parapet that bordered the road. The clouds had lifted during their interview at the palace and the south and western sides of the fissure were drenched in watery winter sunlight. The air-harbour was laid out below them in its entirety, the ships no bigger than a child’s toys from this height. Tymon noticed that there had been a new arrival in the docks; a fourth resettlement vessel, the largest and most impressive yet. Ferry-barges teemed about it like flies. He frowned in distaste at the sleek, glossy curve of the hull, the gossamer sails, remembering Laska’s warning. But the captain’s gaze was trained elsewhere, on the rows of market stalls on the darkened eastern flank of the air-harbour.
They had observed the bazaar on their way up to the palace. It had seemed from a distance as busy and bustling as any market in Argos or Marak. Now, toward the end of the day, the crowds were thinning and most of the aisles were empty. Laska did not linger by the parapet. As soon as Jedda and Tymon had caught up with him, he hastened on.
‘I fear we may indeed be too late,’ he muttered.
The vendors had folded up their wares by the time they reached the bazaar, and the rows of colourful stalls were nothing more than skeletal frames without their coverings of canvas. The three companions passed between them like ghosts. They were not alone in the abandoned market. Tymon glimpsed unmistakably Nurian faces peeping out from behind empty crates, pale and peaked among the evening shadows: small, ragged figures prowled the garbage canisters, scattering before they could be approached. The urchins of Cherk Harbour were a wary lot, shunning all contact. No native beggars importuned the travellers on their way through the market. There was an uneasy, claustrophobic atmosphere to the place that set Tymon’s teeth on edge. No one tarried in the aisles and the few passers-by hastened on as if they all had business of the most urgent sort, hoods drawn over their eyes.
He was surprised to see that much of the area was given over to large slatted pens of the sort used to corral herd-beasts. He had seen nothing bigger than a shillee sold in Marak, but in Cherk Harbour there seemed to be a thriving trade in livestock. It was with a shock like the twist of a blade that he became aware of the piles of manacles lying in the pens, the hardwood chains hanging from the slats. Row upon row of cages for human beings filled the bazaar, enough to hold ten times, a hundred times the number of pilgrims who came through Argos city every year. For all his upbringing, the blatant Lantrian trade in human flesh shocked him. The cages were empty but their stink, the dirty straw on their scuffed floors, bore mute witness to the extent of the trade in Cherk Harbour.
‘This city is cursed,’ he whispered to Jedda as they hurried past the endless rows of stalls.
Jedda’s eyes when she glanced at him reflected the light like a cat’s. ‘Perhaps it is we Nurians who are cursed,’ she murmured, out of earshot of the captain striding ahead. ‘Perhaps we bring it on ourselves.’
Before Tymon could ask her to explain this extraordinary comment, Laska’s voice summoned them through the stalls.
‘Too late. I knew it,’ he exclaimed.
They found him standing in front of a woven straw-frame shack under the eastern wall of the fissure, from which the sun had long since retreated. The door of the shack was shut and a plank had been nailed across it. A torn notice was affixed to its dilapidated front.
‘Written in Lantrian.’ Laska sighed in exasperation.
‘I can read it, I think,’ offered Tymon. ‘I learned some Lantrian at the seminary. Though I’m not sure how much I remember.’
He squinted at the scrap of straw-paper on the door in the dwindling light. ‘Closed by order of his Lordship Omni Salassi Zuma III, Governor of Cherk Harbour,’ he spelled out. ‘And then something about public health and an infestation. This is dated over a month ago, so there’s no way we could have reached here before then. Let’s see … Oh, yes.
These premises have been closed by order of his Lordship Omni Salassi Zuma III, etc etc … due to the danger to public health caused by an infestation of—’ He broke off in confusion. ‘No, that can’t be. I must be reading it wrong.’
‘An infestation of what?’ asked Laska. ‘Go on, just tell us what you see.’
‘I think it says caused by an infestation of women. But that makes no sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense, Tymon,’ sighed Laska, as Jedda gave a snort of dry laughter.
‘This is about the Oracle. I suspect that the Governor made her the same offer as he made us. And like us, she refused, incurring his wrath. This does not bode well for us.’ He shook his head worriedly. ‘The Oracle is more than capable of taking care of herself. But she does have a tendency to disappear when she’s no longer welcome. There’s no telling where she is now.’
‘Why would a Lantrian bother with Nurian Grafters?’ began Tymon. ‘In my experience, they have enough—’
‘What experience?’ burst out Jedda, rounding on him so suddenly and so vehemently that he jumped. ‘You haven’t been to Lantria — you didn’t even know they were slavers. What could you possibly know about this?’
‘Bas, Jedda,’ admonished Laska. The girl gave a stiff shrug and looked angrily away. ‘Let us not argue among ourselves for the benefit of our enemies. Tymon does have a point. The authorities in Cherk Harbour never showed any interest in Nurian beliefs before. The balance of power has shifted,’ he continued, more to himself than to the others. ‘The Argosians have their blast cannons. What will the Lantrians do now? That’s the real question.’
Tymon shivered. The temperature at the back of the fissure had grown colder with the lack of light and the market was plunged in frigid shadow. He felt the resentfulness of maligned innocence. He had been about to tell his companions of his experience on the Stargazer and Captain Safah’s offbeat mysticism, before Jedda interrupted him. He never knew where he was with the girl from Marak. He suddenly found that he missed Samiha acutely. She had always given him the benefit of the doubt, he thought. He had forgotten how dismissive she had been of him when they first met, how ready she had been to judge and condemn.
It was a discouraging end to their long day of journeying. Tymon’s uneasiness deepened as he peered about him at the empty stalls. He was overcome with the creeping conviction that they were being watched; he caught the whiff of an odd odour, like burning hair. For a breathless instant, he thought he saw a hooded figure flitting between two booths. But when he looked back again there was nothing but a piece of flapping black cloth.
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