by Jude Fisher
Tycho smiled. It was a smile of great contentment and confidence; it made gimlets of his eyes. He leaned forward. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I do not think that money will be the problem.’
‘And what does your lordship think may provide an obstacle?’
‘Men’s hearts and minds. It will take much persuasion to raise the Council to war: not everyone will see the right of it.’
Now it was Rui Finco’s turn to smile. ‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘Men’s hearts. And loins.’ His smile became unpleasantly personal. He leaned across the table and touched the Lord of Cantara on the arm so that the man recoiled. ‘Do not be alarmed, my lord: I harbour no desires for my own sex. A willing woman – or even an unwilling one – eh, my lord? – is all I ever crave. Women hold a great mystery, do they not, my friend? Veiled or unveiled, we are blind to their true natures; but how they draw us in, with their subtle signs and their perfect hands, their mellow voices and their soft lips; their seductive scents and the promise of that slippery, hot flesh beneath.’
Tycho looked appalled.
‘You see, my lord of Cantara, I know your inner mind; I have seen into your heart: I know your true desire and motivation.’ Rui stood up, set his palms flat on the low table and bent across to place his mouth an inch from Lord Issian’s right ear. ‘The Rosa Eldi,’ he whispered, and withdrew.
Tycho’s face became a mask of stone, his turbulent emotions betrayed only by the draining of the colour from his skin, leaving it an unhealthy, sallow colour in which the veins stood out like marbling.
Rui Finco settled back upon his bench with his back against the wall and stared pointedly at the tapestry over the Lord of Cantara’s head showing scenes from the Battle of Sestria Bay, a campaign fought during the Third War which had saved the north coast of Istria from the Eyran invaders. Above his head, ancient galleys cut through the azure water of the Istrian Sea, their serried rows of oars delineated in precise lines, their sails furled for close-range fighting and to prevent damage from the northerners’ fire-arrows. Using the enemy’s own weapon against him, Rui thought with a vicious inward smile. Unbeknownst to the Eyrans, the commander of the southern fleet – his own grandfather, Luis Finco, Lord of Forent – had armed his ships with great iron battering rods, fitted to the keel beneath the waterline, and thus invisible to the eye. He had invited the northern fleet to engage them at close quarters, and then, with the rowers suddenly ordered to full speed, the Istrians had rammed and holed the great Eyran vessels, and a vast slaughter had taken place. It was one of Istria’s most famous victories: the only Eyrans to survive had been gelded and sold as slaves. Men whose grandfathers had fought in the Third War still heralded the Battle of Sestria Bay as Istria’s finest hour, citing it as proof that Istrian vessels were as fine as those made in the north; but Rui knew the truth: they had won that engagement only because of his grandfather’s wiliness, and because it had taken place in Istrian waters, close to home. There was no skill in the south at making the sort of ships at which the northerners excelled – the sort of ships that would breast stormwaves and hurricane winds, that would skim the ocean like great birds – and no great skill at sailing them, either. Carrying war to the north would require the services of another Eyran ship-maker turned traitor, and enough mercenary northerners to navigate them there. And if the Lord of Cantara had the money and the will – for whatever reason – to help to fuel that war, he was just what Rui had been looking for. Especially, he thought, since Tycho would owe him the very great favour of keeping his correct deductions to himself, and Rui liked to have others owe him favours.
‘How did you know?’ the other man breathed.
There was desperation in his eyes, Rui noted with some satisfaction. To harbour such lust for a nomad whore that you would invoke the Goddess in your call for a holy war just to lay your hands on her was hardly the honourable behaviour of a devout and patriotic Istrian nobleman. Nevertheless, he leaned forward again and patted the Lord of Cantara on the arm. ‘I have eyes, my lord. Love burns powerfully inside you, I can see. And what better motive for a conflict than to rescue the frail sex from the barbarians in the name of love?’
Tycho breathed out a great sigh. ‘It is a relief to me to be able to speak of this at all,’ he said softly. ‘I have never felt such fire for any woman. I do not think . . .’ He paused, considering. ‘I do not think she is entirely human, the Rosa Eldi; for she is like no woman I have ever seen, or hope to see again. I believe she is touched by the divine, and so I must have her, you see. I must save her soul.’
Absurd, Rui thought. The man is clearly so obsessed with the creature that he raises her on the highest of pedestals and like an alchemist turns basest emotion to pure silver. ‘Assuredly an extraordinary creature,’ he returned blandly.
‘And what, pray, my lord, do you hope to gain from carrying a war to the Eyrans?’ Tycho asked, his tone suddenly sharp.
Ah, now we come to the nub of it. ‘I want the Ravenway,’ Rui said smoothly and looked the southern lord hard in the eye. It was only half of the truth, but he could see by the calculating look that crossed the Lord of Cantara’s face that it was sufficient explanation.
Tycho nodded slowly. ‘The Ravenway,’ he repeated. ‘Seaway to all the ancient lands. Do you even know it exists?’
‘The northerners believe it does, and that’s enough for me. Ravn’s been assembling a fleet to attempt the crossing for the last two years and more; just think of all those fine Eyran vessels, ready for the taking—’
‘But in a war, those vessels will be sailing against us.’
‘Indeed, my lord. But imagine if we were to make a preemptive strike on Halbo before war is formally declared, storm their capital, steal their ships – and their Rose—’
Tycho became very still. ‘Finding the right men for that job will take time, and a lot of money . . .’
Rui shrugged. ‘The genius is all in the planning; but with my strategies and your silver . . .’ There: it was said. He watched the Lord of Cantara digest the idea and wondered which way he would jump. They would have to kill him, of course, if he made the wrong decision; but there were many misfortunes that might befall a naive southern visitor to the decadent city of Cera.
The ensuing silence was long and uncomfortable. Rui began to count the ways the man might most safely be disposed of. At last Tycho smiled. ‘My silver is at your command, my lord of Forent.’
At first Virelai had wondered if the voice he had heard had merely existed in his imagination. He knew he had been preoccupied of late by the Master’s fate, and his own, by extension; so for a time the refrain ‘he’s awake’ had given him considerable pause for thought. But then, if it was the mage that had woken, who was informing Virelai of the fact? He had left the Master alone on Sanctuary: of that he was sure. And if Rahe were awake, Virelai had no doubt that he would know about it from the mage himself, and in none too gentle a fashion.
So then his suspicions had fallen upon the cat – for who knew what the magical beast was capable of? – but no matter how he cajoled or threatened it, Bëte offered him no more than a contemptuous expression and an annoyed flick of the tail.
Ever since he had first heard it Virelai had been as jumpy as a mouse hearing the cry of a predator, snapping out of deep sleep in the dead hours of the night at the slightest sound, jumping at odd noises during the day, and listening, always listening, for the return of the voice.
Then one night his new master had come to him in a highly agitated state, his eyes gleaming as if someone had lit a fire in his head. Unable to stand still for a minute, Tycho had paced the room, talking at such high speed that Virelai could make out barely one word in three, his hands opening and closing like ravenous mouths. Unnerved, Bëte had fled away under the bed where she bubbled and hissed like an overheated kettle.
More silver, seemed to be the import of his babblings; a lot more silver was needed, as fast as possible. Was there not, he had asked Virelai, another way of producing it? He was having tr
ouble laying hands on sufficient tin and brass for the sorcerer to work on; besides, he had bought up so much of the stuff recently that the price of the lesser metals had soared. Soon the transformative process would be barely profitable, given the time and effort he had to put into trading on the goods he had to buy quickly with the fake silver. Could not Virelai work his magic on bricks, maybe; or even bread? But when Virelai had once more tried patiently to explain the difference between the magic required in changing the appearance of like for like, metal for metal, and that required in changing the essential nature of things, Tycho had merely ignored him and carried on in like vein for several minutes about ships and something called the Crow’s Path or the like. Several times in this tirade, Virelai had caught the name of the Rosa Eldi and, with some venom, Ravn Asharson, King of Eyra; that barbarian, scoundrel and pirate. And then the Lord of Cantara had clapped his sorcerer on the back and left in as great a hurry as he had arrived, leaving Virelai to ponder on his instructions.
And so Virelai had redoubled his efforts; until Cera ran out of tin ingots. Then they had had to bribe a local blacksmith out of his premises and Virelai had worked by night as well as by day, for now he had to smelt his own raw materials from the pewter dishes and tin mugs, brass ornaments and candlesticks that Tycho sent his slaves out across the city’s markets to purchase or steal. And ever Virelai kept the cat by his side, trussed up in its ridiculous red harness and the muzzle to stop it from mewing incessantly, drawing on its strength and on its well of spellcraft. There would come a time for reckoning between them, he could tell: for the cat’s eyes reflecting the smithy fires gave back a stare as inimical as death.
And then one night the Lord of Cantara sent a slave down to the smithy to fetch him back to his chambers – for a drink, the boy said, just a drink. Virelai stared at the lad. ‘What, now?’ The alloy was bubbling in its great cauldron; the ingot moulds lay waiting, and he was behind schedule again. ‘He wants me to come back to the castle for a drink?’
The child – Felo, Virelai thought, though he and Tam looked so similar it was hard for him to tell – nodded urgently and grabbed him by the hand. ‘Now, now, or he will beat me. And he said, “bring the cat”.’
As if cognizant of this request, Bëte wound herself around the boy’s legs till he laughed and scooped her up himself. Virelai watched this little charade through hooded eyes. She would rake me bloody if I tried the same, he thought bitterly, aware that all over his forearms and hands there were scars that told that very story.
The Lord of Cantara’s rooms were on the floor below Virelai’s own tiny chamber, rented from the Duke at no little expense; but where Virelai’s were plain and unadorned, consisting only of a stone bed carved out of the wall, fitted with a straw pallet and covered with an insufficient and smelly woollen blanket (which privation suited him well, reminding him as it did of his room back in Sanctuary) Tycho Issian’s rooms professed his master’s love of fine living. The floors were covered with Circesian rugs woven with ancient and mystical symbols said to bring wealth to those who walked upon them; the furniture was all by craftsmen from the Blue Woods; and statues of the Goddess adorned every alcove and cranny. Tonight, the air was thick with safflower incense: it appeared that the lord had been engaged in prayer.
But Tycho did not seem like a man whose soul had been soothed by long meditation; rather he looked flushed and manic, and his breath smelled of undiluted araque.
Virelai looked around. On the settle outside the lord’s own chamber there was an unfamiliar cloak, and on the floor below it a streak of some smeared substance, dark enough to have stained the wood. Virelai frowned. It was rare that the lord drank the red wines of the region, declaring them as he did detrimental to the health, since they heated the blood and blurred the mind. Felo let go of the cat, which ran at once to the stain and sniffed at it with great interest. A moment later, there came a muffled sound from behind the door, and when Virelai stared at his master in puzzlement, he was alarmed to see the white showing all around his dark pupils.
‘Damnation, I thought he was dead!’ With two strides, Tycho was at the door to his chamber and had flung it open. On the floor inside lay a dark shape which groaned and clutched at something that looked suspiciously like the Lord of Cantara’s ornamental knife, the one with the curved, serrated blade that he used for cutting apart his morning grapefruit. Virelai stared down in dismay. The shape resolved itself as a man, a plump, dark man with greying hair, his face turned in agony into the floor, his body curled around his wound like a dying wasp.
‘My lord—’ Virelai started, and at the sound of his voice the man turned over. Virelai gazed at the face thus revealed. He had seen this man somewhere before . . .
It was Gesto Ardum, the merchant to whom the lord had paid what to others would seem a great fortune for a consignment of jewellery and gemstones which he had then traded on or given away to buy favour with the Council lords.
Tycho grasped his sorcerer’s shoulder with a vicious hand. ‘He came here complaining,’ he hissed furiously. ‘It seems that the silver we paid him is not as pure as it first appeared.’
Ah, thought Virelai, feeling his heart hammer. I wondered how long the illusion would last. It had been a month or more since they had done business with the merchant.
‘You have to get rid of him! No one can find him here: it would ruin my reputation. Kill him and transform him into something . . . small; something you and Felo can carry out of here and dispose of without attracting attention to yourselves.’
Virelai stared at him, aghast. ‘I cannot!’ He took a step away, but the Lord of Cantara came with him.
‘You will! You must!’
‘I cannot kill, my lord: I beg you – there is a geas on me—’
‘A curse? What care I for such?’
‘If I kill, I will die myself, and you will be left with no sorcerer—’
That stopped Tycho. His faced twisted with fury, then he stepped back to the merchant, and, setting his foot on the man’s capacious belly, dragged out the belt-knife. The man squirmed and shrieked. A hot jet of blood fountained up, followed by another as Tycho buried it in Gesto Ardum’s fat throat. The squirming and shrieking came to an abrupt halt and a heavy silence descended over the chambers.
Tycho Issian turned to his sorcerer. His face was a dripping mask of red. The knife was red, and so were his hands. Virelai had seen demons in the Master’s books which looked more human. His head began to buzz and itch, his own words ricocheting around and around his skull until he had to open his mouth and let them out: ‘Every creature has the right to its own life,’ he said now, aloud, ‘no matter how they come into this world—’
‘I have just saved your life with this act,’ the lord said unfairly, ‘and it will be many years before you earn it back. You can make a start by getting rid of this thing.’
And so Virelai had laboured long over the body of Gesto Ardum; but flesh will transform only to flesh, and no matter what he tried all he could manage was a change in the merchant’s appearance. At last, he managed to make the merchant such an aged crone that Tycho cried, ‘Enough! At least no one could lay her at my feet and claim a link!’ He had the sorcerer make rags of the merchant’s rich clothes, and then ordered Virelai and Felo to hoist the corpse up onto the sill and lever it out into the night air. Virelai watched it tumble away, a pale, stiff thing that disappeared into the canopy of trees below. Pigeons came shooting up out of the boughs, startled from their sleep; but beyond that there was no sound of discovery.
Two hours later, after much aggressive scrubbing and polishing, Virelai was back in his own bed, lying as rigid as the corpse, staring at a ceiling silvered by moonlight. It was a colour he had come to hate.
He could not sleep. He dared not sleep; for whenever he closed his eyes all he could see was the blood on Tycho’s face and the murder in his eyes. At last, he got out of bed and walked across the cold stone floor to the window. With his hands set squarely on the sill, he
stared out into the darkness, his skull as empty as a drum. A moment later, the tower vibrated, a great thrumming that started under his fingers and overran his arms and shoulders, and then the bones of his throat and head. Through it, he felt how the stone of the tower met its deep foundations in the rocky veins of the earth; how those veins travelled out and away, far away—
Come to me! cried a voice; and Virelai knew it for the voice, the one he had been waiting to hear again. Come south, far south, to the mountains! From desperation, the voice took on a note of cunning. Come south and free me, and I will reward you.
How will you do that? Virelai made the question inside his own head.
I know who you are.
Is that you, Master? Is it Rahe who speaks? Only the Master knew his history. Virelai felt very afraid now.
There was a silence, then the world trembled.
I am Sirio, the voice boomed. Come south to the great caves beyond the Dragon’s Backbone. And bring my sister, and the cat . . .
A great heat filled the room, and the vibration took on a noise all its own. In panic, Virelai pulled away from the sill, breaking the strange contact. But the sound was still loud, and something was breathing in the room behind him. In trepidation, he turned, and found that Bëte the cat was gone, and in its place was a monstrous creature: a vast black jaguar with eyes that glowed like coals and a purr that filled the world. It opened its huge red mouth so that Virelai was treated to the unwelcome sight of its knifelike teeth and great red flag of a tongue.
The Man, the Woman and the Beast, it said into his mind. We shall be reunited.
Interim
The hand of night reaches down to enfold the islands of the Northern Ocean. Already it has cast its inky net over Blackwater Moor and the Nag’s Head, over Long Eye Lake and the Old Man of Westfall; over Halbo and Southeye and Rockfall in the Westman Isles. In the bay at Ness, the fishing boats bob on a sudden churn of current, the waves slapping against sturdy wooden hulls to send them dipping and rocking, before breaking in a crash of white water on the seawall. On the greenstone cliffs bordering the chill waters of the Sharking Straits, the last of the seabirds have found their roosts and laid their heads beneath their wings. Their cries have ceased, but they do not sleep: out of nowhere, a cold wind has just barrelled up the precipitous sides of the chasm, ruffling their feathers and waking their young. On the quayside of the village at Wolf’s Sound, on the northernmost and ill-named Fair Isle, the only movement that might catch the attention of an observer is that of a pair of cats, out on the prowl for their dinner and some sport, as they cross the starlit space between the fishing nets and crab-pots. As a cloud passes across the silver eye of the moon, one of the pair startles, the fur on its back lifting and jagging as the muscles shiver and contract. The other cat drops uncomfortably to its haunches, ears flat. In the distance, a child wails, its sleep disturbed by a nightmare. At Stormway, all the dogs begin to howl at once; and in the upland saeters, where the sheep have spent the day cropping the sweet summer grass, the flock shifts about anxiously.