‘It’ll be perilous anywhere in the City, if someone wants us dead,’ he replied briskly.
‘What if it’s the new empress who’s hunting us?’
‘Then it will do no good hiding. We will be found eventually. And we have both been loyal to the City. We should have nothing to fear from the empress.’ His words sounded hollow. But what was the choice? To leave the City? And go where? ‘You will be my bodyguard again. We must go underground.’
Her face was calm but he saw fear in her eyes. ‘Underground? You mean in the sewers, the Halls? I thought they were destroyed.’
‘In the centre of the City they have been washed away, but beyond that there will still be tunnels. But I don’t mean the Halls. I was told once that it was possible to walk through the heart of the City, from the Red Palace to the Shield, underground. The palace dungeons are connected to those under the mountain.’
‘Are they still in use?’ The emperor’s dungeons had a terrifying reputation.
‘I don’t know. We’ll find out.’
‘Do you know the way?’
‘No. But I know someone who does.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IN THE KHAN palace on the shield of freedom the clank and splash of laden pails told Fiorentina Vincerus, guest of the Khans, that her bath was being readied. It had been delayed because the girls assigned to her had been snatched away at Giulia Rae Khan’s whim for some kitchen task. Fiorentina snuggled into her layers of shawls and looked forward to the heat. A bath was one of the few ways of getting warm in the palace on chilly days.
The Khan Palace was one of the first built on the Shield, perhaps the very first, and it was not built for comfort. A fortress of yellow stone, it was draughty, damp and cold, even in summer. Marcus’ high hall was the only chamber boasting a fire and in winter all the residents of the palace, including the Khans, bundled themselves up in coats and capes and shawls until they could scarcely move.
‘Look, lady.’
Alafair, now her maid, showed her the sprigs of lavender she had found while foraging in the gardens. Fiorentina sniffed the scent.
‘Wonderful!’ she sighed.
‘I’ll put some in your bath and some under your pillow,’ the girl told her. Fiorentina smiled.
There was little enough to smile about. Her pregnancy made every move uncomfortable. She could not sleep, and eating made her chest hurt. Her back ached all the time. She pined daily for her lost love Rafe yet dreaded bringing forth his child. Giulia, who had birthed numerous infants, had sniffed at her worries, but the old woman made light of any discomfort just as she scorned the comforts of bathing and decent food.
It had been a while before Fiorentina had realized the Khans were poor. All their resources seemed to have been sunk into Marcus’ army, with little left for their daily existence on the Shield. Even the boatload of gold Giulia had cajoled from some northern king, intended for the war, had been handed over to the City treasury to fund rebuilding. Fiorentina guessed the Khans were poorer than many an Otaro merchant who contributed nothing to the war, or peace, apart from his criticism.
‘Lady,’ Alafair said, bending over her and speaking gently as if she were a sick child, ‘the lady Giulia invites you to her solar.’
Fiorentina sighed. ‘When?’
‘Now, lady. Or,’ the girl amended, ‘as soon as you feel able.’
Fiorentina struggled to stand, feeling like an upturned ladybird. Alafair took both her hands and pulled her upright.
They were on the stone terrace which stretched high across the south face of the palace. The Khan Palace had no pretty balconies or peaceful gardens in which to sit, but Fiorentina’s apartments gave on to the terrace and she spent a deal of time out there, for it was usually warmer than inside. The low terrace wall was thick with ivies and wild roses which billowed up over the sides and made her feel as though she was in some strange sky-garden. Fiorentina walked to the low parapet, where the terrace faced the Shell Path and a stretch of wooded slope leading down to the Gaeta palace. She wondered what Giulia wanted. She was never invited to the woman’s presence for the pleasure of her company.
Looking down, she saw a movement. For a moment, a heart-stopping beat, she thought she saw her husband sauntering through the trees, up the slope. The figure disappeared then appeared again. He was dark and slender, like Rafe, dressed in black and with a sword at his hip, as she had last seen her husband. She recognized the gait. She knew it as well as she knew the lines of her face in a mirror. It was Rafe. Her breath caught in her throat.
But it could not be. He was dead. Sadly she turned away and Alafair asked, ‘Are you all right, lady? You are pale.’
Fiorentina nodded, unable to speak. If he were, somehow, still alive then he would certainly have sought her out. It was not him. Over the summer she had seen other men, glimpsed in Marcus’ high hall or in the palace courtyard, who she’d thought were her husband. Just for a breath.
‘I had better see what Giulia wants,’ she sighed.
As usual Giulia’s solar managed to be both cold and stifling. It was gloomy and draped with threadbare tapestries whose ancient dust permeated the air. The dark wooden furniture and carved ceiling corbels were highly polished, though the rugs were worn and dirty. Fiorentina guessed Giulia could no longer see the grime, for her eyes were failing her, and her brother probably didn’t care.
‘Fiorentina,’ said her hostess from the gloom. ‘How are you?’
‘As well as can be expected,’ she replied, forcing a smile.
Giulia stepped into the light from the window and Fiorentina caught her breath. The woman had lost ten years, twenty years, since she last saw her. Giulia’s hair, normally a faded yellow, was now pure gold and thick and lustrous as a girl’s. Her face had shed the lines of laughter and pain and was smooth and dewy. Her eyes sparkled, and Fiorentina saw for the first time what a beauty she was. A trick of the light, she thought, feeling a little dizzy. She had been sitting in the daylight too long and the move into this shadowed place had her seeing things.
She looked around, trying to gather her emotions. She realized then that there was a strange man in the room, one dressed all in black, with dark hair. He looked nothing like Rafe.
‘This is Jona Lee Gaeta,’ Giulia said, touching the man’s arm in a familiar way.
He bowed and, bending over, took Fiorentina’s unresisting hand and pressed his lips to it. ‘My lady,’ he murmured.
Fiorentina was speechless. She had agreed with Giulia and Marcus that her presence in their palace be kept secret until after the birth. She had heard of this Jona, head of the Gaeta Family, but had never met him. She tried to remember what Rafe had told her about the Gaetas.
‘Jona,’ Giulia explained with an unreadable expression, ‘is here to pay court to you.’
‘She hides her feelings well,’ thought Giulia. Caught between anger at the revelation of her presence in the Khan household and shock at being treated like a breeding mare, or vice versa, Fiorentina managed an expression of polite disinterest which would have done credit to any imperial counsellor.
‘Cousin,’ Fiorentina replied, an expression she had never used before and one which Giulia found impertinent, ‘I am quite flustered by this news.’ She looks as flustered, thought Giulia, as one of my gate guards. ‘But that being the case perhaps the lord’s esteemed mother should also be privy to this conversation.’
Linking Giulia’s status in this way with that of the mad old woman Sciorra Gaeta, with whom Giulia had long enjoyed a mutual loathing, was even more impertinent. Giulia replied stiffly, ‘It is generous of you to imply kinship between us, Fiorentina, but I am here not as family chaperone but as a humble mediator, a disinterested party.’
They watched each other with hostile, smiling faces. Then Giulia sat and Fiorentina followed. Jona Lee Gaeta perched on the edge of a tapestried seat. He looked from one to the other.
Then he said smoothly, ‘I realize your noble husband has only recently died
, lady, and I have no ambitions to take his place in your affections. I am suggesting an alliance for political reasons between two great houses. My mother,’ he said, looking at Giulia, ‘concurs.’
‘Which houses?’ Fiorentina asked him, her voice cool. ‘Archange is now head of the Family Vincerus. I am merely someone who used to be married to her brother.’
Giulia could not but admire her façade of humility, though she was wrong on every point. For one thing, Archange was never a Vincerus, though she had long since chosen to adopt the name. Only a handful of people living had ever known that, and even fewer knew why.
‘I was referring to the houses of Khan and Gaeta,’ Jona was saying. ‘You have found sanctuary with the generous lord and lady, and I am ever seeking ways to increase the bonds between our two Families.’
‘Increase them?’ Fiorentina asked, her eyes narrowing. This girl is not a fool, thought Giulia.
Jona explained, ‘We are already linked, in a way, by our mutual decision to stay aloof from the internecine struggles among the Families down the years. And we have another important bond.’
He paused, and Fiorentina asked, ‘And that is?’
‘The bond of geography,’ Jona said. ‘Between our two palaces we control the Shell Path – the entrance, and exit, to the Shield. In alliance, and with the power of our two armies, should we choose we could cut off access to the White Palace. And isolate Archange.’ He smiled but his black eyes were cold as stone.
‘Not that we would ever wish to do so,’ Giulia felt obliged to put in.
She had been thinking about Fiorentina’s pregnancy all summer. She had thought about it so hard it had worn a long groove in her mind. This child, if it were Rafael’s, would be the only serious opposition to Archange’s line for the throne. Archange had perhaps one daughter and one granddaughter still living, that Giulia knew of. Her get would expect to succeed.
Unless … unless a Vincerus son emerged. For all its original egalitarian intent, despite the fact that women fought beside men in the war, the City was wildly unequal in its treatment of the sexes. A boy child outranked a girl every time. And Giulia was as sure as she was of anything that the child in Fiorentina’s belly was a boy.
But, with Marcus away, once it became known that a new heir had emerged Giulia would need allies to protect the child and to safeguard her own interests. The obvious course was to send Fiorentina away, to find her sanctuary far from Archange’s reach. But Giulia could not quite bring herself to do that. To again be the hub around which great power revolves, as she had been when wed to Marcellus, was too tempting.
If the babe lives, she thought. If it is not some sort of mutant. She shuddered.
Few people now alive knew Rafael Vincerus had been a reflection. With Araeon and Marcellus dead, that just left Reeve Guillaume, who had gone from the Salient, vanished who knew where. And the Gaetas? Does Jona know? He always gave the impression of knowing a great deal but keeping it to himself. His mother was certainly aware of Rafael’s status at one time, but Sciorra had forgotten most of what she had learned and was unlikely to have retained that piece of information in the few brain cells she had left.
As the silence stretched out, Jona said, ‘You are looking very lovely today, lady Giulia.’
No one knew the effort it took her now to draw on her Gift, but it was important that Jona not underestimate her own power in these negotiations. As one of the few Serafim left on this planet, she must make best use of her resources for herself and Marcus and for the City. A Vincerus emperor with a debt of gratitude to the Khans could ensure their future for another two hundred years. But as adoptive father of the child Jona would increase the power of the Gaetas a hundredfold. Did she really want that? Fiorentina would have to marry somebody, and once the fact of her condition was known offers would come from far and wide. A new source of power was about to be born and everyone would want a piece of it. Once it was clear the child was a Vincerus, much of the power would slip from Giulia’s fingers. The best way to retain it, of course, would be by Marcus marrying the woman. But, infuriatingly, he had laughed when she suggested it.
‘Why would a young beauty be interested in an old goat like me?’ he’d asked her.
‘She wouldn’t, of course, you old fool,’ she’d replied. ‘You’re missing the point. It would keep the power in our hands.’
But he’d shaken his head and Giulia knew he would not be moved. He was just an old soldier, he’d said, not a politician.
So the only way she could retain power was by marrying the woman off to someone she would be happy to ally with, and the only obvious candidate was Jona Lee Gaeta. Relations between the Khans and Gaetas had long been cordial. Although Giulia could not tolerate the matriarch Sciorra, this seemed irrelevant now as the old woman had not been seen in public for a century and was said to be as mad as a hatter, roaming the Iron Palace like a phantom.
She bowed her head in acknowledgment of Jona’s compliment. ‘You are kind, sir.’
‘Have you heard,’ Jona said, his tone confidential, ‘that the empress’s ward has disappeared from the Serafia?’
‘Of course,’ Giulia replied, annoyed that he should think her so out of touch. She glanced at Fiorentina. It was not appropriate that Jona should gossip in front of her. She was barely better than a whore, after all.
‘With Evan Broglanh,’ Jona added.
Giulia could not hide that she had not known that, and her eyes sparkled with interest.
‘Archange must be livid,’ she said happily.
Fiorentina asked, ‘Who is this ward?’
Jona explained, while Giulia sat enjoying the warm glow which came from contemplating other people’s mortal follies. This was the best of news. Although no one really believed Archange wanted the child Emly to succeed her, that was now right off the table. The girl would be lucky to survive this, and as for her soldier … For such a betrayal Archange might well revert to her predecessor’s ghastly ways with execution.
‘And I understand the empress is also seeking the Guillaume heir,’ Jona offered.
Giulia remembered the tall, redheaded young man, a friend of Fiorentina’s, who had spent some time as a guest in her palace after the Fall. Was he being swept up and disposed of? This could also be a good thing – the more Serafim, real or potential, imprisoned or dead the better.
She commented, ‘You are full of snippets of news today, my friend. Why does Archange want this boy – for execution? Perhaps he was privy to his sister Indaro’s assassination plans.’ She looked at Fiorentina, but the girl’s face concealed any feelings she might have about this Rubin.
‘Who knows why Archange does the things she does?’ Jona asked blandly.
She smiled, treating the question as rhetorical, but she knew the answer. Archange was motivated by pride and by vengeance. She harboured deep wells of rancour which had destroyed Araeon, and likely Marcellus also. She had plotted the fall of the City, scheming to see it rise again under her own control.
But other people could hold a grudge too, Giulia thought, and Archange might have underestimated the hatred of those Serafim who had been absent from her world, and perhaps her consciousness, for so long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
IT SEEMED THAT Drusus the drunkard’s flight from the flood and invasion had not improved his personality. When Rubin and Valla tracked him down in the sixth inn they’d tried, he raised a swollen red face and glared groggily at them.
‘Piss on you,’ he growled.
They had walked to the ruins of Amphitheatre and found Drusus’ stone house still filled with silt and debris. They had spoken to neighbours. He still lived there, they said, though his aunt was dead and his slave had run off. But Drusus had made no attempt to make the dwelling habitable since the flood and he spent his days, as before, visiting a string of taverns. Valla gazed at the house incredulously, thinking most people in the City would kill to live in such a well-built home, and she was surprised no one had taken it from
the man at the point of a sword.
She was even more surprised when she met him. The former dungeon guard was not so fat as Rubin had described him, but he was wretched and dirty, the front of his shirt marking the uncertain transit of many meals and jugs of ale. He stank, the inn they were in stank, and she rested her hand on her sword-hilt and wondered if Rubin knew what he was doing.
Rubin dumped a bulging bag of coin on the scarred table in front of Drusus’ bulbous nose.
‘Drusus Vermilo, the empress demands your attendance.’
Ears all around the squalid inn pricked up, heads turned, eyes narrowed. Valla resisted looking at them, estimating the level of threat.
Drusus stared at the bag, then peered up into Rubin’s face, and repeated, ‘Piss on you, whoever you are.’
Rubin picked up the money and looked around him. ‘You two,’ he said briskly, gesturing to two brawny fellows, ‘I have coin for you if you take this man out and dunk him in the horse trough.’
The pair leaped up willingly and grabbed Drusus by the arms, hauling him to his feet. The drunkard struggled. ‘Help,’ he wheezed. Several chairs were pushed back, grating across the stone floor. Valla stepped in front of Rubin and drew her sword. Its metal gleamed in the dull light and the men all sat down again.
Drusus was sobering up fast. ‘The empress, you say?’ he said, struggling against the pair who were trying to wrestle him through the doorway.
‘We are at her command,’ Rubin told him.
Once out in the daylight, blinking, Drusus complained, ‘Get these thugs off me. I’ll listen.’ Rubin tossed the men a gold coin each and they shambled back into the inn to spend their sudden wealth.
‘The name of Drusus Vermilo has come to the Immortal’s notice,’ Rubin told him. He leaned in confidingly. ‘The Hand of Saduccuss now holds sway at the White Palace. The empress asks you to accompany us there.’
The Hand of Saduccuss, Valla knew, was one of the myriad groups of conspirators which had blossomed and died in the last years of the old emperor. It plotted self-importantly though without result and was generally thought of as a drinking-club for disaffected veterans.
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