by Iain Banks
"You did, Oelph."
"I beg your pardon, mistress."
"Oh, it's quite all right, Oelph. I don't mind. Listen away, with my blessing."
The music changed again, and it was time for the two rows of dancers to form a circle and then reconstitute themselves in an alternate order. In the circle, the Doctor held my hand firmly but gently. Her hand, which I'd swear squeezed mine just before she let go, felt warm and dry, and the skin smooth.
Before too long I was dancing in the middle of the great ballroom of our Kingdom's second palace — and arguably its first in opulence — with a smiling, giggling, porcelain-skinned princess from the Half-Hidden Kingdoms in the high, snow-besieged mountains that climb most-way into the sky beyond the savage anarchy of Tassasen.
Her cloud-white skin was tattooed on eyelid and temple, and pierced with jewelled studs at her nostrils and the septum between nose and upper lip. She was short but curvaceous, dressed in a highly ornamented and colourful version of the booted, straight-skirted fashion of her people. She spoke little Imperial and no Haspidian, and her knowledge of the dance steps was somewhat fragmentary. Still she contrived to be an enchanting dancing partner, and I confess that I caught little of what passed between the Doctor and the King, noting only that the Doctor looked very tall and graceful and correct while the King seemed most animated and merry, even if his steps were not as fluent as they would normally have been (the Doctor had strapped his ankle up especially tightly that afternoon, knowing that he would be certain to take part in the dancing). Both wore smiles beneath their half-masks.
The music swelled and rolled over us, the grand people and beautiful masks and costumes surged and eddied about us, and we, resplendent in our finery, were the bright focus of it all. The Doctor moved and swayed at my side and occasionally I caught a hint of her perfume, which was one that I was never able to identify and cannot ever recall seeing her apply. It was an astonishing scent. It reminded me at once of burned leaves and sea spray, of newly turned earth and of seasonal flowers in bloom. There was, too, something tenebrous and intense and sensual about the scent, something sweet and sharp at the same tune, at once lithe and full-bodied and utterly enigmatic.
In later years, when the Doctor was long gone from us and even her most manifest features were becoming difficult to recall with perfect clarity, I would, in diverse moments of private intimacy, catch a hint of that same odour, but the encounter would always prove fleeting.
I freely confess that on such occasions the recollection of that long-ago night, the magnificent ballroom, the splendid profusion of the dancers and the breath-arresting presence of the Doctor seemed like a capstan of ache and longing attached by the ropes of memory to my heart, squeezing and tightening and compressing it until it seemed inevitable that it must be burst asunder.
Engulfed in that riotous storm of the senses, by eye and ear and nose beset, I was at once terrified and exhilarated, and experienced that strange, half-elatory, half-fatalistic alloy of emotions that leads one to feel that if one died at that precise moment, suddenly and painlessly (indeed ceased to be rather than went through the process of dying at all), then it would somehow be a blessed and culminatory thing.
"The King seems happy, mistress," I observed as we stood side by side again.
"Yes. But he is starting to limp," the Doctor said, and sent the briefest of frowns in Duke Quettil's direction. "This was an unwise choice of dance for a man with an ankle which is still recovering." I watched the King, but of course he was not dancing at that point. However, I could not help but notice that rather than make the fill-in steps, he was standing still, weight on his good leg, clapping his hands in time instead. "How is your Princess?" the Doctor asked me with a smile.
"Her name is Skoon, I think," I said, frowning. "Or that may be the name of her homeland. Or her father. I'm not sure."
"She was introduced as Princess of Wadderan, I believe," the Doctor told me. "I doubt that Skuin is her name. That is the name of the type of dress she is wearing, a skuin-trel. I imagine she thought you were pointing at that when asking for a name. However, given that she is a female of the Wadderani royal family, her name is probably Gul- something or other."
"Oh. You know of her people?" This confused me, for the Sequestered or Half-Hidden Kingdoms are some of the most remote and thoroughly land-locked places in the known world.
"I have read about them," the Doctor said urbanely, before being pulled into the centre to dance with the tall Trosilian Prince. I was paired with his sister. A lanky, generally ungainly and rather plain woman, she nevertheless danced well enough and seemed quite as merry as the King. She was happy to engage me in conversation, though she did seem under the impression that I was a nobleman of some distinction, an illusion which I was probably rather too slow to dispel.
"Vosill, you look wonderful," I heard the King tell the Doctor. I saw her head dip a little and she murmured something back to him which I could not hear. I experienced a pang of jealousy that turned for an instant to wild fear when I realised who it was I was feeling jealous of. Providence, our own dear King!
The dance went on. We met with the Duke and Duchess of Keitz, then formed a circle once more — the Doctor's hand was as firm and warm and dry as before — and then took up again with our earlier eightsome. I was breathing hard by this time and did not wonder that people the age of Duke Walen usually sat out this sort of dance. Especially when one was masked, it was a long, hot and tiring business.
Duke Quettil danced with the Doctor in frosty silence. Young Ulresile fairly ran into the middle of our group to meet the Doctor and continued in his attempt to press some portion of his family's equity upon her, while she parried each suggestion as neatly as it was made awkwardly.
Finally (and thankfully, for my feet were becoming quite sore in my new dress shoes and I was in some need of relieving myself) we shared a set with Lady Ulier and Guard Commander Adlain.
"Tell me, Doctor," Adlain said as they danced together. "What is a… gahan?"
"I'm not sure. Do you mean a gaan?"
"Of course, you pronounce it so much better than I. Yes. A gaan."
"It is the title of an officer in the Drezeni civil command. In Haspidus, or in Imperial terms, it would roughly correspond to a town master or burghead, though without the military authority and with an additional expectation that the man or woman would be capable of representing Drezen at junior consular level when abroad."
"Most illuminating."
"Why do you ask, sir?"
"Oh, I read a report recently from one of our ambassadors… from Cuskery, I think, which mentioned the word as though it was some sort of rank but without including any explanation. I intended to ask one of our diplomatic people but it must have slipped my mind. Seeing you and thinking of Drezen obviously secured it again."
"I see," the Doctor said. There was more passed between them, but then Lady Ulier, Duke Ulresile's sister, spoke to me.
"My brother seemed most fixed upon your lady physician," she said. Lady Ulier was a few years older than either myself or her brother, with the same narrow-pinched and sallow look as he, though her dark eyes were bright and her brown hair lustrous. Her voice was somewhat strident and abrasive even when pitched low, however.
"Yes," I said. I could think of little else.
"Yes. I imagine he seeks a physician for our family, which is of course of the finest quality. Our own midwife grows old. Perhaps the lady physician will provide a suitable replacement when the King grows tired of her, should we think her suitable and sufficiently trustworthy."
"With the greatest respect, ma'am, I think that would demean her talents."
The lady looked down her long nose at me. "Do you, indeed! Well, I think not. And you perjure yourself, sir, for the greatest respect you could have accorded me would have been to have said nothing to contradict what I had just said."
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. It was simply that I could not bear to see so noble and fair a lady so
deceived regarding the abilities of Doctor Vosill."
"Yes. And you are…?"
"Oelph, my lady. It is my honour to have been the Doctor's assistant throughout the time she has treated our good King."
"And your family?"
"Is no more, my lady. My parents were of the Koetic persuasion and perished when the Imperial regiment of our late King sacked the city of Derla. I was a baby in swaddling at the time. An officer took pity on me when he might as well have thrown me on to a fire and brought me back to Haspidus. I was raised amongst the orphans of officers, a loyal and faithful servant of the crown."
The lady looked at me with some horror. In a strangled voice she said, "And you wish to teach me the proprieties of who should serve our family?" She laughed in such a way that the shriek produced surely convinced most of those surrounding us that I had just stamped upon her toe, then for the rest of the set she kept her nose angled as though trying to balance a marble-fruit upon its tip.
The music had stopped. We all bowed to each other and the King, hobbling a little, was surrounded by dukes and princes all of whom seemed desperately anxious to talk to him. The little Wadderan princess, whose name I had established was Gul-Aplit, gave me a polite wave as a forbidding-looking chaperone appeared at her side and escorted her away. "Are you all right, Oelph?" the Doctor asked.
"I am very well, mistress," I told her. "A little warm."
"Let's get something to drink and then step outside. What do you say?"
"I'd say that was a very good idea, mistress, if not two."
We collected two tall goblets of some form of aromatic punch which we were assured by the servants was weak in alcohol and then, with our masks off at last — and following a brief period to obey the call of nature — we made our way out on to the balcony which ran round the outside of the ballroom, joining a good hundred or so others taking the fragrant night air.
It was a dark night and would be long. Seigen had almost joined Xamis at sundown that evening and for a good quarter of the wholeday there would be only the moons to light the sky. Foy and Iparine were our lanterns that evening, their bluey-grey luminescence filled out along the balcony's tiles and the terraces of garden, fountain and hedge by glowing paper lamps, cressets of oilwood and scented pole-torches.
Duke and Duchess Ormin and their party approached us on the balcony, their way lit for them by dwarves carrying short poles, on the tip of which were large spheres of clear glass containing what looked like millions of soft and tiny sparks. As these curious apparitions came closer we saw that the globes contained hundreds and hundreds of glowflies, all milling and darting about in their strange confinement. They spread little light, but much amazement and delight. The Duke exchanged nods with the Doctor, though the Duchess did not deign to acknowledge us.
"Did I hear you telling the very young but very grand Lady Ulier your life history, Oelph?" the Doctor asked, sipping at her goblet as we strolled.
"I mentioned something about my upbringing, mistress. It may have been a mistake. She cannot think better of either of us for it."
"From the impression, not to mention the looks I got,
I do not think she could think much less of me, but I'm sorry if she finds your orphanhood in some way reprehensible."
"That and the fact that my parents were Koetics."
"Well, one must allow for the prejudices of nobles. Your forebears professed themselves not only republican, but so god-fearing they had neither dread nor respect left for any worldly authority."
"Theirs was a sadly mistaken creed, mistress, and I am not proud to be associated with it, though I honour my parents" memory as any child must."
The Doctor looked at me. "You do not resent what happened to them?"
"To the extent that I resent their suppression as a people who preached forgiveness rather than violence, I condemn the Empire. For the fact that I was recognised as an innocent and rescued, I thank Providence that I was discovered by a Haspidian officer who acted under the more humane orders of our good King's father.
"But I never knew my parents, mistress, and I have never met anybody who knew them, and their faith is meaningless to me. And the Empire, whose very existence might have fuelled an urge for vengeance on my part, is gone, brought down by the fire which fell from the sky. One unchallengeably mighty force brought down by an even greater one." I looked at her then, and felt, from the expression in her eyes, that we were talking and not just behaving as equals. "Resentment, mistress? What is the point of feeling that?"
She took my hand in hers for a moment then, and squeezed it rather as she had during the dance, and after that she put her arm through mine, an action that had fallen into disuse and even disrepute within polite society and which occasioned not a few looks. To my own surprise I felt honoured rather than embarrassed. It was a gesture of friendliness rather than anything else, but it was a gesture of closeness and comfort, and I felt just then that I was the most favoured man in all the palace, regardless of birth, title, rank or circumstance.
"Ah! I am murdered! Murdered! Help me! Help me! Murdered!"
The voice rang out across the balcony. Everybody stopped as though frozen into statues, then looked round at a tall door leading from one of the smaller rooms next to the ballroom as it opened further and a half-clothed figure fell slowly out of it into the light, gripping the pale gold curtains that fluted back inside, where thin, girlish screams began to sound.
The man, dressed only in a white shirt, gradually rolled over so that his face pointed towards the moons. The pure white shirt seemed to glow in the moonlight. High on his chest near one shoulder there was a bright, vividly red mark, like a freshly picked blossom. The man's collapse to the stones of the balcony was accomplished with a sort of idle grace, until his violent grip on the curtains and his weight overcame their supports and they gave way.
With that, he slumped quickly to the ground and the curtains came billowing, folding down upon him, like syrup on to the body of a struggling insect, entirely covering his round shape so that, while the screams from the room still sounded and everybody still stood where they were, staring, it was almost as though there was no body there at all.
The Doctor moved first, dropping her goblet on to the balcony with a crash and running towards the tall, slowly swinging door.
It was a moment or two longer before I could break the spell that had descended upon me, but eventually I was able to follow the Doctor — through a crowd of servants most of whom suddenly and to my confusion seemed to be carrying swords — to where the Doctor was already kneeling, throwing back the folds of curtain, burrowing down to where the twitching, bleeding form of Duke Walen lay dying.
14. THE BODYGUARD
"Loose!"
The small catapult bucked, the arm — indeed not much bigger than a man's outstretched arm — flicked forward and thudded against the hide cushion on the weapon's tall cross-beam. The stone burred away through the air, arcing over the lower terrace and down towards the garden below. The projectile hit alongside one of DeWar's cities, embedding itself in the carefully raked soil and kicking up a big puff of red-brown dust that hung for a while in the air, slowly drifting off to the one side and settling gradually back to the ground.
"Oh, bad luck!"
"Very close!"
"Next time."
"Very nearly, General Lattens," DeWar said. He had been sitting on the balustrade, arms crossed, one leg dangling. He jumped off on to the black and white tiles of the balcony and squatted by his own miniature catapult. He pulled quickly and powerfully on the round wheel which ratcheted the creaking, groaning wooden arm back until it settled about three-quarters of the way towards the horizontal rear cross-member. The arm bowed fractionally with the strain of the twisted hide at its base trying to force it forward again.
Lattens, meanwhile, got up on to the same stone rail DeWar had been sitting on. His nurse held on tightly to the back of his jacket to prevent him from falling. Lattens raised his toy tele
scope to his eye to survey the damage done in the garden below.
"A little to the left, next time, my lad," UrLeyn told his son. The Protector, his brother RuLeuin, Doctor BreDelle, BiLeth, Commander ZeSpiole and the concubine Perrund sat attended by various servants on an awninged platform raised to about the same height as the balustrade and overlooking the scene.
Lattens stamped his foot on the stonework. His nurse held him tighter.
Perrund, veiled in gauzy red, turned to the Protector. "Sir, I'm sure the nurse holds him well enough, but it makes my bones ache seeing him up there. Would you humour one of your older ladies" timid foolishness by calling for a step-ladder? It would let him see over the rail without having to climb on to it."
Foreign minister BiLeth frowned and made a tssking noise.
UrLeyn pursed his lips. "Hmm. Good idea," he said. He beckoned a servant.
The entire terrace of the garden two storeys below had been divided into two and modelled to resemble a landscape in miniature, with hills, mountains, forests, a large walled capital city, a dozen or so smaller cities, twice as many towns, many roads and bridges and three or four rivers flowing into a couple of small, about bath-sized lakes on each side and then on into a large body of water which represented an inland sea.
The sea was in the shape of two rough circles which just met in the middle, so that there was a short, narrow channel connecting the two great lakes. Various of each territory's towns and cities lay on the shores of the two smaller lakes, with even more on the coasts of the two lobes of the sea, though in each case one territory had many more settlements round one part of the sea than the other, DeWar's territory having the most round the lobe of water nearer to the balcony and the two catapults.
DeWar secured the triggering post on his catapult and carefully unhitched the winding mechanism, then selected a stone from the pile between the two model weapons and, once Lattens had climbed down from the balustrade, loaded the stone into the cup at the end of the machine's arm. He repositioned the catapult according to chalk marks on the black tiles, stood, eyes narrowed, to survey his target area, squatted to adjust the catapult's 'position once more, then took the stone out of the cup and reconnected the winding mechanism to let out a little of the strain before re-latching the triggering post.