by Tim Stead
He was pleased when Ulric rapped on his door.
“What is it?”
“Messengers from Taranath,” Ulric said. “Two of the soldiers that went with him have returned.”
Sam sprang to his feet. “They’re here?”
Ulric smiled indulgently. “I’ll send them up,” he said.
Sam sat again and waited, drumming his fingers on the desk, staring at the door. It seemed an age before the soldiers were shown in, wet and still dripping from the rain, and seated in the chairs opposite. One of them fished inside his coat and brought out a leather wrapped parcel.
“From Officer Taranath,” he said, depositing the thing on Sam’s desk. Sam snatched it up. The wax seal was unbroken. He snapped it off and unfolded Taranath’s missive. One of the soldiers made to stand.
“You’ll wait while I read it,” Sam said. “I may have questions.”
They waited.
The letter was in Taranath’s careful and legible hand and was, as usual, a masterwork of clarity.
Sam read it twice. The High Green man had done a thorough job. He presented clear evidence that the captain and his men had fled from somewhere beyond Pek, and that they had been pursued by a single man, a man who was careful to remain unseen. He had hoped there would be some mention of Jerohal, but that information would come, if it came at all, from Darna. He put the letter down.
“Tell me about your journey,” he said.
“Coming back here?” the soldier asked. It was plain that the man thought it an odd request.
“No. All of it, from the time you left Samara.”
The soldier glanced at his companion. Clearly they had hoped to deliver the letter and go.
“Not much to tell,” he said. “It’s all in the letter.”
“Start at the beginning,” Sam said. “You waited for Taranath outside the citadel?”
The soldier abandoned his token resistance. “Aye, he and his two underlings, just after dawn.”
The tale lasted the better part of an hour. This was because Sam questioned him on every detail, trying to get a feeling for how Taranath was faring with the soldiers and the villagers, the people they’d met and questioned in Pek.
“…and that Pekkish woman, the mayor’s agent, she was a cold fish – all business and a big nose to stick in where it’s not wanted. She seemed to like your man, though,” the soldier finished. “Everyone seemed to like him.” It was said as a kind of insult, as though being likeable wasn’t a soldierly quality, but Sam took it the other way. Taranath was an excellent officer.
He dismissed the soldiers and sat back in his chair, looking out at the rain again. Taranath would be close to Darna now, but that meant very little to Sam. He’d only been out of the city a couple of times, and never along the coast. Blaye, Pek, Darna and Sarata were no more than names to him. There had been that bizarre incident at Woodside when Serhan had taken him there by magic and he’d tried to catch a killer, but it had all been resolved by the Caledon girl, and she’d gone on to be a mage herself. He shook his head. He was getting sidetracked.
“Chief?”
It was Ulric again, leaning around the door in that odd way of his, as though he was hiding his considerable bulk.
“What?” he asked.
“Are you busy?”
“That depends,” he said.
“She’s here again,” Ulric said. “She’s waiting downstairs, carriage and all.”
Ulric only talked about one woman that way – Ishara Fandakari. Sam put his thoughts of lawkeeping to one side.
“Has anything happened in the last hour that I don’t know about?” he asked.
“No, Chief. It’s quiet as I’ve known it. If you need to take a little while…”
Sam stared at Ulric’s face trying to detect the slightest hint of a smile, but he couldn’t see one. That didn’t mean that the man wasn’t smiling inside, of course.
“I’ll see what she wants,” he said.
He went down the stairs and through the law house to the front door. He had to admit that he was curious. He stopped and looked out into the rain.
The carriage was one of the finest he’d seen. It was completely enclosed apart from the driver’s seat, on which perched a small man wrapped in a great coat and hat so that his face was mostly hidden. Ishara sat inside, peering through the rain streaked glass. As soon as she saw him she opened the door, and at once scowled at the wind and rain.
“Hurry up and get in,” she said. “I’m getting wet.”
In all conscience Sam couldn’t stand in the doorway and demand she tell him why she was here. He ducked out of the law house and stepped into the coach.
Ishara rapped on the roof and the coach began to pull away. Sam rapped again and it stopped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I want to show you something,” she said.
“I am a lawkeeper, Ima,” Sam said. “I work from dawn to dusk. It’s what they pay me for.”
“You are the chief lawkeeper, and besides, are you busy on a day like this? Didn’t anybody ever tell you that you need to think about other things if you want to solve a knotty problem? Thinking is like wine, it needs to rest before it’s ready.”
It seemed a peculiar idea to Sam.
“What was it you wanted to show me?”
“It was going to be a surprise,” she said. “But you’re obviously not in the mood. I’ve found you a house.”
“A house?”
“Yes, a house. Something a sight better than that hovel you’re renting at present.”
“Where?”
“Wouldn’t you rather see for yourself?” she asked, almost pleading with him to preserve a last shred of her secret. Sam glanced back at the law house, but there was no help there. Ulric had shut the door against the wild weather. He sighed.
“Very well, show me.”
Ishara rapped on the carriage roof again and it rumbled off along the street. Sam looked out of the window. They were heading north. At the end of the street they passed the turning for Morningside and went straight on past the bridge that led to Gulltown.
“Riverside?” he asked.
Ishara smiled. “Wait and see,” she said.
The coach went on a little further and turned right, and then quickly left again before stopping in a comfortable-looking, broad avenue that Sam guessed ran parallel to the river. He looked out and through the rain saw the shape of a house. It squatted darkly at the back of a rather shallow courtyard, and all he could see from the coach was a door, four windows, and the fact that it seemed to rise more than one level from the ground. There was a porch over the door.
“This is it?”
Ishara nodded. Sam looked again. It was made from the yellow sandstone so common in Samara, and the front yard was paved with flags that glistened in the rain that danced across them. There were no lights lit, no lamps to warm it.
“I suppose we’d best go in then,” he said.
They ran across the narrow yard through the rain and Ishara produced a key which she slipped into the lock.
“You haven’t bought it already, have you?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “The man that lived here inherited his father’s house and moved out last week. The key is on loan.”
The door swung open on a cool and faintly scented twilight. Sam stepped inside and his boots set off echoes. The entranceway was bigger than both his rooms put together, and reached ten feet above his head. He could see a staircase rising up before him and turning both ways at the top, passages on the ground floor passed it on either side.
A light flared behind him, and he turned to see that Ishara had lit a lamp.
“Don’t say anything until I have the lamps lit,” she said.
He nodded, thinking how flattering the lamp light was on her golden skin. It made her look younger, almost vulnerable.
He waited, growing accustomed to the darkness while Ishara bustled about, lighting lamps and bringing each
room to life, brightening each doorway with yellow light. It took a few minutes, and when she came back into the hallway, her face glowing, he had grown accustomed to the space. At least it smelled better than his rooms.
“We’ll start with the reception room,” she said.
It was big. The floor was wood, polished almost so he could see his face in it and decorated with three green rugs of Blayish design, each woven with the image of a different mythical beast. The work was quite fine, and he had no trouble identifying each creature. Several comfortable chairs and a large couch were scattered about, all facing a large stone fireplace. Either side of the fire the wall was pierced by a large window, the shutters folded back to let in the grey light from outside. The back wall was hung with a tapestry depicting a battle. A cabinet stood beneath it.
“The chairs and rugs?” he asked.
“It all comes with the house.”
Sam sat in the nearest armchair and looked at the fireplace. What would he do with a room like this? Ishara had called it a reception room, so perhaps it was like the king’s reception room, but he shied away from that idea. A meeting room, perhaps. A greeting room where he could welcome people to his house. But who? Who would come and visit him? Nobody visited him in his rooms.
“The drawing room next,” Ishara said. She was standing by the door, so he stood and followed her. The drawing room, whatever that was, lay on the opposite side of the entrance hall. It was a similar size with the same polished wood floor, but there the resemblance ended. A great deal had been taken from here. Sam could see where pictures had been removed from the walls, the scars of their presence made the back wall look mottled. A fire dominated this room, too, but it was more decorative. The pillars that supported the mantle were carved in the form of two herons facing each other, beaks raised. There were chairs and rugs again, but somehow less formal, scruffier, and this time there was a door leading further into the house.
“The dining room,” Ishara said.
Sam was bemused. He’d seen big houses, been inside more than a few, but he’d never really thought about how people lived in them. Was there a room for everything?
The dining room had a table that could seat ten and low cabinets down one side, and there was another door leading onwards.
“Kitchens and pantry,” Ishara told him. “There’s a servant’s room behind if you need one.”
“Servants?”
“It’s customary,” she said. Sam followed her on and on. There was a laundry room, a tack room and a study on the ground floor. Sam liked the study. It was smaller and although the empty bookshelves were mildly intimidating he liked the cosiness and the old wooden desk pushed into a corner.
They came to the staircase. It was broad enough for them to walk up side by side, but Sam hesitated, allowing Ishara to go ahead of him. She stopped on the first step.
“Manners, lawkeeper,” she said, smiling her condescending smile again. “A man of breeding should never follow a lady up the stairs.”
“I have no pedigree,” he replied. “But if it discomfits you…”
He stepped up beside her and they continued up to the upper floor. He sensed unease. At the top of the stairs there was a landing that ran all around the stairwell and five doors leading off it.
“Bedrooms,” Ishara said.
“I apologise if my comment caused you any discomfort, Ima,” Sam said. “But I was dragged up in Gulltown and don’t know any better.”
She smiled again, but this time it was relief that Sam saw.
“Not at all,” she said. “But if we are to be business associates may I take the liberty of using your given name?”
“You mean call me Sam? Of course you may.”
“And you must call me Ishara,” she replied.
He smiled back at her. “Shall we go on?”
She opened the first door. What lay behind it was a surprisingly modest room. There was a small bed, a wardrobe, a rug.
“Guest quarters,” Ishara said. “For people you don’t especially like.”
“Why would I invite someone to stay if I didn’t like them?” Sam asked.
Ishara chuckled. “If everyone was like you, Sam, the world would be a different place, perhaps a better one, but sometimes there are obligations that make us do things we do not entirely wish to do.”
“I see. Or rather I don’t, Ishara, but please don’t explain it to me.” It sounded odd, his name in her mouth – somehow better bred – but he liked it.
“The master suite,” she said, opening another door.
The suite consisted of two rooms – a bedroom that was dominated by a vast bed – big enough for three or four, Sam reckoned – and boasted a small table and soft chair by the window that looked out over the street and very little else. The second room was a dressing room, and contained enough wardrobe space for the entire force of lawkeepers.
“This is for one man?” he asked.
“He was married,” Ishara said. “They shared it.”
“How many wives did he have, exactly?”
Ishara chuckled again, but didn’t reply. She ran her hands across the smooth surface of one of the wardrobes and admired herself in the full length mirror.
“This is all good quality,” she said.
There were two more bedrooms, each a little less grand than the master suite, and finally they came to the last door.
“I have saved the best for last,” she said.
“What is it?”
She pushed the door open. “A bathing room,” she announced.
Sam was fascinated. “Upstairs?”
They went inside, and Sam could see the bath – a sizeable model in the centre of the room, but the rest of it looked… complicated.
Ishara took hold of a pump handle and worked it up and down a couple of times. Water splashed into the tub.
“That’s the cold water,” she said. “There’s a steel tank built into the roof which is filled every day – another good reason for servants.”
“And the rest of this?”
She opened a steel box and Sam could see ashes inside. “This fire is lit an hour or so before the bath,” she said. “The small tank here,” she tapped the tank, “is filled from the roof tank with this pump.” She worked another handle and he heard water moving somewhere. “The fire heats the water in the tank. When you want hot water you use this other pump handle to draw hot water into the bath.”
She worked the third handle and a splash of water emerged from a second pipe and dribbled into the tub.
“Wouldn’t a kettle be simpler?” Sam asked.
“For the servants, or a man alone, but all you have to do is announce your intent to bathe and wait an hour, then you come in here, put water in the bath from both pumps until the temperature is what you want, then bathe. If you want a little more warm water a quick pull on this last pump and your chilly water is delightfully warm again. Believe me, Sam, this is a work of genius.”
“You had this in Sarata?”
“Nothing close,” she said. “Samara has the best plumbing in the world.”
Sam stared at the thing. In his rooms he had a steel tub that he could barely fit into. It held two buckets of cold water and a kettle full of hot and at that it was barely warm. He wondered what a bath like this would feel like. It was almost as long as he was.
“You want me to buy this place?” he asked. He knew the answer. She expected him to live like this, to have a room for everything, but he wasn’t sure that he could. It would be living like a king.
“Sam?”
“Do you know the King of Sarata?” he asked.
“I’ve met him,” she replied.
“Does he hate Samara?” Sam asked. “Does he plot against us?”
Ishara sat on the edge of the bath.
“To be honest there’s not much left of the king. When Serhan destroyed his army it broke him. By the time he’d ridden back to the city he was half mad and half terrified. He has no real power. His noble
s and subjects plot and manoeuvre about him, waiting for him to die. His son is the dangerous one.”
“I thought his son died at Samara Plain.”
“He had two. Belin was the younger, less clever and more spiteful of the two, but he only plots to secure the throne. I can’t say that he likes Samara, but his hatred is reserved for Serhan.”
“And how would he view a family alliance between Samara and Blaye?”
“If he knows I doubt that he’d care. His ambitions have not grown beyond Sarata as yet.”
Sam knew very little of other cities. He relied on others to tell him, and he had realised that he had no Saratans and no Darnese among his lawkeepers. He knew about Arla’s Darnese sailor, of course, and several whose judgement he trusted had travelled widely, but Ishara was different. She was a Saratan insider. She would know everyone who mattered.
It occurred to him that she could be more than that. She could be here as an agent of Sarata, someone who could feed back information. On the other hand she could be a rich source of intelligence about Sarata. It all depended where her heart lay.
Reason could not give him an answer, but Sam had acquired something as a lawkeeper. Sometimes he called it instinct, sometimes intuition, but it was more than either of those. It seemed to him that he had an ability to piece together those things that he saw but did not consciously register, as though tiny clues assembled themselves out of sight and threw him a conclusion that he could neither understand nor justify. It was a little like magic, and for a long time he had not trusted it, but it had never failed him.
It was telling him to trust Ishara.
“Are you glad to be in Samara?” he asked.
“I can’t answer that yet,” she said. “One or two things have yet to be resolved.”
“I see. Well, then, you did not tell me how much they want for this place.”
“It’s a good price,” Ishara assured him. “Three hundred and ninety.”
He could afford it. There were a lot of things that disturbed him about living in a house like this, the things that the house itself would insist on, but he had to admit that it was a fine house, and Ishara looked comfortable here, sitting on the bath with the lamp lighting up her face.
“I’ll buy it,” he said.