Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain

by Rebecca Bradley

  "I'm not, actually . . ."

  I left them to it and turned my attention to guiding the horse with a hand on its bridle, Mallinna becoming far too involved in the debate to remember she was holding the reins. On several scores, I was almost giddy with relief. Tigrallef's voice had lost its Painful undertones, an imminent attack had been averted, and the two of them were distracting each other from sensitive subjects far better than I could. By the time we pulled level with the Great Head, they were too busy speculating about who really wrote the plays of Addeni Clanseri to notice it was there.

  In fact, relief at the Pain's ebbing had made me unbelievably slow. It took me several minutes to think over the import of my father's words and to realize what he had actually admitted.

  Too often over the years, our departures had been dramatic, hurried, bloody, awkward, fiery, unplanned, or straight into the jaws of something. Our departure from the harbour of Gil City that night, none of those things, was in fact the dullest of my life. That alone made it remarkable. Thank the Old Ones, the Primate did not make good his threat to come down and wave goodbye, though he sent a small guard of honour from the Flamens' Corps to usher the First Memorian to his ship just after sunset. He also sent his apologies: he had urgent business concerned with the upcoming Day of the Lady. To my surprise and bitter pleasure, the Second Flamen Lestri did not come down either, to wish his future mistress a good journey.

  Tigrallef, who turned strangely sombre as we approached the Fifth along the quay, went straight to his cabin as soon as we boarded and did not leave it until after we sailed. The sombreness worried me, but the side effect was that he ran no danger of being seen by the guardsman from the Flamens' Corps, a sensible precaution while we were still trapped in the inner harbour. There was less peril of me being recognized through my beard, since few people remembered what my uncle Arkolef looked like anyway—Mallinna said there were only three portrait statues of him in the entire city of Gil, all of them tucked away in inconspicuous places, whereas Tigrallef stared at the populace from every street corner, shop wall and public façade in the empire.

  And so, while Tigrallef skulked in his cabin, I worked like a serf all morning, unpacking and stowing the last of the supplies as they came on board, going over the rigging with our new crewmen Malso and Entiso, firing up the galley for our first meal of the journey. I was doing everything possible to keep my mind off Katla and the others, when the Fifth was so full of cruel reminders of them. In the afternoon I slept, knowing I would take a double watch that night.

  Without really intending to, I also managed to avoid our resident guardsman. His very presence was an irritant, though. I was also annoyed to find that he had set up his quarters in the middle hold, precisely where the hatch to the secret holds was hidden. As long as he remained on board, I could not even risk checking that our valuables and research papers were safe, nor fetch the drawings of the Itsant vases and rubbings of the Nkalvi texts that Angel and Mallinna were so anxious to see. Getting rid of him moved very high on my list of priorities.

  By the time Angel was ushered on board and tucked into bed by Mallinna, there was nothing more to wait for except the turn of the tide. At midnight, just after the hour bells rang in the city, the ropes were cast off at last, Malso and Entiso raised the sails, and I steered the Fifth into the track of clear water outlined by the fire buoys. The quay was almost deserted by then. There was nobody to see us off except the guard of honour, who did not even wave. When they were behind us, the only human figures I could see were the dark shapes of Mallinna and the guardsman in the bow. A few lights burned on the ships around us, but nothing else was moving, and the waterfront was held by as deathly a hush as on our first fateful night in Gil. Since then I had learned why it was so quiet. An anti-noise ordinance was in force, not to be relaxed until the eve of the Day of the Ladys, which was nearly a week off.

  We glided ghostlike through the outer harbour. As the twin watchtowers guarding the entrance rode past us on their own reflections, the larger spectre of the Scion Cirallef slipped into line a short way behind us. I muttered a curse in its direction. Then it was time for the turn, the tight curve that would swing us around the flank of the Gilgard and on course for the east. As I spun the wheel over, Tigrallef came softly up the aft companionway and fastened himself into his restraining chair. He said nothing to me, nor did I have anything to say to him.

  The silent city, plated with moonlight, lay to starboard. Above it glimmered the thousand windows of Gilgard Castle, where the cost of lamp oil was obviously not of great concern. I left the wheel long enough to spit Itsant-style over the side. The Gilgard was beautiful: my ancestor Oballef had built it, my Scion forebears had ruled in it, my father had liberated it, and I, Verolef, hoped I would never have to look at it again.

  Two hours later, when we were well out on the eastern sea, Tigrallef silently released himself from the chair and vanished into his cabin, Shree's cabin in happier times. Mallinna, yawning, stopped by the wheel not much later and stood beside me for a while, looking astern to the dark hulking shadow of the Cirallef. The seaman Entiso, another dark hulking shadow, mumbled a greeting as he passed by us on his way to his quarters in the hold, followed a few moments later by the guardsman. He wished Mallinna good dreams in a fashion that I thought was a little too friendly.

  "Have you spoken with Jonno yet?" Mallinna asked when he was gone.

  "Who's Jonno?"

  "He is, the guardsman from the Flamens' Corps. I had a long talk with him in the bow, and he's not at all what I expected. He's—sweet."

  I snorted. "That's an extraordinary word to apply to one of the Primate's hand-picked wolves. He'd probably be offended."

  "No, Vero, he's not like that. He's hiding something, though."

  "Aren't we all?" I asked bitterly.

  "Of course we are—but he isn't hiding what we thought he'd be hiding."

  "He's the Primate's spy, Mallinna."

  She edged closer and spoke in a whisper. "That's what I'm not sure about. I've seen enough of the Primate's spies in my life to recognize the mould, and he simply doesn't fit. For example, he was asking a lot of questions about you and Lord Tigrallef—"

  "Well, there you are."

  "—but they were clumsy questions, far too obvious, put to me with no subtlety at all. He's terrible at it, whereas the Primate's spies are taught to pick your mind like a dip would pick your pocket. And he's sweet."

  Sweet, was he? The sod. The last thing I needed was to listen to Mallinna, whose courtship I was nobly and dutifully forswearing in deference to the needs of my father and the archives, prattle on to me about some other man being sweet. Especially when she was standing close enough to make me willing to forget all about my resolve.

  "Mallinna," I said wearily, "go to bed."

  The glow from the mast lamp sidelighted her cloud of dark hair, but her face was invisible. That was unfortunate at a time when I was particularly eager to see her expression, because she put her hand on my shoulder a moment later and said in a normal non-flirtatious voice, "Don't get me wrong, Vero. I think you're sweet, too." A swift pat on the shoulder, and she was gone.

  "I am not sweet," I told her, but only when I was sure she was out of hearing.

  * * *

  8

  WHEN MALSO TOOK the wheel about two hours before dawn, I wrapped myself in a fleece and stretched out on the deck beside Tigrallef's chair, instructing Malso to waken me if he had problems. He did not, and I slept better on the deck-boards than I had on dry land in the Gilgard, rocked by the ship and dreaming of happier times in Gafrin-Gammanthan. When I finally turned over and opened my eyes, the morning chill was already off and the sun was a third of the way to the zenith of a hazy blue sky. Malso called a greeting from behind the wheel. A few feet away, a shapely young face was regarding me over a steaming beaker.

  "I brought you some breakfast."

  Sweet of him. "You must be Jonno."

  "Yes, memorian." He sat down bes
ide me and handed me the beaker with a ravishing smile. His bright hair was pulled back in a neat queue. He had the kind of staggering blue-eyed long-lashed beauty that would have sent him straight into the catamite division of a seraglio in certain parts of the world. I calculated that, as a guardsman of the Flamens' Corps, he could be no more than four or five years younger than I, but one look at him made me feel faded and world-weary, a sour old man with tough skin and a blunted spirit. It was almost impossible to believe he was a member of the Primate's crack private bullies.

  "You're Vilno, aren't you? One of the First Memorian's assistants?"

  I sipped. "I am." In fact, I was taking his word for it, because my current name had slipped my mind. After, another few time-gaining sips, it came back to me. Yes, I was Vilno; Tig was Talno for the moment. I silently thanked the young man for reminding me.

  "I saw you yesterday when you came on board," he went on, "but I didn't want to disturb you while you were so busy."

  "That was good of you." And highly unlikely; when had a guardsman ever consulted a target's convenience, unless it was with hidden motives? And yet this Jonno hardly looked like a devious character.

  He watched me eagerly as I drank down the broth, as anxious for approbation as if he had cooked it himself. He gave the impression of a pup ready to wag his tail at the first pat on the head; he was sweet. To restore my balance, I pondered the very real possibility we would have to throw him overboard sometime in the next few days. I smiled back at him.

  He was sitting in the same place when I returned a few minutes later from washing, changing, and checking that Tigrallef arid the others were still asleep. Malso was laughing as I approached, but Jonno did not look as if he appreciated the joke.

  "Ho, Memorian," the seaman said, "the Primate's man has a few questions for you."

  Sighing, I lowered myself on to the deck and leaned my back against the side of the chair. "I'm sure he does. Well?"

  The guardsman, with a badgered glance at Malso, inched closer. "You're a memorian, yes? And you studied the records of this ship?"

  Unsubtle, all right. "The logs and journals belonging to the previous owners were examined in the archives, that is correct," I said carefully.

  "That's just what Mistress Mallinna said. She told me you'd know, if anyone did."

  "Know what?"

  He hesitated and dropped his voice. "Whether there was anything—strange—recorded in the logbooks."

  "Strange?"

  He frowned most decoratively as he searched for words. "Peculiar happenings—things out of the ordinary, notable events . . ."

  Behind the wheel, the smile broadened and became nastier on Malso's weatherworn face. "What the lad means is, could this ship be haunted?" he called out. The guardsman flinched, but he looked at me expectantly. I was surprised. It was not at all the kind of question I was anticipating.

  "Haunted?"

  "Please don't think I'm mad," the guardsman hurried to say, "I'm not the first to wonder about this. The shipyard workers thought there was something strange about the ship too, some kind of invisible presence. And then I saw—well—I feel foolish about this, Memorian."

  "No need for that," I said cautiously. "No, there was nothing in the previous shipmaster's records to suggest a history of revenant visitations." Malso's mention of haunting was allowing me to be honest without exactly telling the truth. You could wager your permanent teeth that strange things had happened on the Fifth, but hauntings in the traditional sense had never been one of our problems. "What was it you saw, Jonno Guardsman?" I added, out of a sense that I might as well confirm the worst.

  I waited with resignation to hear what Jonno thought he had seen, but I was fairly sure it would involve a phantom figure of the Scion Tigrallef approximately ten feet tall and shining from the inside like a frosted lamp glass. Chances were good that this figure would be declaiming Old High Gillish poetry or seeing how long it could stand on one foot.

  But I was wrong.

  "He thought he saw the phantom of a pretty girl, that last night we spent in harbour," Malso informed me in a voice that was unduly loud, seeing as the guardsman and I were only about five feet away from him. Much louder, and the crew of the Scion Cirallef, a few hundred feet to port us, would be able to enjoy the jest as well. The guardsman's smooth cheeks flushed to the colour of a vicious sunburn.

  "The phantom of a girl?" I murmured. "What did she look like?"

  He shot an embattled glance at Malso. "I didn't see much, I was half-asleep and the only light was the moon through the companion. All I remember is that she appeared suddenly out of the darkness and stood by my pallet looking down at me—her face was clear for a moment or two—and then she floated back into the shadows and vanished."

  "Floated?"

  "Her feet didn't seem to touch the floor—that's why I thought she was a phantom. Otherwise," he looked resentfully at the man at the wheel, "I might have thought she was some doxy that sinner smuggled on board."

  "At least," Malso said cheerfully, "all the women that come to my bed are real flesh, and when I say flesh—"

  "Dark hair," said Jonno loudly, "a little wavy, clipped fairly short around her head; straight eyebrows like yours, Memorian, except dark instead of fair. A lovely face she had, slender with high cheekbones and—what's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Did you notice what your phantom was wearing?"

  "I don't remember. Wait." He shut his eyes. "Yes I do. Her robe was pale-coloured; it looked white in the moonlight, but it might have been yellow or even grey. Yes, and there was a darker band at the neckline, black or purple." He opened his eyes and looked at me anxiously. "That's all I can remember. Are you sure there's nothing wrong? You look—"

  "Nothing's wrong. And I think you must have been dreaming."

  The guardsman's face fell; then he lifted it again and smiled. "If she was a dream, then she must have come as a portent," he said. "She came on the very eve of the voyage—that's a good time for portents. Perhaps it was the Lady in Gil herself, come to give us her blessing. Don't you agree, Memorian? Wouldn't you think she was a portent of good fortune?"

  Malso snorted, but I responded with a smile that did its best to look genuine. Inside, I was reeling with shock, fear, and the beginnings of grief. "Let's hope so," I agreed pleasantly.

  That morning's work consisted of sitting in the shade of the midsail explaining to Mallinna's hired seamen the remaining technicalities of the rigging and the double rudder system, and the special steps to be taken in storms or high seas. Luckily this was a task I could do without thinking, because my mind was on other things.

  I was asking myself some terrible questions; my head ached with them as I explained the function of the demi-lateens on the foremast and the unique configuration of the buntlines. Was the guardsman's phantom visitor the wraith of our Kat? Did this mean she was already dead? Had she been broken on the Mosslines before we were even clear of Gil City?

  Or, I asked myself, was the Pain beginning to expand its repertoire? (I sketched out the freakish arrangement of the upper yards, the flexible bracing of the crosstrees.) As far as I knew, it was nowhere ordained that the Harashil could only wear my father's face. I wondered how I could ask Tigrallef—tactfully—what his dreams had been like the night before last; whether, perhaps, they had involved the Harashil sleepwalking around the Fifth dressed in Katlefiya's second-best robe, the grey one from Amballa with the purple braid at the neck.

  We were lucky in the weather for the first week of our journey. I calculated we had a nine-day sail to the sunken coastline of Sher, but two days before that we would put in at the island port of Beriss, and it was there that I planned to lose the Scion Cirallef. Until then, it was actually useful to have that threatening mass sailing just downwind of us, a shark shepherding a minnow. Patrol ships never challenged us, merchant ships gave way to us, the only pirate convoy we sighted turned tail and fled. For the first six days of the journey, we amicably threaded the maze of navigation poi
nts together.

  Angel was prostrated, partly with seasickness, but partly (Mallinna and I suspected) with sheer terror at being so far outside the walls of the Gilgard for the first time in his life. We carried his pallet out on to the open deck every afternoon; by the third day he was taking an intelligent, if somewhat wan, interest in the flight patterns of the seabirds, and we figured he was on the mend. By the fifth day he was making copious notes and sketches when he wasn't throwing up.

  Tigrallef was a different matter. The gloom that descended on him as we came on board the Fifth in Gil harbour became even darker during those first days. He never left his cabin, he neither read nor wrote, and he refused to talk about what was troubling him. It was true there were no attacks of the Pain that followed the old familiar pattern, nor any of the lambent new ten-foot manifestations, but there were other developments that I found about equally disturbing.

  On the fifth day, with his dinner tray in my hands, I stopped outside his cabin door at the sound of voices inside and ended up eavesdropping on a lively debate of which I understood hardly a word, since it was carried out in Naarhil, the secret tongue of Oballef and the Harashil. Both sides were using Tig's normal voice; it was impossible to tell which one was Tig and which, presumably, the Pain. A pity, because one of them was clearly losing the argument, and I would have liked to know who. As soon as I touched the door, however, my father's voice fell silent. He was standing stiffly in the middle of the floor when I entered, and the glow I had been prepared to see was not shining through his skin, as it had before, but was an aura the thickness of a finger that enwrapped him and reproduced him in meticulous detail, down to the neckstring of his tunic and a shimmering patch on his knee.

  "It was just about here," he said darkly.

  I set his tray down and gave him a gentle push towards the chair. "What was?"

  "It was here that we came out of hiding," he explained.