The question sounded rhetorical, but he paused for me to answer. "No," I said, "I didn't know that."
"Well, it has. But—pay special attention, Vero, this is a warning—if you head too far east, or founder on the shoals, or get driven on to the skerries, it's quite likely I'll have to use the old sow's power in a deliberate act of Will to save your skins. And then where will I be?"
"You talk almost as if you won't be with us."
"Oh, we'll be with you," he said gently, "alas for you. You'd better go now, the timing is very important. As I said, if you leave this port much after midnight, the old sow will be licking her ugly chops at the prospect of an act of Will, and I'm not sure I'd be able to hold back."
So now we had a deadline of sorts. The first thing I did was go to Angel's cabin and get out the expensive sea-charts and tidal almanacs which the Gillish treasury had so obligingly bought for the expedition. I looked for the Pilazhet Basin and the skerries, checked the tides in the Canton Ber channel, memorized the dangerous shoals that infested the northern approach to Beriss, noting with reluctant gratitude that the Primate had caused all-weather lighthouses to be set up at intervals all along the way. When I was confident I could steer us along the course my father recommended, I went out on deck.
It was already late afternoon, dismally hot and heavy, though the light was oddly clear. One or more processions were winding through the streets of the town, the music of pipes and horns and chanters being now muffled, now magnified, by the vagaries of the unstable air. Festive crowds surged along the banner-brightened corniche, and I could see the Cirallef's smallboats setting out for the quays with loads of grinning dun-shirted troopers. Mallinna emerged from the main cabin and joined me at the bowrail.
"I've put the First Memorian down for a nap," she explained. "He did very well with the Cirallef's captain, but all that coherency with a stranger wore him out. What now, Vero?"
I told her about Tig's warning, then called Malso over and repeated it to him. "So I want to leave before midnight," I finished. "You and Entiso get the smallboat lashed down. I'll leave instructions about the rigging before I go ashore."
"You're going ashore?" Mallinna asked.
"I have an errand to do—a package to deliver."
"Jonno?"
"Exactly."
Her face fell. "You're not planning to hurt him, I hope."
"As little as possible," I said hurriedly. I had given a lot of thought to this. My first plan had been to take him ashore, get him blind drunk and leave him to sleep it off in a dark alley. By the time he stumbled back within signalling range of the Cirallef, bleary and hung over, we'd be long gone. Talking it over with Malso, however, the fisherman pointed out gleefully that if the lad managed not to be murdered in the dark alley, he would almost certainly be handed a death sentence by the Flamens' Corps for drunkenness on duty—either way, Malso added with great relish, there'd be, one less black-tunic bastard stinking up the world.
So much for that plan, I'd said to myself. It would be not much kinder than just throwing him to the sharks. The best alternative I could think of was to take him ashore but keep him sober, hit him very carefully on the head, and leave him to sleep it off in a reasonably well-lighted alley.
Early evening. Jonno was standing solitary by the bowrail watching the jovial uproar of the crowds ashore. The sunset was a strange one, still with that ominous clarity of light, but a front of high fibrous clouds was advancing steadily from the east, messenger clouds bearing news of the approaching storm. Several breadths of sky behind them there would be the thicker mats of cloud, blue-grey and darkening, that would deepen rapidly to a black ragged-based mass of rain and thunder and killing winds. Meantime the swell was already slightly up outside the breakwater, running ahead of the worst of the winds. Tig's time estimate began to look too optimistic.
Aware that Mallinna was watching from the cabin, I went to Jonno and touched him on the elbow. He started and looked at me with desolate eyes.
"Looks quite festive in the town, doesn't it?" I said amiably.
"Yes, very much so." He sighed.
"There's no curfew tonight, is there?"
"Of course not—the celebrations will go on until dawn, just as they will in Gil City. It's the same all over the empire. Didn't you know that?"
"I've never spent the Lady's day in the provinces before," I said truthfully.
"Neither have I." He propped his elbow on the bowrail and his chin on his palm, the very picture of wistfulness.
"Like to go ashore?" I asked. Casual but friendly—I'd practised on my father.
He straightened and looked at me with brighter eyes. "Could we? Could we really?"
"I don't see why not. We wouldn't be ashore for very long—we'll have to be back before that storm breaks, anyhow. What do you say?"
His delight was wrenching. At the dawn of pleasure in his face, I had to armour myself with annoyance—a sudden impulse to shake him hard and say, look here, you young idiot, by the Eight Rages of Raksh, what are you doing working for a stone-hearted tyrant like the Primate? Why don't you go home to your widowed mam and your two adoring sisters? Instead I said, "Might be a bit of fun, eh?"
"Yes, oh yes! Wait here while I get my money belt." He practically flew towards the aft companionway; following him guiltily with my eyes, I was waylaid by Mallinna's mournful face in the half-open cabin door. I spread my hands helplessly: it's for his own good. With a definitive click, she shut the door.
* * *
9
OUR HOLIDAY EXCURSION began to go wrong from the moment we stepped off the quay, with the problem residing wholly in Jonno's smart black tunic and green armband. True, his uniform got us plenty of respect. Crowds parted to let us pass. Chanters broke off singing at the sight of us. Laughter died within a wide radius. Pretty girls shrank or were pushed behind their mams. Little children were called to heel. Men's flushed faces turned guarded and pale. Even the dun-tunics from the Scion Cirallef gave us a wide berth. One would have thought poor Jonno carried a deadly contagion.
The town itself was potentially quite pleasant. Most of the buildings were newish and neatly put together, dating from after the great fire twenty years past and built to survive the stormbowls that regularly swept in off the Sherkin Sea. The main streets were broad and well paved, with covered drains down the centre, and the street decorations, though not as elaborate as those in Gil City, added a gleaming element of gaiety to a scene that was already lively. A well-fed populate shone under the lamplight in bright festival silks and fine cottons—clearly, although the Primate was a tyrant and a murderer, he was very good at organizing empires. If not for the reaction to poor Jonno's uniform, I might have been impressed by the Most Revered Primate's achievement. As we walked on through the streets, however, preceded by a bow-wave of sullenness and suspicion, trailed by a wake of whispers, Jonno's excited chatter grew more sporadic and eventually stopped altogether. When I stole a glance at him, his face was set in an expression of careful nonchalance.
We came to a small market, a double row of brick stalls set well apart, festooned with banners and presided over by a life-sized statue of my da on a high pedestal—the Blessed Scion Tigrallef, that is, the Ark and Sceptre himself, brandishing the Lady in Gil over his head. The Lady was represented by a gilded figurine, and the Scion's robe was also gilded, and both were dazzling in the unsteady flare of hundreds of candles crowded around the base of the pedestal. Beyond it was a small but ornate stone building, also gilded over much of its surface, that could only be the local shrine to the Scion. Its arched doorway was reached by a flight of broad black-stone steps, up and down which flowed constant streams of worshippers. Two Flamens were at the portal accepting offerings, flanked by two hard-faced guardsmen of the Flamens' Corps. I pointed them out to Jonno.
"Anyone you know?" I asked.
"No."
"Don't you want to greet them? Maybe you could drop in on the local Corps barracks." I was hoping he would want t
o, because I needed a good excuse to find out where it was. After seeing how the Berissu viewed men in Corps uniforms, I had a bad feeling about Jonno's life expectancy if I left him unconscious and helpless almost anywhere in that town; but if I could drop him at a carefully calculated distance from the Corps barracks, say, close enough to be safe until found by the guardsmen, far enough not to be found too soon . . .
"I want to buy a present for my mother," he said flatly. He headed straight towards one of the stalls. I sighed and followed.
The counter was laid out with dozens of terracotta reproductions of the Lady in Gil—what the damned thing was supposed to look like, anyhow, nothing to do with the plain glass tube my father had shattered with such good intentions and disastrous results. These examples were mostly crude, stylized and fairly hideous, cheap mass-moulded obvious females stamped MADE IN GIL on the bottom. But on a shelf at the rear of the stall, behind the proprietor, was a row of hand-carved wooden Ladies of much better quality, brightly painted and picked out with real gilding. Jonno surveyed the terracotta abominations on the counter with tactfully disguised distaste, then pointed at the shelf.
"How much are those?" he asked in Gillish.
The stall-keeper had drawn back out of the lamplight as Jonno approached. Without a word, he lifted one of the wooden figurines down from the shelf and put it into Jonno's hand. He turned away.
"How much?" Jonno repeated in a louder voice.
The proprietor shook his head sullenly.
"Two palots? Three palots?"
Berissbal is part of the Miisheli/Grisotin/Fathidiic language family, and also incorporates large numbers of Sheranik loanwords. I could thus pick up the gist of what the stall-keeper said in carefully humble tones: "Just take it, thou whoreson, thou [thief?], thou tupper of [unknown], thou [unknown] assassin of [innocents?], and leave my family alone. Just [unknown] take it and go away."
Uncertainly, Jonno balanced the object in his hand. "I'm sorry, I don't understand. Do you speak any Gillish?"
The stall-keeper gave us both a long resentful stare. "Take," he muttered in Gillish. "Is yours. Not palots. Only but take."
"But I can't accept—" Jonno began. He stopped suddenly. "Oh," he said. Very gently, he placed the figurine on the counter among its terracotta cousins and walked away.
I turned to the stall-keeper, finding him in the last phase of an obscene gesture at Jonno's retreating back. First I caught his eye. Then I leaned over the counter and grabbed his throat. "Thou whoreson dog's-behind," I hope I said, "that young one wanted to pay." I squeezed very briefly, then released him and strode after Jonno.
By the time I caught up with him, he had cut through the middle of the market and into the mouth of the least salubrious street I'd seen so far in Beriss. He was very much on his dignity, ploughing through the crowds with a determined smile on his face. We walked along without talking for a short stretch. Some of the looks he was getting worried me; I was also unhappy to notice how the long banners billowed and snapped in sudden gusts of wind. I was about to bring up the subject of the Corps barracks again when he stopped and touched my arm. "Come along, Memorian, let's have a drink," he said brightly.
My heart dropped. If he smelled at all of booze when they found him . . . "Oh, no," I said hastily, "not just now, thank you. But I'll wager you could get a dram and maybe a drop of food and some good company down at the Corps barracks—"
"That may be so," he said thoughtfully.
Relief. A sense that I could still get rid of him without danger to himself. "Well then, good. I'm sure we can ask directions from the Flamens at the shrine—"
"But, no, I think I'd rather go to a tavern," he interrupted. "This place looks all right."
He dived into the entrance of the first tavern I'd seen in Beriss that wasn't bright, clean, neatly painted and thronged with jovial faces. No, young Jonno had to pick a dingy little pothouse with a villainous smell oozing out of its dim interior and a pool of sick beside the door. Grumbling, I shook my fist after him and followed him in. This was not going as I had planned.
The inside was worse than the outside. The only light came from a few smoky lanterns spaced along the crossbeam of the ceiling. The thronging faces were not jovial. The room was quite full when we came in, and thick with a low growl of voices, but voice by voice it fell silent until the only sound was a scuffling of feet as the patrons slunk past us out the door. Jonno took no notice.
"So you changed your mind, Vilno? Oh, look, we can have a bench to ourselves."
By that point we could have had twenty benches to ourselves. The only other patrons left were the handful of sots who had already passed out. Jonno marched over to a bench in the centre of the drinking hall and pulled up a table. I dusted off the bench and sat down beside him. "Just a small one, Jonno, and then I think we should—"
"Tapman! A small one for my friend here, and a very large one for me!"
"Oh, gods," I said faintly.
Unfortunately, the landlord appeared to understand Gillish. He sent a tapman like a lard barrel with a scowl to set two beakers in front of us. Jonno's was big enough to boil whole spud-roots in. "How much?" he said to the tapman, who only shrugged and began to turn away.
"I said, how much?"
The tapman stared at him with wonder and disapproval and said nothing. Snarling, Jonno pulled his money belt into the open, reached in and pulled out two golden palots, which he slammed down on the table. He glared at the tapman until the latter reached out and scooped them up.
I waited while the tapman stumped away. "Guardsman, don't you know you should never show your money belt in a pothouse?"
Jonno switched his glare to me. "Tup that."
"Did you know you paid him enough to keep us both drunk for a month?"
He lifted his beaker with both hands in a defiant salute. "Good. To the Blessed Scion's return, Vilno!"
"Oh, surely." I sniffed mine while Jonno choked on his first swallow. It was the real old rotbelly, I could tell that from the sickly vapour curling off its surface. After a couple of discriminating sips, I decided it was not the worst I had ever tasted; probably the fourth worst. Still, it was so bad that I saw no danger Jonno would drink too much of it. "Jonno, we'd get much better brew at the Corps—" I began, turning back to him.
His face was entirely hidden by the kettle-sized beaker, which was tilted at an angle suggesting most of the contents had already vanished down his throat.
"Jonno!"
He set the beaker tenderly but a little unsteadily on the table. By my estimate, somewhat more than two-thirds of it was gone. Looking slightly dazed, Jonno rubbed his hand across his mouth and wiped it on his heretofore spotless black tunic.
"S'good," he said thickly. "You don't get brew like that in Gil City." He gulped.
"I'm sure you're right." The time for heroic measures had arrived. I swept my hand out in a gesture that culminated in slapping Jonno on the back, but succeeded on the way in knocking his beaker off the table. "Oh, sorry," I said.
"Wha'? Never mind. Tapman! Tapman! Another enormous one for me, good tapman, and one for my dear friend here."
"No! Jonno, I really think we should find the Corps barracks, but first we should find an eating den and get some food and root-tea down you, because—"
"But whass—what's wrong with this place, Vilno? I like this place. I think we should have juss another little—"
"No!" I frightened off the hovering tapman with one very black look. Meantime, Jonno picked up my beaker and almost drained it before I noticed what he was doing and wrested it away from him. Then he nestled his head on his arms, which were folded on the table in front of him. That fiendish brew had hit him fast and hard. What I could see of his face was an exemplar of tragedy.
"Memorian, I've never been hated before."
I sighed and patted his shoulder. "You probably have, lad, you just never noticed it before."
"Really? Do you really think so? Honestly? Thank you, Vilno, you're a gre
at comfort."
I ground my teeth together when I realized he was being sincere. "Now, guardsman, about the Corps barracks—"
I broke off. The tapman, just visible in the shadows of a smoky alcove behind the counter, was looking intently towards the door, which was latched open. I was almost certain he had signalled to someone in the street. When he caught my eye on him, he started and moved further back into the darkness. The landlord was not visible at all.
"See, Vilno, you're a good—a good man, but the trouble is—the trouble is—" Jonno hiccoughed.
"Tell me about the trouble, Jonno." I kept my eyes on the door. I could not see outside from that angle, but a lantern in the street was casting a useful rectangle of light on the floor just inside the threshold. To our left, one of the sleeping sots made munching noises and turned over. A squall of wind clattered the door in its socket and sent a devil of dust swirling across the room.
"See, the trouble is, you're just—urp—a memorian, Vilno. Nothing wrong with memorians, but you could never understand a man of—urp—a man of action, like me . . ."
"No doubt you're right." I lost track of his babbling for a bit—two shadows, three, five, were gathering in outline in the patch of light at the threshold.
"—great p-poets on my da's side—did I tell you I write p-poems? Would you like to hear—?"
"Maybe later." I scanned the pothouse for other exits. The few windows were small and high; there were no other doors unless the alcove led to one, but I had a feeling the tapman and the landlord would have their own small armoury back there. I loosened the Gafrin-Gammanthan belt and pulled the fighting chain out of its compartment; that was for the left hand. The cosh I had brought for Jonno's benefit went on the table by my right hand, along with the two knives from the chest scabbard. The knives in my boots would be left hidden until I needed them. Outside, the wind shrieked again.
I did a quick survey of the sots snoring the rotbelly off in various corners of the drinking hall. Five were visible, and there might have been any number sleeping under the tables, but none of them looked like an immediate threat. I glanced at Jonno in passing, but took a second to register what I'd seen; then I swung round on the bench to stare at him with horror. Sitting up again, he had gathered six or seven abandoned beakers from the adjacent table and was systematically finishing them off. I grabbed the one he had just emptied and sniffed it. "Great balls of Oballef, Jonno, that's rakk. You should never mix rakk with brew."
Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain Page 17