With a sigh Celestaine fell into line and followed him into the mansion, Heno and Nedlam behind her, making her think of innocent hounds following their master into a ridiculous position of danger without any idea of what they were doing, which wasn’t true but it felt true.
They were ushered into a major room where Celestaine recognised Adondra, and was in turn recognised with a glower. The Governor was seated behind a large and imposing desk. She sat behind one end and behind the other, the figure of a much weakened and aged Archimandrite was upon an upholstered throne. A woman with the kind of grimly practical haircut that smacked of self-loathing stood rigidly upright beside him, wearing the pale wool robes of some variety of abnegating low-ranking priest. She was so clean and exacting and the Archimandrite’s gaze so dreamy and vacuous that Celestaine had no trouble placing who was the power at that end of the table.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of another delegation from the house of heroes?” Adondra asked, but she was more weary than the last time they had met and she lacked bite.
“I came to ask your advice about safe passage to Galdinnion Island in the Golden Isles. Who takes ships that way and are there any disputes that I might fall foul of.”
“Really? That seems so unlikely, and yet… I feel there’s more. Go on. What is the purpose of this monumental quest. You have saved the Aetherni and now you are going to save someone else lost in a terrible place without hope except you and your crew of one-time genocidal maniacs?”
Celestaine looked at the discomfiting, flat gaze of the dark-eyed priest and then at Adondra, surviving on sarcasm alone these days. She decided to chuck some truth under the wagon. “Yes. You know me so well. I am off to seek my fortunes and discover what has happened to the gods.”
Heno made a disappointed noise, as you might make if you had just seen someone score a magnificently unanticipated own-goal.
The Archimandrite sat forward, awake suddenly. “You’re going to find the gods? What a lovely idea. But I must tell you they are very far away and have said they can’t come back. If you find them, you will not come back either. On the other hand, I rather like the sound of that.”
“I…” Celestaine began but was cut short.
The very serious looking priest with the bad haircut who had been looking at Celestaine without affection broke in. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is maintaining the peace and the rule of law now that being a Templar means enforcing a godless generosity on all and sundry?”
“Does it mean putting the heads of bad soldiers on pikes?” Celestaine hazarded.
“That is one of its less appetising results,” the priest said. “I am Carzel, the Archimandrite’s moral advisor. It falls to me to judge what kindness means, in any particular dispute. And there are many disputes. Almost as many new ones about kindness as there are old ones about vengeance and robbery and whose land is it. Now we must deal with all the imaginary slights of unkindness in words, deeds and thoughts. And all the omissions of words, deeds and thoughts, whose absence cuts a hole in the hearts of the pure.” If it was possible to kill people with contempt via enunciation Carzel would have been guilty of multiple counts of genocide.
“People are very touchy,” the Archimandrite said in a mellow manner, and Adondra rolled her eyes in search of patience, as if it was stored under her forehead.
“Those displayed on the poles have been slow to come to the new teachings of the Temple. They don’t give up god easy around here,” Carzel said. “Which is why, Slayer, I think it would be best that you take the swiftest ship to the Golden Shore and be very prudent about returning, especially if you were to, let us say, inadvertently bring some lost beings with you.”
“You don’t want the gods back?” Celestaine asked and the whole room sucked in a breath between its collective teeth.
“Heaven forfend, I have never said and never will say such a thing,” Carzel stated flatly and with loud, clear diction. She looked fit to spit a tack. “I say that I would not want to see you involved in such a thing.”
Adondra leaned forwards, composing her hands. “You want a Drake ship. There’s a captain in town I suspect of smuggling ora root among his trades and other materials of similar properties so he won’t be averse to paying passengers. Vakloz is his name. He taxes me and I want to tax him, especially on his ‘secret’ imports. I think you and he would get along very well. I believe he has connections on the Golden Coast that reach well inland and as far as the Islands of the Guloss Archipelago which is where you are headed. There is no end of territory out there in need of great heroism and mighty deeds. You can find him near the docks at the house of his mistress, the Lady Demadell.”
Celestaine glanced at Carzel who was drawing one finger slowly across her throat as the Archimandrite smiled and tapped his toes to some unheard music. Her gaze was flat and its meaning crystal clear. But to be sure she said, “Whatever you do, don’t bring anything back with you. Customs would take a dim view of anything they can’t quantify. We have lately appointed a young man of great ambition from Cherivell and he has firm views on paperwork. We however are very grateful—very grateful—for the gods’ final words. And we will do our utmost to see them carried through. People who fail to do so are clearly lacking in the most basic piety and will have to be regrettably detained or made examples of. Since the new rules have come into place the benefits to commerce and daily life in this city have been immense. I hope I’m being as clear as possible.”
“Better not come back at all, really,” the Archimandrite said dreamily. “Although if you could send them a message with our best wishes I would really appreciate that.”
Celestaine was dumbfounded. She hadn’t expected them not to want the gods back at all but it seemed that this is what was being said, or not being said. She’d been ready to fend off all kinds of demands and arguments, all kinds of pleading and hope, every situation under the sun, except this one.
“Pop along,” Adondra added. “There’s a good girl.”
Celestaine stepped forwards and put her hand down on the table with a loud clack. When she withdrew it several gemstones lay there, winking and glowing in the lamplight and shooting the odd rainbow ray thanks to a sudden shaft of late sun. She gathered her wits. “We do apologise for troubling you. I hope that this goes some way to assisting with city business.”
Carzel leaned forwards and picked out two gems, pushing the third towards Adondra. She looked at them, and then handed one back to Celestaine. “I will see that this goes to help the needy. Those are the people the Temple works for now. We are devoted to service and good works in honour of the departed gods and their final, very clear and explicit wish.”
“Be kind to each other!” the Archimandrite said, raising his hand and pointing at the sky with a beatific grin before lapsing back into a blissful doze.
Celestaine blinked. Had these people really gone all out for a godless world of service in such a short time? Even if it was enforced by draconian rule, was that so bad? She hesitated, then gave the spare gem to Adondra. “It’s for whatever is needed.”
Adondra took both jewels on her side of the desk and pocketed them. “Your good works are noted. Well, I’d like to be snarky about your generosity but there’s so much to be built that I won’t. Feel free to come and go as you please. Especially go. The longer you stick around the more people will think about Guardians and gods again. The Widow Demadell has a very good table I hear, and she likes to start at dusk. There. Is that enough niceness to satisfy you?”
“I just wanted…” Celestaine felt Heno kick her ankle. “Yes. Thank you.”
They were escorted out. In the narrow hall Carzel caught up with them and snagged Celestaine’s arm. “Listen, Slayer. It’s not that we’re not all grateful but I’m just going to put this out there for you to think about. ‘Be kind.’ In your experience is that the sort of thing that the gods who left here, and left the Guardians, you know, like Wall and the Kinslayer—d’you think that ‘be kind’
is what they would choose for their lasting legacy? D’you think that’s really who he heard through Cinnabran’s skull? I’m just saying. Think about it.” She put her finger on her nose and then pointed at Celestaine and then at the Yoggs, one at a time. She gave them the thumbs up sign plus a very exaggerated wink and then spun back into the state room.
“So—she’s saying they weren’t kind,” Nedlam said.
“Yes,” Heno said.
“Why is everyone talking like they aren’t saying what they’re saying all the time?” Nedlam scowled.
“In case the gods are listening, or someone with an axe and a grudge,” Celestaine said, thinking about it with a growing sense of unease and complicity. “The last two much more likely than the first.”
“It does my head in,” Ned said and shifted her hammer to the other shoulder.
Another delegation of quarrelling Cheriveni were already filing in two by two. The corridor smelled of too much perfume and nervous farts. Before the door closed they heard Adondra’s voice and the rap of her gavel calling them to order.
“What’s happening?” Celestaine asked them as they came back outside into the yard. She felt as if she had been summoned to see her mother for a dressing down and while she was all right with falling slowly out of favour as time passed, not able to trade on old glory, she was deeply irritated by the way they resented her when she had come, well, to be kind. A grinding sensation in her stomach made her wonder if she were right about kindness and doing the right thing. Amkulyah’s people—that had been better than terrible, when she had done all she could to return the wings. Hadn’t it? And here she was, not expecting thanks, but this all felt very unnecessarily resentful. She looked up at the kindly severed head of the unreformed Templar on its pike. “It’s just like before, only… very slightly different. Is everyone mad?”
“Dunno,” Nedlam said, “but she said something about dinner at the Widow’s house. Do you think they can cook like Bukham?” She licked her tusks.
“I think that went as well as you could have hoped,” Heno said, clearly having hoped it wouldn’t happen at all. “They said we could have a ship. They didn’t ask for explanations. They even told us where to get one.”
“But I gave them a fortune,” Celestaine said, still puzzled.
Heno put his hand on her shoulder as they walked out of the building. “At least they didn’t ask where it came from. Smarter than that. But also, smart enough to wonder if someone’s coming to find you for it, you not being in possession of a mighty fortune all by yourself and having a reputation for killing things,” he said and shifted his shoulders uneasily inside his long dark coat. “Let’s get moving while we’re lucky. That priest might already be sending a word to this Widow about getting rid of us permanently.”
The grinding sensation eased. Heno was right, Celestaine realised. She’d been so focused on thinking of what she might do for the best she hadn’t thought about what could happen for the worst. “All right,” she said. She felt quite back to herself; positive, focused, all because of danger’s thrill and it occurred to her for a moment, that all her works may in fact be aimed right at creating these situations, so she could be what she was, free to move without second guesses. It was a fleeting thought and it flitted fast, swept away by necessity. “But first we need to find the others.”
BUKHAM WAS STANDING in the low roofed room that was Rofuel’s Ilkand Bank, his mouth half open as he looked at the table where the ruby he had placed down was being examined by a series of experts in a deathly silence. He was awed by the order, the precision, the books and the sense of authority of the place.
There were actual walled vaults, with iron barred doors guarded by uniformed men bearing pikes and axes. There were scales of different sizes—some for coins, some for grain, some for raw metal nuggets—all of them in use, their arms tipping lazily one way, then another before the contents of a pan were bagged and labelled, then carried away by small men in a different uniform to the guards, but similar, cloth jerkins instead of leather over mail, their hands neat and clean, inked in places, their hair tied back or cut short and orderly. He felt a little bewildered, but in a good way. He was following what they were all doing and had realised that a bank was an amazing thing.
At Taib Post the wealth was kept by individuals and regulated by the honesty of their relationships with the matriarchs. It was all rather vague and only the patriarch had a clue as to what the totals might be at any one time. Here there was an incredible order and an exacting system of valuation. Bukham had become expert at understanding the value of a vegetable at any point in the year—depending what it was, its condition, its scarcity and its popularity. He had considered the future value of vegetables only as far as his sense of the weather’s consistency ran. He fondly remembered the day he had understood how money worked, and how he could translate the value of a coirib bean into the value of crabapples directly through copper scits.
Here in the bank they were not only able to say what his jewel was worth in terms of scits and pollys but in terms of anything at all, and any combination of things—they had a ledger, continually adjusted by their reviews of supply and demand. Here, at the bank, he saw them talk in terms of things called futures and the values of land and buildings as collateral. He saw them chat over ten ways to consider lending and whether interest was robbery and how to tailor loans carefully to any kind of customer, whatever they thought about interest.
He was so absorbed in this incredible expansion to his repertoire of trading techniques that as he watched his jewel turned he lost track of Lysandra and Kula, thinking them paying attention like he was. It was only when Murti tugged on his sleeve and murmured, “I think we’ve lost some of our party,” that he looked up and realised they were nowhere to be seen.
THEY HAD BEEN bored as soon as they entered the bank with its quiet and order and had gone out the doors to wait in the much more interesting street. At first they had walked up and down, looking at the windows—Kula had never seen a glassed window before and they amused themselves pulling faces at their reflection until a woman came out yelling and chased them away with a broom. A few doors down a delightful smell revealed a bakery and they went inside, watched other people hand over coins for what they wanted and then looked over what they had in their pockets. Lysandra could only find a ring with a green stone in it which looked like it was close to the copper and silver coins. She held that out when their turn came.
Outside in the warm afternoon sun they sat together on a bit of grass at a corner where four streets somehow turned into five streets and tried to share a pie so large that even with a huge chunk in both hands for each of them there was still most of it left. The pie was meats in a fruit-rich, thick sludge of a gravy, and so good that they stuffed themselves, smiling at the people who paused to stare at them and point and laugh. When some ragged little children turned up they gave them pie and Lysandra also broke up the crusts and handed this out to passing rats, who ran off at first as they were used to fleeing for their lives but then, sensing a moment of rare fortune, stayed to gorge themselves and leap for new treats. Lysandra soon discovered that a rat would jump very high, even somersault, if there was a piece of beefy pastry in it for them, and that they would also run up her arms and sit on her head or hide in her pockets. Soon there was quite a crowd.
“Here, what’s going on?” A small, filthy man in leathers pushed his way to the front. At the sound and sight of him the children fled, laughing and shrieking, shouting things as they went. He was Ilkand stock, with a grubby Temple badge stuck upside down to his jerkin. “Stand back, I’ve vermin to collect. Get up there and stand away.” He had a net on a stick and a long rod with a sharp, poking end much stained with mud and gore. There was also a wriggling sack on his back and he had a smell which gave him all the room he wanted far faster than his vocal demands. He peered suspiciously at Lysandra.
“Soft in the head, eh?”
She smiled and held out to him the last
chunk of the pie which had been resting on her knee. It was as big as two hands. A gob of the filling dropped out of it and landed on the ground, immediately seized on by three rats who had been investigating the bizarre tangles and lengths of her skirting.
The ratcatcher’s eyes bulged, torn between two conflicting imperatives.
“An entire Hunter’s Bludgeon,” a woman said from the crowd with great envy. “An’ they’ve eat the whole thing. Enough for a family of five.”
“What’s she wearing though?” asked another. “She must be a lady.”
“Not any lady behaves like that,” said a man with disgust.
Lysandra got up suddenly with a single motion, like a doll being lifted by strings. She held out the pie to the ratcatcher as rats sped in all directions, causing a few bystanders to squeal as their feet were dashed over. “Well, perhaps they should,” she said in a pleasant tone.
He took the pie silently and brought it to his mouth as if he expected it to explode with rats but it was clean enough and there was no room for a rat. In a moment he was too busy eating to bother with anything else, although he looked this way and that with ferocious intent, as if marking every scurrying body’s whereabouts for later.
Lysandra bent to wipe her hands in the grass and to flick a crumb of pastry off Kula’s chin. “We need winter clothes,” she said, bringing her hand up with gems in it. A particularly large grey rat was still riding on her shoulder, sitting on its hind legs, hands composed in cleaning its whiskers, ears perked. Lysandra addressed everyone, “Where do we buy those?”
“I know!” A young woman stepped forwards quickly and beckoned. She was dressed in handsome leather gear with a brown knitted scarf around her head and neck through which long, dark hair came in uneven tufts. Her belt had a dagger and a purse on it and she wasn’t as dirty as many who were grumbling now the street was blocked. “Kifti Fulp’s Furs and Leathers. It’s not fancy but it’s really well made. And she has some Ystachi working for her. They do the best light mail underlays. Are you going far?” As she moved in closer to Lysandra she hissed quietly, “You need to get moving, words are all over town by now that a rich madwoman is handing out jewels for nothing. Let’s go. Quickly!”
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