More Gulu Thek modalmen raised their voices as they saw Shkarauthir passing by their fires. The effect rippled out, until all of them were on their feet and hollering booming cheers. A spontaneous dance began, the modalmen swaying from foot to foot and clapping out complicated rhythms with their four hands. They were all warriors. There were no women folk there.
“So this is an army,” said Rel grimly.
That Shkarauthir’s men were so numerous was heartening. Rel’s group headed directly for the central ring and an unlit bonfire of wood that must have been dragged hundreds of miles. Around the fire modalmen wearing cloaks with peaked hoods sat cross legged, swaying in time to the singing. As Shkarauthir approached they got slowly to their feet and added a thrumming chant to the song. Beneath the hoods, Rel saw aged faces, deeply wrinkled and turned a whitish grey. Their clan markings were the same shape as the rest of Shkarauthir’s people, but they glowed a muted, unchanging silver.
A modalman thrust a burning brand into the bonfire, and it burst into flame, announcing Shkarauthir’s arrival.
“I had guessed that you were a chief or something,” said Rel. “But you could have told me you were a king.”
Shkarauthir waved at his tribesmen. “I am many things, small one, like all men. In the desert I am a warrior, on the road I am a guide. With my close clan band I am chief. Only here, when I am surrounded by so many of my people, am I a king. These are my kin, the people of the Light Sands, the Gulu Thek.” The king dismounted, and the singing and dancing grew louder. “And while you are here, you are one of us.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Powerful Foe
EDUWIN GROSTIMAN WAS thinking about a second glass of honey wine when his secretary Hensiall rapped on the door and poked his head around the jamb without waiting for a response. In Grostiman’s experience, this was never a good sign.
“Goodfellow Grostiman, I must announce a visitor.”
Grostiman laid down his pen with exaggerated care. A blob of ink fell from the nib onto his notes, making him tut. “Yes? Who is it? I am occupied today, as you can see.” He passed his hand over the paper to show said occupation, though the notes were unimportant, and Grostiman had little to do at that precise moment other than consider more wine.
His secretary swallowed audibly. “My lord, it is Katriona Kressinda-Morthrocksa.”
That would explain Hensiall’s reticence, thought Grostiman.
Grostiman lifted up his spectacles and rubbed his face. “That damned Kressind woman. She was bound to show up sooner or later. You have told her I am in, I suppose?”
“I tried to veil the truth as you require, my lord, but she has the parliamentary list for today. Your name is quite clearly on it. She showed it to me. Twice.”
“Yes, well, it would be. I put it there myself when I came in this morning,” he said testily. All parliamentarians were required to sign in and out of Sunderdown Palace, to prevent fraudulent claiming of expenses. Grostiman had championed that motion six years ago. He regretted it now, and not only because he needed to find funds to repair his summerhouse roof. He sighed and blinked extravagantly. His eyes were small but mobile, well suited to staring, blinking, and other expressive motions. He always held it made up for their wateriness, and his lack of chin. “Send her in then. I must speak with her at some juncture. Right now is going to be as painful as any other time. I may as well get it over and done with sooner rather than later. The early scourge hurts just as much, but is over all the quicker, as they say.”
His secretary bobbed his head sympathetically. “Yes, goodfellow.”
Grostiman sat back in his chair. The springs creaked. The bloody thing needed replacing. His parliamentary office at Sunderdown was so small, its furnishings so mean, leagues away in terms of quality from his bureau at the Ministry of Justice. He resented having to spend time there.
A moment later, he heard voices, mostly the shrill, imperious tone of the Kressind she-dracon. He decided to pour that second glass of honey wine right then.
Katriona stormed into his office with the force of a battering ram. Although she was dressed in pretty lady’s clothes, she might as well have been as armed and armoured as one of King Brannon’s dracon knights. He could not stop his lip curling at such an unfeminine display.
“Goodfellow Grostiman,” she said. She smiled superciliously as she curtsied. That made his blood boil.
She thinks she’s already won, he thought. A vein of worry chilled his outrage. What if she knows something I don’t?
Steady, he warned himself.
“Goodlady Kressinda-Morthrocksa,” he said with a warm smile. He stood smartly and indicated a chair with his hand.
Ah, the social dance, he thought. A smile is a shield to hide one’s sword behind with the understanding it shall not be revealed. Without such smiles we’d be bashing each other’s faces in with rocks. Civilisation depends on smiles.
“And what can I do for you today?” he asked brightly, while simultaneously plotting how to destroy her.
Katriona had a larger bag with her than last time she had barged into his offices. The dainty clutch bag had gone, replaced by a leather satchel of the type employed by couriers of documents. A man’s bag. She gently riffled through it, and withdrew, of all things, a broadsheet. She placed it before him, pressing a finger onto an article she had circled.
He glanced at it. He knew it well. He had written most of it himself. The broadsheet’s proprietor drank at the same club as he.
“Yes. The Lemio Clothing and Shoddy Factory,” he said, as if it were an item of mild interest. “I say, would you care for some wine? I have this fine honied vintage here, all the way from the volcanic terraces of Irrica’s mount Hethaly.”
“Why not?” she said politely, wrong-footing him. He had expected her to refuse. He had offered to make her uncomfortable. Real goodladies did not drink in the day.
Watch her, he warned himself. He poured and offered the wine with a smile even broader than the first.
“It is a delightful drink,” he said, “and suitable for one of so delicate a temperament as yourself.”
“I shall be the judge of what is suitable and what is not suitable for me, I cannot claim to speak for all goodladies any more than you can, Goodfellow Grostiman.” She sipped at the wine, pursing her lips as she did. She had fine lips. She was, if viewed in the abstract, a beauty. Something stirred in Grostiman, a toxic mix of lust and hate.
“Quite. Now,” he said, lacing his hands together and leaning forward attentively. “What can I do for you today, Goodlady Kressinda-Morthrocksa?”
She took another sip. “You know damned well what I am doing here, Eduwin.” She pointed at the article. “I am here because of this. Do you think you are clever, closing your own factory down because of the breaches of the law that I discovered there?”
“My dear goodlady,” said Grostiman. “It was not my factory. It was a distant relative’s.”
“Distant?” she said incredulously.
“Well, not so distant, a second cousin’s. I had a modest stake in it. How was I to know, or indeed my poor dear cousin, that the management he had employed in all good faith,” he waved his hand to emphasise the point, “were taking advantage of those poor orphans. Alas, in these competitive times, one tends to look at the results before examining the means. He has been fined for his naïvety, and will spend three weeks in the Drum, poor fellow. He has learned his lesson, and what salutary education it is for all of us! I thank you very much for bringing the abuses at the Lemio Clothing and Shoddy Company to light. I promise you that I shall be more diligent in future.”
She narrowed her eyes. In her delicate lace gloves, slender fingers tensed. Grostiman imagined them bending iron, then crushing the life out of him, both images he found perversely erotic. He forced himself to look into her piercing eyes.
“I went through the court report from the trial,” she said. “It is suspiciously brief. If I were a mistrustful woman, I would say tha
t you used your position as Minister for Justice to hurry this through the courts and resolve it before anyone noticed, claiming to be horrified while being aware of it all along, and throwing your own kin under the charabanc to save your greasy hide,” she said.
“Greasy?”
“Greasy. You are rich, Grostiman, yet you are not directly linked to any of the factories you actually own. You probably think that keeping yourself at one remove keeps you safe, and your reputation as an upholder of justice clean. I will not forget what I saw in your mill. You will never see the inside of a gaol. You are too slippery for that. But I can make you sweat. I can and I will force you to shut down your mills by exposing any illegal or immoral practises within, even if I have to do it one by one.”
Grostiman sighed. “If we assume these outrageous claims are correct, goodlady, what good would it do you?”
“It will hurt you. Your profits will be hit. I imagine you are probably at this moment reorganising the workings of your mills to remove the stain of impropriety. Well, goodfellow, I view that as a victory, for the abuses will stop. Your lack of conscience will cost you money, a great deal of money.”
Grostiman looked around his pokey office. “You see this room? I am required to work three days of every week here in order to keep my position as a landsman of parliament. If I am not a landsman, I cannot be a minister. There are checks on all our powers, goodlady, yours as well as mine, but there are also checks on the checks. When the Sunderdown was built after the War of Suffrage, the offices within were designed to be the same size for members of all Three Houses, ministers and landsmen alike, to show equality in government no matter a man’s birth or station. By having us working in similar sized cells, like busy little bees, we are supposed to be humbled, put aside our ambition, and work for the common good.” He smiled. “It is all the most pungent goat shit of course. The nobility rule the land as they should. You are a case in point, my dear, the daughter of a magnate banging a drum for the poor that they cannot sound themselves. The poor are poor because they deserve to be.” He smiled sympathetically. “And the poor are poor because you are rich. It is only right that the strong and the clever rise to the top, and rule things for the benefit of all. Take my own family. We are not the highest nor the mightiest, but we were one of the canny few members of the aristocracy willing to seize the opportunities presented by the new industries. We are an old clan, one of the Companion Families, descended from King Brannon’s knights, but fortunes wax and wane. The Grostimans were poor enough when industrialisation began not to turn our noses up at work. We were cheated and sidelined over the centuries. Now we are rich while those who spurned us see their power retreat. Your own family was nothing until a hundred years ago, but you also rose. You did this, because you deserve it, your own natural advantages put you were you are. Stop chasing after the rights of idiots and layabouts. If they were meant to be rich, they would be.”
“Nonsense!” said Katriona. “You know that is not true. Opportunity has little to do with drive, and everything to do with birth. Families like ours grow fat on the milk of others, and crush those that work for them. It does not have to be that way. Support my bill, Grostiman, and you will be at the forefront of a new generation of industrialists who share wealth with all, for the betterment of mankind.”
“I will be hanged for a fool, when production moves away from the high wages your laws will create to cheaper lands, and our workers starve and riot.”
“They are starving already.”
“Well, they are not rioting yet,” said Grostiman. “Although, I recall they were rioting at your mill?” He raised his eyebrows. She made a moue of irritation.
“You are making the problem worse,” he said gently. “And you will never get your proposal through the Three Houses.”
“The First House has already passed the bill to the Second House, and I can win the second.”
“The First House has no power! They don’t approve, it’s been pushed up so they don’t have to deal with it. Really, my dear, you are poorly informed.” He laughed. “You might win the Second, if you can persuade your own father not to vote against your motion. Even if you do, you cannot possibly win a vote in the third. Prince Alfra himself is opposed to your plan; he is the head of that house. His say is final. We are ruled by kings and the sons of kings as nature intended.”
“He will only vote that way because you have filled his ears with nonsense.”
Grostiman shook his head. “Alfra is not senile like his father. He is not a dullard. He has a shrewd mind, and will not be led. He can see the truth on his own. Goodlady, there is so much foolishness here. The Tyn have bewitched you. I appeal to your good sense, abandon this extremism, and we can find a better way. Conditions for the workers are not perfect, I agree. We can change this, but we cannot do it your way.”
“I have no desire for your kind of tokenism,” she said crossly. “Only for meaningful change. As for the Tyn, they persuaded me to help them, by showing me what dire circumstances they lived in. They only wanted their river back. Now I have given it to them, and the blindfold was lifted from my eyes. I am making a stand against a broader injustice. The Tyn have little to do with it.”
“So, spurred on by this successful restitution of property, which amounts to no more than giving the Tyn a pond to paddle in, you seek to give something to people that they never had in the first place?” said Grostiman. “My family is rich again, and more powerful than it has been for two hundred years. I am the Minister of Justice, do not let this blasted cupboard deceive you. I’ll be damned if I will allow a woman to strip away my family’s hard-won wealth.”
“As you will,” said Katriona. She stood, leaving her wine on the desk. “I am going to mount a legal challenge against the findings of the inquiry into your mill. I am going to find the children you removed from there, and I am going to collect their testimonies.”
“I will fight you every step of the way. You will hear from my lawyers, Artibus, Dofer and Seward. I will charge you with trespass, on my second cousin’s behalf.”
“And you will be hearing from mine,” said Katriona. “They are Artibus, Dofer and Seward.” She pronounced each name very precisely. “I am sorry,” she said insincerely. “My poor girlish head. I meant to tell you as soon as I arrived that you need to find yourself new advocates. Your last agents received a better offer.”
“I will buy them back.”
“You can try. I am richer than you, for all your posturing, and unlike you, those three goodmen can tell which way the wind is blowing. Good day, Goodfellow Grostiman. I have an appointment to keep. I shall show myself out.”
Katriona left. Grostiman drummed his fingers on his desk and pursed his lips in thought. He finished his wine, then he finished hers.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Display of Piety
GILT DOORS SWUNG open upon a hall lined with mirrors. Musicians in two facing lines lifted silver trumpets and blew a clarion for Adamanka Shrane.
A courtier approached Shrane and her companions, taking the small steps of a man in heels far too high for him. He removed and replaced his staff of office on the floor in extravagant display, and stopped with a flourished bow. The wig on his head was so tall, and the paint on his face so thick, it obscured his humanity, turning him into an expressionless doll. A useful trait in hiding his distaste at Guis’ stink. He gestured to further doors already swinging open, and stated with courtly disinterest, “The Comte Raganse will see you now. Welcome to the court of the Second Comte of Perus and Maceriya.” He bowed the number of times prescribed for greeting a mage. Harafan and Guis did not merit this courtesy. The courtier shuffled backwards, still bowed, his court shoes clopping on the floor of rare wood.
“I have never been played in by a fanfare before,” whispered Guis behind his hand.
The thing possessing Guis had done its best to cover up the stench of its stolen body. It insisted it had bathed, but the reek of spiritual corruption could not be w
ashed easily away, and he emanated a sharp, unpleasant odour. The smell of old sweat and shit had gone, at least, and perfume went a long way to hiding the rest. The thing had sourced new clothes in the highest style, and wore full court make-up, but even to the dullest mind something would have appeared amiss about Guis. The makeup cracked on his skin, and his teeth were yellow as egg yolks. Adamanka Shrane looked askance at this servant of the gods, if indeed it were. The lesser Y Dvar were tricky things, whatever form they used. She would have to destroy it, though for the time being it served a purpose.
“Shh,” said Shrane. “Guard your charge. Do not speak.” She referred to the terrified Harafan behind Guis. He wore his best clothes, but in the surroundings of the Second Comte of Perus’ staggering wealth he looked like a vagrant.
Shrane curtseyed to the courtier as convention demanded, her fixed smile not betraying the arthritic twinge in her hips. The courtier did not notice, nor would he have cared. His role was done. He remained bowed in motionless discomfort, as courtly law dictated.
“Shall we get on with this?” said Guis. He stared at the musicians until one blinked, then smiled with satisfaction. “He moved!” he said.
“Silence, Y Dvar,” Shrane commanded. She set out down the avenue of musicians, toward the second doors.
Various kinds of expensive timber shipped from the northern tropics made up the floor, inlaid as a subtly pleasing pattern of muted browns, blacks and creamy whites, and polished to a mirror finish.
Rich men love to display their wealth, and the power it implies. The timber’s cost was matched by sea dragon ivory sculptures, and gold and silver. Precious stones studded extravagant plaster mouldings that covered every inch of the walls not occupied by mirrors. The ceilings dripped crystal chandeliers lit up by the very latest in glimmer technology. Money, money, money—that was all these short-sighted fools had their eyes on, thought Shrane. She sincerely doubted the piety Raganse so professed for the banished gods. Religion was only another road to power for men like him.
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