“What a calamity for House Erevesic,” says Terevant, as lightly as he can, but both of them know it’s not wholly a joke.
“This isn’t about blame or the errors of the past. It’s about ensuring that the family sword has an acceptable bearer.” Olthic plunges his thumb into the skin of an orange, flays it. “Daerinth has arranged a meeting for me at the alchemists’ guild in a while, Do you want to spar before I leave? We have to keep in fighting shape, set an example for the living.”
Terevant finishes his coffee. “No. I want to take a walk. See some of the city, get the lay of the land.” He leaves I haven’t beaten you in a fair sparring match in twenty years unspoken.
Olthic leans forward again, the chair creaking under his weight. “I’d prefer if you didn’t leave the embassy compound except on official business.”
“As his Excellency commands.” Terevant rises, salutes, waits to be dismissed.
“Oh, don’t stand on ceremony. Go on.”
Terevant strides across the courtyard.
A withered hand attached to a withered frame topped by a withered face stops him at the door. “Lieutenant?”
Ter suppresses his first question, which is why are you not dead yet? “Yes, First Secretary?”
“Young Lemuel has news from the city. He awaits you in your office.”
Terevant nods. “Ah, thank you.”
“Don’t let yourself be misled by him. The boy’s a useful guttersnipe, but he’s not… not…” Daerinth trails off, as if he’s forgotten what he intended to say, but he doesn’t release his grip on Terevant’s arm. “You don’t look much like the ambassador, do you?” Daerinth’s eyes are so whited with cataracts that Terevant can’t tell if the old man is making an observation, or genuinely asking for information.
“My brother’s always been a bigger man than I.”
“You must not be angry with him,” says Daerinth. “It is very hard.”
“Why not? I mean, what is very hard?” Terevant begins to wonder if this man’s mind is as frail as his body seems to be. The First Secretary is supposed to be the embassy’s premier diplomat, the ambassador’s right-hand man in negotiations with Guerdon. Why entrust such a vital role to so fragile a vessel? Why not a younger man, or at least a dead one? He glances at the old man’s wrists, but they’re clear of the magical scars that mark a Vigilant. His house sigil doesn’t indicate they have a phylactery. When Daerinth dies–which might be before the end of this conversation, from the look of him–he’ll just die a Supplicant and end up in the jar in the courtyard.
“To be one of the Fifty. I should know.”
“Are–were you?”
“Not me.” The old man smiles like a child. “My mother was. Long, long ago. She was a poet. She won a place in the Fifty, and suddenly she couldn’t write like she used to. Everything became rimmed with knives, she said. Everything became a potential failing. I was only five, but if I couldn’t recite my histories in school, then that was a mark against her as one of the Fifty.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
The withered hand clutches tighter.
“She won, you know. This was before the war got bad, and the Crown cherished her voice. I grew up in the palace, and they called me the Laughing Prince.”
“That was you!?”
Daerinth bows ironically, although he can only manage a barely perceptible bend at the waist.
“I feared that she would stop loving me, you know. How could she not, I thought? She was part of the Crown then, a thousandth part of a soul so glorious so how could she still love her mortal child when she was mother of the nation? But I was wrong. She loved me. She did, for a while. She wasn’t my mother, but the Crown loved me.” Daerinth inclines his head towards the man in the courtyard. “He will remember you, too. Even afterwards.”
The spy looks down on Guerdon’s crowded harbour, at the spires and bulwarks of Queen’s Point across the bay. “Then perhaps an ocean will work.”
He mentally steps back for a moment, to listen to his own words, to study their effect on Eladora Duttin. Apparently his Alic identity is partial to poetic notions. Alic likes feeling useful, too; he’s enjoyed fixing Jaleh’s roofs, and putting up posters for the Industrial Liberals. But Alic isn’t the spy, even if the spy is currently Alic.
Duttin is hard to read. At first glance she reminded him of something delicate and nervous. A hare, maybe. A library mouse, burrowed into a cosy paper nest. Or a clever bird, a parrot that can recite speeches, but would be best kept in a comfortable cage. The more he talks with her, though, it becomes clear that there’s a slow, deep strength in her. She’s a glacier, moving forward irresistibly. A little cold and wet on the surface, but iron-hard and remorseless.
She senses his scrutiny, smiles awkwardly. Keeps talking about Kelkin. She’s slow to react, prone to second-guessing herself. The spy can work with this.
The path to Sevenshell Street wends through the most confusing parts of the dream-like architecture of the New City. Wide boulevards suddenly contract into alleyways, unfinished towers stand forever on the brink of collapse. A mansion like a doll’s house, missing its front wall.
They pass a profusion of temples and shrines. Icons watch them as they go by. Some are ancient relics, probably salvaged from a loser’s temple in the Godswar. Others were made here, cut out of the shimmering stone of the New City, shaped from river clay, assembled out of junk. The spy recognises some of them–there’s Lion Queen, and Cloud Mother, and Blessed Bol, his statue made of thousands of copper coins glued together into his fat grinning face. All those are gods from the south, but there are other deities, too–Mother of Flowers and Holy Beggar from Guerdon, Yellow King and Masked Prince, Ishrey the Dawnmaiden and Uruaah Mountainmaker from the Silver Coast.
“Look at this one!” exclaims Eladora. She’s gone into one shrine that’s lost in shadow. He follows her into the cool darkness. It’s a shrine to Fate Spider. Eladora stands next to a huge statue, as tall as she is, depicting a monstrous spider. She reaches out and brushes her finger over the marble. “I wonder how they brought this here. It must weigh several tons.”
The spy doesn’t dare speculate. He moves cautiously, wary of disturbing whatever powers are connected to this place. The walls of the shrine are covered in messages and prayers, each one written in a private code. There are offerings, too, little burned scraps of paper with secrets scrawled on them. They rustle under Eladora’s boots as she circles the statue, an echo of the Paper Tombs.
Silkpurse hisses from outside, and it breaks Eladora’s enchantment with Fate Spider. As she hurries out, she brushes past him in the darkness. Quick as a ghoul, he dips his hand into her bag, holding the coin-purse tight so it doesn’t jingle. Eladora doesn’t notice.
Outside, in the sun, he asks her, “What’s in Sevenshell Street, anyway?”
“My, ah, cousin. I’ve been there before, but it was a few months ago and I came at it from a different route.”
“Fallen on hard times, has she?” The spy tries to square how Eladora–clearly well educated, moderately wealthy, and close to Effro Kelkin and the IndLib inner circle–could have a close family member who lives in one of the most dangerous rookeries in the New City.
“Jumped, more like,” mutters Eladora.
Silkpurse leads them on down this street of foreign gods, and then through an archway into an unexpected market. Sellers shout at them in a dozen languages, gesturing at the wares spread out on brightly coloured blankets. The stalls here deal in alchemical goods–salvage from the warehouses, weapons, medicines in cracked glass jars. A Stone Man haggles for a syringe of alkahest; there’s a butcher dealing corpse-meat for ghouls under the counter. Across the market, there’s a woman giving a speech, and Eladora insists they go over and find out which party she’s from, but it turns out she’s a recruiter for a mercenary company.
The spy lingers for a few moments, talking to the alchemical vendors. He’ll have something to rep
ort to Tander and Annah, something for Emlin to whisper to her fellow saints of Fate Spider. Enough to keep Captain Isigi satisfied. He wonders idly if the captain is still alive, down in Mattaur. Maybe her mortal form has broken under the strain of sainthood.
Silkpurse circles back to him. “How much further?” he asks her.
“Not far.” Silkpurse looks at the bundle of Industrial Liberal posters and flyers that she’s still carrying, and sighs. “Oh, Alic, she’s not going to Sevenshell because of the election, is she?”
He shrugs. “Everything’s political.”
“Let’s get it done, then,” says Silkpurse. She scurries off to fetch Eladora out of the crowd, and finds her at a bookseller. The spy watches the interaction from a distance, as if it’s a mummer’s play: Eladora crowing as she finds some unexpected treasure of a book, the ghoul plucking at her sleeve urging her to go, the merchant quoting a price, Eladora reaching for her coin-purse and finding it missing. She looks around in alarm; Silkpurse’s mix of pity and exasperation–what did Eladora expect, walking into the worst part of the New City?
The spy dodges out of sight, waits a few heartbeats, then pushes through the crowd to Eladora. He makes himself breathe heavily, as though he just won a footrace. “I caught the little thief. He got away, but…” He holds up the purse he stole from Eladora.
She thanks him profusely while cursing herself for not paying more attention. Her face flushes with embarrassment; she stammers as she tries to bargain with the merchant. The spy steps in and haggles for her in the cant of the Severastian markets, all hand gestures and throat noises. He buys the book for half the asking price, and hands it to Eladora.
“Thank you, sir,” she says, still embarrassed. She pretends to flip through the book, but he catches her glancing at him with a new appreciation.
It’s best not to appear too eager. In a day or two, he thinks, she’ll come by Jaleh’s, ask him to go walking with her in the New City again. Infiltration is part seduction, part patience. He has to wait now for her to contact him. She’s got to be one to spot Alic’s potential, the one to ask for his help, to take him into her confidence. She has to trust him–and then he’ll be able to report to Annah and Tanner that he’s infiltrated the Industrial Liberal party. From Eladora, it’s only a single strand of the web to Effro Kelkin and the highest echelons of Guerdon’s government.
And Emlin will whisper these secrets back to their superiors in Ishmere.
And the heavens will burn.
CHAPTER 15
Lemuel’s snoozing, cat-like, in Edoric Vanth’s chair when Terevant arrives. From the doorway, Yoras makes a bony click of disapproval.
“What news do you have for me?”
Lemuel slowly opens his eyes. “I’ve found Vanth, maybe. Up in the New City, I’m told by my contacts. Sevenshell Street. I thought you’d want to go up and take a look.”
“Quick or dead?” Among the folk of Haith, “quick” covers both actually living and the long post-mortem Vigil allowed by the necromancers.
“Dead, I’m told,” says Lemuel.
“How?”
“I’m not sure. The story is some saint got him.” Lemuel stands, stretches. “Come and see.”
“Aren’t saints banned in Guerdon?” Terevant asks, remembering the watch thaumaturges on the train, Lys’s insistence that he hide the Erevesic sword.
Lemuel rolls his eyes. “City watch tries to ban the foreign ones. Send those they catch out to the camp on Hark, but some slip through. And the New City’s dangerous.”
Terevant turns to Yoras.
“Yoras,” he calls, “get your mask.”
The Vigilant are not to leave the embassy without permission, sir.
“Can’t I give you permission?”
Not as such, sir. Not unless it’s an emergency.
“Dash it all.” There are living soldiers in the garrison, too, but he doesn’t know them yet, doesn’t trust them. “All right. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I look forward with bated breath, sir.
He double-takes at that, but Yoras is always grinning these days. Terevant grabs a weather-stained cloak to drape over his uniform, and follows Lemuel out of the sprawling building.
Lemuel moves with a long, loping stride, quickly covering the ground between the compound and the Bryn Avane train station. They pass the grotesque idols of Ishmere’s embassy, the sullen high-walled darkness of Ulbishe, the shining minarets of the Twin Caliphates. Terevant remembers one of Vanth’s reports, about some Ishmeric spy who was shot right here in the gutter, and the outline of a satirical poem rises up in his mind. The street is the Godswar in miniature, told from the perspective of the rats who dodge the titan footfalls of the incomprehensible giants who walk there. He tries to quash the idea–he’s an officer again, with duties and a reputation to rebuild, and no time to write it anyway–but it distracts him enough that he walks past the entrance to the station, and Lemuel has to pull him back.
The walls of the stairwell are thick with election posters. Lemuel digs into a pocket and produces a pair of rosettes, hands one to Terevant. “Pull your cloak over your uniform,” he advises, “and fasten it closed with that.”
The rosette is made of crepe paper, with a cheap brass pin in the shape of a crown. “What is it?”
“Party supporter badge. Keeps the worst of ’em from annoying you, if they think your vote’s spoken for.”
Terevant does as Lemuel suggested. “Which party?” he asks.
“Monarchists. Bunch of lunatics who think the king’s going to come back to save the city.” He puts his own rosette on, replacing one with the sign of the Keepers.
“You said a saint killed Vanth–what saint? What god?” demands Terevant.
The train platform is almost deserted, but Lemuel still shushes him. “Not here. Too many ears.”
They board the nearly empty train. Thunder down through the tunnels. They sit in silence, facing each other. Lemuel yawns, brushes down the buttons of his military jacket.
“Where did you serve?” asks Terevant, nodding at the jacket.
“Oh, I took this off a dead man.” Again the insolent smile. “I’m told you were a poet.”
“Ah, yes. Before the war.”
“I always preferred the theatre,” smirks Lemuel at some private joke.
“Do you know where Lys–where I might find the Lady Erevesic?”
“You might find her almost anywhere. She gets around, our Lys, doesn’t she?” Lemuel picks another speck of lint from his sleeve. “She trained me, you know. I’ve been with her for years.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“If she wanted you to know, she’d have told you.”
Shame battles with irritation within Terevant. If he hadn’t screwed up on the train to Grena, then maybe Lys would have revealed more of her secrets to him. And he had such grand plans to investigate Vanth’s death, to prove himself that way–but instead, Lemuel’s found the trail already. His face flushes with anger.
Lemuel laughs. “Gods below, you’re easy to provoke.” The words delivered not as an insult, but as an assessment, the way a mechanic might triage a damaged piece of artillery. “They’ll eat you alive in this city. You’ve got to learn to act.”
“Blend in, you mean?”
“You’re not going to do that, not with that accent of yours–and everyone knows your glorious brother, anyway.” Lemuel chuckles again. “See? There you go again. Compare you to his Excellency, and you twitch. You’re an easy mark. You’ve got to give less away. Hide what you really care about. It’s caring that’ll get you killed.”
He becomes more serious, leans forward. His voice drops. “I’ll give you an example. Back before the Crisis, I had this girl bedding an alchemist from the guild. I’d known the girl–her name was Jenni–since I was ten. She’d convinced lover boy to bring some documents out of the guild, alchemical secrets that the Bureau wanted, right? Only the Tallowmen got wind of it. They follow Jenni to where s
he was supposed to meet me.”
Lemuel swallows. “I spot ‘’em. I work out what’s going on. And I walk away. I walk right past Jenni without looking at her. And I don’t look back when the Tallowmen grab her. I don’t look back when she screams. I’m just a bystander, as far as they’re concerned. Like she had nothing to do with me.”
“You sound proud of being a bastard.”
“I’m from the Wash. Can’t afford pride where I grew up.” Lemuel throws himself back in his seat, theatrically offended. “See, once they know you, who you really are, they can use you. You can’t give ’em an opening. That alchemist–soon as I found out he wasn’t happy, I put Jenni in his way, and I had him by the cock after that. Other people, it’s something else. Money, fear, revenge, love. Doesn’t matter. Once you’re hooked, you’re gone.” He crooks his finger, mimicking a fisherman’s hook tearing through soft flesh.
“You should get out before anyone gets their claws into you,” adds Lemuel. And then he turns his gaze to the flickering lights beyond the window, his expression blank as if he and Terevant are strangers who just happen to be sharing a carriage for a moment.
Sordid, thinks Terevant. The vile man is projecting his own gutter sensibilities onto the whole. Surely the Bureau isn’t all like that. In his youthful imaginings, in the books he read in Paravos, it was all daring intrigues, high-level diplomacy, cleverness and guile. Not some poor girl used as a lure, then gutted on the street like a fish by Tallowmen.
The city presents its many faces to them, station by station, like an impressionist. At Five Knives station it’s a street tough, daring them to disembark. At Castle Hill, a doddery clerk, fussy and busy. At Venture Square, a rich speculator.
And down by the old docks, something stranger. They’re on the edge of the miracle-spawned New City here. This station nearly collapsed in the Crisis, but was saved through divine intervention. Ribs and spars of shimmering stone bear up the roof, having broken through from above like the roots of some petrified tree. The iron rails end halfway along the tunnel, replaced with matching rails of stone.
The Shadow Saint Page 17