Reign of Stars

by Tim Pratt

  "My companion, my bodyguard, my assistant, yes, and my friend, too. We're here in Starfall at Zernebeth's invitation, to undertake an important mission—"

  "Oh, yes, your mission. To die at the Battle of Falheart. Hmm. Well, your friend was attempting to sell fake relics to some of the more credulous members of court. I caught him and explained to him the penalties for fraud and smuggling, which, for the sake of ease and convenience, are the same penalty: donating one's living body to further our researches." Bothvald tapped a finger against his lips. "But, all right. If you can promise to take responsibility for your cur, and make him come to heel, and explain to him that fifty percent of anything he sells—that's fifty percent of the gross—must be handed over to the League treasurer, which by happy coincidence is an office I hold, then I'll let you have him back, not noticeably damaged. All right?"

  "Fine," Alaeron said.

  Bothvald began to step aside, then paused. "One other thing. You're not really going to the Battle of Falheart, are you? Come, now. I know secrecy is key, but the League is a terrible place for secrets. I'll find out anyway—save me the tedium of investigating?"

  "It's..." He slumped his shoulders. "Gorum Pots. I'm supposed to investigate a wreck there."

  "Mmm. The hot springs. Try not to fall in. There's a reason no one's set up a spa there—the water is tainted by things other than sulfur." He put a hand on Alaeron's shoulder, his face all friendliness. "Thank you. And I apologize for the misunderstanding. If I'd known the dog was yours, I would have let you take care of punishing it yourself." He turned and called, "Release the prisoner," then nodded to Alaeron and walked away. "One coming up!" Bothvald shouted, presumably to the guards on the trapdoor, and then he was gone.

  Inside Room One, a woman in a long black apron with her hair pulled back in a severe bun sighed and put a gleaming instrument of pincers and needles down on a table strewn with similar implements. "You'll have to carry him. We gave him something to quiet him down."

  Alaeron hurried to Skiver, who was sprawled on his back on a metal table, tilted just slightly toward the feet. The table had gutters all around the sides, leading to a drain on the floor. "You drugged him? Why? I thought the point was to learn how to make prisoners talk."

  "When someone goes to sleep whole and wakes up missing a hand or a foot, it makes quite an impression on them. They often become very talkative. If I can't work on him, please take him away. I have other uses for the table."

  Luckily, Skiver was more lean and leathery than big and musclebound, so Alaeron was able to sling him over his shoulders and get him out the door without much difficulty. Once he'd reached the foot of the stairs he called to the guards, "Two coming up!" The door clanged open, and one of the guards looked down. "A little help?" Alaeron said.

  "We usually don't bring dead ones through here." The guard scratched his chin. "There's the acid pit, and the incinerators, and of course all those things in the meat garden that like to eat corpses—"

  "He's not dead, he's asleep, he's heavy, and I'm a member of the bloody Technic League, so help me!" Alaeron roared.

  The guard was big enough that he could have picked Alaeron up and snapped him like a twig, but he paled and rushed down to help. Membership, even provisional membership like Alaeron's, had its privileges.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  He got Skiver into bed, then barred the outer doors of both their rooms. Whatever compound the torturer had used to knock him out didn't stay in the blood long, because he began moaning almost immediately, eyes fluttering open. "What—what happened—"

  "You were—"

  "That festering ass!" Skiver sat upright, snarling, looking around wildly. "The long-haired prancing pretty boy—"

  "Bothvald, yes. A captain of the Technic League. He said he caught you selling fake relics—"

  "They weren't fake. They were replicas! For those who can't afford genuine Osirian or Azlanti artifacts from antiquity, I offer high-quality copies, suitable for public display. Great conversation pieces, and a minimal loss if a drunken guest knocks them off the mantel. They'd only be fake if I was trying to convince people they were real. Besides which, we saw people openly selling bad imitation artifacts in the market square—"

  ‘‘Yes, but those people paid the League their percentage," Alaeron said.

  "I would've made arrangements." Skiver sounded more sulky than enraged. He sighed. "But, yes, all right, I'd be annoyed if an out-of-towner wandered into my neighborhood and started doing business without permission. I should have made sure my connection to you was a more dependable umbrella before I wandered out in the rain. But they were talking about doing horrible things to me, Alaeron, a lot worse than having a serious conversation with a pair of brass knuckles, or even tying a sack of rocks to my feet and dumping me in a harbor."

  "They're monsters." But Alaeron was frowning now, and thinking hard. "Except...Bothvald is a Technic League captain. Policing minor crimes is hardly his job. And even if he took notice of you, and decided you should be punished, why come to your room later and take you personally down to the subbasement? Why tell you where he was taking you, in earshot of a slave who could give the information to me? And how could he not know who you were, that you were with me? Information is the lifeblood of a League captain."

  "Ah. A setup, then." Skiver scratched his nose. "What did you have to give him for my freedom?"

  "Nothing much. A promise of half your profits—I know, but the alternative was literally death, Skiver. Oh, and he asked me where Zernebeth was sending me, and I told him Gorum Pots—"

  "What's Gorum Pots?"

  Alaeron shook his head, waving the question away. "A place we're not going. A plausible lie. But he didn't press me, feed me a truth serum, or try to impress on me the seriousness of his question, and he accepted it without apparent doubt. Perhaps because Zernebeth is spreading a secret rumor that Gorum Pots is my destination anyway, but...I think he knows better. Asking me that was a distraction, so if I grew suspicious, I'd assume that was the reason he took you, to find out where I was going. No, I was meant to save you all along."

  "That's a relief. So if the question about your destination was misdirection, what's Bothvald really after? What was the point of the whole unpleasant exercise, eh?"

  Alaeron frowned. "Skiver, do me a favor. Take off all your clothes."

  "This is quite a time for you to switch over to my side of the sheets, Alaeron. Getting into the swing of the decadent court, are you? But I'm afraid you aren't my type, entirely too intellectual—"

  "Please? It's important."

  "Wait, you trained as a physician, didn't you? So this is a matter of professional interest?" Skiver stripped quickly, standing bare before Alaeron moments later, his body all ropy muscle and fading scars. Alaeron examined him carefully, bringing an alchemical lamp to bear, then grunted. "There. In the, ah...cleft of your, ah..."

  "The crack of my ass? Feels like a bug bit me there, damn close to the worst place possible. I assumed it was some horrible Numerian vermin from beyond the back of the stars."

  "No, there's a tiny stitch here, I think when you were unconscious in the subbasement, something was...implanted. Do you have a very sharp knife?"

  "This day gets better and better," Skiver muttered.

  After dousing the blade with alcohol—to clean the wound as he inflicted it—and making Skiver lay face down, Alaeron cut a tiny fingernail-sized metal disk out of his flesh. The stitch he put in to close the wound wasn't as neat as the torturer's had been, but it would suffice. "So what've you pulled out of my ass, then?" Skiver said.

  "I'm not sure. Some kind of device that shows your location, I would imagine—do you remember how Kormak, the assassin, was able to track our relics when we fled to the ruins of Kho? This may be something similar, a piece of something larger, with a sympathetic connection linking the two."

  "Ahhhh. So Bothvald did want to find out your real destination. He just didn't plan to find out by asking you—he was going
to follow me, knowing where you go, I do too."

  "It seems plausible. Hmm. What should we do with this thing?"

  Skiver plucked the tiny disk from Alaeron's hand. "I'll carry it in my pocket, and hope it's not so sensitive Bothvald can tell it's not in my ass anymore. And when we see a good opportunity, we'll put it somewhere else."

  Alaeron sighed. "Is this politics, Skiver? I hate politics."

  The thief grinned. "I don't know about politics, but it's mischief, and I'm good at that. The bastard had me dragged to a basement, knocked me out, and put a flake of rust in my rear—I intend to make as much mischief for him as I possibly can."

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the Court of the Black Sovereign

  Skiver and Alaeron dressed in their best finery, packed away safely in the black box during the journey. Alaeron wore dark breeches and a white shirt, with a pale green jacket and high boots. Skiver opted for black clothes accented with silver, slicking his hair back with a sweet-smelling pomade, and even shaving thoroughly for the first time in Alaeron's experience—normally the best Skiver managed was to shave well enough to make it look like he'd shaved yesterday.

  Not long after nightfall a slave arrived to tell them it was time to attend the feast, and they left the Technic League compound for the more thorough decadence of the palace itself. The hallways were made of fine stone, alchemical lights hanging from the ceiling, and every niche and nook and cranny was stuffed with art objects and relics from surrounding countries. None of the art was offensive in and of itself, and some pieces would have been at home in any discerning art lover's collection, but they were haphazardly arranged with no sense of harmony or coordination, and the overall effect was one of vulgarity and ignorance—someone who had no idea how rich people filled their homes, doing their best to work out the proper behavior from first principles.

  Alaeron paused to marvel at the juxtaposition of a huge Osirian jar with handles shaped like curving serpents and a lid shaped like a scarab, placed beside a chipped ceramic swan with outstretched wings. "I think the Sovereign has displayed literally everything he's ever been given as a gift by a foreign power, ambassador, or emissary, or looted during his wars of conquest."

  "It's a bit like being in a junk shop, but better lit," Skiver said agreeably.

  After walking what seemed a mile, they finally reached the feasting hall, the doors attended by slaves in golden collars. They stepped inside, where a fair-sized crowd had already gathered, and simply marveled for a moment.

  "You can put the barbarian in a palace, but he's still a barbarian," Skiver said, whispering from the corner of his mouth. In contrast to the alchemical lanterns that hung elsewhere, the walls here were crowded with flaming torches, giving the scene a flickering and wild quality. A garland of humanoid (and occasional monster) skulls hung from the high rafters beneath the dome, and axes and swords, notched and hard-used in battle, decorated the walls as the room's only other ornaments. Long wooden feasting tables were lined up on a raised dais before the throne—a vast chair of pitted black metal, reputedly fashioned from a meteorite that had screamed out of the sky on the night of one of Kevoth-Kul's great victories. The crowd mostly wore ornate fashion doubtless copied from the courts of other nations, apart from a healthy smattering of Kellids in more traditional garb, which was to say furs and leather, with jewelry leaning heavily toward fangs and carved bones dangling on metal chains.

  The throne was presently unoccupied, the Sovereign nowhere in evidence, but the long tables on the dais were crowded already with Kellids and members of the Technic League, including what appeared to be the entire council of captains (excepting the gnome). Bothvald wore silk in scarlet and black, and Zernebeth was dressed in a stunning dress the color of sea froth, accented with skymetal jewelry. They were leaning together, talking, and Alaeron thought better of going to see Zernebeth. Time enough later to tell her what Bothvald had done, and what Alaeron believed he was trying to do.

  "This way, please." The servant who bowed before them wore only a thin gold chain around her neck to reveal her status as a slave; otherwise she was dressed as well as the courtiers. They were taken to one of many smaller tables near the walls of the hall, where the lower-status members of the court would be fed.

  They took their seats and nodded hellos to their tablemates, and then a white-haired Kellid leapt up beside the throne and clapped his hands. Alaeron recognized him, vaguely, as the court skald, the bard/storyteller combination favored by the Kellid tribes, responsible for composing the songs and poems extolling the Black Sovereign's greatness, and a de facto master of ceremonies whenever such a role was called for. "We come together today," the man announced, "to celebrate the marriage of Tek Makul and his sweet young promised one!"

  A grinning, handsome young man stood up from a table on the platform and shook his fist in the air, his terrified-looking bride smiling wide-eyed at his side.

  "I'll save the pretty words for later," the skald went on. "For now, we feast!"

  And so the feast began. First, slaves brought out a life-sized statue of a kneeling donkey made of brass, and set it on the table before the bride and groom-to-be. The donkey was laden with saddlebags, and the slaves threw them open, spilling out heaps of olives, white and black, along with what Alaeron suspected were fish eggs. The delighted diners began scooping up food with their hands as servants circulated in the rest of the room, bringing much smaller-scale statues similarly appointed to the tables along the walls. Skiver scooped up a handful of pale orange fish eggs from their ornamental donkey and chewed them thoughtfully. "Salty," he said. "Nice ass, though." He prodded the brass donkey's nose.

  Next the servants brought silver platters, each bearing tiny bridges made of iron, arrayed with what appeared to be mice drizzled with honey and poppy seeds, surrounded by sausages and plums and the seeds of pomegranates.

  Wine was poured liberally, sharp red and cool white, and Skiver drank freely, chatting with their well-dressed Kellid tablemates even though he spoke barely any Hallit and they spoke barely any Taldane. Alaeron was picking at a sausage, wondering what animal or animals it had come from, when the Sovereign finally arrived.

  Alaeron hadn't seen the ruler of Numeria in years, but amazingly, the passage of time had not been all that unkind to the man. He was still hulking, still with long black hair, still with cold, cruel eyes—and if those eyes were shadowed, his skin too pale and slack, his muscles transforming to fat, and his general air one of decadent dissipation, at least none of that was any worse than it had been years ago. The League constantly tinkered with the formulation of the drugs the Sovereign lived for, and apparently had managed to work in some preservatives, or at least to offset some of the more deadly ravages of the substances milked from Silver Mount.

  "My friends!" the Sovereign boomed. "My cousin marries tomorrow, and tonight, we send him off in high fashion." His gaze swept the room almost balefully. "You will celebrate, you will feast, you will rut, you will give in to every appetite—this is how you honor me and my family!"

  Alaeron had never been more afraid not to have a good time. What if the Sovereign decided someone wasn't being sufficiently celebratory? The man's moods and whims could be terrifying and destructive. Alaeron reached for the nearest jug of wine. Alcohol, like all chemicals, had useful applications, and one of them was creating merriment where it wasn't necessarily felt otherwise.

  The huge brass donkey was taken away, and servants next brought a tray topped by an immense statue of a hen wrought in silver, surrounded by straw, and placed that at the high table. At a whispered instruction from a slave, the husband-to-be began digging in the straw and came up with a fist-sized egg. He cracked it open with a spoon, laughed, and then took a huge bite from it, shell and all. Alaeron understood when the servants began distributing eggs to his table: they were made of some kind of pastry, stuffed with a "white" and "yolk" made of something sweet. The guests at the high table dug through the straw searching for eggs, laughing, as th
e Black Sovereign sat in his throne and ate from a tray resting on the naked back of a kneeling slave, the food placed in his mouth by other slaves, scantily clad men and women seemingly drawn from every nation of the Inner Sea, to feed his vain love for variety. It was amazing he didn't have someone to chew his food for him.

  Alaeron was already full from the sausage and olives, and the courses showed no sign of stopping. His head was beginning to swim from the wine, and a group of slaves had begun wandering the hall, singing something in Hallit that Alaeron couldn't quite catch; nevertheless, he thought it was probably obscene, based on the way the bride-to-be blushed. One of the guests knocked a beautiful silver dish onto the floor, and rather than picking it up, a slave swept it into a pile of refuse along with spilled food and straw, an ostentatious show of wealth on the Sovereign's part.

  Alaeron's hands were sticky after the sweet egg pastry, and when a servant came by with a pitcher, Alaeron allowed some to be poured over his hands, realizing too late that it was perfume, not water. Other slaves were scattering the floor with sawdust, presumably to soak up spilled wine, but even the sawdust was perfumed, mixed with rare spices and sending up a cloud of scent that clashed terribly with the food. At some point, the slaves became mostly naked, and there were a lot more of them kneeling around the Sovereign, and several others performing various acrobatic displays.

  The vulgarity on display was astonishing, and it didn't stop. Things began to blur together for Alaeron as he more deeply dipped into the wine, but he remembered an entire skeleton, human in shape but actually constructed from sheep and cow bones, being cracked open so guests could feast on the marrow; heaping platters of testicles and kidneys, from what animal Alaeron didn't dare guess; young sow's udders; sea scorpions; whole honeycombs, speckled with tiny bees made of spun sugar; and servants bearing miniature silver ovens, from which they dispensed fresh bread.

  The more he drank, the more he wanted to talk to Zernebeth, wondering if what they'd done together twice so far was more than just a trick to make him loyal. But she was always deep in conversation at her table, or whirling around the dance floor (once even with Bothvald), or leaning to whisper in the Sovereign's ear. Eventually Alaeron drank enough to lose track of her.