by David Hair
She turned her head find Portia Tolidi standing over her. Come to gloat, have you? Her mood blackened, but she could not risk a scene when so many here despised her. ‘I cannot prevent it.’
Portia tilted her head, causing a ripple of gorgeous red-gold hair to catch the torchlight. ‘Of course you can. With a word. I have no desire to torment you.’ Her voice was deeper than most women and sounded very sophisticated to Cera. She bit her lip in jealousy.
She helped Tarita survive the massacre last year, she reminded herself. She may not be all bad. ‘Then sit, for the sake of my maid.’
Portia’s mouth softened a fraction. She sat gracefully. ‘Grazie, Princessa. How is Tarita?’
Tarita, who was your brother’s lover. ‘She is as well as can be.’ She met Portia’s eyes cautiously. ‘She has great anger and sorrow.’
‘And so do I.’
‘Excuse me if I do not see that. All I see is one doing well for herself by her collaboration with an invader.’
Portia didn’t grow angry and leave as she’d hoped she might. Instead she flinched, as though ashamed. ‘Do not think that all the Gorgio wanted the Dorobon to return,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘And anyway, is not “collaboration” also your intention?’
‘It was never my intention.’
‘Then Magister Gyle’s,’ Portia responded. ‘He praises you to Francis. It angers Octa.’
That made her heart go cold. Octa Dorobon frightened her. ‘Then he must stop speaking well of me.’
‘He should, if he values you,’ Portia agreed. She leant forward. ‘Have you heard his latest proposal? He has told Francis that under the constitution of Javon, a king may take multiple wives – a harem, like the Amteh do.’ She made the Sol-sign against blasphemy. ‘The constitution allows it, he says, for in theory, a Javon king must be Amteh as well.’
Cera swallowed. A harem? Gyle is insane. ‘Is this true?’
‘Don Perdonello’s lawyers say it is. Gyle tells Francis that taking a wife from each of the important families will tie them to him, especially once he fathers children on them.’
Cera tried to see if Portia felt threatened by this, but she couldn’t tell. Her perfect heart-shaped face was devoid of emotion, so much so that it suddenly occurred to her that Portia might be no more willing to bed Francis Dorobon than she was. Though in Portia’s case, he was already rukking her nightly. ‘How do you feel about it?’
Portia’s eye’s narrowed faintly and flickered about the hall. They were tired, those eyes, as if she slept poorly. Tarita said Francis rode her for hours at a time. Cera also scanned the room; no one was watching them that she could see. Octa and her daughter were staring sourly at Gyle, who was in the midst of some anecdote that had the knights about Francis howling with laughter. Even Alfredo Gorgio was laughing despite himself. ‘Francis is an overgrown child with a cruel mind,’ Portia murmured. ‘You are lucky that your Jhafi looks repel him.’
Perhaps I am. But Gyle wants me to marry him … And Portia’s attitude of sympathy puzzled her; the Gorgio were noted for their disdain of the native Jhafi. But Portia sounded compassionate. And she aided Tarita, she reminded herself again: a little Jhafi maid whom her beloved brother was bedding. ‘Francis seems besotted by you,’ she noted.
‘He likes sticking his dildus in me, that is all,’ Portia replied crudely. ‘Apart from that he has no regard for anything I say or do.’ She looked at Cera sideways. ‘So, Cera Nesti: do you think that it is possible for us to be friends?’
Friends? ‘I will be dead soon. One way or the other. What is the point?’
‘If you were truly going to kill yourself, you’d have found a way by now. Me too. I think we are both survivors.’
Cera studied the other woman. Portia was almost five years older than she was, and far more beautiful. Her pale skin was radiant, her nose small and delicate, faintly freckled by the sun, her mouth a rosebud. She had hazel eyes and bewitching hair. She was dauntingly lovely. If Portia was a survivor, it could not have been an arduous task. But she respected the offer. ‘We shall have to see, I think.’
‘Who knows, we may end up as sister-wives,’ Portia said softly. ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you.’ She winked, then rose and glided back to Francis’ side. He stood and wrapped his arm about her, which forced all the other guests to stand also. Cera reluctantly joined them.
‘It’s to bed!’ Francis shouted, showing off his lovely consort. ‘May you all have as lively a time of it as I!’
She looked for reluctance, for a sign of distress, on the face of Portia, but saw none. Only desire filled her beautiful face as she clung to the young ruler.
One way or the other, she is a fine actress.
*
Gurvon Gyle pulled his eye from the spy-hole, tiring of the sight of Francis Dorobon’s ample buttocks as they humped up and down between Portia Tolidi’s perfectly formed, spread-eagled legs. There would be no more conversation worth overhearing tonight. But the idea he’d set in motion had hooked the young man, that was clear. He’d spoken of it to Portia again; he was smugly taken with the idea of a harem dedicated entirely to his own gratification. What Portia Tolidi thought, he couldn’t tell. She appeared to have no personality at all.
He nudged Hesta, who was using the other spy-hole a foot away.
The Lantric witch half-smiled.
He closed his spy-hole.
Hesta tutted softly.
Hesta licked her lips with a wry grin.
He looked at her sternly.
The Lantric witch grinned slyly.
He pulled out a relay-stave from his wardrobe, gripped it and sent his mind questing out into the night, calling cautiously into the aether. A darkly beautiful male face appeared in his vision almost immediately: Rashid Mubarak, Emir of Halli’kut. His mental touch was like perfumed silk.
Rashid sounded amused.
Rashid gave him a crooked smile that promised nothing.
The emir’s mental demeanour changed subtly.
Rashid paused, frowning. He bared his teeth momentarily, then nodded.
They broke the connection without pleasantries. The relay-stave was almost burned out anyway. He poured himself a nip of whisky, savouring the smoky taste on his tongue before swallowing. The one perk of dealing with the Dorobon was that their lands in Rondelmar were famous for the potent spirit. Then there was a knock at the door, and he reflected that there were other benefits was well.
Olivia Dorobon slid her ample body through the door when he opened it and fell eagerly into his arms. She was voluptuous, bordering on plump, but eager – definitely that. And there was much to be said for eager.
*
‘Tell me more of yourself, Yvette.’ Gyle could speak aloud to her now. Her eardrums had rebuilt themselves sufficiently, and the lobes he’d severed from a freshly dead young man had now integrated with the rest of her mutable flesh. The new eyes were almost functional too, but they were too newly settled to be used; there was still a bandage over them.
‘Why should I do that?’ Coin’s voice was still barely comprehensible, but he listened with his mind as well as his ears.
‘I like to know the people I work with,’ he replied reasonably.
‘The people you use,’ Coin corrected.
‘Being a captain of magi is all about knowing the people around you,’ he said softly. ‘I care about all those I work with.’ It was an utter lie, but Coin was a child, intellectually.
‘No one cares about me, not even Mother.’
Your mother is the coldest being on this planet. He touched her hand gently. ‘Yvette, for someone to care about you, you need to share something of yourself.’
Coin’s head lolled sideways towards him, the bandaged eyes giving it a blank strangeness that was unsettling. But at least it was easier to look at than the skinless mess of flesh slowly regrowing over her torso and arms, the naked sinew and organs pulsing wetly with every heartbeat, every shuddering breath.
‘What would you like me to share?’ she asked contemptuously. ‘My beauty? My merry nature?’
‘How old are you?’ he asked her, his voice dispassionate.
‘Twenty-seven. Mother sent me away. I was raised by priests of the Kore.’
‘When did you discover the gnosis?’
‘When I was ten – it came early for me, they said.’
‘How did it manifest?’
‘I changed shape – I made my cleft close, because I was ashamed of it. I wanted to be a boy, like the young priests. They were my friends.’
Gyle raised his eyebrows. A mage’s first expression of the gnosis was almost always elemental, not one of the more difficult Studies. For her to go straight to morphic-gnosis spoke volumes of her affinity. ‘Then what happened?’
‘One of my friends, one of the novices, wanted me to be a girl so that he could lie with me. The older priests saw what was happening and I was taken away from the monastery and sent back to Pallas. To Mother.’
Gyle squeezed her half-formed hand gently. It felt wet and raw, and left a smear of blood on his fingers. ‘And then?’
‘I was given a tutor: Renata, an Arcanum woman:. She was Palacian, one of my cousins. She trained me.’
Gyle knew the name. ‘She’s dead now, isn’t she?’
The lack of lips made it look like Coin was grinning. ‘I killed her. She lost her temper with me, so I made her heart stop.’ Her mental voice was hollow but satisfied. ‘I hated her.’
Gyle felt his complacency evaporate. Willing another’s heart to stop was not easy at all. She’s a pure-blood, Gurvon, four times more powerful than you are. Never forget that. ‘What came after that?’ he asked carefully.
‘Mother taught me how to become other people: I had to learn their shape and their mind, and use mesmerism to get inside their heads. Mysticism would work better, but I have no affinity for it. So I’m better at impersonating a person’s shape than their behaviours.’
Gyle had already noted that trait in her. ‘Who is your father, Yvette?’
‘Wanting to know if it’s my mother’s brother, are you?’ she said with tired bitterness. ‘That was a lie: one that my father – the Emperor Hiltius, my mother’s husband – allowed to be spread, to explain why I was a freak. I hated him for that. I was glad when he died.’
When your mother killed him, you mean? Or do you even guess at that?
‘I’ve never believed that piece of gossip,’ he told her, not entirely truthfully. ‘It must have been hard for you to grow up this way.’
Coin turned her head away. ‘It was Hel.’
‘But you helped the family by killing the Duke of Argundy?’
Coin’s voice turned reflective. ‘Mother said he was plotting against the empire and she wanted Echor to take over as Duke.’ She giggled faintly. ‘I bet she regrets that now.’
I’m sure she does. ‘Do you have any friends?’
Coin went still, and then slowly shook her head. ‘How can I? I am never me.’
I am never me. He thought about that. ‘I know what you mean, Yvette. I too have to spend much time pretending to be someone else. Being “me” is a luxury. We’re not so unalike.’
‘It’s not the same,’ Coin rasped. ‘I’ve never been me, not since the monastery. I don’t even know who “me” is.’ Her hideously grinning flayed skull turned to him, her voice going from empty to suddenly full. ‘I can be anyone else you want me to be. Anyone at all. But I don’t know how to be me.’
‘I’ll help you find your true self,’ he promised, because it was what she wanted to hear.
16
Common Ground
The nature of God
I say this, that there is one God, and that God is known by the Amteh as Ahm and the Omali as Aum, and the Sollan as Sol. One God, with many faces. If we can reconcile ourselves to this fact, then there will be peace in all of Ahmedhassa. You will note I exclude the God of the Kore, for this Corineus is merely a fabrication of Shaitan to justify the powers of these afreet they call Magi.
IMAM ALI-ZAYIN, HERETICAL GODSPEAKER,
AT HIS TRIAL AT SAGOSTABAD, KESH, 698
All gods are equal. Equally imaginary.
ANTONIN MEIROS, 791
Mount Tigrat, Javon, Antiopia
Shawwal (Octen) 928
4th month of the Moontide
Kazim pictured an attacker, a spearman, lunging at his back; he spun, blocked high and then thrust, driving him backwards, before finishing with a lateral sweep of the blade. Decapitation. He froze, examining the positioning of his feet. Too close together. He practised the move again and again, until he was regularly finishing with a stronger stance. He exhaled slowly, then straightened as the dust he’d kicked up swirled all around the little courtyard.
A surreal rhythm had settled over the old monastery as the days turned to weeks, the hours emptied of everything but the blade in his hand and the enemies in his head. Each day he pushed himself a little harder, a little longer. The time it was taking to regain his strength told him how close he’d come to dying of Mara Secordin’s venom, and reminded him again that he owed Elena Anborn his life.
That thought led his mind to the garden on the other side of the monastery. It had better air, better sun, more room – but he refused to go there, because that was where Elena trained. He was still struggling to deal with her as a person and as a woman. In Lakh, men and women lived shared lives, but the distinctions between roles and duties was been well-defined: men led and protected and women provided and obeyed. In Kesh, the divisions were even more pronounced; men and women lived almost entirely separate lives from childhood until marriage, and even then everywhere was segregated, from the Dom al’Ahms to the public baths. They even lived in separate parts of their homes.
But Elena acknowledged no such rules.
There were a few women in the Kalistham. They were of two sorts: dutiful wives and deceitful harlots. Elena was neither. She was like no one he’d ever imagined existing. She was only a woman, but she was as fast as any man he’d seen. Part of him longed to cross blades with her, to
test her – no, to put her in her place. He knew how Haroun would see her: as a deceitful harlot. But she’d not lied to him, so far as he could tell. He avoided her as much as he could for she had no sense of propriety. When he told her that the way she dressed offended him she’d just laughed – but then she’d taken to covering herself more modestly in front of him, an unexpected concession. And she spoke of interesting things: magi, and wars in Yuros. Her manner affronted him, but she had a strange fascination too. Though she did not conform to his idea of femininity, he could not deny her grace of movement.
He took a swallow of water and tried to put her from his mind. She too was training hard. She claimed that the afreet which had possessed her had neglected her body, something he shied from thinking about. The idea of someone inhabiting another’s body was nauseating, and of course it made her doubly nefara.
‘What does nefara even mean?’ she’d asked him over breakfast a week ago when he’d used the term to describe one of the deceitful harlots from the Kalistham.
‘Nefara women are impure and unholy. They have polluted themselves. They corrupt any man who—’ He broke off and coughed, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Anyone who has congress with a nefara woman must purify themselves or Shaitan will reap their soul.’
She’d raised her eyebrows in that quizzical way she had. She had little respect for holy things, even the teachings of her own heathen religion. ‘How does a woman become nefara, then?’
‘Many ways.’ He frowned, trying to remember what Haroun had taught him on the journey north through the desert. ‘Any major sin pollutes them – lying, theft, murder, adultery. Unnatural acts with a man or a beast. Performing witchcraft. Failure to attend prayer … There are so many.’ He faltered a little as his memory faded. ‘Wearing red clothing,’ he added hesitantly. ‘And drinking urine.’
She’d laughed. ‘Drinking piss!’
‘It is a sin.’
‘But who the hell would drink piss?’ she demanded, slapping her thighs with mirth. ‘Or do you mean alcohol?’
‘Do not mock. You are nefara yourself.’