Ilario, the Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  brains of any local man fool enough to walk out in it. What it’ll do to a

  man used to twilight, and used to being out in all the hours of the

  day . . . ’

  ‘Any advantage she can get?’ I speculated.

  The bald man’s lip quirked. ‘Regrettably the Pharaoh-Queen could

  not find time in her busy schedule until this hour.’

  Constantinople is worse than Taraco at midday. I’d made the mistake

  of going out drawing in the day’s heat once and only once. The lines of

  silver-point on the treated paper scrawled off into flicks and trailing half-

  circles; and I had had to be brought home by Carrasco, of all men, and

  put in a darkened room to be fed cool water in drips.

  By the time Carrasco found me, I had rolled under the edge of a cart

  187

  at the side of the market square’s infinite hot expanse. The air

  shimmered, the heat hit like a hammer, and I had sought out the only

  tiny piece of visible shade.

  Ramiro Carrasco pulled me out by one foot and smugly carried me

  back to the palace over his shoulder. It might have left him scarlet-faced

  and gasping, but he evidently thought the moral ascendancy worth it. I

  felt too grateful to even resent that. If I had been fool enough to take Onorata out with me, she would be dead.

  Picturing the unknown envoy, I knew that he would be craving

  darkness, cool, shade; that his head will throb, and his eyes pain him.

  The crowd parted as the horns blasted out a flat raw sound.

  Men stood silhouetted against the white sky.

  The Carthaginian party moved inside, almost with unseemly haste.

  Perhaps a dozen men, most of them wearing Carthaginian plate armour

  – I winced in sympathy for the soldiers – and two in long white robes.

  The envoy and an aide, I guessed.

  They stood for a long moment in the entrance to the throne-hall, long

  enough for whispers to start.

  The taller of the robed men put his hand up to his face.

  I realised he was unknotting the length of white gauze cloth he wore

  tied about his head, over his eyes. His entourage also.

  Of course: they’re Carthaginians, they must know what countries

  outside the Penitence are like!

  His hawk-bearded face uncovered, the taller man bowed to his shorter

  companion, and signalled to the guards. They walked between impassive

  lines of the Pharaoh-Queen’s Royal Guard, ignoring the ceremonial

  sarissas that the men held.

  The Carthaginian soldiers had empty scabbards at their sides. I

  guessed there were halberds left at the palace gatehouse, too. They

  walked as stiffly as men in plate armour in high heat do, and I caught two

  of them exchanging a word and a grimace, exactly as Honorius’s men

  might have done.

  ‘You stay here,’ Rekhmire’ murmured. ‘I must be beside the Queen,

  but I want you out of danger.’

  I thought him angry that the Pharaoh’s ban on armed foreigners in the

  throne room should extend to Attila and Tottola. And that I had insisted

  on being present.

  ‘Rekhmire’, I’m not in danger—’

  ‘I can’t protect both of you!’

  He did not speak loudly, but the intensity of it stopped me dead.

  ‘If it comes to it,’ I said, as steadily as I could, ‘don’t throw yourself between anybody and a sword. I don’t want you to do that.’

  Rekhmire’’s mouth twisted. He gazed down at the short, stout staff

  with a silver handle, that he had substituted for his usual crutches. ‘You

  188

  need not worry. It’s not likely I’ll be able to move fast enough to put myself between Ty-ameny and harm—’

  His whisper was grim and somewhat self-mocking; I interrupted it

  mercilessly. ‘ Unless you’re right next to her. Don’t think I don’t know why you want to be at her elbow.’

  ‘I can’t be at hers and yours.’

  His expression was frighteningly raw for a usually composed man.

  He looks torn in two, as if he would literally divide himself up to

  defend both of us – and sell his soul to be the man of quick movement

  that he was before his injury.

  ‘I’ll be safe enough,’ I said, indicating my female dress.

  He desires to keep me as safe as his Pharaoh-Queen, I realised. As for

  what that means—

  I don’t know if he values my knowledge and political usefulness – or if

  he’s as fond of me as he plainly is of Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names,

  who he treats like a brat of a schoolgirl.

  Aiding him the only way I could think of, I said, ‘Where am I safest,

  for you?’

  ‘This side of the throne.’ His eyes narrowed at the hulking apparent

  statue beside the tiny figure of Ty-ameny. ‘I don’t trust that thing not to

  come for you, Ilario. Far more likely Carthage intends it for her, but how

  do we know it doesn’t remember you?’

  ‘It doesn’t remember anything. It’s stone.’ I thought of it killing.

  Nothing with feelings could act that way without some emotion showing,

  if only satisfaction at an order obeyed. ‘It’s a set of orders, waiting to act

  on command.’

  Rekhmire’’s look had something I recognised, eventually, as respect. If

  he hadn’t seen the golem act in Rome, he trusted what I’d observed.

  That is a responsibility, too.

  His hand closed once on my shoulder, and he ambled off, deceptively

  relaxed, sliding into the group of advisers around Ty-ameny’s imperial

  purple throne.

  The Carthaginians would recognise his role, I thought, assuming any

  of them had been on diplomatic duty for more than a week. But the

  ability to deter an assassination is also valuable.

  Unless they’re sure an attack will succeed; so sure that it doesn’t

  matter how many men Ty-ameny has around herself, or how well armed

  they are, because hands of stone can bat swords aside without a second

  thought, and stone can smash iron, bone, arm, skull—

  ‘Welcome our visitors,’ Ty-ameny said aloud, her voice muffled by the

  gold mask and braided false beard she wore. Her herald stepped forward,

  rapped his serpent-staff on the marble steps, and began a lengthy

  greeting to the lords of Carthage and the representatives of his sublime

  greatness the King-Caliph of that nation . . .

  The herald stuttered a couple of times and looked annoyed with

  189

  himself. He wanted to be nothing but imperturbable duty, a role rather

  than a man, I guessed, and not seem as on edge and apprehensive as the

  rest of us were.

  ‘ . . . the Daughter of Sekhmet and the Regent of Ra graciously allows

  you to present yourself to her.’ The herald bowed and stepped back.

  The shorter of the two robed men stepped forward, as if they were

  engaged in a formal dance. Which I supposed, in fact, they were.

  Out of respect, the man put back his hood. It left his sun-reddened

  face exposed to the courtiers, with the white strip of skin where he had

  covered his eyes with cloth.

  His tight expression suggested him aware of the comic tone of his

  appearance.

  The man’s features, which would otherwise have been handsome,

  tugged at my awareness.

  Rum
maging in one sleeve, I pulled out a folded sheet of paper and a

  remnant of willow-twig charcoal. The palace laundry could be excused

  for complaining at me, I reflected, while I looked up and back, up and

  back, marking the values of the ambassador’s face on the paper.

  With the tones and shape broadly in place I studied the sketch, while

  the initial diplomatic niceties droned on. And dabbed at the charcoal,

  smoothing it to a paler grey where I had drawn his hair in its long single

  braid.

  With pale hair, that suddenly seemed like the white of old age, the face

  of Hanno Anagastes stared off the paper at me.

  Under the drawing, I scrawled, Younger son of House of Hanno??? , beckoned a page, and sent the boy off with it to Rekhmire’. As I watched

  him thread his way through the press of bodies, the ambassador’s

  pleasantly resonant baritone rang through the throne room.

  ‘I have a question for the great Pharaoh-Queen. Why do you consort

  with that ship of demons?’

  Ty-ameny must love her ceremonial mask, I thought. No change was

  visible in her small figure, sitting with her gold sandals neatly together on

  a footstool set on the throne’s step. Without a view of her features, her

  body was impassive.

  The Carthaginian diplomat stirred a little in the silence that followed

  his words.

  Ty-ameny beckoned her herald and spoke briefly into his ear.

  The herald straightened and fixed the ambassador with a bland look.

  ‘The Divine Daughter of Ra says her Royal Mathematicians have not yet

  finished determining what the nature of the ship and its crew may be.’

  ‘It’s obvious what they are!’

  It was obvious to me that the man seized on the excuse of working himself up. He threw off the hand the taller man rested on his arm –

  which I was willing to bet they’d cooked up between them, back on the

  Carthaginian bireme.

  190

  He wants to be able to shout at Ty-ameny.

  My body was suddenly and instantly cold, knowing the reason why he

  might need to do that.

  ‘Even followers of false gods must be able to recognise the presence of

  corruption in their midst—’

  The Pharaoh-Queen’s captain of the guard shifted his gaze, just

  barely, to catch her orders. She lifted one finger, where her hand lay on

  the arm of her throne. He stiffened, made no further move and issued no

  orders, but I saw his nostrils flare.

  The pale skin of Rekhmire’ caught my eye, in a chiaroscuro against the

  black robes of the palace guard. Idly, he clasped his hands behind him,

  leaning back on his stick, standing squarely between Ty-ameny’s throne

  and the stone golem.

  He rocked unevenly back and forth on heels and toes as if this were

  nothing more than another trade delegation, political approach, or other

  everyday order of government. The Carthaginian man of House Hanno

  shot him a glance.

  He won’t care if the golem goes straight through you to get to the Queen.

  If I’m wrong, I thought. If this stupid, stupid idea doesn’t work – oh,

  Judas, he does mean to kill her!

  The ambassador’s voice was rising to a peroration. Ty-ameny leaned

  one slender elbow on the arm of her throne, chin in hand, as if supremely

  bored. I obsessively repeated Masaccio’s ingredients and method for

  glue; wondering if a week in the creating and curing could make

  anything with a tensile strength greater than a spiderweb.

  I was on tiptoe, I found, and straining my eyes to stare at the golem.

  Not a quiver of movement.

  The joints glistened in reflected light from the piazza outside, but that

  could be the polished brass and bronze gears. The finished glue had

  poured like liquid glass in Milano’s factories; poured in and settled

  around every cog, every spring, every wheel, every plate, every part of

  the statue that moved.

  And that it did move had been confirmed by Ty-amenhotep’s orders

  to it, shouted from thirty yards off, so that it exposed all its limbs and joints to us to anoint.

  Alexandrine Constantinople – or the life of Ty-ameny, at least –

  depends on the tensile strength of glue, once set.

  I bit my lip until the sharp pain of bursting skin gave me the taste of

  blood.

  ‘—consorting against even the tenets of the heretic Frankish church—’

  Rekhmire’ turned his head as the page tugged on his sleeve. I saw him

  read the note; his lips moved, saying something to the boy. He returned

  his gaze to the ambassador, not looking over towards me.

  Too professional to seek me out. Too concerned that I may be a

  target. But I realised I would find it infinitely reassuring to meet his gaze.

  191

  ‘—and it is treachery! Conspiring with slant-eyed demons against the

  civilised world! Treachery in the highest degree, without even the excuse

  of necessity of – Saint – Gaius – Judas!’

  He hit the saint’s Carthaginian and Frankish names heavily, with a

  hammer’s rhythm.

  That’s it! That’s the trigger for the golem’s orders—

  The son of the House of Hanno stared, white showing all around his

  eyes.

  A faint click sounded, below the discreet mutterings of the courtiers

  about the discourtesy of this diplomat, and speculations as to what Ty-

  ameny would do about him. The faintest possible abrasion of metal

  against metal.

  The surface of the stone quivered. Once, twice. And—

  Nothing.

  Nothing more.

  192

  20

  The Carthaginian envoy stared at the stone golem.

  The stone golem stared sightlessly into the distance, as if the palace

  walls were transparent to it, and it could see all of the city, the sea, and

  the walls of Carthage that lay so many weeks of travel to the west.

  It still did not move.

  I frowned, squinting. Most of the crowd were looking at the

  ambassador or their Queen; I doubted more than half a dozen of us were

  looking at the golem.

  Nothing.

  Holding my breath made my mouth arid as the desert around

  Carthage, and dread made me feel as cold. Stare as I might, I could see

  no more vibration in the stone limbs and body.

  They meant it to kill her!

  Rage soared through me, bringing welcome heat. The golem’s

  response, minimal as it was, spoke of all the danger that Carthage’s gift

  would have brought here – a poisoned chalice that the Pharaoh-Queen

  could not diplomatically set aside; a trap that would have stood statue-

  like at her side, until the right words from an agent of Carthage sent it into convulsions of violence.

  For a moment I could smell an illusion of the carnage that this hall

  would have suffered; see the pale bodies marked with blood, and Ty-

  ameny’s limbs and head pulled from her body in grotesque parody of a

  child pulling apart an insect.

  ‘We are pleased to accept the new envoy of Carthage, Hanno

  Gaiseric.’ Ty-ameny spoke up, her tone with something savagely

  restrained under it. ‘And if the King-Caliph will accept a poor gift in

  recompense for this gift of his—’

&nbs
p; Here she gestured at the motionless stone golem.

  ‘—then I have drawings, documents, and divers other things concern-

  ing the foreign demons of Chin, which the King-Caliph’s scientist-magi

  may find of interest.’

  Hanno Gaiseric tore his gaze away from the golem with evident

  difficulty.

  ‘The King-Caliph accepts with—’ The word seemed to choke him:

  ‘—gratitude.’

  Forty-eight hours later, Hanno Gaiseric went aboard the bireme and

  193

  unexpectedly left the grand harbour; Ty-ameny’s spies reported the ship

  heading unerringly and unstoppably back towards Carthage.

  An hour after that, the Pharaoh-Queen announced Carthage’s gift so

  valuable that it must be installed in the Royal Library. And Rekhmire’

  came back up to our quarters dusting his hands together, having lent a

  hand at mortaring the stone blocks and iron bars that irrevocably closed

  up one of the Library’s lowest storage chambers, now buried well below

  ground-level.

  ‘“Safe”.’ Ty-ameny shook her head, her unbound hair rippling over her

  bare shoulders. ‘Yes. Yes, but – Carthage desired us to know we cannot

  engineer what they can. Very well, we have been lessoned . . . ’

  Even in her private chambers, wearing only a linen wrap in the

  afternoon heat, she kept the presence of the Pharaoh-Queen. Hanno

  Gaiseric’s attempt at murder seemed only to have energised her. She

  smiled ferociously at Rekhmire’.

  ‘I think, therefore, it’s time to issue a lesson of our own.’

  As ever in a court, it may have seemed that we were alone, but as soon

  as Ty-ameny lifted her hand, slaves and servants came with wine, ivory

  cups, small crisp biscuits, and a number of leather map-cases. A shaven-

  headed slave ordered the placing of a low table in the room’s sunken-

  floor area, spread the maps with his own hands, and bowed to his queen

  as he left.

  Each chart was bordered at top and bottom with brass, to keep them

  from rolling back up; I found myself wondering if there was a use for

  that in drawing.

  Had I been able to pick them up to investigate, I would; in fact, my

  hands were occupied in sliding under Onorata to check she was still dry.

  The palace’s smallest tyrant having decided she would spend any part of