Carnelian saw the other Masters nearby, waiting for the wagon to pass. He moved towards them, recognized Jaspar by his gloves and drew close to him. 'Was that a dragon?' he shouted in Vulgate over the noise.
'What?' the Master shouted back. 'No, no, only one of its smaller cousins.'
The movements of their aquar separated them. Suth was making the party form up. Carnelian was directed into place with curt gestures. Resentment burned up in him. His father was treating him like a child.
The Marula sculled a way into the throng with the hafts of their lances. The Masters and baggage animals waded in after them. The Marula dug a space in the middle of the road then fell back to shield the Masters with their bodies. The inexorable march swept them all in its tide off into the south.
Drab drifts of barbarians jabbered like birds. Chariots studded with shell buttons snaked streamers. Strings of smaller half-feathered aquar carried nests of clutter. Sawn-horned huimur clacked stone bells, their backs like upturned boats. Some had howdahs, some were snail-shelled with trussed goods, some pulled carts or painted wagons. Carnelian's mood brightened. He indulged his curiosity and looked at everything. It surprised him that the road's two streams slid so smoothly past each other. One was going to the sea, the other coming from it, penetrating deeper into the Naralan. He peered to front and back to see their march swallowed at both ends by hazing horizons. Swarthy hawkers clamoured at the edges of the road waving their meagre wares. Children threw stones, stared, pointed laughing. The sun-baked land behind was patterned with spaced trees. Boulder-bordered tracks scratched off into the hinterland. The land folded distantly into vague hills or crusted here and there into clusterings of hovels.
Carnelian wondered at the narrow track that ran alongside the road beyond a ditch. In some places this was paved but he saw nothing move along it. He deduced it to be the much-vaunted leftway. It did not impress him much until he saw a tower up ahead with its stiff banners. As it came closer he realized it was a fort standing by the road. The banners turned out to be gibbets hung with the tatters of flesh and bone the birds had left. Behind the fort, churned earth spread as far as he could see. Charred spots and litter showed that the land had held a huge encampment.
The heat made him drowsy. He had grown used to the rocking of the saddle-chair and even found a comfortable way of sitting. The crowd noise became a rushing of water. The road flowed ever on, eating up all time, all distance.
At last the sky began darkening in the east. People began streaming off the road onto a field of trampled earth. A few dust-greyed trees stood here and there among the ruts. A rush was on for the better sites in the stopping place. People were being absorbed into the hazy hem of the sky. Aurum passed back a message that they would press on. They would make better speed on the emptier road.
The air cooled. Nightfall slowed their progress. Wagons lit feeble flickering lanterns. These winking flecks sparked off into the distance, showing the windings of the road. On they went until the moon rose to silver everything. Carnelian drifted in and out of sleep.
He woke suddenly. The rhythm of his chair had changed. The stars covering the earth all round him outshone those in the sky. Wafts of roasting meat. Songs, night-thinned, nasal-voiced. He realized they had left the road. His reins were hanging loose but his aquar was following the others.
They found their way round fires and wagons, tethered beasts, tents, pavilions and all the other flotsam washed up by the road. Calls and curses came from every side as they blundered through the flickering night.
Aurum found them a sandy knoll on the edge of the camp. The Marula put up tents. Some were sent to fetch water from the wells, while others led the aquar off to find drinking troughs. Those who remained, squatted in a ring around the tents, facing outwards, their lances aslant against their shoulders.
The Masters sat in a circle unmasked, eating, each cross-legged on a low stool, their ranga shoes beside them on the ground. The air was wreathed with purifying myrrh. Around them flapped a canvas wall stretched over a ring of uprights.
'Are you sure it is high enough?' asked Jaspar, carefully unpeeling the leaf that wrapped a hri cake.
'Even a rider could not look over,' said Aurum.
The Marula will protect us against intrusion,' said Suth. 'But still it might be wise if my Lords were to keep their masks close to hand.'
Aurum put a crumb of the yellow porridge-cake into his mouth and nodded.
'It makes one uneasy to be so naked in the outer world,' said Jaspar.
Vennel's eyebrows lifted. 'But then, my Lord, does not such nakedness serve to hide us from the terrible eyes of our enemies?'
'Often the blinded see further than those with sight,' said Suth severely.
Even though Vennel dropped his gaze, seeming to give all his attention to his porridge-cake, Carnelian had glimpsed the wariness on his face.
'I had expected the road to be more than just a dusty track,' he said. He crumbled a piece of cake and put it to his lips. It exhaled saffron, like attar of lilies.
'We are still only in the Naralan, cousin,' drawled Jaspar.
Vennel looked at Carnelian. 'My Lord had better become accustomed to the dust.' He gave the others a sour look. 'It seems that we will be a long time journeying to the Guarded Land.'
'Oh, the weariness,' sighed Jaspar. He shook out a sleeve of his robe and clouded the air with dust.
Frowning, Vennel blew on his hri cake, brushed it clean with a twist of leaf wrapping. 'If our journey has become so wearying, my Lord, it is because of the choices that others have made.'
Jaspar frowned. 'It is true. Had one imagined the discomfort, one's ring might have voted for the faster way, whatever the risks. To travel with the common herd is hideous enough, but at their level ... without perfumes ... it is perfectly too much.' He turned to Suth. 'Alas, my Lord has been proved only too correct: one has utterly forgotten the molluscs.'
Vennel looked round the circle of luminous faces. 'Is it any surprise that we should pay a heavy price for the flouting of the Law?'
'We do not flout but choose to set aside in direst need, my Lord,' said Aurum.
'Once one begins this business of setting aside the Law,' said Jaspar, 'one does begin to wonder where it will all end. Are we now to disregard the whole Law?'
Aurum's face became limestone. 'Only the Law of Movement has been set aside. The rest of the Law remains sacrosanct.'
'And yet there are other laws that our present circumstances will make it difficult to enforce.'
‘Such as, my Lord?' said Suth.
Jaspar smiled. The various punishments that one might have to mete out to one's slaves, not to mention our barbarian escort. Surely, my Lords, the honouring of those laws would only serve to reveal who we are? It might be wiser to show mercy or to seek postponement.'
The Law, my Lord, does not allow for mercy,' said Aurum.
Carnelian looked at the Master's face. It had the same hard look as when it had pronounced Crail dead. He went cold with fury. Though he pressed his Hps together the words mumbled out. 'No ... not... mercy.'
Aurum turned his Master eyes on Carnelian. 'Did you say something?'
The unyielding face maddened Carnelian. 'Only that my Lord seems to have a whore-keeper's appetite for inflicting punishment,' his voice rang out.
A slow smile formed on Aurum's lips, humourless, intimidating. He turned to Suth. ‘Sardian, your son gives insult to my blood.'
Suth looked sick as he focused his eyes off into the distance. Carnelian stared at him, willing him to confront Aurum in his defence.
'You will apologize to the Ruling Lord,' Suth said, not looking at his son.
Carnelian looked at him in disbelief. He wanted his father to turn round. He needed to look into his eyes. The smile was still fixed on Aurum's face. Carnelian despaired. When he spoke his voice was hoarse. 'No, my Lord Father, I will not apologize.'
Jaspar lifted his hands in a gesture of peace. 'Come, come, my Lords. It is
not fitting that we should quarrel thus. The road has frayed our tempers. We should retire for the night. No doubt, the morning will bring its own distractions.' He turned to Vennel. 'Does my Lord know the sleeping arrangements?'
There are only four tents,' said Vennel.
'Obviously, the intention was that the Lord Suth should share with his son.'
Carnelian was appalled. He had never slept in the same room as his father. At any time this would have been difficult; now that there was such bad feeling between them, it was unthinkable. 'No,' he blurted.
'No?' parroted Vennel.
Carnelian could feel all the Masters looking at him. The anger in his father's eyes only served to spur him on. 'Surely it is unseemly that a Ruling Lord should share with anyone?'
Jaspar looked surprised. 'You suggest, my Lord, that you and I share a tent?'
The boy has a point,' said Vennel, acquiring a predatory leer.
Jaspar looked briefly exasperated, then shrugged. 'So be it.'
Such a swift victory made Carnelian uneasy. He looked to his father but he averted his gaze. Aurum's eyes were bright with malice. Carnelian knew he had made this happen and now he would have to see it through. He put on his ranga and his mask, rose, and left the enclosure.
Fire spangled the darkness. The smell of men and beasts mixed with the smoke of meat charring. The rising falling murmur of voices was pierced by flutes, rhythmed by tambours.
Two of the Marula had followed Carnelian to the edge of the knoll. They moved when he moved as if they were his shadows. Carnelian heard a sound behind him and turned. Against the faint light from the Masters' enclosure, a bar of blacker night was drifting towards him flanked by the shapes of more Marula.
'Night is best to brood in, cousin.' It was Jaspar.
Further up the slope the Marula had made a fire and were cooking something of their own.
Their food smells better than ours,' said Carnelian.
'But then of course it is unclean,' Jaspar said, sounding regretful.
Carnelian turned to look at him, a hole cut into the starry sky. 'From whom do we hide, Jaspar?'
'We Chosen hide from everyone, Carnelian, out of care, lest the radiance of our faces blast them to ash.'
'It is the Empress Ykoriana who threatens us, is it not?'
'Lower your voice,' hissed Jaspar. His silhouette consumed more stars and gave birth to others as he moved away. Carnelian heard him muttering commands. The Marula melted away and Jaspar returned. Carnelian felt the gold face sizing him up. 'It is unthinkable,' it said at last.
'Aurum and my father are thinking it, my Lord.' 'It is this Lesser Chosen plot they fear.' Tell me, Jaspar, are the Marula rare in the Commonwealth?' 'What does this—?' 'Humour me.'
They pay us no flesh tithe and only a handful of them enlist as auxiliaries in the legions.'
Then I would suggest that the Ruling Lord Aurum always intended us to return using them as our disguise.' Carnelian could not conceal the smugness in his voice.
'I do not quite follow ...'
'Does it seem likely to you, Jaspar, that the Legate would just happen to have more than a dozen of these rare creatures in his auxiliaries?'
'And so ... ?' said Jaspar.
'And so, either Aurum brought them with him or he had the Legate obtain them. Either possibility makes it certain that the arrangements were made before you all set off across the sea. This suggests that Aurum knew my father would return with him.'
'It is well reasoned.' Jaspar's mask nodded. 'Well reasoned,' he said, his voice lower, as if he were speaking to himself. His mask became very still. 'Why then was Aurum so despondent on the journey out?'
Carnelian deflated. The implication was that the influence Aurum had over his father he had not brought with him. If that were true then he must have found it on the island. Carnelian worried that Jaspar was moving towards the same conclusion and spoke quickly to ruffle the surface of his thoughts.
'By the same reasoning, it cannot be the Lesser Chosen that we hide from. Whatever was written in the letter, it could not be that.'
Jaspar said nothing. Carnelian became disconcerted by the Master's mask floating its dead face in the night. The Marula, my Lord, were already waiting for us.'
Jaspar gave a slow nod. 'Let us say, cousin, that you are right and we are hiding from the Empress, what then?'
'Why are we hiding?'
'Spinning pure conjecture, it could be that she intends to stop your father getting to Osrakum in time to influence the election.'
'How could she do that?'
'She could set assassins searching for him along this road.'
Carnelian went cold with fear for his father. 'She could not... the Blood Convention ...'
‘She has already murdered her own daughter.' 'Her daughter?' 'Flama Ykoria.' 'Why...?'
'Ykoriana was the first woman for generations to be born blood-rank four.'
Carnelian almost gasped as he calculated it. 'Her ring casts eight thousand votes. Nearly half as much as all the Great together.'
Jaspar nodded. Through her, Flama Ykoria inherited the same rank. Now, Ykoriana alone enjoys this distinction.'
Carnelian was aghast. 'But even she must fear the Law.'
Jaspar laughed without humour. 'She had already long before suffered all the punishments the Law can inflict on Chosen women: the purdah imprisonment, blinding.'
Carnelian shuddered. 'But not death?'
'We do not slay our women, they are too precious to us.'
Carnelian realized Jaspar was not being ironic. 'What other crime did she commit?'
Jaspar shrugged. 'Some matter internal to the House of the Masks. That is in the past. It is the election that concerns her now.'
'How will victory assuage her bitterness?'
'Nephron is his father's son, Molochite his mother's: a weak prince, a wallower in rare vices. She would wed him, encourage his corruption, then rule unfettered from behind his throne. Of course, if your father were to ensure Nephron's victory ...'
'My father?'
Then he would enjoy high favour at the new Gods' side and, should he choose, could wield oppressive power over others of us of the Great.'
'My father would never abuse such trust.'
'He might not, but what if he became an instrument in another's hand? Aurum's, for example?'
'Aurum?'
'You must have noticed, Carnelian, what influence he has over your father?'
Carnelian felt the sweat soaking the bandages on his back. 'I ... I really have no idea what you mean, my Lord.'
'Are you certain that you have not, cousin?'
'Absolutely certain.'
'Well then.' Jaspar's mask was a dark mirror. 'We have talked enough, cousin. One would not deprive you of much-needed sleep. The days that follow promise to be wearisome, neh?'
Jaspar turned and walked back up the slope. As Carnelian watched him fade away, his heart seemed to be shaking its way out of his body. A scent of menace lingered on the night air. He told himself that really nothing much had happened. It amused his cousin Jaspar to frighten him a little, that was all.
When Carnelian was calmer he began to climb the knoll. The Marula squatting in the dark like boulders stood up silently as he passed and followed him.
Mattresses thick enough to satisfy the commands of the Law had been rolled out to form a floor in the tent. The air was weighed with incense. Carnelian jerked a nod at Jaspar. He frowned when he saw Tain prostrate with another gangly boy beside him. His brother looked up and twitched a smile.
'What a relief it would be to remove these accursed wrappings,' said Jaspar, speaking from behind him.
Carnelian could feel his own bandages embracing him like clammy arms.
'One fears we will have to stew in them until we reach Osrakum.'
Carnelian gave the boys leave to rise. He registered the look of horror on Tain's face and could make no sense of it. The other boy slipped past him with hands held out. 'Let y
our slave help you, Master,' he said in a thin voice.
In increasing confusion, Carnelian watched Tain clasp trembling hands over his face. Carnelian turned and saw the other boy's small hands reverently coping with the weight of Jaspar's mask as it was handed down.
'My slave is not as pretty as yours, cousin, but he is a wonder with a brush,' Jaspar was saying.
Carnelian felt sudden nausea as he stared at the Master's naked face. 'You have destroyed my brother.'
Jaspar started back and put on an expression of childlike innocence. 'Cousin? Aaah, you are being droll.'
'You removed your mask.'
'Indeed. Did you think I would sleep in it?'
'But the Law ... he will have to be punished.'
'He will have to be blinded.'
'You did it deliberately?' Carnelian put his hand to his head. 'I can't believe it,' he said in Vulgate.
'All the slaves we brought with us will be blinded. Did you really think, Carnelian, that the Great would choose to suffer inconvenience merely to save the eyes of a handful of slaves?' He laughed. 'It is too grotesque.'
Carnelian turned back to Tain. His brother's hands hung limp at his side. He would not lift his eyes.
'One can see no reason for so much distress. What is this pretty creature to you, cousin?' Jaspar gave a knowing smile. 'He will still be able to perform for you.'
'He is my brother!' Carnelian said, aghast.
That is a ridiculous word to use of one whose blood runs dull and cold.' Jaspar reached down to his slave's hand and lifted it. The boy could have been a rag doll. Jaspar opened the boy's hand. 'I might as well start claiming this one to be my nephew, or some such.'
A green tattoo on the palm proved the boy had been fathered by a Master. Jaspar let the arm flop down.
The procedure can be made painless. Besides, you can give him beautiful new eyes of stone. Turquoise would match his colouring. Give him sapphires if you wish to pamper him.'
Carnelian gaped at Jaspar, then dug his chin into his chest and held his stomach. He dared not look round at Tain.
'Do not be cruel, cousin. Think on my loss,' said Jaspar.
The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 Page 20