‘Was this the night the former Duke of Volta threw you out of his carriage?’ he asked.
‘This very young man picked me up and carried me into the inn,’ Iralia said.
The Emperor smiled. Aranthur had a moment to wonder if this was, indeed, the right way to be introduced to the richest man in the world, but the smile appeared genuine.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You didn’t say that he was a giant, nor a handsome giant, when you spoke of him. What is your name, Syr?’
Aranthur didn’t even know how to address an emperor.
‘My lord—’ he began.
‘Imperial Highness,’ Iralia said with a shrug. ‘Or just Syr. He is incognito.’
The Emperor nodded.
‘Syr …’ Aranthur tried.
It sounded terrible, with the reality of the Imperial person standing two feet away. Say what you would, as a Student who was against the Imperial power, but the man himself had incredible dignity and a sense of humour.
Aranthur bowed his best bow, again. ‘I am Aranthur Timos.’
The man made a face. ‘Timos. Splendid name. People of the Eagle, eh?’
‘Yes, syr.’ Aranthur bowed again.
‘Enough of that,’ the Emperor said. ‘Do you work for Master Palko?’
‘Oh, no, syr. I am a Student …’
Suddenly the Emperor was looking at him and seemed a different man. Focused, and perhaps even a little dangerous.
‘Timos,’ he said, ‘do you by any chance have one of my books? And a little gold reader, an artifact of the First Empire?’ He glanced at Iralia. ‘This is that Timos?’
‘I do’ Aranthur said, breathing faster.
‘Yes,’ Iralia said, with catlike satisfaction.
‘Well,’ the Emperor said.
Master Palko had joined them with a woman – an older woman who had to be his partner. She made a deep curtsey. The Emperor nodded to her and smiled, but his eyes went back to Aranthur’s.
‘See that you take good care of that reader, lad. It’s older than the Empire. Do you know what being Emperor means, lad?’
Aranthur flinched. ‘No, Majesty. Syr.’
The older man nodded a few times, his eyes on Iralia.
‘It means living with a lot of treasures and riches that belong to your nation. Your job is to hand over as many as you received, when you die. So don’t lose my reader.’ He bowed to Dahlia. ‘And happy Craftday to you, Myr Tarkas.’
Dahlia put her hand on her heart. ‘Syr.’
The Emperor put a hand on her head, the way a man would put a hand on his daughter’s head – a very familiar action. She smiled.
The Emperor turned away with Master Palko and his lady. Iralia looked back over her shoulder.
‘Come and see me,’ she said to Aranthur. ‘At the palace. I’m in when I don’t go riding.’
She walked away, her eyes aglitter.
Dahlia tugged his arm, hard.
‘You know the Emperor,’ she said.
Aranthur paused, thinking of all the things he was not at liberty to say.
‘You know him too.’
‘I am the eldest daughter of one of the oldest Houses in the land. I have been introduced at court. I could wear the blue feather in my hair, if I chose to have enough hair to do such things.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve known him since I was a baby.’
Aranthur shrugged. ‘I know Iralia,’ he said, vaguely.
He was in a pleasant sort of shock. It wasn’t altogether pleasant, because he had the idea that he had the reader and the job reading Safiri because of her. It wasn’t anything he’d done. It was good old-fashioned nepotism.
‘The Emperor’s paramour. You know her?’ Dahlia looked at Iralia and back at Aranthur. And shook her head. ‘You know her?’ she asked again. ‘Beastroot! I thought you was a virgin.’
He frowned. ‘You are my first lover—’
‘I don’t care! Virginity is a fancy word for inexperience. She might have taught you better, but then, you ain’t bad.’
She smiled to show she meant no harm, but he bridled when she didn’t believe him.
‘I never …’ he began.
‘Save it for the cheap seats,’ Dahlia said.
Soon enough, they moved on, going down the street of cutlers and smiths, Aranthur fighting an inclination to spoil the evening by showing his anger. But he fought it off. Dahlia’s presumptions were annoying, but they reflected her life and class.
Aranthur was feeling a little drunk by then, and Dahlia was still stewing over Iralia. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, or what to say, so he went back to looking at swords. In a candle-lit booth that smelled of incense, he found a blade he loved: straight, not too short, with a finger ring for defence and a straight cross-hilt which appealed to his Arnaut nature.
The owner of the stall was an old man with a tonsure of white hair around the bald head, contrasted by a very elegant moustache and beard.
‘Swordsman?’ he asked.
Aranthur shrugged. ‘I hope so.’
Dahlia played with the blade and said ‘Like’. She grinned at the balding man, who smiled back.
‘It is a good blade. The hilt is plain – I can rehilt it in something fancier—’
‘No, I want it to use,’ Aranthur said. ‘How much?’
The older man raised an eyebrow, looked behind him at the lit window of his shop, and gave the smallest shrug Aranthur had ever seen.
‘In truth, young syr, I would like ten golden sequins. I could tell you thirty, and you could tell me five, and we could spend what is left of the night on it, but I have not made a sale all evening and my wife would like to go and dance. I made this sword for a client who never came and picked it up – I’ve already been paid half. Ten sequins. My only offer.’ He winked at Dahlia. ‘I’m trying a whole new technique in sales.’
‘Do it!’ she said. ‘I can loan you … two …’ She frowned. ‘Three, if I pretend I can’t pay my rent. And don’t eat.’ She gave a shrug herself. ‘It’s perfect. For you. Heavy, and balanced, and a little Arnaut and a little City.’
Aranthur had drunk wine and danced, and Iralia, who had briefly been between them, had vanished with the appearance of the blade. He felt at peace with the world. He opened Drako’s tiny leather bag and shook the contents into his hand. Sequins were not much bigger than the size of the end of his last finger, not much thicker than paper, but pure gold. Whatever the Emperor’s shortcomings – and the man was very unpopular at the Academy – his coins were solid gold.
There were fifteen sequins. He counted out ten, his hands shaking a little. It was different from taking a dead man’s money, somehow.
‘I am Leone Techne,’ the old man said. ‘I didn’t make a scabbard.’
‘I am a leather-worker,’ Aranthur said. ‘I can make a scabbard, but not the metal parts.’
The cutler frowned. ‘Come back in a day or two. Leave the sword – I’ll make you some scabbard fittings.’ He nodded. ‘That’s fair, eh?’
They spat on their hands and shook.
Aranthur handed over the money, and then he and Dahlia went off into the City in search of other adventures. They danced and sang and listened to music, drank and ate until dawn.
Aranthur thought it was the best day and night of his life. But Dahlia was a little distant, even when they made love.
The next morning, the second day of the festival, Aranthur woke early, copied his letters and wrote out his verbs. He cast his shield several times, both from inside himself, the true Safian way, and from his kuria. Dahlia slept. He went out and got her quaveh, which he paid for from his own – that is, Drako’s – money.
He went back up all six flights of stairs, passing what had been Kati’s room and remarking on the relative silence of the new occupants. He’d never seen the door open.
Dahlia was awake, standing by the glass window, washing from a basin. Aranthur thought her incredibly beautiful, but he had a clear memory of finding her dull beside Iralia. Th
is suggested to him that she had cast a compulsion, either directly on him, or a very powerful general compulsion. Perhaps she had made an artifact with the emeralds.
He frowned.
Dahlia turned. ‘Like what you see? Too skinny?’
He handed over the quaveh. ‘My love for you is such that you are worth twelve flights of stairs.’
‘Damn.’ She drank her quaveh with relish. ‘I want to do something.’
Arathur laughed. He nuzzled her neck and put his hands over her breasts.
‘I want to do something too …’ he began.
She shook him away. ‘No, something … fun.’ She met his eye. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
Aranthur rubbed his jaw. ‘Ouch.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know much about you,’ she said suddenly. ‘You know the Emperor and his mistress. And Tiy Drako.’
‘I don’t know the Emperor.’
‘You do now,’ she said.
‘I only met Iralia once. We were not lovers.’
Dahlia looked out the window. ‘But she’s spoken to the Emperor about you.’
Aranthur began to be annoyed. ‘This is a little too much like being interrogated by the Watch,’ he said. He lacked the experience with naked women to be able to talk well to one.
She nodded, pursing her lips. ‘We were better off fencing. I want to go out. Do you have any nice clothes?’
‘I have a good black doublet. Here.’ He took it off its peg.
‘Right, I thought I’d seen that. Very nice. Almost fashionable – a little too Voltain. Let’s go and watch the opera,’ she said.
‘What’s opera?’ he asked.
The curtains parted for the second act.
The viola organista began to sing under the stage, and Aranthur looked around. He was in the pit, with Dahlia tucked in by him. Tall as she was, he was a head taller and much broader, and the press of people in the pit was oppressive. The tip of someone’s scabbard was pressing into Aranthur’s ankle, and he wasn’t even sure which of three men was the culprit.
And then the first actress began to sing. Aranthur was almost positive she was Niobe, the title role; he knew the myth well enough, and she certainly seemed arrogant enough to be Niobe. But the whole work was in Ellene, and while he was a student and he used the language every day, it was crushingly difficult to make out the words when sung rapidly.
The viola organista played, and almost beneath his feet, a dozen gitterns and ouds played faster, and Niobe, if it was she, launched into an aria.
The music was incredible. Aranthur forgot that he was sweating, forgot that Dahlia was annoyed, forgot there was a scabbard pressing into his instep. There was nothing but his ears and the music, and when the aria ended he wanted to beg the artist to continue.
The second act came to an end with the Twelve gathering like Dark Furies to punish a single human woman for her hybris. The writer, whoever she was, captured the heart of the myth: that however guilty Niobe might be, and however awful a mother, the gods were about to slay all her children as punishment for …
Nothing. The twelve of them, draped in dark grey instead of the traditional white, sang together. Their sound filled the theatre, and yet the music sounded pompous and smug.
The crescendo was limited, the roar of triumph almost false. The audience was asked to question the gods.
Aranthur slammed his hands together hard enough to make them hurt, despite the press. He found that his foot was asleep, and almost fell.
Dahlia looked up at him. ‘You like it?’
Aranthur’s heart was full, and he felt as if he was on a drug.
‘The music …’
Dahlia shook her head and shouted something that was lost. People began pushing past them, fighting for the doors to get chilled wine before the third act.
‘I can go,’ Aranthur said.
Dahlia shook her head. ‘I was going to let you leave,’ she quipped, rolling her eyes. ‘But you are enjoying it.’ She slipped in front of him as the press grew less. ‘We can go closer. I know two of the actors, and the lyricist is my cousin.’
‘Lyricist?’ he asked, feeling foolish. He seemed to feel foolish all the time, with Dahlia.
The press became merely a crowd, and then was almost thinned out.
‘Look, it’s your friend and the Emperor,’ Dahlia said, pointing.
Above them was the Imperial box, a massive confection of gold leaf and ribbons that appeared to be suspended from the ceiling above all the boxes. But it was behind them, and Dahlia was right. Aranthur could see the Emperor, waving down at his subjects, and Iralia, whose eyes seemed to reach for his.
He looked away. At Dahlia.
‘Does she have a compulsion on her all the time?’ he asked.
‘That’s what it looks like to me. I don’t like her. Damn it. Women have to do everything the hard way, and then some little flounce like her wanders up, spreads her legs, and takes everything. I hate it.’
She avoided saying ‘I hate her.’
His head was working well; he was organising the things he was learning, and assigning causes to effects.
‘And then she uses a powerful spell – Aploun’s dick, she must be a first-rate Magas, and she uses her work to power her … her appeal. It demeans women.’ She looked at him.
He shrugged. ‘I like her.’
Dahlia looked away. ‘You would.’
Niobe’s children died at the hands of Aploun and Potnia – a shower of very well-executed magik arrows slew them – and they died singing, a convention which Aranthur loved. The special effects were startling, and somewhere offstage a theatrical Magos was casting in perfect time to the performance. Aploun and Potnia danced a sinister and dark ballet of bloodlust and lost innocence that suggested everything from incest to malevolence in the very gods themselves.
It was magnificent, and a little horrifying for a farm boy from Soulis. Granted that tales of the Twelve, like the tale of Niobe and her children, were myths told as frightening stories, it was still somehow blasphemous.
In the end the gods gathered and sang a magnificent chorus of their earlier song of godly triumph. It was loud, and strident, like military music. Was it intentionally bellicose? Did the author imagine that people were at war with the gods?
‘Come on!’ Dahlia said, grabbing his hand.
She pulled him forward as the crowd began to head for the exits. It was a little like the night in the fencing tavern relived, as they pressed through the crowd. Several men turned to take offence at their passage and then paused to leer at Dahlia, who had dressed for the occasion in traditional Byzas finery, with her hair piled atop her head in a rope of pearls that she assured Aranthur were fake. Her gown was a simple midnight-blue silk kirtle, but slit well up the leg and cut low enough to require a very straight back to carry it off.
A wide man with gold earrings moved to block her.
‘In a hurry, darling?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said.
He pushed towards her, his bulk forcing them back into the crowd.
‘Maybe I want to get to know you better.’
Aranthur pushed forward. He was, if anything, bigger, if not wider.
‘We’re in a hurry,’ he said.
‘Not speaking to you, cock, so fuck off,’ the man with gold earrings said.
Another man in a jewelled beret laughed.
Dahlia shrugged. ‘I don’t know you.’
‘I’m—’
‘Nor do I want to, so get out of my way.’
Earrings grew red in the face.
Dahlia moved to push him, and he slapped her.
Aranthur caught his arm, twisted, and dropped the big man on the floor.
‘Let him go,’ Dahlia hissed. ‘He’s from the Iron Circle. Fucking barbarians think they own women.’
Earrings was getting up, helped by his friends.
‘Do you have the baraka to meet me?’ Dahlia asked. ‘First light, the Field of Rolan, behind the Temple. An
y weapon you fancy.’
‘Fight a bitch?’ Earrings asked. ‘I’ll fight the farm boy here. Is he your pimp?’
‘You’re drunk,’ Dahlia said. ‘Fight me, or I’ll tell everyone that you are a coward.’
‘Men don’t fight women,’ Earrings said.
‘You should go home,’ Dahlia said. ‘But first, tell me your name, so I can tell everyone who you are.’
Jewelled Beret leant over and whispered.
‘Fine. You’re dead. First light,’ Earrings said. ‘Then maybe I’ll fuck your corpse.’
‘I suppose that passes for a witty exchange, in the North?’ Dahlia said. ‘After I kill you, I will not make any attempts on your corpse. Although I suspect your member will work as well, or ill, after death as before, eh?’
Earrings turned so red that Aranthur, who was full of the spirit of combat and ready to fight, wondered if the man might explode.
‘Dead. You are fucking dead!’
Dahlia just walked past. Aranthur avoided the man’s spittle, and managed a little bow. Then he followed Dahlia’s regal progress up the steps to the stage, where she was immediately embraced by one of Niobe’s children. Closer up, the make-up was broad and over-coloured, and all of the performers looked a little like monsters. The face paint had a particular smell …
Aranthur continued to watch the little knot of Northerners.
‘Forget them,’ Dahlia snapped. ‘They came in drunk, and they wanted trouble. Volta pays them to do it.’
Aranthur felt as if he’d entered a dark world he didn’t understand.
‘Why?’ he asked.
Dahlia shrugged. ‘Because the Emperor supports the opera,’ she said, as if it was obvious.
She introduced a wave of actors – two of Niobe’s children and a tiny blond imp who turned out to have been one of the angels in the ballet.
‘Anyone you want to meet?’ Dahlia asked. ‘I know them all. My sister is a principal dancer, although not tonight. My cousin writes the lines.’
Aranthur was a little starstruck. ‘I …’ He shrugged, still full of the daemon of combat, and a little light-headed. ‘The Magos?’
Dahlia led him backstage, where he met Potnia herself, revealed as a middle-aged woman with the most amazingly muscled legs he had ever seen. He bowed deeply, and she grinned.
Cold Iron (Masters & Mages) Page 25