The City

by Stella Gemmell

  “Fell is our best hope.”

  “Fell isn’t here. I am. I’m a palace guard, remember?”

  “And who do you think is responsible for that, idiot?”

  Riis stared at her. After his conversation with Evan he’d asked around about Saroyan, and found that, among other things, the lord lieutenant was responsible for troop deployment within the palace. But he had not made the connection.

  “We have infiltrated someone else into the Red Palace,” the woman went on. “A girl. She is maidservant to Marcellus’ whore. She will contact you with information and you will keep an eye on her.”

  “So you want me to be a doorman and a childminder? And if I find an opportunity to kill the…target, if for instance he’s standing alone in a room with his back to me, do I have your permission?” he asked sarcastically.

  She smiled thinly. “You don’t like women, do you?”

  I love women, he thought. I just don’t like you.

  She said, “The emperor is not a normal man. He will be hard to kill. Fell has the best hope. Probably none of us will survive this. You will have your chance to die for your City.”

  Riis scowled. “I don’t want to die for the City. I want to kill the emperor and get away with it. And if I get a chance then I will take it.”

  “Fell wants to kill him too, remember. And Evan Broglanh. Of all of you, Evan is the one who kept in sight the vow you made as children. The rest of you were sidetracked—Fell with his mission to save his warriors, you with your women, Ranul…well, Ranul was perhaps the best of you,” she said thoughtfully.

  “What happened to him?”

  Saroyan ignored the question. “I must go now. You will not see me again. Broglanh will stay in touch. If you must, you can leave messages for Sami at this inn.”

  And Riis did as he was asked. He shepherded the girl Amita to her new quarters with the whore Petalina. Though she had no idea who he was, he wanted to get a good look at her. She was pale and fair and looked no more than fifteen. She had shining hair and hid nervously behind its pale curtain. He wondered what sort of conspiracy it was that thought a girl like her would be useful.

  He watched her sometimes at night as she scurried around the palace. He was amused by her dogged persistence, although he thought she was wasting her time. Once he had been forced to kill a guard he spotted stalking her through the darkened corridors. He suspected the man planned to violate the girl, rather than report her for snooping. Either way, it could not be permitted. Riis dragged the man’s body down to a lower, drowned, level where it sank into the silent water.

  Amita was a chore to him, a chore and a nuisance. But when he heard she was dead, he grieved for her more than he would have thought possible.

  The sisters Petalina and Fiorentina, in a family not blessed by the gods with boys, had been raised by their father to hunt and ride to hounds, to swim and run, and to use a sword, as well as the more maidenly pursuits of singing and dancing. A later generation of girls was to be pressed into the army, to die in their thousands on battlefields in sight of the City, but in those days their father was seen as a harmless eccentric for the education he gave his daughters.

  Petalina, sitting in the emperor’s feasting hall before a board groaning beneath the weight of gold plate, ornate candlesticks and cutlery, startling sprays of exotic flowers decorated with stuffed hummingbirds and bright fish, not to mention mountains of food and gallons of wine, wondered what their father would think of them now.

  She looked along the table at her sister, who was listening to her husband, Rafael Vincerus, as he spoke confidentially in her ear. Fiorentina must have felt her gaze for she looked up and saw Petalina and smiled. Rafe saw the look and turned and raised a glass to Petalina.

  “Would you like some more little fishes?” asked the tedious foreigner at her side. He must have thought she was smiling at him, and he was presenting her a basket full of the dried fish which was a delicacy in his land. What a strange people, she thought. The Wester Isles are surrounded by living fish, yet its people value this dry chewy abomination which tastes like salted wood.

  “No, thank you.” Petalina smiled warmly, her eyes on his, and added apologetically, “I’m afraid I have only a tiny appetite.”

  He smiled condescendingly as if confirmed in his opinion that ladies rarely admitted to eating, if they ate at all. Petalina smiled at the thought of Marcellus and herself a few hours before, after a robust session of lovemaking, devouring a leg of mutton together and how he had laughed at her as she tore into it with her teeth.

  She wished he was with her, for the empty chair on one side gave her no excuse not to talk to the ambassador. He had only one topic of conversation and, try as she might by asking him about his family, and the customs of his country, and his opinions on the war, he would not be diverted from his pet subject. Having heard all she ever wanted to about fish, Petalina had cast about for some diversion. But she could not talk to the guest opposite her, a dashing captain of the isles’ navy, for a herd of flying fish, painted and pinned on sticks, were in her way. Fish all about me, she thought in despair, and despite herself she giggled, concealed it with a cough, then straightened her face.

  “Are they very beautiful, the Wester Isles?” she asked the ambassador, sitting back in her chair and turning towards him so he could have a good view of her breasts. Our trade links are crucial, Marcellus had reminded her, as if she were unaware of it. Keep the man happy. See he has anything he wants. Anything? she had asked him archly.

  The ambassador gazed fixedly at the twin mounds of pale soft satiny flesh presented to him, and replied, “Yes, very beautiful, my lady.” He dragged his eyes back to her face and she rewarded him with a smile of such complicit warmth that she could see sweat popping out on his forehead.

  “What is beautiful, sir?” asked a deep voice. “My lady Petalina?” She felt a strong hand on her shoulder, then sliding down her back, as Marcellus dropped gracefully into the empty seat beside her. As always, she felt the thrill of his presence and saw all eyes along the great table turn to her lover.

  There was a moment’s silence as Marcellus looked around him, acknowledging faces with a smile or a nod, then he raised a glass to Fiorentina, in an echo of his brother’s gesture moments before.

  “Indeed,” replied the ambassador as Marcellus returned his enquiring gaze on him, “the lady Petalina is beyond beautiful. She is…” His ambassadorial skills, if he had any, deserted him and he laboured for a word. Petalina wondered if he was going to compare her with a fish. The entire company fell silent as the man struggled. “She has a beauty that is seen only once in a lifetime,” he finished rather lamely.

  Petalina smiled sweetly at him, wondering if he realised the insult he had offered to every other woman in the room. She glanced again at Fiorentina, who returned her look gravely, but her eyes were twinkling. She spoke to her husband and Rafe leaned across the table, pushing aside a bush-ful of roses, and attracted the ambassador’s attention. The fish man apologised to Petalina then swung to speak to him.

  I love you, my sister, thought Petalina.

  “I trust you kept him entertained?” Marcellus asked her quietly.

  She looked up into his eyes. The brothers were unalike, Marcellus the bigger, heavy-shouldered, fair, Rafael smaller and more graceful, and dark. But their eyes were the same, black as midnight—not the very dark brown often seen among eastern tribesmen or the people of the southern wastelands, but pure pitch-black, and shiny as wet pebbles. They scared her a little, the eyes.

  “Like most men,” she told him, “he is not difficult to entertain.”

  “I saw you were entertaining him with your breasts.”

  She shrugged. “I would have thrown off all my clothes and leaped astride him if it stopped him talking about fish.”

  Marcellus laughed. “Now you have met him,” he asked her, “what choice of companion would you make to sweeten his night?”

  “Easy,” she answered. “A boy.�
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  He raised his eyebrows. “But he was entranced by your womanly bosom.”

  She smiled at him, then said, lowering her voice, “All men are fascinated by breasts but there are those who want to sink into them, to wallow in them, to succumb to them, and those who are fearful of them. He was entranced as a snake fascinates a mouse. He is a man of deep uncertainties and seeks sexual comfort from what he knows. Trust me, the ambassador of fish will be well satisfied by a pretty boy, perhaps two, but it must seem to be very discreet for, like all important men, he is anxious to be well-thought-of.”

  “Like all important men?” he repeated, sitting back and gazing at her sternly.

  “Yes, my love,” she told him complacently. “Even you, when you were younger, judged yourself by the opinions of others, I’m sure. But it is so long ago that you have forgotten.”

  She wondered again how old he was. He had to be at least seventy, for she had first met him thirty years before and he was not young then. Yet there was still more gold in his hair than grey, and his clean-shaven face was unlined, except around the margins of the eyes. He was as strong as he had ever been, stronger. She feared for him, for more than half his year was spent campaigning, and each time he sallied out with his troops she was afraid she would never see him again. It was the one ambition of his life to see an end to the war. Or so he told her. Where, though, would he be without it? She feared that if the war ended, as he wished, and he went into retirement, then he would quickly age and die.

  She realised Marcellus was looking at her and she wondered, not for the first time, if he could read her thoughts.

  The servants were bringing another extravagant course of food the City could ill afford and which would probably be largely wasted. Marcellus, who was served first, poked with his knife at the folded package of red and green leaves, revealing a heap of pink shrimp. Petalina moaned quietly in revulsion.

  “Eat it,” he ordered her with mock severity. “These shrimp died so we might live.

  “Ambassador,” he said, leaning across her, and she gladly sat back to let him converse. It gave her an excuse not to eat.

  “We will have a chance to speak at length tomorrow,” Marcellus told the man, “but I was wondering if you and your colleagues would be interested in another trade agreement.”

  “What is that, my lord?” The ambassador’s two colleagues, down the table, abandoned any pretence at conversation with lesser men and swivelled round to listen.

  “The Wester Isles is famous for its timber. I believe you have forests of oak and beech still uncut.”

  “It is true,” replied the ambassador smoothly, “yet our western allies take all our surplus trees, and crave more. They are building a new city and need all the building stone and timber they can buy. We have many binding agreements with them.”

  “Do these binding agreements dictate the length and span of the timber required?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “Then there will probably be room for agreement between us. You supply your allies with timber for building. Any that falls short of their requirements we might buy for carriages and carts.”

  Petalina was wondering why her lover was claiming to be interested in timber. There was always a shortage, it was true, since the oak-clad mountains to the south fell into enemy hands, but it was not Marcellus, First Lord of the City, who dickered over supply contracts.

  He smiled warmly at the ambassador. “Perhaps, if you have finished at table, you would join me in the Serpent Room to discuss it.”

  The man had clearly not finished, for he held his fork poised in readiness for another bite, but he put it down hastily and said, “It would be an honour, my lord.”

  They stood and Marcellus ushered the ambassador through the ornate doors at the end of the hall. The ambassador’s colleagues, uninvited, looked at each other, then gladly returned to their meal.

  Petalina smiled to herself. No one says no to Marcellus, she thought.

  For thousands of years the Wester Isles had languished in happy obscurity, its natives devoting their lives to fishing, logging and boat-building. Their only contact with the outside world had been the trade in these vessels: small, clinker-built fishing boats and larger cargo ships. The ambassador himself had been a fisherman for thirty years. Then the isles had come under the eye of the beleaguered City, which had been willing to pay inflated prices for wood for its buildings and fish for its citizens’ bellies. The City’s gold flooded the islands, and with it came civilisation, closely followed by administration. Within a few years the isles had a bureaucracy and a government, ministers, bankers, commissioners and creditors. The simple fisherman, friend to a newly created minister, left his devoted wife and children, and was sent abroad to lie for his country in the most famous court in the world.

  He missed his wife and their three growing children, and their golden oak home built on the dunes surrounded by tall grasses that sighed and shifted in the wind off the sea. He hated the City. With every footfall he felt farther from the natural world of seasons and tides he was used to. Here there was just stone upon unrelenting stone; he could feel the many generations of cities beneath his feet, and they reeked of blood and death. Since he had been in the palace he had felt a low vibration of anxiety deep in his soul, and he became certain, as each hour passed, that he would not leave alive.

  He was not a foolish man. He knew how others viewed him, and he saw the slyness behind the courtesan’s smile. She had been told to entertain him, and she had done so, but her pride forced her to disclose to him her real feelings, almost concealed, of amused, indulgent scorn. He wondered if she had any clue how he really felt about her, the ageing whore with her doll-like face and her childish finery.

  If the emperor’s feasting hall was designed to impress, then the Serpent Room was intended to inspire unease. It was not a huge room, on the scale of the Red Palace. It was wide, but quite low. And everywhere, on ceilings, floors, walls and furniture, were snakes. Painted, carved, stuffed, and live slithering ones in glass tanks. The ambassador looked round nervously. He did not mind snakes. But then he had never seen thousands together at one time before.

  “I hope you do not mind snakes?” Vincerus asked him. He had a mischievous smile on his face. “I imagine that its designers, whoever they were, hoped to arouse fear in visitors, to put them at a disadvantage. In fact, only a child would be frightened by these poor creatures. It is a fine example of more being less.”

  The ambassador relaxed a little. He had been daunted by the prospect of meeting the Vincerii, but the brothers had been nothing but courteous and appeared to be open and candid. Such powerful and charismatic men, he guessed, had no reason to be devious. Marcellus was tall and well built, with fair, shaggy hair and a boyishly handsome face. The ambassador estimated him to be about forty, maybe a little more. He had very dark eyes which contrasted strangely with his fair countenance.

  “How do you like our City?” asked Vincerus affably, sitting on a snakeskin couch and gesturing that he do the same. The ambassador looked round at all the serpents’ eyes on him and sat on the edge of his couch.

  “It is remarkable,” he replied honestly. “I have been here before, once when I was a child. I saw the emperor in a parade. It was the highlight of my young life. I’m sorry the emperor did not attend tonight.”

  “The Immortal does not go to feasts,” Marcellus replied and, though the words were light, the atmosphere in the room cooled. The ambassador felt the low thrum of dread in his belly.

  Nervously, he said, “Rumours of his death reached our islands last year. I am glad they proved untrue.”

  It was as if he had not spoken. The lord said, “You and your colleagues have a busy schedule, I’m sure,” although nothing could be further from the truth. “I will get to the point. I have no interest in timber. We have battalions of supply officers to deal with that. I have a proposition for you, for your government.” He leaned forward and the boyishness dropped away. “Yo
u may know that the greatness of our City is buttressed by the workers in the furnaces of the northern wastes. Their work is hard and the death rate high. The war has decimated the population of the City and that of our many tributary kingdoms. We need more workers to man the furnaces.”

  The ambassador was silent, baffled. But we are just a small country, he thought, of fisherman and loggers. We have no spare workers.

  Marcellus went on. “To the west of you, weeks to the west, I understand, is a large land mass which has been so far uncivilised.”

  “Yes?” the ambassador said, wondering.

  “There are thousands, tens of thousands of potential workers there. The City will pay generously for every man or woman brought here to work in the furnaces.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then, “Slaves?” the ambassador asked.

  “Workers. We have found that slaves and convicted criminals die very quickly in the furnaces. Workers, however, are asked to sign a year’s contract. This is a legal document which is binding on both the worker and the City. This gives them hope that at the end of their year, if they survive, they will return home with generous compensation. Hope keeps them alive. Some of them.”

  “How many of them?” the ambassador asked sceptically.

  Vincerus frowned. “I’m sure some functionary in the palace offices can tell you the number if you really wish to know.”

  So this is why we are here, the ambassador thought. This is why we have been invited here, and wined and dined and flattered. He is asking us to become slave masters. He felt the ground underneath him shifting, and his sense of dread burgeoned.

  Playing for time, he feigned naïvety and asked, “But why would they agree?”

  “They will be handsomely paid.”

  “In their own terms?”

  “In the City’s terms.”

  “You want men of the Wester Isles to sail to their land, fill our ships with these people. By force?” Marcellus shrugged as if indifferent how the mission was fulfilled. “And bring them here to die in the service of the City. For which we will be paid.”