The last night, as they entered the vast straits dominated by the twin cities of Ulama and Megara, Aranthur put a belt of gold around his waist and chose clothes he could wear wet.
“You’ve smuggled things into Megara?” he asked Inoques.
She shrugged. “Not precisely. But I know the currents. You’re not that good a swimmer—you can’t be daring. If I sail past the city in the darkness, I can put you in the water two hundred paces from the beach below Petros Island.” She looked at him. “Do you know someone you trust absolutely?”
Aranthur thought of Tiy Drako and smiled.
“Not absolutely,” he said. “But for this.”
She reached out and caught his hand.
“I want to tell you something.”
He sat next to her on her swinging hammock. It was more a box bed that swung on heavy ropes; it was very comfortable, and he’d enjoyed the four days sailing from Antioke very much. He’d also learnt that he looked like a scarecrow.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
He thought for a moment, and met her black eyes.
“You always intended to be pregnant,” he said.
She continued to gaze at him. “You are perceptive.”
“So…” He leant towards her. “Why would you want to be pregnant, oh Ancient One?”
She smiled. “That needs to remain with me for a while. I promise again, no harm will come to you or your friends.”
Aranthur nodded. “That’s not as reassuring as it sounds.”
She nodded.
Two hours later, he was out on deck in wool hose, simple linen braes, and a good wool doublet—the clothes of a gentleman. He found Dahlia and handed her the old sword, wrapped in his sword-belt.
“I wish you were taking a sword,” she said.
“I’ve come to believe this sword is almost as important as the Black Stone,” Aranthur said. “And I can’t swim with it. Keep it for me, and if I don’t return, consider… carrying it.”
“Complete with its guardian angel. Is she the woman in armour who saved us when the sky broke open?”
“I think so.”
Her hands closed around the scabbard, and he let go.
Dahlia looked at him, her eyes round with amazement.
“It spoke!” she said.
Aranthur nodded. He felt an enormous sense of loss, and even jealousy.
Dahlia glanced at him. “You know you are thin as an old board, eh?”
“I know.”
“I think that enhancement is burning you away. I think I know how to treat you, but I think you have to stop using it.”
“It’s all that is keeping me alive—” he began.
Dahlia shrugged. “I’m trying to help.”
“Mark twelve. By the mark six. By the mark five.”
The man in the bow had a dark lantern and the lead, which he threw very rapidly, testing the shoaling water. The Northside neighbourhoods of the City were so close that Aranthur could smell the polpo, the octopus grilling in the bars and tavernas along the waterfront.
“Two green lanterns anywhere along the Angel,” Aranthur said. “Every night after dark until midnight, if you can come in. Red lanterns if you should sail for Lonika.”
Dahlia nodded. Inoques stepped in close, as if to kiss him, and then changed her mind. Kollotronis took his shoulder.
“I still think I should come,” he said.
Aranthur shook his hand. “See you in a day or two.”
“By the mark four,” Mera called from the bow, very softly.
“Ready about,” Inoques said. “Ready, there,” she said gruffly to Aranthur.
He stopped, grabbed her waist, and kissed her.
She smiled. “Don’t die.”
Then he stepped up to the rail facing the city. It was slack water; the tide was neither rising nor falling, the notorious currents around the city walls at their lowest speed. He could see the Aqueduct, lit from below by the fires of the refugees, and he could see the clock face on the Temple of Light. The palace of crystal was dark, but the Temple of Light was well lit, and the whole north side of the city sparkled with life.
He leapt into the sea, and began swimming for shore. When he was close enough to hear the conversations of the privileged who ate in the taverns of the beachfront neighbourhoods, he turned and swam up the Little Canal, passing under the bridges, and then south. He rested against an ancient stone bollard, surprised at his own temerity. He couldn’t have imagined swimming voluntarily in the canals before the war.
Then he swam on. He swam past the ruins of one of the Northside palazzi, destroyed by a poisoned kuria crystal, and he followed the bend until he came to white marble stairs, green where the tide washed them. The fondemento was empty, as far as he could tell. He climbed out carefully and dripped for a few minutes, savouring the relative safety of dry land.
He had to lie down on the steps when six strong porters carried a chair past him on the bridge above. When they were gone, he felt ready for the next leg. He didn’t want to use magik until he had an idea of what was going on, so he didn’t dry his clothes or warm himself.
He walked up the Gully, the little valley that separated the Pinnacle from the Academy, avoiding honest neighbourhoods, using alleys when he could, because until his clothes dried he looked wrong. He passed under High Bridge with a regretful glance back; somewhere above him, the Master of Arts…
He set his damp shoulders and walked on along the dark path that edged the stream that ran down out of an ancient leak in the Aqueduct. He’d walked this way many times as a first year student, but now there were refugees living in the Gully. Tiny fires winked on either hand, and he was cautious, which was just as well, because there were corpses on the path: bloated victims of the bone plague, but other corpses too; perhaps victims of brutal robbery, but possibly unburied victims of the darkness. The Gully stank, and Aranthur, who had survived the Black Bastion, found himself afraid.
Eventually he climbed the short flight of wooden steps set into the mud bank and came to the neighbourhoods he knew, below the Academy on Southside. He walked to the little square with the wellhead and pretty bridge, where once, he and Mikal Kallinikos had fought three thugs in a fixed duel. He took one of Dahlia’s red ribbons from his pocket and tied it to one of the four bronze lions, each of whom bore a bronze ring, left over from an ancient time when people tethered horses to wells in the city, perhaps the time of Tirase.
It was his signal. A member of Cold Iron would see it, and tell Tiy Drako.
The ribbon shone against the dark brown of the bronze and the white of the wellhead. Aranthur smiled and walked away quickly, before the rising sound of aristocratic voices coming from the seaside neighbourhoods.
This time he walked with purpose, across the bridge, along the walkways, across another bridge until he reached a familiar blue door. It was late, but not impossible.
He knocked.
A pretty child of ten answered his knock.
“I know you,” she said. “You look very thin. Have you been in prison? You called me Demoiselle once. And you are very damp.” She blinked. “Patur is eating his dinner.”
“May I come in?” Aranthur managed.
“You are very damp,” the girl said. “Daddy! Daddy! It’s one of your students and he’s very wet.”
Maestro Sparthos appeared from the back of the house.
“What the devil…?” he said, and then stopped. He was perhaps three strides from Aranthur.
Aranthur learned a great deal in that one moment, when their eyes crossed.
“Do I know you, syr?” the maestro asked.
Aranthur bowed. “I have been your student.”
Sparthos smiled at his daughter.
“This is a friend. Go eat your nice biscuit and honey.”
“But I like him—”
“Run along,” Sparthos said firmly.
She looked back and Aranthur bowed.
“Is this politics?” Sparthos asked. “You
are Timos, aren’t you? I didn’t know you at first.”
“Yes, Maestro.”
“What do you want, coming like this when the school is closed, wet to the bone?” Sparthos said sharply.
“I need to get dry. Then I will leave you,” Aranthur said.
Sparthos considered for a moment. “Of course. Come.”
He led Aranthur out of the back of his house, into a very small courtyard, only just big enough for a tangle of clothes lines. The little yard was clearly shared with three other houses.
“Sapu’s visiting his father. Here’s his room. Let yourself out.” Sparthos paused. “Can I get you something to eat?”
“Yes, Maestro.”
Sparthos returned with good rich cuttlefish pasta and a heap of bread and garlic, as well as a tall glass of beer. Aranthur ate it all.
“Were you with the General?” Sparthos asked.
Aranthur nodded.
Sparthos looked away. “Was it terrible?”
It was the most human thing that the sword master had ever asked him.
“Yes,” Aranthur agreed. He thought of killing the women in front of the Yaniceri trench; or the fighting in the Black Bastion. After a long time, he said, “You know we won?”
Sparthos’ head snapped round.
“What?” he asked.
Aranthur’s fears were confirmed. He had the satisfaction of having guessed correctly.
“We fought a major action on the plains of Armea, and defeated the Pure with Atti as an ally. Two weeks ago, General Tribane defeated them again at Antioke.”
Sparthos sat back. “Impossible,” he said.
“I was present at both battles.”
“So Roaris is a liar,” Sparthos said. “No news there.” He sighed. “How is your bladework?”
Aranthur thought for a moment. His smile was genuine.
“I’m here.”
Sparthos laughed. “In other words, adequate. Well said, Timos. Should I ask any more?”
“Probably not,” Aranthur admitted. “May I ask you some things?”
Sparthos nodded.
“Tell me what’s happened here in the last month.”
Sparthos got up, put out all the candles but one, and paced nervously.
“The fleet sailed, and everything was quiet. Then the bone plague grew worse—a great many Easterners died. And then…” He shrugged. “The Dark Forge came to the sky and the darkness came to people’s minds. It was… terrible. And there were attacks in the streets—people going mad, or acts of terror. I can never tell.”
He coughed, and settled into a chair. He coughed again, and took out a handkerchief, which was spotted with blood.
“I thought the world was ending,” he said, “and I do not succumb to fancies. My daughter held me, as if she was the adult and I the child. People died—up in the Academy precinct, it was as if there’d been a riot.” He was looking into the candle. “They say that the Emperor is still lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.” Sparthos shook his head silently for a while. “That’s when things began to go mad. There were looters, and some of the Easterners attacked an aristocrat’s farm outside the city, or that’s what we heard. I heard there were roving gangs of Easterners. And then Roaris returned, the same day or a day later…” He stopped. “And they say that the Emperor appointed Roaris to command the Watch. I’ve heard that the Emperor can’t speak. Regardless, Roaris is widely believed to have saved the city. He crushed the Easterners and ended the looting.” Sparthos sat back. “Except that then he began arresting people.”
Aranthur nodded. “What people?”
Sparthos shrugged. “I try not to take sides in politics. But mostly, he arrests prominent Whites. He claims they are in league with the Easterners to overthrow the city.” He shrugged again. “Almost no one believes that except Lions.” He glanced at Aranthur. “But suddenly there are quite a few Lions. Even lower-class lions, if such a thing could exist.”
Aranthur nodded. He could almost see it.
“And the Academy?”
“Roaris has demanded the Master of Arts’ resignation,” the maestro said. “She appealed to the Emperor yesterday.”
Aranthur nodded. “And the Emperor?”
“Is in the Crystal Palace with his guards,” Sparthos shrugged. “That’s what the broadsheets say. There’s a lot of open talk against the Emperor now. Because the guards didn’t do anything to stop the riots.”
Aranthur said nothing.
“You look like you need sleep,” the maestro said.
“I do,” Aranthur admitted.
Sparthos thought for a moment. “You can have Sapu’s room until he returns next week at the start of the Autumn term.”
“I’ll be gone in two hours. If I return… we’ll talk.”
“You are very sure of yourself.” Sparthos rose. “More food?”
“No, thanks. My duty to your daughter.”
Sparthos frowned. “I wish it had been I who answered the door. I would not like to see her interrogated by the Watch.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“Everywhere,” Sparthos answered. “The Watch themselves aren’t so bad, but there are a good many young men, mostly Lions, in black and yellow cloaks who are ‘deputised.’ Yellowjackets, people call them.”
When the maestro went to put his daughter to bed, Aranthur went through Sapu’s small room. He had an armoire, a big one, and in it, Aranthur found his student robe, which he’d left months before.
He stripped off his doublet and put on the gown. It was not cleaner than the last time he’d worn it, and he had a moment of temporal confusion buttoning up the familiar buttons, his thumbs seemingly working of their own accord.
The hour rang. He ate a piece of garlic bread. He was supposed to visit the meeting place every six hours, under certain conditions. It was all very foolish, unless things were very bad. But now he thought that things really were that bad.
He went back through the corte with the wellhead and the four bronze rings an hour later. The ribbon was still tied there. Recrossing the Aphres Bridge, where the goddess’s voluptuous statue flirted with pedestrian traffic, Aranthur saw four men in black and yellow parti-coloured cloaks loitering at the end of the bridge. It was too late to turn around, so he walked up to pass them, but they fanned out.
“Hola, Student!” called one. “Where are you going at this hour?”
Aranthur didn’t sense that they were after him, exactly; more, seeking entertainment.
He bowed with all the subservience that Arnauts saved for Byzas officials.
“I stayed too late with friends.”
“Carrying a weapon?” the short one asked. His face was the meanest—pinched and angry like a ferret’s.
“No, my lords,” Aranthur said, bowing again.
“Let’s just search him,” said Ferret.
Aranthur had a range of choices, but he chose to be searched.
Ferret’s fingers closed on his kuria crystal.
“This is too nice for an Arnaut boy,” he said.
“Stop that, Ypsila,” said the tall man. “Stop, I say.”
“He probably stole it,” Ypsila said, in an ingratiating voice.
“I’ve told you before,” the tall man said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “The way we treat the lower orders defines us. If we are noble, we must be noble in our behaviour.” He stood back and waved. “You there. Get off with you. Be careful in the streets.”
Aranthur walked away, feeling their eyes on his back.
The same bridge was guarded by four more Yellowjackets six hours later, when he came back. He spotted them from above, and he walked across one of the Academy terraces to look down on the little group. He leant over the elaborate marble railing to look down…
Into the eyes of Djinar, looking up.
Djinar recognised him instantly and shouted. But Aranthur wasn’t just twenty paces higher—he had instant access to the labyrinth of alleys and paths inside the Precinct. He cr
ossed the Great Square by the chapel of Sophia, went through the Gate, and entered the Long Hall, which had been technically forbidden to him as a Second Year.
He could remember when such rules had mattered to him. Now, he walked boldly down the Long Hall and crossed the “Small,” a lush green courtyard with a garden behind the Long Hall. The Master of Arts’ magnificent windows gave on to the Small, and he was again tempted to try and obtain an interview, but he knew she would be watched.
But he did think of Edvin, her notary. He knew where Edvin lived. He filed that thought away and turned back towards the Ravine, this time by the back gate of the Small, which led to a dirt path.
He crossed the Ravine, a longer trip, all the way down on muddy, seldom-used steps. At the bottom of the Ravine he could hear the Yellowjackets accosting tradesmen on the bridge above. Just at the edge of the stream that ran down the Ravine to become the Great Canal further along, he found not one but three bloated bone plague victims like evil puddings. One long tendril of skin showed how a dying man had tried to scoop water from the stream even as his bones melted.
Aranthur shuddered. But he climbed the far side of the Ravine, passed through a small host of beggars almost without comment, so threadbare was his robe, and emerged into the web of streets behind the corte, approaching the wellhead from a new direction. He passed maids going to work, manservants opening palazzo gates, and vegetable carts making deliveries. Everyone looked tense—even terrified. People looked at him as if he was out of place, and Aranthur began to reconsider his Student guise.
He emerged from a filthy alley between the walled gardens of two great palazzi into the corte. The ribbon was still there as he walked by. He was crossing the next bridge when a canal boat full of furniture was poling along in the early morning light, and the boatman was singing “The Battle of Cowry.” Aranthur hummed the tune himself and wished for his tamboura. And a sword. His arming sword was hanging in his rooms, which were paid for.
Was it a risk?
Was there a point to all this cloak and dagger?
Aranthur continued across the bridge. He never stopped moving. He watched the canal boat go under him, and saw another boat loaded with stone coming down the cross canal, and then he was on the Thousand Steps, going up to the level of the Academy, out of all the fine houses and the best neighbourhoods. He turned from time to time, until he found a “landing” about halfway up the steps from which he could see down into the corte. The ribbon was a spark of red below him.
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