Madness of Flowers

by Jay Lake

  Wedgeburr's face was tight now. "Everything I said was true."

  "A man was slain here the night of the riot," Imago told him. "I did not kill him. I wanted to kill the other fellow, but I was restrained from my anger. The man who did kill your lover died during the Tokhari assault." Which was technically true, though Jason had certainly pursued a lively career since. "As for mockery, it has never been a capital crime to mock. The rest of your charges were not my doing in the least."

  He approached the cage, leaning close. "Now the clever Serjeant Robichande has set me a pretty problem. I daresay any doctor in this city would give you strong philters and send you to your bed for a year or two in hopes that you might recover from your madness. I even know the one to do it.

  "But alive you would continue to boil against me. I suspect you have already lost your bench. Robichande is no fool. He will be sure that Zaharias hears this tale. Even impeached, with you alive and in the funds your family holds, I would not be safe from bullet or poison.

  "Or, I could kill you now. It would hardly be self-defense with you locked in a cage. I could wrap myself in the dignity of my office and the crises of these terrible times and postpone investigation until no one cares.

  "So tell me, Syndic Wedgeburr. Am I a good man, or an evil one? Am I a killer, or a merciful gentleman? I will act upon your judgment in this matter."

  He stepped away from the cage and found the sword behind the bench. It hung in a wooden scabbard built into the platform. Curious, Imago thought. What purpose did this serve in the ritual of the law? The implements of the question were openly racked near the cage.

  Approaching the cage again, Imago dangled the sword in his hand. "Well?"

  "You are a smug, trite little parvenu," said Wedgeburr. "Those Burgesses not too far gone in vice or dementia have long hated you. You have made us over from proud rulers of the City Imperishable to a debating club confined within these crumbling walls."

  "Then you are idiots!" Imago shouted. "I am Lord Mayor of this city. I do not control the waterways, I do not administer the Rose Downs, I am not responsible for the loss of Port Defiance. You Burgesses are. Everything beyond these walls is yours. The City Imperishable sits like an aging spider in an empty web, at the center of the vacant lands of our old empire. Your debating club could do anything, could rule a thousand leagues at a word. Instead you fools plot to bar the Portmaster's office from me, and niggle at the hours of the closing of the gates. Everything for pride, including your attempt to have me murdered." He poked through the bars with the sword, jabbing Wedgeburr in the stomach. The judge's eyes were wide as two moons.

  "Everything for pride and nothing for sense." Imago drew a deep breath. "Tell me one thing. Is it true, about the elections act?"

  "Yes." Wedgeburr snickered, vainly attempting to show a game face. "We made you over into history."

  "As a private man, I have no role here." He tossed the sword to the ground next to the keys. "I suppose the charwoman will let you out."

  As Imago climbed the steps to the door, passing the shattered bone and links of silver chain, Wedgeburr called out. "What about the bullets? The poison?"

  Imago turned and stared back down at him. "If you think you can do better than I at running this madhouse of a city, then strike me down and take my chair. Otherwise leave me to the business of keeping us all alive."

  He left. The doors were not even locked.

  Robichande stood between two of the broken idols which lined the hallway, his arms folded. He was not carrying a pistol.

  "Serjeant," Imago said with a nod.

  "Lord Mayor."

  Imago spread his hands. "See? No blood."

  After a moment, Robichande answered him. "I am surprised."

  "I have to ask. Did you know what Wedgeburr was about?"

  "It was a writ, duly served." Robichande quirked a small smile. "We had to work a bit to get at you, sir."

  "So you were not a party to murder?"

  "I am a party to justice. A loyal bailiff, sworn to the law."

  "We are not friends, Serjeant, and I don't suppose we ever will be. But I respect your oath. I am also tired, and have larger battles to fight than warring over the wounded pride of Burgesses."

  "Fair enough." Robichande stared at him a moment longer. "Then I have a suggestion, sir."

  "Yes?"

  "Petition to address the Assemblage. Bring it out into the open. Tell them what you told Wedgeburr about empire and empty lands. Remind them who we are."

  "You don't like being a shadow of a shadow of power, do you, Serjeant?"

  "I am a loyal bailiff, sworn to the law. But the law could be more than it has become these days."

  Bijaz

  He knew the dead man's replacement from the river cruise—Sammael Pierce. The new man was quite deferential to Bijaz.

  Ashkoliiz led a brief discussion of supplies and food consumption and the logistics of keeping twelve dozen men alive in an unpeopled wilderness. As Bijaz had figured, it was her intention for the Northern Expedition to forage for everything but a few key necessities.

  He was far more interested in her statements about their line of march.

  "I shall split our force into two columns," she said. "The riders should be here within another day. They will be bringing pack strings with them if all has gone well. We'll load the majority of the gear onto the animals and send them north and west along with a screening force of forty men under Priola. There's a trail which will get them up and over the Silver Ridges at Jarais Pass.

  "Our own group will ascend the cliff cities here. A much more direct route above will take us up to the old Imperator Paucius nickel mines, and through the mountains there. We will save two weeks' time and build an advance base on the north side of the Silver Ridges to be prepared for the arrival of the mounted column. Wee Pollister will command the heavy troops, who will do the primary load bearing. Pierce will command the light troops, who will range ahead to mark the ascent and set ropes as necessary."

  "We're not heading to Endres Pass?" Bijaz asked, surprised.

  She gave him a long, slow look, those ice-blue eyes narrowing. "Why would I do that? Endres Pass is a hundred and fifty miles east of here."

  "Of course," he said blandly. She'd said Endres Pass, back at the City Imperishable, which corresponded with what Marelle had told him. Where was she going? Certainly not following the most likely path of Imperator Terminus.

  Of course, there was always the question of trees.

  Whatever the hells that meant. Though it was true he kept seeing trees where they did not belong.

  The tribesmen on their horses rode in at dusk, just as the horrible little bats were rising from the globe houses above their heads. The riders led several dozen animals of a kind Bijaz had never seen before. They resembled camels, with their spade feet and their broad, long faces, but they had a pair of floppy humps rather than a single high back.

  Bad tempered, too, Bijaz observed as he watched Priola and his men try to wrangle the strange camels into a temporary corral. Several of the men got bit, and there was one fairly serious trampling. The horsemen just sat in their saddles and laughed.

  Bijaz managed to avoid the bats that night by sleeping in the shelter of a shallow portico with a roof too flat to attract them. He supposed that as one of Ashkoliiz's councilors he would be entitled to more sumptuous quarters, complete with wine and cigars, but he wasn't interested.

  The next morning brought chaos, pure and simple. None of Ashkoliiz's commanders had apparently ever led anything more disciplined than a bar fight. Their men saw no reason to take orders from someone they'd just recently shorn at dice, or tussled with over a ration of sour mash. A number of thrashings were underway, to varying result.

  Only the horsemen were ready. They contented themselves with a knife-throwing contest at the far end of the docks, away from the muddle.

  The men were avoiding Bijaz like a dockside whore with cuntburn. Word of yesterday's argument with
Whump had gotten around. He gathered what little kit he had accumulated thus far and climbed to the balcony he had used the night of the landing.

  There he was surprised to find Ashkoliiz. Unusually, she was alone. No Northmen, no bear. She wore traveling leathers trimmed with small scraps of her signature blue silk. It was the first time he'd seen her dressed in a practical manner.

  The outfit did nothing to diminish the lurch of his heart.

  "What do you think of my men?" she asked.

  Bijaz glanced upriver. The foredeck of Slackwater Princess protruded at an angle above the surface, the current of the River Saltus breaking in white spray around it. When he turned to meet her gaze, Ashkoliiz was smiling. Those ice-blue eyes seemed the size of frozen lakes.

  "I think they are all fools," he said slowly. "And I do not see why you have brought such an ill-matched set of misfits."

  "Well." Her lips quirked tighter. "I am a woman after all. Perhaps I am no judge of men, easily swayed by a pretty face or a tight arse."

  He thought of the bald man, angry and stupid. "No, no. You have done this on purpose." Bijaz certainly hoped so.

  "Indeed. They are fools, friend dwarf. Hired as such and meant to be such. But consider this: from any crop of fools will rise a few sensible men. And this crop shall be winnowed in the weeks and months to come."

  "Months, eh?"

  The smile faded slightly. "Were we hiking to Endres Pass, yes. Months indeed. You and your strange little Lord Mayor have done some pretty guesswork."

  "What else would you expect of us?" He snorted. "You come to town and set a stout problem to hand, one which is equally dangerous whether true or false. Of course we look into understanding what you meant. And while the City Imperishable has not set its eyes northward in centuries, we are not entirely bereft of maps or histories."

  "I but seek to restore what was lost." She spread her hands. "Should I not profit thereby?"

  "You seek to upset the order of half a thousand years, lady." In that moment Bijaz felt his age. This woman could have been his granddaughter. She was caught up in the romance of her cause, the wealth and fame at stake. All her thinking was in the present. It took a tired old man like him to look and see what her deeds would mean to history, to the future of the people she purported to help. "Besides that, there is more at play than your desires. You do not travel alone, and you do not take your counsel only from your conscience."

  To his surprise, she struck at that bait. "The bear is something you would not understand. A tutelary spirit. He holds my wisdom."

  "I know what a totem is." Bijaz knew what an overseer was as well, and he was certain the ice bear somehow filled that role. He had not yet tasted the tang of the noumenal in the bear's presence, but they had never had a direct confrontation. Of course, at thirteen feet and better than half a ton, he would pray to any god who had ever darkened his door that such a confrontation never take place.

  "If you understand," she said, quite serious now, "then do not challenge how I tread the measures of my dance. It is a matter of the North, where life is different."

  "Naturally," he said. "Life is different everywhere, lady."

  She pointed down to the docks. "Watch life be different here, now, as I make a point to my men."

  Bijaz turned his attention back to the shoving, milling mass below. The ice bear and the three Northmen were fanning out from yesterday's meeting hall. They waded in to separate knots of arguing or idling men. All the bear need do was loom overhead and everyone hopped to attention. The Northmen were forced to work a little harder to capture the fractious attention of their targets, but they were all three masters of a fighting style Bijaz had never before seen. With open hands and rapid spins they were able to lay out three, four, even five men each in quick succession.

  After the first few rounds of this, the columns began to fall into shape. Even the odd double-humped camels were frightened into submission by the ice bear.

  In less than ten minutes Ashkoliiz's lieutenants had accomplished what two hours of pushing and shoving and yelling had failed to do.

  "What they have all just learned," she said quietly, "leaders and men alike, is that they need me. Only I speak with my Northmen, only I command the loyalty of the bear. Only I can make their fellows obey."

  It seemed to Bijaz they needed the Northmen far more than they needed Ashkoliiz, but he held his counsel in that regard. "Leading from fear is not the position of greatest power."

  "Hmm." She gave him a brisk nod and turned to find the stairs. "The command section will be forming up in about ten minutes. You might wish to center on my banner. That will be a position of strength in times to come."

  The pack column set out in the bright fullness of morning. The camels were restive and braying. The mounted warriors rode three times around the moving column before pulling ahead, leaving the west end of the dock and kicking dust as they followed a long, shallow slant up the hill beneath the cliff face.

  The camels followed, Priola's forty men spread among them. Bijaz figured this was seen as scut duty, but then they weren't climbing through an abandoned city, and might have a better chance of living to see the back of the Silver Ridges.

  Ashkoliiz's banner was a long whiptail of blue silk. It streamed from a tall pole capped by a round brace with four dangling white horsetails. She held it herself, surrounded by four large men picked from Wee Pollister's heavy troops. They wore blue silk hats atop their otherwise irregular expeditionary kit. They all looked distinctly uncomfortable. None would meet Bijaz's eye.

  All the musical instruments seemed to be among Pierce's light troops. The tune soon trailed off as the scouts scaled the steps north of the port, climbing toward the base of the cliff cities complex. The plan was obvious. They would go higher and set the lines to draw the rest of the men up from below.

  He wondered how many among them were mountaineers, or had ever climbed anything higher than the steps to a flatback room.

  They reached the top of the first stone globe in an hour. At this rate they'd be a week climbing the cliff. Nonetheless, the men cheered. Lines were dropped down and stouter lines drawn up. Despite appearances, someone knew what they were doing.

  The scouts had set the climb so that the ascending heavy troops would have access to the globe's spout-entrance. Once they were up, the lines could follow.

  "We go after everyone else," Ashkoliiz said as the first of Wee Pollister's men began beetling their way along the ropes.

  He didn't answer. It didn't seem necessary.

  Onesiphorous

  Behind the door was an irregular cavern which seemed a natural formation. It had been walled off from the outside by a course of dressed stone. Half a dozen full-men and another dwarf sat around a table playing cards in a pool of light, though he could not immediately spy out the glow of a window or airshaft. Wooden partitions along the stone walls allowed for curtains to define private spaces. Larger tables stood near the back of the cavern, where several ladders and tunnels led off. Dividers ran across them, with bins beneath.

  Sorting tables for the jade. Though no one seemed to be working at the moment. It was a very lazy mine.

  The men glanced up at his entrance, but Onesiphorous marked that they looked to Beaulise. She nodded and they went back to their cards.

  "Your day of rest?" Onesiphorous asked. He had no idea what day it in fact was. He was three weeks or more thrown out of his office, but the time had since become a blur.

  "Every day is a rest day now," said Beaulise. "Boat's two weeks late. We're already out of wine and milk and butter. No point in bringing down even more rock if it's just going to sit here waiting to be stolen. It's safer in the ground."

  "So you know what's happening in Port Defiance?"

  Beaulise shrugged. "I know what I heard. Don't know what happened. Corsair banners flying on the Flag Towers, dwarfs in hiding around the port. Some other strangeness back in the City, but it's another one of their twists far as I can tell." She snorted
. "You know, like the Drover's Heresy or that business with the soul bottles when I was new in my box. There's a reason so many of us came down here over the years."

  He pursued her earlier remark. "But I was expected?"

  "Last assay boat here, crew said a City dwarf was making trouble for the Harbormaster. You're not the most ordinary fellow, you know, and half of anyone up the Saltus knows of you. Besides, that new Lord Mayor hasn't got a lot of people to trust."