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Gil Trilogy #1:
Lady in Gil
Rebecca Bradley
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TIGRALLEF BOUND
"March!" is what they bellowed at us, but I would hardly call it marching. We staggered, mainly, the collection of fetters around our necks half-throttling us with every tortured step. The braces were special agony; we wore two, locking each of us into helpless partnership with the wretch ahead and the wretch behind.
"I won't go. I won't go. I won't go," the Gilman ahead of me was droning.
"He's right," muttered the man behind me. "He won't go. He won't live long enough."
"What's happening?" I whispered.
"What's happening? It's the slave levy, you pocketing fool, what did you think? We'll be well on the way to Sher this time tomorrow."
My heart turned into a kind of cold pudding behind my ribs. The quest was ending before it had even begun, my life would end in the salt pans of Sher, or deep in the killing mines near Iklankish, or high in the scaffolding of some pretentious new tower in the imperial warcourt . . .
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Lady in Gil
Rebecca Bradley
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
LADY IN GIL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events or locales is entirely coincidental.
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with
Victor Gollancz
PRINTING HISTORY
Victor Gollancz edition published 1996 Ace edition / March 2000
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996 by Rebecca Bradley.
Cover art by Fred Gambino.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Victor Gollancz,
An imprint of the Cassell Group,
Wellington House, 125 Strand, London WC2R 0BB
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http://www.penguinputnam.com
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and much more, on the Internet at Club PPI!
ISBN: 0-441-00709-0
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ACE and the "A" design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For K. N. Coutts
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1
IT WAS THE sixth morning after my brother's accident. I was sitting peacefully in the archives, annotating a rare manuscript and minding my own business, when the door crashed open with enough energy to set the ink-jars tinkling on their rack. I marked my place with a finger and looked up.
A tall man loomed in the doorway. A black cloak swirled around him, a horned Sherkin helmet of quite overdone ferocity, mostly spikes and jutting brow ridges, concealed his face. He flourished a knife at me with one mailed fist and raised a lethal-looking club in the other.
"I think you have the wrong room," I said.
He roared at that. He flung the club past my head, charged through the door, vaulted over the table, grabbed my throat in one iron hand and lifted me half out of the chair. "Fight me," he growled.
"You mean me?" I was bewildered.
"Yes!"
The knife flashed in front of my eyes, then swung down to kiss my throat just under the chin. Groping, I managed to push the precious manuscript further along the table, to what I hoped was a safe distance.
"Let's be clear about this. You want me to fight you?"
"Yes! Fight, damn you!"
"But why?"
"Why? Why? By the Lady!" he exploded. The knife clattered into its sheath; the iron fist released my throat and gave me a shove that tipped the chair over backwards and sent me sprawling on the floor. Cautiously I raised myself on to my elbows. My assailant sat down on the edge of the table, pulling the Sherkin helmet off at the same time. I knew his face.
"You're one of my brother's training Flamens, aren't you?"
He nodded without speaking.
"I do hope," I said mildly, still from the floor, "that you're not sitting on that manuscript. It's very old."
He spoke one word. "Hopeless," he said, with deep scorn, and I thought at first that he was talking to me; but then I heard a swishing near the door, and peering through the legs of both the table and my ex-assailant, I could see a curtain of green robes moving sedately towards us. A second later, five pairs of old eyes under shaggy grey eyebrows appeared over the far edge of the table; five straggly old-man beards draped themselves over the tabletop as their owners craned to see me. They belonged to the Primate himself, the three most senior Flamens-in-Exile, and my good friend the First Memorian.
Hastily, I sat up straight and began a gesture of formal greeting.
"Don't bother," the Primate said. "You'll only get it wrong."
My greeting died in mid-waggle. I noted a slight curve of self-congratulation on the Primate's spotty old lips, as if I'd managed to live down to his very worst expectations. "My lord Tigrallef," he added, "do get up off the floor."
I scrambled to my feet, trying to watch all the Flamens at once. The First Flamen's face was gloomy, and he kept shaking his head so that his long grey beard swayed back and forth like a feather-bush in a breeze. The Second and Third Flamens looked awed, as if the spectacular failure they had just witnessed was something to build legends around. Their heads were also shaking.
I turned pleading eyes to the First Memorian and found him dutifully wagging his beard along with the rest of them, but with a gleam of muted approval, even relief, on his face. "You see?" he said, turning to the Flamens, "Lord Tigrallef is totally unsuitable."
"Totally," said the First Flamen.
"I quite agree," said the Second Flamen.
"Not to be thought of," said the Third Flamen.
The Primate's eyes narrowed. "He's a Scion of Oballef. That makes him suitable."
"But Most Revered One, you saw what happened when Clero attacked him. He hasn't the faintest idea how to fight; he has no heroic instincts whatsoever—"
The Primate silenced the First Memorian with one of his famous glares. "Lord Tigrallef can be trained. I'm sure Clero agrees."
Clero, the training Flamen, obviously did not agree, and was just opening his mouth to say so when he also caught the look in the Primate's eye. Armour and knife and bulging muscles and all, he quailed. "Oh, yes, Most Revered One. We can make a hero out of him—given enough time." Given a few decades, that's what his expression said, but the Primate was already turning to the door in triumph.
I coughed. "Most Revered One?"
The Primate swung back to glare at me, his great grey puffs of eyebrows raised. This was normally enough to make me shake like a jellydevil caught on a sharp rock, but a horrible suspicion was taking shape in my mind, and it steadied my voice.
"Most Revered One—does this have something to do with my brother?"
"There is nothing
you need to know at this moment, Scion," said the Primate.
"But how is my brother? They said yesterday he was improving."
"Lord Arkolef will live," he answered coldly.
"Then what—?"
"Unfortunately," he interrupted, suddenly bearing down upon me, "his wound has begun to rot on the bone. The healing Flamens tell me the leg must be sacrificed, or he will die within a few days." The eyebrows knitted into a frown, daring me to speak again; daring me to accuse him.
For once, I didn't give a pick of the nose how the Primate was looking at me. The shock was lending me a sour kind of courage. "Well, that's a set-back for you, Most Revered One," I said. "Now you won't be able to send him to Gil. What a shame. I know how you like to keep up your average—"
"Lord Tigrallef!"
"—and it's been four years since you sent poor Baraslef to his death—"
"We don't know that he's dead, Scion."
"—but I can't believe that even you would send a one-legged hero into the jaws of the appalling Sherank. If you ask me, the leg is a small price to pay for his life. Thank the Lady, Arko's safe."
"And thank the Lady," said the Primate coldly, "we have an alternative."
"An alternative?"
"Yes, indeed." He smiled, with a mouth like a narrow groove chipped in a block of ice. I knew that expression; I had seen it before, directed at persons whom the Primate planned to use, not necessarily with their whole-hearted approval, for some dangerous or distasteful task. "Someone who can take over the quest in Lord Arkolef's stead," he added.
"I trust you don't mean—"
"You will be told," he said, "when the Council of Flamens has made its decision."
"What decision?" I asked, but he was heading for the door again, sweeping Clero and the other Flamens with him. The First Memorian paused by the door, looking back at me with pity and regret, but when I mimed a question at him, he raised his hands helplessly and vanished after the others.
It was hard to concentrate after that. I rewrapped the manuscript in its leather envelope, cleaned my pens and trailed miserably over to the sickhouse to see if there was any news of my brother. I was not allowed to see Arko and the healing Flamens were too busy to talk to me, but the foetor of boiling herbs and bubbling concoctions was quite informative. I wandered disconsolately through the clouds of steam, identifying sleeping draughts, blood thickeners, flesh cleansers; when a little acolyte walked in carrying a cleaver and a saw, I left.
So, I remember thinking, Arko's leg would be lost, but his life would be spared. I knew Arko would not be pleased. The prospect of going to Gil and confronting the Sherank had meant everything in his life to him. He had been honed and polished for it from birth, immersed in the Ways of Combat, trained in the Arts of Valour, educated with patience and some difficulty in the Secrets of the Ancients, the Caveat and the Lesser and Greater Wills, and thoroughly steeped in the Heroic Code, which lays down the etiquette of combat and social behaviour for right-thinking heroes. He was tall, strong, golden-haired and handsome. He had muscles knit like chain mail, the physical fitness of a dozen athletes, the moral rectitude of two dozen saints, and the profile of a god—from both sides.
I was shortish, stocky, graceless, dirty-blond and as physically fit as half an athlete. Even my mother, who loved me, couldn't meet my eyes and call me handsome. As for courage, I suppose I'd be as brave as the next man, assuming the next man to be an abject coward; not even approximately hero material. This had been evident from such an early age that the Primate-in-Exile had despaired of me, and had not honoured me with the normal rigorous childhood of a Scion of Oballef. At the time of Arko's accident I was a memorian, obscure and largely unharassed, happily buried in the archives for most of my waking hours. I was a good one, too. It was all I ever wanted to be.
That day, however, roaming along Exile's rocky strand, I had a nasty feeling that my status was about to rise. My brother Arkolef had been ideal mission-fodder. He believed in the Heroic Code; he welcomed the chance to die for the honour of Gil. I never thought he was terribly bright. But he had somehow managed to buckle on his heavy leg-armour backwards, a feat requiring really inspired stupidity, and fallen over, breaking his left leg in three places, and then compounded this idiocy by ignoring the pain for several days, as per the Heroic Code. End of career.
But the Flamens still wanted a hero; with Arko out of action, they were left only with my cousin Callefiya, of the right age and training, but now the mother of two young children; six little Scions, including Callefiya's two and Arkolef's two, between the ages of one and fourteen; and myself. And the more I thought about it, the more ominous did that morning's performance in the archives appear.
The First Memorian told me later that the meeting called to discuss the ramifications of Arko's leg did not have the usual dignity of Flamen functions. One faction, the largest, held out for postponing the next mission until one of the children was of an age to go, a delay of at least seven years. The rest were split between those wanting to send Callefiya, although this would probably orphan her children (her husband Baraslef had been the last hero to depart); and the Primate, who wanted to send me.
Both the other factions thought the latter was about as sensible as setting a fieldmouse to nip a rippercat to death. I was well known to be of no use except in the archives, where my tendency to trip over even very small objects was not a fatal drawback. Furthermore, it was not customary to send a Scion to Gil before he or she had ensured the bloodline by producing another little Scion or two, whereas they hadn't even been able to arrange a marriage for me yet—and not for want of trying. No, they said, no indeed, even if Lord Tigrallef were the last of Oballef's line left in Exile, it would still be futile to send him.
Then the Primate took the floor—and kept it. The first argument he dismissed out of hand as unimportant; I was a certified Scion of Oballef, and I could be trained. As to the second argument, he said if they waited for me to father a child, they could very well wait for ever; and that was assuming my contribution to the Scions' lineage would be worth waiting for, which he rather doubted. He pointed out that their best attempt to marry me off so far had failed abysmally, although who could blame any discriminating peeress for rejecting me? He pointed out a great many things, none of them pleasant or tactful, and as he spoke he glared around the assembly with a face that promised endless grief to anyone who opposed him. By the end of the meeting, there was not a single dissenting voice. The First Memorian was the last to surrender.
That evening, the Primate sent an unhappy delegation to inform me. I suppose I could have refused at that point. Typically, I lacked the nerve. Anyway, we Scions were accustomed to doing what the Flamens told us, just as the Flamens were accustomed to sending us to theoretically glorious deaths at the hands of the Sherkin usurpers in Gil. The only note of hope was dropped by my mother, the Lady Dazeene, into the silence the delegation left behind.
"Strange," she said, "I'd resigned myself to the thought of losing Arko, and now you're to go instead. Of course, it's better this way."
"You mean, I'm not as much of a loss?" I asked, surprised and a little hurt. She had never given the impression that she liked my brother best.
"Don't be stupid, Tig," she said. "I mean that now I might keep both my sons—and by the way, if you happen to find your father, you can tell him I'm still waiting."
I sighed and kissed her. It was nineteen years since my father had taken ship for Gil, and she still refused to believe he was dead. As for implying that I might succeed where others and betters had failed, well—there was a fond mother for you. Of course, she was not of Oballef's line herself, but was a Satheli princess, born and bred in the Archipelago, and nobody expected her to understand these purely Gillish matters. I pushed her words to the back of my mind.
The decision made, the training Flamens descended on me, though without much conviction. I was put on a diet, given a crash course in the Heroic Code, the Ways of Combat and the Arts of
Valour (I already knew the Secrets of the Ancients, the Caveat and the two Wills, forwards and backwards, from my years as a memorian), and browbeaten into a vigorous regime of exercise and physical education. A bare half-year was allotted to my training, six grisly, gruelling months that seemed endless at the time, but still passed far too quickly. At the end of that period, I was fairly fit, leaner than I'd ever been in my life, and could just about handle a weapon without endangering myself more than my opponent. On the other hand, my cynicism about the Heroic Code had deepened immeasurably, and my sense of doom had not abated one grain. I was a very unhappy hero.
My departure for Gil was attended by the usual ceremony and celebration, but it was easy to see that the Flamens' hearts were not in it. I felt bitter about this—if they had so little confidence, why send me at all? Surely a live memorian was more useful to them than a dead hero? I was within a skull's whisker of backing out when I glanced up and saw my cousin Callefiya standing between her children on top of the hills; her fatherless and potentially motherless children, I reminded myself. Knowing the Most Revered One, she'd be on a ship to Gil within the month if I refused to go. Behind her was Arko, with his younger child in the crook of one arm and a crutch under the other. His face was desolate, but he saluted me with the blessing for a departing hero. That clinched it. I directed a final despairing look at my mother, who smiled at me confidently from her place of honour next to the Primate, and then turned to plod through the arch of flowers and waving banners to the rowboat on the beach. As I stepped in, a hand clawed at my shoulder. It was Marori, the oldest Flamen of all, the last survivor of the Gilborn exiles.
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 1