"I mean, the others have all been so—so—"
"Impressive?" the old man suggested. The man in green nodded. They reviewed me again, point by point, with cool, critical eyes.
I scuffed my toes in the pile of the carpet. The children were giggling by now, and I could feel a blush reddening my neck. Arko would never have blushed, nor would he have let himself be baited by this low-grade two-clown comedy team. Arko would be off fighting the Sherank by now. That made me feel worse.
"Have you finished?" I enquired.
Neither of the men answered, but the children's enjoyment became louder. The man in green turned to frown at them, and they subsided. "Well, then," he said, "never mind what he looks like. Did he pass the test?"
The old man shrugged. "He made no move to kill me, but I believe he thought about it. Didn't you, young man?"
"Well—" I said uncomfortably, thrown off my guard. The old man, despite his appalling mutilations, was now exuding an authority that made me feel like a guilty child. No adult reply sprang to my lips, so I shut them.
"Not very talkative," said the man in green.
"Quiet, Namis. You, answer my question," said the old man more sharply. "Did you think about killing me?"
I realized with bewilderment that both men were hanging on my reply. Even the children had developed an air of breathless expectation. Something strange was happening here, something serious, and I did not understand it, but it was clear that my answer was important.
"Well, yes, actually, I did sort of think about it at one point, but, you see—" I began, with as casual an air as I could manage at such short notice. True, I could see no weapons, but there was nothing to stop them from bludgeoning me to death with their harps.
To my amazement, they were delighted. The children cheered; one of them struck a few chords on his harp in a painful rendition of the Paean of Praise. The old man nodded as if satisfied, and the man in green clapped me on the shoulder.
"Thank the Lady for that, anyway!" he cried. "At last! You have no idea how frustrating it's been!"
I stared at him, smiled weakly, and swallowed. It seemed they were all quite mad. "I'm glad you're pleased," I said. "Mm—what if I'd actually killed him?"
"You would not have been given the chance." The voice, low and menacing, was behind me.
So it was a trap. I leapt around, startled, tugging at the hilt of my swordstick. The damned thing stuck halfway out of the scabbard, so I lunged for the knife in my boot, but the serrated tip snagged in the seam of my britches. I pulled at it desperately; the fabric ripped, and the knife flipped out of my fingers to land point-down in the floor, an inch or so from the old man's only foot.
"You could hurt someone, you know," said the newcomer flatly, retrieving the knife and holding it out to me. The voice was female and faintly husky, but its youthfulness was in curious contrast to the apparition that produced it.
She was a collection of rags knotted loosely on a broomstick, then dipped into a puddle of mud. Her face was thin and deeply wrinkled, half-hidden under a hood so old that the cloth seemed translucent under the dirt. On the other hand, her back was straight, and the filthy paw with my knife in it was steady inside a cocoon of disintegrating fabric.
"Who are you?" I asked. I took the knife from her, gingerly, and tried to work it back into its sheath.
"Never mind who I am," she answered. "It's more important who you are. A Scion of Oballef, unless Bekri missed his guess. Right?"
I gaped at her for a moment, then closed my mouth. So much for the Flamens' assurance that I would fit right in. Since the masquerade seemed to be over, I decided to impress them, or try to.
"I am Lord Tigrallef of Gil, of the line of Oballef, son of Cirallef, grandson of Arrislef, second in line to the throne of Gil, and sent by the Flamens-in-Exile to recover the Lady in Gil and restore the kingdom of my forefathers," I said all in one breath, making a last attempt to sheath my dagger. The pocketing object still refused to fit. I shifted it to my other hand, trying to give the impression that it was there for a purpose.
"Cirallef's son, are you? I remember Cirallef passing through," said the old man. "He was very good with knife and sword; not that it helped him in the end."
I stared at him, my embarrassment forgotten. My father had been one of those who simply vanished, and had been presumed dead by the Flamens. I was four when he left, and now I was twenty-three. Arko and I hardly remembered him.
"What happened to him?" I breathed. "Is he dead?"
"Most likely—may his bones bring forth flowers," replied the old man.
"How did he die?"
"I'll tell you all we know, but later, my lord Scion, if you please. For now, before we go on, we must know one thing: will you give us your trust, and accept our help?"
They were all hanging on my words again, even the children. I bounced the knife thoughtfully in my palm. Trust no one, Marori said. Trust us, the old man said. "You'll cut yourself," the female said. Strangely enough, it was that which decided me.
"I suppose so—" I said hesitantly. This time nobody cheered, but the two men and several of the children raised their hands in the Gillish gesture of thanksgiving. The female only nodded under her hood.
"Good. We'll start by feeding you and putting you to bed," she said firmly. The old man began to protest, but she took his hand and pressed it to her forehead—the old gesture of a subordinate seeking to overrule a superior. "Forgive me, Revered Bekri, but our Scion appears to have been ill. There will be time to talk in the morning. Come with me, Lord of Gil." She took my arm in a grip of granite. With one startled and probably pleading glance at the old man, I suffered myself to be led away.
She marched me to a curtained doorway beyond the circle of children and pushed me into a cold little chamber containing nothing but a pallet, a pisspot and a candle. A few minutes later, a jug of water and a reasonable supper were pushed under the curtain. Nobody disturbed me while I ate; I pictured the female creature on guard outside the door, armed quite adequately with nothing more than her personality. The excited buzz of voices in the outer room died away. I laid my belly down on the pallet and was asleep within seconds.
And thus, bemused and uncertain, but at least fed and within four walls, I ended my first day in Gil.
* * *
5
THE CHAMBER WHERE I awoke from confused dreams the next morning was clean, nearly bare, and achingly cold. I tried to wiggle my frozen toes inside the tight-fitting boots, which I had been too tired to take off, but the effort defeated me. Shivering miserably under my cloak and the one blanket, I mused over the day's prospects. Not one of them attracted me.
First, of course, there was danger. That went without saying, given that I was squarely in the middle of a Sherkin stronghold, a snakehole of vice, crime, violence and general desperation, according to the few reports that reached us in Exile.
Second, I was less certain of my new friends than I had been the night before. They were all too familiar as types, despite our short acquaintance. They, especially that harridan in the grey cloak, showed every sign of being zealous, enthusiastic, committed. I could well imagine them urging me into unappetizing situations, on the assumption that I was the heroic sort and would thrive on danger and difficulty.
My training Flamens, back in the Archipelago, belonged to that type. They liked doing horrible things like swarming up slimy ropes, and climbing sheer rock faces, and bearding wild creatures in their lairs, just for the fun of it. Moreover, they expected me to like doing such things too, and were always puzzled and a little hurt when I didn't. They never failed to point out how well Arko had done all those things, before his unfortunate accident.
Just as I was deciding to stay in bed all day (although I was frozen and hungry, at least I felt fairly safe), the curtain twitched aside and a young woman with long dark hair entered. She seemed somehow familiar. She was carrying a tray in one hand and a pottery bucket of gently steaming water in the other.
> "Breakfast, Lord of Gil," she said briskly. "Up you get."
I groaned and rolled over. With one efficient movement she snapped the coverings off my body and flung them to the far end of the room. I groaned again and sat up. It seemed less trouble than defying her, and also safer.
"Here's water for washing, and some breakfast. When you're ready, Bekri Flamen and the council will see you." She slopped the bucket down beside the pallet and deposited the tray on my lap. It held a bowl of nasty-looking cold porridge and a beaker of hot liquid that my nose informed me was even nastier.
"Thank you very much," I said. I tried to sound like a person to whom physical discomfort was nothing. The girl watched me as I took a sip from the beaker and spluttered at the heat.
"It helps if you blow on it first," she said. Something in her tone made me look up in recognition. Of course! She was the female creature from the night before, the one with the wrinkles and the talent for bruising my self-esteem; only now her face was smooth and her gauntness had been transmuted into slenderness, pleasantly relieved by well-placed curves. It was such a complete transformation that I immediately doubted my eyes.
"Um—have we met? Or perhaps not—" I began.
"Of course we met. Last night. Bekri and I brought you here from the inn. At least, Bekri brought you and I followed. I'm Bekri's great-granddaughter, Calla." She smiled with more than a touch of smugness. "You didn't recognize me, did you? I do my own street-kit. The older and uglier you can look, the safer you are."
I nodded, thinking of the Sherkin reputation for taking or destroying anything of beauty, human or otherwise, virtually on sight. This might explain a lot of things, for example the fact that everyone and everything I'd seen since landing in Gil had been ugly to the point of ostentation. Perhaps there was more purpose in the squalor than I had imagined. The food, however, was fully as awful as it smelled, as my first spoonful proved.
Calla's smile stretched to a grin. "Eat up," she said, "it's good for you." She was past the curtain before I could argue the point.
I choked down as much of the glutinous muck as I could, alternating it with mouthfuls of the ghastly liquid. Washing seemed pointless. I pulled off my boots and used the hot water to defrost my feet. Last of all, I unpicked several stitches from the sheath in my boot and practised getting the dagger in and out of it a few times. At last voices in the outer room warned me that my new associates, whoever they might be, were waiting. I poked my head through the curtained doorway.
In the wan morning light, the room looked drabber and more threadbare than it had the night before. There were large eroded patches in the carpets, and it was clear the tapestries had been designed for other chambers, some being too long and others too short, and none forming a complete set. All had been mutilated to some degree, and loving attempts at repair had failed to disguise the damage. The effect was somehow touching.
Five men in green robes stood in a rough semicircle by the screen, watching me appraisingly. The music teacher of the night before was not there, but the old man, Bekri, was reclining on a low couch in the centre of the group, swathed in a rough blanket. Underneath the blanket I could see the neck of a green robe, and the tarnished silver chain of the Lady. His scars were as horrific as I remembered, but a green eye-patch hid the empty socket and he was not drooling. He regarded me steadily for a moment, then bowed deeply and sketched a familiar symbol in the air.
Suddenly he was a Flamen to his fingertips, making respectful obeisance to a Scion of Oballef, and he made me feel like the Flamens always made me feel: that is to say, unworthy and inadequate. I returned his gestural greeting correctly on the second try. He sighed.
"Let's hope he has hidden talents," whispered one of the other men, grinning, or more likely sneering. He was tall, young and wretchedly handsome, and carried his worn green robe with the air of a better man than I. Bekri looked irritated. "That's enough, Hawelli," he said sharply. "Remember the respect due to a Scion of Oballef." Hawelli inclined his head gracefully, but managed to pack more sheer insolence into that than into the original snigger. Bekri sighed again and turned back to me.
"My lord Tigrallef," he said, "what is the situation among the Exiles in the Archipelago? Why did they send you? Are there no other Scions of the royal house to take up the search for the Lady?"
Hesitantly, I explained about Arko and his accident, and my consequent promotion to royal hero. The others, even Hawelli, looked profoundly depressed, but Bekri only nodded.
"So you are the last hope of Gil," he said thoughtfully.
"Oh, no," I said. "There are the children."
Bekri flung off his blanket and sat up, suddenly furious. "Yes," he repeated, "there are the children. And in ten years from now, another generation of princes and princesses will be thrown away, like their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and like the generations to follow them—unless the Sherank find the Lady first. Useless, pointless waste! No, my lord Tigrallef, I repeat: you are the last hope of Gil."
I realized my mouth was hanging open, and closed it. However ambiguous, this was the first time anyone but my mother had expressed even the faintest hope that I might be worthy of this mission, and my mother could be regarded as biased. Bekri threw himself off the couch and stumped to the window, muttering under his breath. "Come here, my lord," he said. "Come and see your birthright."
I went to the window and stood beside him. We were high in one of the aged tenements, looking over the rooftops of lower buildings stretching raggedly towards the Gilgard. Here and there I could see sad traces of noble architecture, vandalized and filthy, like flowers in a dungheap. Wooden and wattle shacks crowded the rooftops and spilled into the streets. Graceful raised plazas that had once held hanging gardens were squalidly packed with lean-tos and rubbish tips, browsed by scrawny beasts and scrawnier children. A thin river of ordure flowed sluggishly down the street from the market square at the corner, where a strident crowd surged about a litter of shoddy stalls. It was dirty beyond belief, tawdry beyond imagination. Even at this height, the stink was sickening. Only the topmost spires of Gilgard Castle, catching the mid-morning sun, remained beautiful—and only if you managed to block out the foreground. I turned blankly from the window.
"You don't like what you see," Bekri said softly. "Look there—that way, up the street."
I looked. A small group of Sherank were riding towards the market, prancing along on brightly caparisoned horses. A grey figure slumped in a ruined entry across the street evidently caught their eyes, for one of them leaned across his saddlebow to poke at it with the point of his sword. The figure pulled itself slowly erect and started to limp inside, but the Sherkin skilfully snagged his sword in the grey cloak and pulled the Gilman out into the street.
"One of their little amusements," said Bekri. "I don't imagine they'll kill him, but they'll surely give him a bad time before the fun palls."
We watched without speaking as the riders chivvied the man from one side of the street to the other, ripping at his cloak—and within it—with their swords. Their laughter reached our window clearly. The Gilman danced in silence from one swordpoint to the next, collapsing at last in a little ball, covering his head with his arms. I saw blood from a score of gashes run down to mingle with the foul stream on the cobblestones. His tormentors whooped with glee and rode their mounts over him and down the street, the game finished. Only when they were gone did two furtive figures, one a woman, creep out of the entry and half-carry the injured man inside. The shreds of his cloak still fluttered in the road.
I felt my stomach stir at the incident's casual brutality. It may have been mild compared with the legendary atrocities of the Sherank, but I'd led a curiously sheltered life—it was the first time I'd seen such a thing with my own eyes.
When I looked at Bekri, I found that he was watching my face intently. "A very small sample of life in latter-day Gil," he said drily. "Tell me—how does that make you feel?"
I assayed the lump in my
throat. "Angry," I said. I looked at the floor. "Useless." And, more softly, "Frightened."
"Very good," said Bekri. "My hopes grow by the minute. Let us rejoin the others."
The circle had grown. I counted another dozen men beyond the five in green, a like number of women, and at least twenty children. About half were in what I was coming to recognize as street camouflage: dirty, ragged, stringy-haired and powerfully smelly. The woman Calla was among them, transformed again into an unsavoury crone. The others were clean, and decently dressed in old but meticulously mended robes and britches. A few even wore boots. Bekri motioned me to sit beside him on the couch, but the others spread themselves about on the carpets.
"This, my lord Tigrallef," said Bekri, with a sweep of his maimed arm, "is the centre of the Web. These are the servants of the Lady in Gil. We are eager to help you if you will allow us, and I would remind you that you agreed to this last night."
I made a gesture of acknowledgement, bewildered. What, in the Lady's name, was the Web? Why didn't the Exiles know about this? Surely my predecessors had also come into contact with this weird band—and what had happened to my predecessors? My suspicions clawed their way back above ground, uglier than ever.
"You're right to be suspicious," said Bekri. I wondered if the old man could read minds. "Also, it's a very good sign. Listen to what I have to say before you make your final decision; and then, if you decide to have nothing to do with us after all, you may leave here with our good will—as others have done before you."
I signed agreement with a slightly shaky hand. The motley audience shifted into comfortable positions, signifying that the story about to begin was a long and familiar one. Pulling his blanket back about his shoulders, the old man cleared his throat.
* * *
6
"AT THE TIME of the invasion, I was fifteen years old. I was a novice of the Flamens—fifth rank, very junior, but already entitled to wear the Lady at my throat." He touched the tiny pendant reverently. "I was with the Primate when news of Kishr's armies reached the Gilgard, in the middle of our lesson in divination. Ironic, when you think about it.
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 4