Vespera

by Anselm Audley

There was no silence in Vespera, not even at night. Already, in the pre-dawn darkness, there had been a murmur, like the sound of surf or a forest at night, a constant noise that seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere, even though none but cats and bakers were stirring. It might have been the thousands of fountains that stood at every street corner, in every square and courtyard, but there was more to it than that, as if the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people were loud enough to spill over into the waking world.

  Raphael had never heard a dawn chorus as clamorous as that in Vespera, not even in the middle of a forest – the entire city was full of birds, singing from trees and creepers in hidden courtyards, the gardens small and large that were everywhere, tucked in through passages and round the façades of houses, the trees that lined so many of the streets for protection against the midday sun. It was more cacophony than harmony, but then that suited the City.

  He reached the Exchange as dawn broke and the empty streets suddenly came alive. Shutters were thrown back, voices echoed from windows, and within a matter of minutes the murmur was gone, drowned out by a rising tide of conversation. The maze of galleries and halls began to fill up, the child-messengers grabbing food from the street-vendors nearby before disappearing into the cavernous bowels of the Exchange to begin their long day. These were invaluable jobs for children with few connections, because no-one dared bully the Exchange messengers, and many a career had been built on the experience gained there.

  Raphael walked on northwards, along the waterfront, through the commercial heart of Vespera, the Exchange and Clothmarket contrade with the City towering above him, all those houses and palaces and workshops slowly waking up. This was the section of the Processional Way where the flower market was, and he lingered to breathe in all the heavy scents, as the vendors sized him up and ignored him. He was neither shopping nor obviously smitten enough to want flowers, so they turned their attention to the clan servants and keener matrons who had arrived to take flowers for palaces and larger houses.

  He cut across the landward edge of Clothmarket, below Decaris Cliff, along twisting, narrow streets between sandy-gold walls overgrown with creepers, listening to wake-up calls and the shrieks of children from unseen courtyards. As he reached the waterfront shopkeepers emerged from their stores to take down the wooden shutters and roll out the awnings. It might still be cool at the moment, but soon enough the sun would creep over the mountains, and the heat would begin to mount.

  But for now, he could watch Vespera in shadow, see nuances and contrasts that would be lost in an hour or two, once the equatorial sun began to beat down.

  The quays and wharves were already busy, sailors sluicing down decks and carrying slop buckets across to the harbour drains. City officials at the time of the Empire’s height had written entire treatises on the sewers and aqueducts of Vespera. He liked that, it was a very Vesperan way of thinking, although Vespera had had another name then.

  For all the power and glory of the Empire, all the seas and islands it controlled, all the campaigns it had won, some of its leading citizens thought the capital’s water-supply had been the Empire’s greatest achievement. It had ended the plagues of the early Republic, allowed for expansion, brought clean running water to every single building in Vespera, and been spotlessly maintained for seven hundred years. That was impressive.

  From side canals, running down between the warehouses, he heard the sounds of hammering and wandered down to peer briefly into a small factory where seven or eight men were busy at their machines – what were they making? It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the dim light, see the sheets of copper piled up to one side and water-pipes of various sizes stacked on the other.

  The noise was deafening, as was the impact of so many people as they headed to work, to the shops, to the harbours, to the dozens of small bars and cafés for breakfast, to the market stalls for baskets of fruit just in from the market gardens of Ilanmar.

  All around them were the noises of ships and cargoes in the greatest port of the world. Only the sailing ships were visible, and even with ever larger mantas and flamewood-powered surface ships taking over more and more routes, nearly all the trade between the islands of Thetia and into the surrounding seas was still carried by the ubiquitous clan xebecs.

  There were thousands of sailing ships here, carrying more cargoes than anyone had bothered to count — despite the fact that at least half the commodities traded in Vespera never came anywhere near the City. Coffee and food and hardwood from the cities of the Sea of Clouds, spices and herbs from Imbria and the Sea of Rains, pottery and equipment from the workshops on Gomarzo and Immuros around the Sea of Whales, stone from the quarry islands in the western Sea of Stars, which sometimes threw up dust palls to stain the Vesperan sunsets blood-red.

  He was here. At the edge of the Porta, the enormous, sprawling name for the whole northern half of Vespera where ships still docked. This was where the entire City seemed to have been lifted and held up while a layer of warehouses – horrea, they were called here – was slotted underneath, then gently placed on top, garlanded with a network of walkways and bridges over the now-sunken streets. Sea level was for cargo, a more or less continuous quay round the whole Avern; the levels above, supported by endless arched horrea, were for people. Canals had been cut all the way along, leading as far inland as they could, sometimes doubling round to meet each other, and the streets simply crossed them on bridges at a higher level, carrying pipes and power conduits inside their stonework. Sometimes they had even been vaulted over, and carried above them a normal-looking street. It was a marvel of engineering, and all the more so for having grown organically over the centuries.

  Raphael threaded his way along the waterfront to the first address his uncle had given him, and found a small apothecary’s shop tucked away on a corner, overlooking one of the canals. On the water below, boatmen were manhandling a barge into a space that seemed too small for it, ready to unload sacks and sacks of coffee beans into one of the horrea. Bearing Estarrin colours, Raphael noticed absently. He still had some checking to do on them.

  A bell rang as Raphael entered the shop, perpetually shielded from the sunlight by other buildings and surprisingly cool. The walls were covered with shelves, on which stood rows and rows of neatly labelled solutions in bottles of varying colours.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the thin, unsmiling apothecary said, and then caught sight of Raphael’s face. ‘Ah. You’ll be wanting the usual.’

  She disappeared through a door at the back, emerged again a moment later bearing three glass vials shaped like hip-flasks, and a device Raphael had seen singers use, a water-spray to moisten their throat before they sang.

  ‘He said he’d be needing another of these,’ the apothecary said brusquely. ‘Usual instructions. It’ll be on his account.’

  The bell rang again, but Raphael didn’t look round until he saw a big man in the characteristic bright, flamboyant clothes of Clan Xelestis, carrying a heavy bag on one shoulder and a pet mongoose on the other. He had the air of a captain rather than a common sailor – a prospector, Raphael guessed.

  ‘I come bearing the wonders of the West!’ he proclaimed, dropping the bag on the counter with a heavy thump. The mongoose sat up, its eyes scanning the shelves.

  ‘He gets on those shelves, Baido,’ the apothecary said, ‘and you’ll have to give me the wonders of the West just to pay for the damage.’

  The Xelestis captain looked affronted, and reached up to ruffle the mongoose’s head. ‘He wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ It bit him, though without drawing blood. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Perverse creature,’ the apothecary said, wrapping Raphael’s glass vials up in muslin and tying them with twine. ‘Now what have you got for me? Or do I only merit the dregs this time?’

  ‘Some very interesting things,’ Baido said, as Raphael turned, and realised the Xelestis captain was waiting for him to leave. ‘For a start, an entirely new species of Xendrethus I found in the mo
untains. I’ve already written to the Botanical Society about it . . .’

  Raphael nodded his thanks to the apothecary, tucked Silvanos’s medicines into his bag, and left, the closing door cutting off the conversation. If the Xelestis captain wanted to be circumspect, it suggested the apothecary was one of those who dealt in unapproved substances. Perhaps even a purveyor of poisons for Silvanos? In any case, Silvanos was clearly a long-standing client here, and a valuable one.

  The second address wasn’t far away, two streets along, but on the waterfront this time, facing north across to the other shore of the Avern and the building Raphael had come to investigate. Its street-front was occupied by a ship’s chandler, one of literally dozens in this part of Vespera. Raphael was the only customer; he looked round, saw a small, busy man in a threadbare tunic high up a ladder, tucking something into a recess.

  ‘There you are,’ Plautius said, coming down the ladder with a sigh of with relief. ‘I hate doing this, and we have a lot of real work to do.’

  Leonata rubbed her eyes and took another sip of coffee, careful not to spill it on her paperwork. The ancient surface of the desk was dark with a mixture of spills and varnish from generations of Estarrin leaders, though she’d had it moved up to this small, plain study on the first floor from the rather grander room downstairs, because here at least she had peace and quiet to work for a few hours. And no books to distract her.

  She ought not to have allowed herself the luxury of staying out too late, not when she had a mountain of Clan and Council work to attend to after five days’ absence, and a Council meeting at noon, to handle more of the interminable details of Valentine’s state visit. Such a visit would normally have been arranged weeks or months in advance, but he’d sprung this one on them with a mere two days’ notice.

  Now he would be out courting the crowds again. No, that was this evening. She pulled out the piece of paper with the current schedule on it in some bureaucrat’s handwriting. Handwriting! They hadn’t even had time to get it printed! This morning he was meeting citizens of the New Empire resident in the City, which could cover a multitude of sins. And in four nights from now there would be a grand masked ball at Ulithi Palace, which meant a hundred other things would need to be rescheduled or cancelled. At least she wasn’t the one in charge of organising that.

  And when she’d needed six good hours of sleep, all she’d had were grim, ominous dreams of being hounded by a beast she could never quite see, but which had great dark wings like a jay’s and an oddly feline face. She’d been having a lot of these dreams recently.

  Still, there was nothing she could do about that now, and she had the more pressing matter of the botanical expedition to the edge of the Desolation to consider. Two of her captains were begging her for the opportunity to go before the Xelestis got there, but heading so far south would mean a considerably bigger investment than a normal voyage, and with far less certainty of reward. Most of the islands down there were barren rock, with little chance of supporting new plants or medicines.

  Yet, as far as she knew, they’d never been surveyed . . .

  A double knock on the door, very apologetic. Flavia knew well how irritable she could be if interrupted now, but she had left instructions.

  ‘Come in.’

  Flavia opened the door, letting in all the sound and bustle of Estarrin Palace at the end of the corridor. Leonata had this tower restored early in her tenure precisely because it was a little removed from the din.

  ‘The Prince of Imbria to see you,’ Flavia said.

  ‘I’ll see him in the reception room.’

  ‘He was most adamant he wouldn’t trouble you for long, he said he didn’t want to interrupt your morning’s work.’

  ‘Send him in here, then,’ she said, and laid her pen down, walking over to the set of wooden chairs she kept for conducting meetings in this room. They were beautifully carved, but deeply uncomfortable, entirely deliberately.

  ‘Leonata,’ Petroz said, a moment later, as Flavia closed the door discreetly behind him. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you.’

  No, Petroz wasn’t a disturbance, he was a very old friend, and a man she always had time for. And now that his wife was dead, after a happy but childless marriage, there was no-one in Imbria he could trust absolutely.

  ‘You can leave out the apologies,’ she said, gesturing for him to sit down. Of course, he refused to sit until she had, but it was part of his charm. ‘Something’s worrying you.’

  He was wearing a fresh set of formal robes, in Salassa white and dark green, and he gathered them up carefully as he sat down. He looked every inch the elder statesman, but not, at the moment, a happy one. She felt a brief stab of alarm, wondering if he were ill, but it faded when he drew a small, stained oilcloth pouch from his pocket, and tipped something out of it on to his palm, before holding it out to her across the small wooden table.

  ‘This was delivered in a blank letter to me two days ago. It looked like an official invitation, but we couldn’t trace the messenger.’

  A gold wedding ring, of a very specific kind. The kind that signified an alliance between two clans as well as a wedding. Only a few older, traditionalist clans still used them, those with hereditary Thalassarchates, and she couldn’t remember any such marriages since the Anarchy.

  ‘May I?’

  He nodded, and she took the ring, held it up to the light streaming through the tall, narrow window. The workmanship was exquisite, but . . . Her breath caught in her throat as she recognised the device etched on the dark purple gemstone.

  ‘It is my sister’s wedding ring.’

  For a moment Leonata was lost, and then she remembered, but Petroz had caught her momentary lapse.

  ‘Everyone does that,’ he said. ‘Damnatio memoriae.’

  An old legal phrase, a feature of Thetian history from the earliest times. When a person or a clan fell because they were guilty of treason, every reference to their name and their existence was erased from the records and the buildings of the City. To deny that they had ever lived, that their crime had ever taken place.

  Leonata hated it. It was a pretence, a sham that the past hadn’t happened. It achieved nothing, and in her palace it was forbidden.

  Since her palace had belonged to the closest ally of the man whose crest this had been, it was a more than academic point.

  ‘Claudia,’ Leonata said. ‘Your elder sister, not your younger.’

  She set the ring down on the table between them. A ring commissioned by Ruthelo Azrian for his bride, Claudia Salassa, almost fifty years ago. For the alliance of two great clans in the heady days after Palatine II had succeeded Aetius the Tyrant, when the shadows seemed to have lifted.

  ‘Where does it come from, Leonata?’ Petroz said. ‘Who sent it? What does it mean, after all these years?’

  The Prince of Imbria was shaken, but there was something else in his expression, fear or something close to guilt, and Leonata felt her skin prickle. Claudia and her children had been murdered in the Anarchy, after Ruthelo’s defeat and death, and while it technically wasn’t a crime, no-one had ever admitted responsibility. Did Petroz want to know what it meant, or did he want forgiveness for a crime committed all those years ago? Had he been served a notice of revenge?

  She felt on very thin ice suddenly, but she couldn’t let Petroz see it. She didn’t want to believe he’d murdered his own sister and her children, or that he was even capable of such a thing. But a great many people had done things in the Anarchy they’d never have contemplated in more civilised times. If he only wanted to know, and she shut him out, she’d have done him a grave wrong, but if it were something darker than that, her life and those of her clanspeople would be in danger.

  ‘You’re sure this is Claudia’s ring, and not a forgery?’

  ‘If it’s a forgery, they have the original to copy from. But it would be a difficult and expensive forgery,’ he said, seeming to regain some of his composure, the urbane mask he always wore.

&nb
sp; She needed to find out what had happened, not be poisoned by suspicion. But could she forgive, if her fears turned out to be right?

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘If you should come across any trace of her, or her children, word of what might have happened to them, let me know,’ he said. ‘This timing isn’t a coincidence.’

  With that she could agree. But did he want to know what had happened? Or who knew, to silence them?

  ‘No, Plautius said, ‘you’re not going.’

  ‘And your men have enough experience of the north to recognise something odd when they see it?’ Raphael asked, frustration mounting at Plautius’s obstinacy. The Jharissa Palace and its horrea complex glittered across the water, torches on the outer walls casting long fingers over the dark Avern. Somewhere on the near shore, a group of sailors were singing their way through every ballad known to man, sometimes two or three times, and sometimes in truly appalling Tanethan.

  ‘I don’t care how much you’ll recognise,’ Plautius said, waving a finger under Raphael’s nose. ‘The men I’m sending will look to all intents and purposes like thieves or clan infiltrators. If they’re caught, we can deny any knowledge of them. Iolani will know this isn’t the case, everyone else will know this isn’t the case, but she can’t do anything. If you go, and you’re caught, we’re in trouble. Big trouble. Oh, and not to mention that after about ten minutes of arduous physical activity you start wheezing like a diseased water buffalo.’

  ‘Have you ever considered teaching as a career?’ Raphael inquired. Plautius was right, though he hated to admit it – on both counts. He couldn’t go with the men breaking into Iolani’s warehouses, just across the Avern from the upper room where they were gathered. In an apparently innocuous house without even a courtyard, which turned out to be Silvanos’s centre of operations for spying on Jharissa.

  But it had been a long day, reading reports, familiarising himself with everything Silvanos’s network knew – or was prepared to reveal – about Jharissa and the situation in Vespera, and planning the raid on their warehouses.