Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘No, they’re not,’ Plautius said. ‘That lot belong to the brotherhoods.’

  The brotherhoods had been nothing more than social clubs until recently, it appeared, most bound by oaths and codes of morals, made up of men from across Thetia and the City who were generally sympathetic to the Empire and a more ordered vision of Thetia. They saw the City as decadent, needing the Empire to bring new life into it.

  ‘It was only politics and ideas at first, but then times changed,’ Plautius said, and refused to be drawn any more. ‘We should get this woman to the Sanctuary.’

  It was very late by the time Raphael returned home, and the streets were deserted as he walked back past darkened rooms and hidden courtyards, the sound of cicadas and fountains a soft background noise.

  Silvanos’s house looked so peaceful in white moonlight, shafts of it reaching through the windows as if to drive away the shadows which still lurked here. The sound of the fountain was soothing, the shape and inconsistencies of its stones so familiar – the chip under the rim on the west side, the slight dent in the side that had made it possible for a sleepless child to sit back against the fountain rim, to pass hours out here in the moonlight.

  He went back to his own rooms briefly, to sketch the face of the Exile mage while he still remembered it. Then he retraced his steps and crossed the inner courtyard to the suite of the man who, for reasons of his own, had been unavailable tonight. Spinning webs so secretive that he couldn’t be reached even by his own nephew.

  There was no sound from inside, not even a light. Raphael slipped the key out of his pocket and opened the outer door, stepping into the pitch-black living room with its shuttered windows before locking the door behind him again. He tried not to bump into any of the furniture as he walked over and tapped a precise sequence on the bedroom door. There was a long silence, then he saw a flickering light on the other side, and braced himself, for more reasons than one.

  It was forever before the door swung open, but even then he waited, smelling the blood in the air, until he heard a croaked ‘Come in’.

  Like Silvanos’s clothes, the room was black – even the sheets on the huge bed, sheets made by his special order. The maids and the laundry workers would wonder, lay it down to some sinister perversion, point to the blood on them as evidence for Silvanos’ unhealthy interest in pain and torture.

  ‘What happened?’ Silvanos was still wearing his robes, lying propped up on top of the sheets rather than inside them. Hunched, his already sinister face looking like a death-mask.

  Just looking at him was enough to make Raphael’s throat try to compress, feel the memory of the sharp pain in his own lungs. It was the same illness, though more severe in Silvanos.

  ‘We found Catiline’s mage, near Jharissa Palace. She killed several people.’

  ‘The raid?’

  ‘No trace of Matteozzo. The vigiles hadn’t finished with the corpses when I left, Plautius will report in the morning.’

  ‘Where did she come from?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to find out,’ Raphael said, and described the mob and his bargain with Iolani. Though not what he’d said to her, at the end, or why he’d made the bargain.

  ‘You’re a fool.’ Silvanos didn’t say anything more for several minutes, as he coughed into a black cloth which came away damp. ‘What happened before that?’

  So Raphael told him, from the messenger’s arrival to his return here, coldly and concisely and accurate because Silvanos wouldn’t put up with anything else.

  When Raphael had finished, Silvanos didn’t speak again as another cough spasm racked him, longer than the last. But then the near-black eyes settled on his nephew, glittering in the light of the single white lamp.

  ‘I expected better from you,’ he said, in a rasping voice. ‘You had a perfect chance to prove Iolani’s guilt, and you threw it away.’

  ‘I had a perfect chance to stop a pogrom, and I took it.’

  ‘All you had to do to stop that was play for time, wait for the vigiles to arrive. Instead, you’ve lost us a chance to exploit Jharissa’s mistake.’

  ‘We don’t know they were responsible.’

  ‘“We don’t know they were responsible,”’ Silvanos said, mocking. ‘Of course we do. They were keeping her prisoner in the horrea. Matteozzo and his people found her when they broke in, released her, but didn’t realise she was mad. Either she killed them, or she got loose and wandered out, and they got away before Iolani’s guards could take them. Perfect. Except you’re such a fool you let the chance slip through our fingers.’

  ‘That’s all I’m expected to do? Find some proof we can pin on Iolani and take it to the Emperor?’

  ‘What do you think we’re here for?’

  ‘And when it turns out the whole affair is a great deal more complicated than that, and it comes back to haunt us? What then?’

  ‘Have you fallen in love with the woman, or something?’ Silvanos asked acidly, before another bout of coughing took him. His fingers scrabbled for the spray, and Raphael saw him squeeze it on to his throat until it ran dry.

  ‘Why does the Empire hate the Jharissa?’ Raphael asked, when his uncle was sitting upright again. ‘The truth, please, not whatever you give for public consumption.’

  ‘Ah, the truth. You seem to have quite an attachment to it all of a sudden.’

  ‘Why does the Empire hate the Jharissa?’ Raphael repeated.

  ‘Because they’re not a clan at all. They’re a front for a new power in the north, a revival of the Tuonetar. They’re dark, and implacable, and they’ve based themselves on what the Tuonetar became towards the end of the Great War, a tyranny which enslaves minds, thoughts, dreams. And because the best way to become popular in the far north, ever since Aetius the Great’s legions and the storms obliterated everything except the moss and lichen, is to swear vengeance on Thetians, that’s what they’re doing.

  ‘Slowly but surely, they’re rebuilding the north and forging themselves a new empire up there. The ice trade allows them to buy weapons and resources down here and ship them back up there. Thetia is weak, divided, while they have oaths of loyalty the Domain would envy, and a great purpose that they all believe in. The princes all know about it, but they don’t believe it’s a threat. Vespera doesn’t care, as long as Jharissa dues flow into its coffers. Only the Empire bothers to do anything, and we’re hamstrung by the need to guard against everyone else.’

  ‘I saw nothing of this when I was there,’ Raphael said. ‘No hatred, no new power.’

  Odeinath and the crew of Navigator had been welcomed wherever they went, bringing trade goods and knowledge and Odeinath’s boundless curiosity. They’d even sailed to Ralentis, the islands in the far north-eastern Archipelago which sheltered the last flickering embers of Tuonetar civilization. Where the Tuonetar Senate still sat, after more than a thousand years, a shadow of its former self, and the Ralentians tried desperately to defend against the encroaching ice and keep their ancient machinery going.

  ‘It was still in its infancy, out in the far north-west. And, in any case, Odeinath is one of a kind,’ said Silvanos, which was high praise for him. ‘I know you went to Ralentis – they haven’t joined this new power, they value their pitiful independence too much.’

  ‘What do they call themselves?’ Raphael asked. The blood has already been spilt. Oceans and oceans of it, in the dark where no-one would know.

  ‘The Lost Souls,’ said Silvanos. He surveyed Raphael’s face. ‘You don’t want to believe me.’

  ‘It fits everything I know,’ Raphael said.

  ‘You can confirm everything I told you with people who have no reason to hide the truth. Ask Vesperan merchants who’ve tried to trade or prospect in the north, Xelestis captains. Petroz Salassa.’

  ‘Then why are so many of the Ice Runners Thetian?’ Raphael asked.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Silvanos said, very coldly and precisely. ‘That isn’t for you to know.’

  ‘Then I’ll find o
ut,’ Raphael said.

  ‘You will not. You are a servant of the Emperor, and thus my subordinate, and I forbid you.’

  ‘If you wanted me to think that way,’ Raphael said, standing up again, ‘you should never have sent me to Sarthes. I’m no-one’s servant.’

  Silvanos’s fists clenched, and he broke into another spasm of coughing. ‘Your arrogance will be the death of you, Raphael.’

  ‘What was it the poet wrote? Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?’

  Silvanos stiffened. ‘Never, never, never say those words in this house, or this City! Or to any living soul!’ Raphael had never seen him so furious, not even as a child, when his cold rage would fill the house for days at a time.

  ‘Get out,’ Silvanos almost spat. ‘And confess your failure to Aesonia, if you want to have anything further to do with this investigation.’

  ‘If I see fit.’

  INTERLUDE I

  LAMORRA

  NINE MONTHS AGO

  ‘Four points to starboard!’ Odeinath called, lowering the sextant and blinking to clear the sun from his eyes. The incidental blindness was one of many problems with using an instrument this old, but he still brought it out to take the sightings every so often, to keep in practice.

  ‘Aye!’ The wheel creaked as the steersman brought it round a tiny bit, the only man on the deck of the Navigator with something sensible to hang onto as the ship dipped and rose through the swell. The seas were calm by the standards of northern spring; he’d been expecting more of the howling gales that had riven them northwards past two interesting island groups. Perhaps they’d be lucky this third time.

  He leant against the rigging as the deck tilted downwards again, wiping the sextant with a cloth to remove the specks of spray and laying it in its case before he headed along the deck, down the companionway into the stern cabin where the chart was already spread out over the blanked aether table.

  ‘How are we?’ Cassini asked.

  Odeinath blinked – he hadn’t noticed the slender botanist wedged into the seat below the aft windows, two books and a notepad balanced on his lap as he catalogued the specimens from their last landfall.

  ‘Should sight Lamorra any time now,’ Odeinath said, walking over to fit the sextant back into its cupboard. ‘Their capital is on the south-east side of the first island, so with luck we’ll be there well before nightfall. Providing whoever originally mapped it could navigate worth a damn.’

  ‘Capital?’ Cassini raised an eyebrow. ‘Lamorra has a capital?’

  ‘It’s a princedom, I think,’ Odeinath said, leaning over the chart. Of course, this was the northern ocean, and some of the early explorers must have been sailing with their eyes closed and navigating using the painted stars on their cabin ceiling. He’d discovered that on his first visit to the far north ten years ago, when only the helmsman’s instincts had prevented Navigator from running onto a shoal that would have ripped even her polyp-armoured bottom out. A shoal which, according to the charts, was a hundred and fifty miles to the west.

  ‘A princedom of three people and eighty thousand goats?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Odeinath said, glaring at Cassini. ‘Eighty thousand goats would have eaten the island by now. No, it’s a real princedom, apparently the capital has over ten thousand people.’

  Cassini flinched. ‘That many? Protocol, royal palace?’

  ‘You may be coming too,’ Odeinath said, wondering if that would be wise, given Cassini’s particular failing, but then maybe Lamorra would be different. ‘Windsoar said it was fairly civilized for the north, they have stone houses and paved streets.’

  ‘Very grand,’ Cassini said, catching a dried seaweed specimen before it could fall onto the floor. ‘With a capital like that, I’m surprised it’s not an empire. What’s the prince’s name?’

  ‘Besach, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Emperor Besach, Prince of Lamorra, Lord of the World’s Four Corners, Overlord of the Mackerel, Ruler of Ten Thousand Goats . . .’

  ‘And ruins,’ Odeinath said. Windsoar’s captain had only mentioned those in passing, when he’d discovered during the dinner that Odeinath had been an architect. A good captain, but more of a buccaneer than an explorer. Windsoar had a certain reputation.

  ‘You’ll be happy then,’ said Cassini. ‘Tuonetar ruins? Wait, no-one else this far north has even got round to inventing fire on their own, so the ruins must be Tuonetar.’

  ‘Keep your mouth shut if you can’t be polite,’ Odeinath said, with an exaggerated scowl that even Cassini should be able to understand. ‘They can’t help living in the north.’

  ‘They can help thinking their little cluster of islands is the centre of the universe,’ Cassini said, and more bitterly: ‘And that the only sign of talent or nobility in a man is indicated by how good he is at slicing people open with a sword.’

  ‘But they do, and they also think southerners are arrogant and effeminate, an impression you won’t do anything to dispel.’

  ‘Effeminate?’ Cassini said, with a puzzled look. Odeinath rolled his eyes and marked their position on the chart.

  ‘You don’t look like a fine specimen of northern manhood,’ Odeinath said patiently. ‘That makes you effeminate as far as they’re concerned.’

  Not that his crew usually had many problems, because northerners tended to judge a ship by its captain, and Odeinath’s own physique had made him an honorary northerner – the skin and the hair were overlooked. He knew Cassini hated the north – watchful, curious and highly intelligent didn’t count for much, and his skills as a botanist and gardener would only be laughed at and dismissed as women’s work. The older men ignored him, the younger men bullied him, the women laughed at him.

  Odeinath had little time for the far north either. Thure and Ralentis contained the ruins of the civilization that had once flourished here, yes, but its descendants had fallen a long way. Not really a surprise, given that barely half of the inhabited islands had survived the Thetian legions and first few years of the storms.

  ‘I’m happy to be effeminate as far as they’re concerned,’ said Cassini, with a shudder, ‘as long as I don’t have to listen to them talking about their glorious deeds in battle.’

  ‘Better to hear them talk about it than to see it,’ Odeinath said, and in a part of his mind he saw again the Azrian marines marching down to their ships, proud under their copper-red banners, to fight for Ruthelo and their clan, and never come back.

  ‘We never had a warrior ethic, though,’ Cassini said.

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ Odeinath replied, not really seeing him. ‘Thanks be.’

  ‘Land ho!’ The shout drifted down from the crow’s nest. ‘Two points off the starboard bow.’

  Someone had been awake when they charted this area. Good. He called up to the helmsman to adjust course another two points to starboard. No point going up on deck yet, he’d wait till they had something more definite.

  ‘Did you find out what the ruins were like?’ Cassini asked.

  ‘No, he said they were big, and impressive for ruins, and I’d have a whale of a time there.’

  ‘When you’re not being royally entertained by Prince and Emperor Besach, that is.’

  ‘That’s enough jokes about him,’ Odeinath said sharply. ‘He’ll be our host tonight, and princes aren’t renowned for their temper.’

  Prince Besach of Lamorra was more than either of them had given him credit for, at least in the scale of northern rulers who elevated their tiny archipelagoes into princedoms inspired by the Thetian city-states of old.

  Lamorra came into sight in late afternoon. It was an island, rather like the sites of many Thetian colonies, at the edge of a large bay, with fields on the landward side and then forest stretching up to mountains that were still snow-capped at this time of year. There seemed to be another town a few miles along the shoreline, and houses here and there.

  ‘Relatively civilized for a northern princedom,’ Odeinath said grudgin
gly, as Navigator beat her way into the bay. ‘At least it’s more than a few huts and an emaciated goat.’

  ‘Not all that civilized.’ Daena, his ship’s physician and also the ship’s intelligencer. Unusual – in most Xelestis ships it was one of the officers, but Daena had demonstrated many times over that physicians could get to places no-one else could.

  It had been Daena who’d introduced Raphael to intelligencing, for which Odeinath had never quite forgiven her. But then, it had probably been inevitable that Raphael would leave eventually.

  ‘How not?’ Cassini asked.

  ‘Walls,’ Daena said. ‘No windows on the ground floor of any of those outside houses, and I think there are bars on the upper floors. Quite a good defence, there’s no way an enemy can just land if the houses fall straight into the water.’

  ‘Windsoar said it was safe,’ Odeinath said, wondering if that meant safe by the standards of a ship possessing twelve cannon ‘for self-defence’ and whose crew were armed to the teeth.

  Not that Navigator couldn’t defend herself, because her strange construction meant she was a good deal more sturdy than Windsoar, but fighting was to be avoided. In any case, Xelestis ships were never attacked. The Clan had had to ram that point home occasionally in the early days, half a dozen ships gathering to exact revenge for an attack on one of their fellows, but two or three instances of that had been enough. Word spread out here, and Xelestis ships were the only outsiders many island groups ever saw.

  ‘Is that their harbour?’ Cassini said, peering through the telescope as they bore slightly to port to avoid a sandbar Windsoar had mentioned.

  ‘What?’ Odeinath took the telescope from him, pointed it to the northwest side of the town where he’d seen masts. It sprang into focus – a stone cothon, big enough to hold three or four ship’s Navigator’s size and a moderate-sized fishing fleet, with a breakwater to keep them safe in the event of storms.

  Windsoar had said there was a proper harbour, but something like this? No petty state like Lamorra should have been able to afford the engineers, the materials, the work to build something like that. And what was the point? How many ships a year could a place like this have?