Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘Ah,’ was her only comment. Flavia had been more vociferous.

  ‘We can’t find anything suitable,’ Flavia went on.

  The tailor looked Raphael up and down, reached into the pocket of her dress and took out a measuring tape. ‘I should think not.’ She took his measurements briskly, with the same detached, businesslike air, then stood back, tapping one finger on her chin.

  ‘The maroon, and the black, and the russet,’ the mother ordered, and the daughter went out without another word. ‘It’ll cost you, to have it ready so quickly.’

  ‘I . . .’ Flavia began, but Raphael cut her off. He wouldn’t be beholden to Leonata’s generosity for this, and he’d already fought Flavia over the mask.

  ‘I have the necessary funds.’

  Barely, because he’d never had a steady source of income, and his tastes were expensive to maintain – particularly in Taneth, where consipcuous consumption was the only way to compete with the Merchant Lords. He had investments in several prosperous concerns in Mons Ferranis, but he didn’t want to touch them yet.

  The daughter came back very quickly, weighed down by three bolts of heavy silk which the mother held up against Raphael, then conferred with Flavia. All three were shot through with some kind of very thin golden weave that made the colour seem almost three-dimensional, although he didn’t like the maroon as much. And the last one, the one she’d called russet but was closer to fiery copper, why should that stand out? And then he remembered

  ‘Russet,’ Raphael said, impulsively. ‘I will wear russet.’

  ‘Why?’ Flavia said.

  ‘It goes with the mask,’ he lied.

  ‘If you’ve set your heart on it,’ said Flavia suspiciously.

  They spent a while longer discussing the cut, and the fall of it, during which Raphael, looking round at the white-painted panelling and the incredibly detailed stonework border running round the inside of the roof, mentally rehearsed his opening.

  The mother began sketching and noting measurements on a piece of paper, occasionally breaking off to confirm a measurement, while the daughter returned to her sewing without any obvious pleasure, looking slightly more nervous.

  Flavia and the mother had almost finished with the designs when the daughter’s hand slipped, stabbing the needle into her finger. She cursed, softly but loud enough for the other three people in the room to hear, for her mother to issue a reprimand in a language that was not Thetian, and for the daughter to reply. He understood both despite this, it was the last confirmation he’d needed.

  ‘Sisters,’ he said, in formal Ralentic, ‘I need your advice, and that of your people, in a matter that concerns us all.’

  They froze.

  Leonata stopped, looking for a familiar landmark.

  Close to siesta time, and the courtyards of the Museion were thronged with scholars and students pouring out of the temples where lectures were held, while others sat on almost every available scrap of space on the steps. Under an awning, in one corner of the main, sunken courtyard on to which three of the temples faced, a lecturer in a discipline which hadn’t existed at the time the Museion was built was just winding up, even as some of his students slipped stealthily out of the back to join their fellows. How could they hear anything through all the din? The noise of hammering from the omnipresent scaffolding seemed to be continuous, as the Museion’s haphazard, ongoing effort at expansion slowly erased all traces of the serene ancient temple complex it had once been.

  She’d known her way around the Museion when she attended lectures almost forty years ago, and long after that, but the building work had accelerated in recent decades, and she couldn’t get her bearings with half the passages and corridors out of action. She tapped a passing student on the shoulder, a sun-dark Qalathari with an Amadean sun pendant round his neck.

  ‘The Temple of Clio? How do I get there?’

  He pointed to her right. ‘Go through the Decanum, the main passage is open, and it is to your left, noble lady.’

  It took her only another five minutes to find the Temple of Clio where, by the look of it, the historians had finished their lectures early. The corridors were deserted, the seats in the main temple hall were in their usual disarray, but she wasn’t looking for the main hall. Ah! A pair of historians, emerging from a corridor just ahead. One tall and severe-looking, the other short and pugnacious.

  ‘ . . . very bold thesis, but too much narrative,’ the pugnacious one was saying. ‘No substance.’

  ‘He’s not sound,’ the other one said. ‘He only got his stipend because of all that work he did for Clan Mandrugo . . . what can we do for you?’

  ‘I was looking for Daganos, I’m wondering if you could direct me to him?’

  She knew from the twitch on the first one’s mouth that it was Daganos they’d been talking about, and she warmed to the absent historian immediately when they gave her directions, with thinly-veiled hints that she wanted someone more reliable, and returned to their character assassination.

  ‘Daganos?’ she said, poking her head into the small room they’d directed her to.

  A small, rotund man with round eyeglasses looked up at her, his initial cross expression fading into a smile as he stood up, almost sending a mound of papers onto the floor. Why were Museics incapable of keeping their offices tidy? She itched to lock Daganos in here and make him tidy it, but that would be unfair.

  ‘What can I do for you, Thalassarch?’

  He was younger than she’d expected, but not wearing, as so many scholars did, the black and gold of Clan Polinskarn.

  ‘I’m looking for help on a somewhat . . . sensitive topic,’ Leonata said. ‘Something that occurred in my lifetime.’

  Daganos’s smile faded. ‘Ah. Shut the door, will you? They already think I’m no better than a storyteller, I don’t want to give them ammunition to kick me out as well.’

  ‘Are you?’

  He snorted. ‘In their eyes. I recount history, they pick it into shreds and fight over details like dogs over a bone. I’m not really a historian at all, but here I have a stipend, and access to the library. Maybe another book or two and I’ll be able to support myself.’

  She closed the door and perched on the edge of a cupboard.

  ‘Now, what was it you wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve written a History of the Anarchy,’ she said, and Daganos went pale.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ he said, suddenly. This wasn’t at all the reaction she’d expected. ‘No, I toyed with it, but it’s . . .’

  ‘Dangerous,’ Leonata finished.

  ‘Much disputed,’ Daganos said, trying to salvage some of his pride. She had read two of his earlier works, lively accounts of Thetian history, but it was sheer luck that more than a year ago her spymistress Tellia had overheard a careless remark of his and thought to report it.

  ‘I’m not here to threaten you,’ she said. ‘Or to accuse you. I’m here because you’re apparently the only man without a political patron to have written a history of the Anarchy. Which was a brave thing to do.’

  ‘Thalassarch, this may be a small matter to you, but they could kill me for talking to you,’ Daganos said. ‘I started this when I thought no-one had done it before. Now I’ve found out two others tried.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Both dead,’ Daganos whispered. He was frightened, she could see from the beads of sweat on his forehead, the way he was nervously biting on the end of his glasses.

  ‘Someone came to see you,’ said Leonata. ‘In the last few days. They told you they’d kill you if you revealed any of your work to anyone. Possibly even took your manuscript?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I have that hidden. I gave them an early draft.’

  ‘Do you know whose they were?’

  The historian shook his head, mute.

  ‘No, they wouldn’t have told you. It would be foolish of them.’

  Would they be watching his office? Sweet Thetis, she didn’
t want him to die because she hadn’t anticipated someone else would get to him first.

  ‘Did they tell you to inform them if anyone came looking?’

  He nodded. As she’d suspected.

  ‘Tell them I came looking for information on Claudia Salassa,’ she said. ‘I can protect myself, you can’t. I’ll leave here looking as if I found nothing.’

  Daganos stared at her. ‘Thank you,’ he managed to mutter at last.

  ‘This will be over soon,’ she said, with more concern and bravery than she felt. She’d put her clan in danger as well as herself, which was unforgiveable, but there were bigger threats to deal with, and as yet she still know nothing. ‘When it is, I will fund the printing. I’ll not have anyone trying to suppress the past in my City.’

  She stormed out, leaving an ashen Daganos alone with his terror, and the scant consolation that he’d given nothing away. She would ask one of her allies to protect him – Bahram or Hasdrubal would be the logical people, since they weren’t as closely tied to her as Arria or Shirin. To protect him with Estarrin agents would be a death sentence.

  Unless she simply made him disappear for the time being. It would only work if things were coming to a head, otherwise she’d effectively be banishing Daganos from Thetia. She doubted it would be more than a few days, now.

  So, Daganos and his family would disappear to a safe-house where she could find out what he knew. It would take time, though, time she wasn’t sure she had.

  ‘Why have you come here?’

  Raphael looked round, saw a man in his late forties standing by the door of the empty courtyard. He was bearded, robed in dark red, and wore the conical cap of a Magister. Teacher was the most direct translation, but the Magistri of Ralentis had always been much more than teachers. Philosophers, advisers, the central figure in any Ralentic community. And the keepers of the old ways, what remained of them.

  ‘I am Raphael Quiridion, friend of Odeinath Sabal Xelestis and once crewman of the Navigator. I come for knowledge, and with news of danger to you.’

  ‘I am Magister Catalc,’ the Ralentian said, regarding him with keen eyes. Even under a tan, the paleness of his skin showed where the sleeve of his robe had snagged up. ‘I know Odeinath. Now I see your face, I know you,’

  Raphael let himself relax a little. He’d been afraid all of the Ralentians here were too-long established to remember his visit, as the mother and daughter had been, but it seemed he wouldn’t have to persuade them of that as well.

  Catalc paused a moment, then sat down on a bench in one corner of the stone courtyard, and motioned to Raphael to sit on one of the chairs opposite, reserved normally for the Magister’s students. They were in the courtyard of the Ralentic star-temple, a small building tucked away in the fold of the hill, looking for all the world like any other Thetian house.

  From the outside, that was.

  ‘I also know you serve the Empire now, that although you sailed with Odeinath, now you serve under your uncle. And your uncle is no friend of our people.’

  ‘My uncle is no friend of mine,’ Raphael said.

  ‘Then how do you serve the Empire? Either you’re his agent, or you’re a traitor to your own cause. This doesn’t inspire my confidence.’

  ‘I’m the Empire’s agent. I refused to give them my unconditional loyalty until they’d earned it.’

  ‘And what would they have to do to earn it? Rulers rarely like being told they have to work for their subjects’ affections.’

  ‘They want me to prove Iolani Jharissa guilty of the Emperor’s murder. They tell me a story of a new power in the north, sworn to our destruction, ready even now to strike and destroy Thetia.’

  ‘Some might say such a fate would be merited,’ said Catalc evenly.

  ‘Because two wrongs make a right?’

  ‘I didn’t say I agreed with them.’

  ‘But even as they preach of this threat,’ Raphael said, ‘they seek to poison the Vesperans against all northerners, to incite bigots to attack you.’ He listed a few of the examples Flavia had given him – a recently revived cycle of street plays on the war, savage polemics in the pamphlets, performances at the two larger Operas of two more works in which the Tuonetar were the villains.

  Catalc sat listening, his oddly disquieting eyes never leaving Raphael’s face.

  ‘We knew of these things,’ he said. ‘You think we wouldn’t, when they’re directed against us?’

  ‘You knew of the Empire’s part in them?’ Raphael said, taken aback, though he shouldn’t have been.

  ‘We suspected.’

  ‘I can confirm. The Empress Mother herself persuaded Tiziano to write Aetius. Her hand, and her propagandists, are everywhere.’

  Unsmiling, Catalc stood up and walked to a bin beside the ebony doors of the star-temple, pulling out a sheaf of pamphlets and despositing them in Raphael’s lap. He shuffled through them, needing only a quick scan of each to realise he was dealing with a master of the art here. They were professionally done, not simple polemics but more effective for the insinuations and rumours they made. Slow poison.

  ‘I read them all,’ Catalc said. ‘For my people’s sake. It’s best for at least one of us to do so. What you’ve warned us of, we have known about for years.’

  ‘Then I ask for your knowledge,’ Raphael said. ‘The Empire has lied to me, and concealed its own truth from me. The Empress is afraid of something, but refuses to reveal what. And I see no reason why a clan sworn to Thetia’s destruction should include quite so many of Thetian birth.’

  Catalc regarded him with those strangely still eyes, unblinking.

  ‘And what makes you think I would tell the truth, since I too am a northerner?’

  ‘Because my uncle, no friend of yours as you said, told me specifically that your people had refused to join this new alliance.’

  ‘A new alliance it is,’ Catalc replied, ‘and it commands the loyalty of a great many who simply hate all Thetians. It has rediscovered some of the lost arts of the Tuonetar, I don’t know how, and there are rumours of a terror in the deep.’

  ‘A terror . . .’ Raphael’s eyes widened, as he remembered the quotation, from an old Tuonetar victory poem. ‘No. The arkships were destroyed. None could have survived this long.’

  Catalc shrugged. ‘They are merely rumours. Did I say anything more?’

  Raphael shook his head, wondering. The arkships had been the mainstay of the Tuonetar fleet in the Great War, vast underwater behemoths a mile or more long, carrying enormous invasion forces and scores of smaller vessels. All mechanically built, since manta polyp wouldn’t survive in the north. If even one had survived, the damage it could do would be incalculable.

  But to have lasted two hundred and fifty years, a thing of metal and glass and machinery?

  ‘But for its origins, you must look here, to your own country,’ Catalc went on. ‘The Lost Souls are your own people, and they mean you no less harm than if they had been the Tuonetar reborn.’

  Raphael’s reply was interrupted as the outer door was flung open and the girl from the shop raced in, quailing a little at the Magister’s fierce glance. She and her mother had remained in the shop with Flavia while others escorted Raphael back here.

  ‘What is it?’ Catalc said sternly.

  ‘Magister, the brotherhoods gather in hiding on the Street of Toucans, below Entexje’s house. There is an Ice Runner coming past, we think they mean to ambush him.’

  Catalc met Raphael’s gaze, and his expression spoke more eloquently than words. The girl stood by the door, waiting for an answer.

  ‘By your leave, Magister?’ Raphael said. ‘As an Imperial agent I have some leverage. I will see if I can persuade them otherwise. It would be better for you and your people if I could appear to come from another direction, and if I could speak with Flavia first.’

  Catalc nodded, and sent the girl running back with a gesture that was almost sign language. ‘You understand, we can offer no help.’

 
‘I know,’ Raphael said.

  He still wasn’t quite fast enough.

  It was well into the siesta now, and the Street of the Toucans was a smaller road leading upwards from the Street of the Lions which ran parallel to the Avern. Since the Street of the Lions itself bent at this point, the corner of the Street of the Toucans was hardly overlooked, and most of those in the surrounding houses would be asleep now. Raphael was feeling sleepy too, it was the time of day when the heat became enervating, when the cool breezes died down and the City sweltered.

  It was only as they attacked, Fergho and five other thugs armed with fighting staves, with Raphael still twenty yards behind them, that Raphael realised the Ice Runner was Glaucio, Iolani’s captain.

  They rushed him from two directions, but even then the big man showed remarkable reflexes, ducking under the first club-blow and spinning to punch one in the face, sending him sprawling against the wall, moaning in pain. Glaucio evaded another blow, and a stave crashed against his injured shoulder. Raphael saw him stiffen in agony, but then the thugs saw Raphael, and paused.

  ‘Come to supervise?’ Fergho asked. ‘We’ve caught one of them.’

  ‘I thought there was to be no fighting to mar the Emperor’s visit,’ Raphael said.

  ‘That was then,’ Fergho said. ‘We’re not letting them get away with their treachery any more.’

  ‘You will stop this,’ Raphael, and suddenly realised he’d made a terrible mistake.

  ‘And why would that be?’ Fergho said, stepping away from the now frozen Glaucio as the others held their clubs over him, ready to strike.

  ‘Because I’m keeping him under surveillance,’ Raphael said. ‘I can’t find out who his contacts are if you’ve beaten him to a pulp.’

  Fergho made a signal, and another of the men stepped away from Glaucio to stand beside him.

  ‘Well, that’s odd, because we’ve had orders to bring him in, see? They reckon he could tell us a lot, like whether it was his ship killed the Emperor. Much easier. Now, I suggest you run along and find some else to follow around, and don’t interfere with us. Otherwise, we might get the impression you’re not all on the right side.’