Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wish to speak to High Thalassarch Leonata. Watch over the others, have your men form a perimeter, so we aren’t disturbed.’

  Seconded to Raphael’s command, the tribesman silently moved to obey, and Raphael found himself in the centre of a circle of tribesmen facing a haughty, stone-faced Leonata. He didn’t bother to keep them out of the sun.

  ‘Silphium, High Thalassarch. You promised to investigate.’

  ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘I will know who obtained the silphium. No harm will come to them, but the silphium must be confiscated.’

  ‘You’ll have to find out yourself,’ Leonata said.

  ‘If neither you nor Vaedros can tell me, I’m afraid I’ll have to fall back on mind-mages. The Empress will want to know there is any more of it about. The longer it takes to find it all, the more danger to her mages.’

  ‘This is a prospect I should fear?’

  Raphael glanced up at the sky. ‘I wouldn’t rely on Valentine’s grace, with the Erythra blowing.’

  Leonata paused. ‘I’ll give you a name, in exchange for a promise. A very small thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Enough wine for everyone in Orfeo’s, in Hycano’s name. I won’t even ask you to pay, tell them to put it on the Estarrin tab. Hycano prefers chilled Gorgano white, it would be appropriate if you’d toast him with a glass of it.’

  ‘A very small thing, Leonata?’ Raphael asked, humbled even now by Leonata’s exquisitely crafted revenge.

  She believed him. She had seen him pass the mind-mages, almost kill Hycano. He had fooled Leonata. Which meant, almost certainly, that he had fooled the Emperor. But his sudden rush of triumph was stillborn with her next words.

  ‘A very small thing, set beside a man’s life.’

  ‘I will do as you ask. You have my word,’ Raphael said, and she told him where to find the silphium.

  ‘A Xelestis captain named Baido Kaamea made a long prospecting voyage to Mons Ferratan territory six months ago, and was paid a small fortune when he returned. The prospectors are a proud and close-knit group, I suggest you treat him better than you’ve treated me.’

  ‘Is he in the City now?’ Wait, that name rang a bell. The apothecary’s shop.

  ‘He was when the information was given to me. Whether he’s been sensible enough to leave the City rather than stay under the Empire’s rule, I don’t know.’

  ‘Perhaps he’ll stay,’ Raphael said. ‘Lost causes can live on in the unlikeliest of people, after all.’

  He met her eyes for a moment, long enough to make it clear that everything he’d said had been simply padding for those last words.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ Raphael said. ‘There might be some silphium still unused, and a delay in finding it, even a few hours, could be very dangerous for the Empire. We still have enemies left to be conquered, in the City and out.’

  ‘Then I wish them all success,’ Leonata said, her gaze still locked with his. She’d understood.

  Raphael stepped back.

  ‘Guards! Take our guests to their quarters!’

  The cellars of Ulithi Palace must have been a building of their own, centuries ago. The network of vaults and storage rooms in which the prisoners and the captured equipment were stored - as far apart as possible, naturally – had the haphazard air of an old building patched up and turned to a very different purpose. There were blind windows, the remains of doorways which led nowhere, spaces where marble columns must once have supported a colonnade.

  It was all vaulted over now, though the acoustics were oddly dead, despite the stone walls, floor and ceiling, and Raphael didn’t hear the noise of the chains until he was almost on top of the prisoners.

  The remains of an ancient courtyard, long since buried under newer construction, were filled with guards and prisoners. Off a corridor on one side, four prisoners at a time were being herded into larger cells and manacled to hastily improvised ring-bolts in the wall. The rest – including, it seemed, the most important of the prisoners – were bundled into small storage cubicles on one side, and four enormous barrels on the other, barrels of the kind which always concealed secret passageways.

  ‘Not a word, not a word!’ Plautius said dramatically, turning from making another notation on his list. He’d pitched his voice higher than usual, and when Raphael glanced around, he realised the prisoners were being kept hooded, even once they were chained into their cells. Which meant they’d never know who the busy little bureaucrat asking their names and putting them, by numbers, into the cells had been. ‘Not a word about secret passages!’

  ‘Would I say such a thing?’ Raphael asked, dropping his own voice a little. ‘Though now you mention it . . .’ He tapped the side of the barrel, and Plautius gave an exaggerated sigh.

  ‘Everyone who’s seen it makes the same infantile joke,’ said Plautius. He clicked his fingers, and one of his helpers dipped a brush in a pot of bright blue paint and carefully painted a number onto the latest prisoner’s calf.

  There were only half-a-dozen tribesmen present – the rest of Plautius’s assistants were men in plain, ordinary clothes, the only distinction being that all wore dark colours, and all had their belts cinched with an elaborate, overcomplicated knot. Raphael recognised a familiar face a moment later holding a captive Ice Runner against the wall in one of the storage cells. Matteozzo, the man who’d led the raid on Jharissa Palace.

  Thetis, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  ‘Where’s the Amazon?’ Plautius said, fretfully, looking round. ‘Amazon, Amazon?’

  Two more tribesmen brought Anthemia forward, and Raphael felt the white heat of his anger flare a little higher. He’d had to order her hobbled, because she was simply too strong to control easily, and even now he could see the tension in her muscles as she waited for a chance, any chance, to escape.

  ‘Nothing but trouble, this one,’ Plautius said. ‘Well, the third barrel has proper ring-bolts, heavens only know why, we’ll put her in there. Number forty-seven, please.’

  Raphael made himself watch them number her and chain her against the wall of the barrel, watched how they turned the key, its shape, where Plautius put it, even which way the door of the barrel opened. And, while the tribesmen were preoccupied, he scooped up her discarded bonds and slipped them into his robes. They might be useful.

  Anthemia was almost the last – Plautius was nothing if not efficient, and he waved a neatly written and ordered sheet, complete with names and descriptions and numbers, in front of Raphael.

  ‘All perfectly in order, no-one will find fault with my record-keeping. The chain, please, the chain!’

  The small storage cells didn’t have keys, Raphael realised, so instead Plautius had had construction crews attach brackets to each door, and his men ran a long chain through every one and fastened it tight at the ends. Not the most efficient method, as one would have to unlock every cell to fetch a single person, but it would do, in the circumstances.

  These cells would, after all, be properly guarded.

  Plautius locked the chain and hooked the keys on his belt, and Raphael suppressed a curse. Not even to give keys to the guards was wise, but it made things a great deal more difficult.

  ‘Now,’ Plautius said. ‘All done, all correct, we go, we go. On to more tasks, a jailer’s lot is not a happy one. Come on, my friend.’

  He clapped Raphael on the back, and they swept out of the cells, leaving only the ever-watchful tribesmen. Plautius stopped at the top of the stairs, where several passageways led off an arched corridor connecting the Fountain and Garden Courts, and tapped Raphael on the shoulder.

  ‘I thought you might want to know,’ he said quietly, in his normal voice, ‘The Ancient Mariner is here in Vespera.’

  ‘The Ancient . . . what?’ For a second he’d forgotten the faintly mocking title Silvanos had given Odeinath, which Plautius had picked up. ‘Navigator is here?’

  Plautius shook his head
, and a gave a fussy wave of his hand. ‘The ship isn’t. You’d have heard the moment you got here if she had been, no other ship like that the world over. No, just the Mariner. Two people with him – a great hulking Archipelagan and a woman who knows when she’s being trailed.’

  Raphael felt a knot in his stomach, one that had nothing to do with him or the fear of being found out. Could someone have taken the ship? What had happened to the others, to Cassini and Granius and everyone else?

  ‘Do you know where they’re staying?’

  ‘With Bahram Ostanes, who I believe you know well.’

  Raphael didn’t, he realised a moment later, know where Bahram actually lived. His slight hesitation gave him away.

  ‘Street of the Leopards, in Stone Basin,’ Plautius supplied.

  ‘Is there anything you can’t remember.’

  Plautius looked affronted. ‘Of course not. You think I’d entrust anything to paper?’

  Raphael smiled despite himself. Plautius was, if not a comforting presence, a familiar one, and in a way his clinical treatment of the prisoners made him less of an enemy. He had no desire to humiliate or to conquer, and he’d have taken on the task solely so he knew who’d been captured.

  It was a small, cold thing for Raphael to take comfort from. He thanked Plautius and turned out to the Fountain Court, where the water was splashing away as it always did, a soothing sound in the background.

  ‘Two more things, Raphael,’ Plautius said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d get permission from the Emperor to go, if I were you. I’m sure you can find an excuse. And make sure you’re back here, or at Silvanos’s, for the night. You have a guardian angel, and you don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘Guardian angel? Plautius, what do you mean?’

  ‘The Dream Twisters are here, Raphael. Why did you think we were all having nightmares?’

  Someone rapped on the door, three times, and Odeinath saw Bahram’s slight hesitation, his friend’s fingers tightening around the glass he held.

  ‘Dariush, see to that,’ Bahram ordered. ‘Take Ormazdh and Orodes, just in case.’ The white-haired major-domo put the bottle of wine down and headed for the stairs.

  Odeinath pushed his chair back slightly, and saw Tilao put his own glass down. The brightly lit room seemed to darken suddenly, Odeinath found his eyes searching the walls for possible weapons, but the Mons Ferratans didn’t go in for such decorations. Tapestries, yes, and richly woven carpets, heavy wooden furniture, but not displays of weapons.

  ‘What is it?’ Daena asked. ‘Why should you worry?’

  ‘I’ve been mixed up in this affair,’ Bahram said. ‘I’ve been far more reckless than I ought.’

  ‘You did it to help Raphael,’ Odeinath said. He heard the major-domo’s steps going downstairs, calling for Bahram’s two imposing house retainers, who had also been mercenaries, and spies, and a great many other things besides. Odeinath had known them for years, and Bahram trusted them implicitly.

  ‘Yes, but there’s a line, and I crossed it. I have my responsibilities to Mons Ferranis, and to House Ostanes, and I shouldn’t get too involved in Thetian politics.’

  ‘Even now?’

  ‘Even now, my friend,’ Bahram said, his dark eyes thoughtful, and troubled. Odeinath had told him what they’d seen in the north, though he hadn’t yet seen the aether recording. ‘We are a wealthy power, but not so strong we can stand against the Empire. And an Empire that does such things is more to be feared.’

  Downstairs the door opened, and they all fell silent. The voices were too faint to make out what they were saying, but after a moment the door closed again, and a soft owl-call drifted up the stairs. Bahram sat back in his chair again, and let go the glass.

  ‘Your all-clear signal?’ Daena said. ‘If you don’t hear it, something’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ll have to think of a new one now,’ Bahram said. ‘But I’m curious as to who this is. This isn’t a night to be out and about.’

  It hadn’t been a day to arrive in Vespera, either. Thirty-one years away, and Odeinath had come back when the Erythra blew. His skin felt uncomfortably dry already, and as for the City . . .

  The City had changed, had grown into itself, but he had come back as the lengthening shadows threatened to engulf it, and perhaps more than anyone in this City, Odeinath knew how deep those shadows were.

  What price Vespera’s magnificence, its new-found confidence, the forest of masts in the Portanis, the thousands of boats and vaporetti plying the waters of the Deep, its musicians and artists and opera houses, what price those things against an Empire which could commit such crimes? An Empire which could send tens of thousands of its own people to a living hell in the high arctic?

  He had come back too late. It had been an endless voyage south from Thure, he had spent every last coin Navigator possessed on flamewood and port charges, had used up that same flamewood escaping a flat calm two weeks’ sailing north of Thetia, and still he had come too late, to be greeted by news of Saphir Island.

  News, too, of exactly who had been captured.

  ‘Who is it, Dariush?’ Bahram called down, as footsteps echoed on the stairs. Bahram’s rented house was spacious enough for a Mons Ferratan, which meant it was enormous for a Thetian – heavens only knew how Bahram managed to twist the price of the rent out of his brother. More likely Bahram was using his own, not inconsiderable personal fortune, accumulated over the years because he simply couldn’t stand Old Man Ostanes’ pathological meanness.

  ‘A friend,’ said Dariush, and a moment later ushered Raphael into the room.

  ‘Raphael!’ Odeinath shouted, everything else forgotten, and surged forward to envelop the younger man in a bear-hug, careful not to put too much pressure on his chest, not least because he knew Tilao had never learned. A moment later, Tilao did indeed almost squeeze the life out of Raphael; Daena was more restrained, but not less glad to see him.

  And then Odeinath stepped back, and saw the look in Raphael’s eyes, and his face, and wondered if he knew the young man at all.

  ‘Is Navigator safe?’ Raphael asked, the words spilling out before he could say anything else, before he even sat down in the chair Bahram offered, or Dariush could find him a glass from the antique cabinet built into an arch in the far wall.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Odeinath said, smiling, pleased beyond measure that that had been Raphael’s first question.

  Raphael gave a wan smile and collapsed into the chair. He was carrying a stiletto in one hand, Odeinath realised, though not the one Odeinath had given him in Mons Ferranis all those years ago. He made sure all his crew could defend themselves, and it had quickly become obvious Raphael’s best hope in a fight lay in what anyone else would call treachery – surprise and a poisoned, or at least drugged, blade.

  ‘Some thug from one of the brotherhoods didn’t believe I was in Imperial service,’ Raphael explained.

  Odeinath slumped back into his chair, his smile fading. He’d known, but Gods, what had it done to the man? Raphael looked a thousand years old, the pride and the determination overlaid by something else, something harsher. He’d grown into himself, into a man of undoubted presence – but what was wrong?

  ‘You’re not in Imperial service, are you?’ Daena said, uncertain. Her words hung in the air, as Raphael looked from one of them to the other, and Odeinath realised he was ready to close off, because he thought he’d come among friends. Now he wasn’t sure, and they seemed on the verge of rejecting him.

  What was Odeinath to do, if Raphael had gone over to the Empire?

  ‘We’re safe here?’ Raphael asked Bahram, quickly, nervously.

  ‘You know all of us, my people have been with me a lifetime, and I assure you nobody is listening.’

  Raphael began to speak, then shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, you’re not safe. There are Dream Twisters in the City.’

  Odeinath gripped the arms of his chair as memories suddenly surfaced. Screams in the night,
the servants carrying his grandfather’s body downstairs, the rictus of terror on the dead man’s face when the covering had shifted, Odeinath’s mother hustling him away, not realising he’d seen it.

  The dead silence afterwards, as if his grandfather had never existed, and then the realisation years later that his grandfather had been killed simply to terrify the Scartaris leadership, to whom he had been a minor adviser.

  Everyone who’d lived through those times had such a story – even though perhaps no more than four or five hundred had died or disappeared in the time of the Dream Twisters, it wasn’t something one ever forgot.

  The other three exchanged puzzled glances – of course, Bahram had been far away, a child in Mons Ferranis; Daena and Tilao were too young, and had never lived in Vespera.

  ‘Dream Twisters?’ Bahram said, and his voice might have been sceptical but for the naked fear in the room.

  ‘They’re an abomination,’ said Raphael savagely. He was afraid, Odeinath realised, and Raphael wasn’t a man given to fear. Reckless folly and over-confidence were more his line.

  ‘They turn your dreams into nightmares,’ Odeinath said wearily. ‘And when you’re asleep, you don’t have full control over your mind, so they can collect information without you remembering anything except a bad dream.’

  ‘Then what we’ve told Bahram . . .’ Daena said, in alarm.

  Thetis, she was right. They’d come into the City carrying a secret in the sea-chest and in their minds. The recording was safe for the time being, but if the Dream Twisters could read their minds, they’d all be in danger.

  ‘What have you told Bahram?’ Raphael asked.

  Another dead silence. Odeinath and Daena exchanged glances.

  ‘It doesn’t show the Empire in a good light,’ Odeinath said cautiously.

  They stared at one another, paralysed. If thoughts could be taken from their minds, then telling such a secret would put Raphael in danger – and they were all in terrible danger already.

  ‘You’re sure about the Dream Twisters?’ Odeinath asked Raphael. ‘Who told you?’