The Filament House is secluded behind a thicket of tall tenements, away from the immediate business of the boulevard. Even its architecture does not belong, tessellated arcades and balconies, a façade of bricks and painted stone. Oblong windows done in jagged tracery and tinted panes. She is admitted into a partitioned lounge—discretion so highly prized here that customers need never see one another—and asked whether she has an appointment. “No,” she says, “but I’d like to make one. I have a reference from Yifen Lin.” She tells the attendant her preferences. Specific, even outlandish, though she knows it is not unique to her.
“That member of our staff is ready and can see you at once,” the attendant says, “if you wish.”
Nothing like immediate gratification. “Do I get a quote now, or later?”
She gets one. The price is high, but then the Filament provides services like nowhere else. For certain niches, it has no competitor. Once payment has been negotiated, she is led past softly lit corridors. From all accounts, the Filament is selective in the patrons it accepts; at any time there might be only a dozen guests in the house or fewer. Privacy is paramount and, despite the upfront talk of commerce, there is an illusion that this is a personal rather than a transactional arrangement.
The room is faultlessly clean. Furniture in cerise and lavender, the ghost-pipes a quiet murmur, decorated so it would offend no one and fade into the background. If adjacent rooms are in use, she hears no noise. Soundproofing must have gobbled up much of the establishment’s initial funding. A plate of marzipan fruits has been provided for her, miniature rose apples and pears glazed to a high, succulent shine. She tries one. It is rich, soft, lightly sweet rather than saccharine. Pleasant, surprisingly so.
Nuawa doesn’t have to wait long. Part of the service is the impression of effortlessness, everything moving along with the ease of dream logic. Perfect, exquisite.
The courtesan glides into the room, a rustle of leather and polished boots. She has a sculpted face, acute chin and narrow jaw, an umber complexion. The look of a Kemiraj aristocrat, but it is the manner more than the appearance that compels. She takes Nuawa’s chin in her hand, tilting it up. “And how should I take you?” A low thrumming voice, tenor.
“You are presuming.”
“Am I wrong?”
Nuawa does not pull free. In bed, most partners assume she’d take charge and she does; it is rare that yielding excites her, rarer still that she finds a bedmate who suits her in that way. “I’m not the first to come here for this.” A semi-popular fantasy, or at least one where clients are few but which pays exceptionally well.
The courtesan laughs; she is no Lussadh but must have studied the general well, mimicking even the edged amusement, the exact timbre. “No, but you are the first to talk so much. Come, it is a play and this room is our stage. Fall into it. You wished for a certain thing, but is it not the unpredictable parts that excite?”
There is persuasive force behind this person, an intensity of play-acting that convinces. Nuawa gives; the courtesan guides her to the wall, pressing her against the padded hardwood. It should feel methodical, flimsy make-believe, but her mood and circumstances conspire. When the courtesan undoes her trousers—none too gently—and slips a gloved finger inside, she is already slick, nerve-ends eager for touch. She breathes deeply to pace herself, delay the cresting of arousal, as two long fingers become three. Embroidered suede. Attention has been paid to detail, to texture. The push and the pull, a curl of knuckle that insistently grazes those nerve-ends, a thumb and forefinger that press and pinch. This side of agony.
She is maneuvered: her arms pinned behind her—she could easily break free; she doesn’t—and her head canted back against the cool silk of the wall. Hard teeth work at her throat while one gloved hand pulls her up, up until she is on tiptoes. Straining to stay upright, the muscles of her calves trembling as those long fingers move inside her.
By the time she’s flung onto the bed and spread, her breathing has gone to rags and her pulse raw. Lussadh (not quite, but enough) says, “Ask for it.”
“Yes—” Predictable, even this part, but in momentum the body overwhelms the intellect: Nuawa does not care that this is pretense, that the script itself follows a type.
“Ask again. This time properly.”
“Please.” She closes her eyes; she imagines. “General.”
Coming down from climax, she lies splayed on the sheets, her cunt fluttering. She is stripped from the waist down while the courtesan never disrobed at all. The gloves will be scrupulously washed, Nuawa supposes, but the Filament’s laundry deals with more sordid secretions daily. “You seem to enjoy your work,” she says. “The mechanics if not the client.”
The courtesan leans next to the door, hands loose at her sides. “And this seems very good for you, medicinal even. She inspires frustration, doesn’t she? A most magnetic personage.”
Nuawa wonders if she should feel embarrassment, but it is no different than treating a fever, dressing a wound. Her thighs are damp, her limbs leaden with euphoria. Satisfying the flesh is easy, and this way is safer than most. “Anywhere I can clean up?”
“I could clean you. It’d be no chore.”
A tone of intimacy that is good at sounding genuine rather than the ingratiation of worker to client. “No, I’m fine.”
“As you wish. I’ll send for someone to bring warm water, towels.” The courtesan nods. “Good luck in the games, duelist. Come again should you feel the need.”
Chapter 7
Lussadh is going through the output of Sirapirat’s agriculture with Governor Imnesh when the reports come in.
“Taxing them at this rate isn’t sustainable,” she is telling Imnesh. “The farmsteads here have mostly adapted, but even you must admit that the landowners and farmers don’t have enough left to seed the next harvest.”
“They’re still sheltering dissidents, General.” Imnesh has his hands folded on the table, though she suspects he yearns to clench them into fists, then apply those fists to her face. An older courtier—senior to her in age if not in rank—he’s never been one to curry favor with Lussadh, mostly because he was close to her predecessor and after all this time still resents what he sees as usurpation. “Five decades on and they haven’t learned their place. No one wants my position.”
She gazes at the cabinet behind him, a display of medals and badges earned in combat. Ex-soldiers from before her time tend to hold the same opinion of her: an upstart who stole the position of winter’s commander, second only to the queen’s rank as grand marshal. A position that should have gone to one of the old guard. “I just put down an uprising in Kavaphat, Imnesh. I know what it means when seditionists operate as guerillas. But brutalizing their supporters only inspires the next batch and when all the farmers are dead, they won’t be able to pay a lick of tax.” She doesn’t say that she did not approve of his most recent mass execution. There are limits to how far she can push. “We’ve been treating Sirapirat citizens like animals for fifty years. Past the first decade or so it got excessive, and the result is we still have problems. Consider Kemiraj.” Of which she is the de facto governor.
“Yes, yes. Kemiraj joined winter as a very special case. You of all people know, General, and can afford to gently handle it. Leniency is no panacea. Indeed I have been milder and milder with this city, treating it like my own infant, and what do I get.”
Caricatures of him published in satirical boards. Petty and harmless, an insult Imnesh could easily have let slide. Lussadh suspects he doesn’t even get dead animals in his bed and, against all odds, hasn’t yet been successfully poisoned. “There is such a thing as responding in proportion. Give them a couple years. Send as many to the kilns as is absolutely necessary and not one person more. Have them give tribute at the same rate as Johramu.”
“That’s half the current tribute, General.”
“I’m aware.”
“Where,” he says, enunciating deliberately as though speaking to a child,
“am I supposed to find the ghosts to compensate for that shortfall?”
“Kavaphat, for the next six months. It won’t be your problem.” Not that the capital requires such surplus. There are entire vaults of ghosts frozen and dreaming their unknowable, foggy fantasies. “After that, we’ll see. Get to it swiftly, Imnesh, and incidentally reconsider your choice of having Sirapirat staff only for menial positions—you do realize having them in the kitchen and garden is a fine way to have your food spat in or poisoned. Either have locals in supervising roles as well, or you’ll have to allocate a higher stipend to hire menials from the capital. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
In her study she draws out her calling-glass, slots it into a mount. The palace staff has filled her quarters with flowers, vases bristling with lilac bloom and bifurcated leaves. Potted ferns that look like they have teeth, either to appease her taste—what they think is her taste—or to make a statement against a symbol of winter’s rule. No further dead birds. “Report,” she says.
A hazy image from the calling-glass: the body of one of her soldiers. Ulamat holds up resin sheets of more images, three more bodies. Each has been decapitated, the head cradled in the body’s lap or perched on the body’s shoulder. “As you can see, my lord.”
She eyes the fragment of Ytoba’s phalange on her desk, a yellowed piece nestling in sable fabric. In her personal vault, she has an extensive collection of such, a piece or two of every dangerous enemy: a lock of hair, a shard of bone. Grudge detritus, necessary for a thaumaturge to track a person down. Which the palace thaumaturge had, or so she’d thought. When the result pointed to four different locations in the city, she’d sent a soldier to each for reconnaissance. “I can see. My thanks, Ulamat.”
“I would never overstep my bounds, lord, but this seems like a case I ought to know about.”
“It is,” she says. “In due time. What about the duelist?”
He leaves the body, letting a Sirapirat officer have a turn at examining it. “I’ve been looking into her family. A distressingly common surname, mostly attached to people who aren’t related. Not native to Sirapirat, as such; the surname belongs to a wave of immigrants who arrived here during the administration of—”
“Ulamat,” Lussadh says mildly.
“Yes, my lord, apologies. I wasn’t able to find immediate relation save a cousin who entered monkhood—teaches at a theological college in Kavaphat—and an aunt living in the countryside; nothing troubling so far. The aunt used to live in Johramu, came back twenty-five years ago presumably to raise the duelist, who was orphaned. Was born illegitimate, I get the impression. The aunt, Indrahi Dasaret, sent her to exceptionally fine schools until she was seventeen.”
“No university?” An odd choice, surely, since Sirapirat boasts a decent one and Nuawa strikes Lussadh as well-educated.
His breath curls out. He is standing alone on a balcony, gaining distance from the scene and the corpse. “Not as far as I’ve been able to find out. Private tutoring, I reckon. The aunt appears moderately well-off. I’m tracing the source of her wealth, just in case.”
“I appreciate it.” She pauses. “You are not going to look into why my soldiers died. Not until I tell you. It is important, but I have my reasons, for now.”
“Here as in all else I bow to your decision. One tangential matter. There is a Kemiraj courtesan at the Filament House in Sirapirat, who—ah—tenders unique services. That is, she is a sort of thespian, dressing as you do and …”
“That I didn’t need to know, Ulamat.”
“No, no. I keep an eye on the courtesan because her clientele, while a short list, is of some interest. But naturally not an item I would bring to your attention unless it’s relevant. Most recently, the duelist joined the exclusive list of those giving her patronage.”
Lussadh blinks. The muscles in her face spasm between pulling into a grimace and something else. “Are you absolutely certain your informant didn’t confuse a stranger for Nuawa.”
“My lord.” Indignation. “I wasn’t there to monitor her myself, but they are very sure, absolutely.”
“Of course.”
She makes herself tea, strong, the color of desert dusk. Pours generously, and starts sipping while it can scald. It is not that the idea surprises; she is a public figure, and even if she had not conquered territories in her queen’s name her position would nevertheless inspire deep loathing, resentment, fury. That some of it would translate to that is not new—she has seen pornographic art featuring her, ranging from risqué to profane, and heard of worse. There is the other kind: she is not unaware of her own appeal, has never been since her days as royalty. But perhaps she has been too forward with the duelist, has taken liberties which Nuawa cannot safely refuse and so must find an outlet for.
Teacup in hand, Lussadh paces the parlor she shares with Nuawa then—after some consideration—unlocks the duelist’s room. She already knows from the servants that Nuawa has brought very little. The wardrobe contents are sparse, practical, with a few formal outfits: a narrow dress, a limned jacket, close-cut trousers with snaking lines of seed pearls. No jewelry save the victor’s badge from the first round. Toiletries are likewise few and simple, with a particular preference for herbs in toothpaste, soap. No perfume or cosmetics. No telling details, like keepsakes or religious icons. Nor signs that the duelist practices alchemy of the spirit, or indeed any other sort. That the duelist is literate is obvious, but she appears to have left all her reading behind.
In all, her belongings have been curated to reveal next to nothing: not her faith or pastimes, and certainly not her politics. Reasonably cautious rather than something to hide, perhaps.
Lussadh reviews the other contestants. She’s met most of them, felt no pull of affinity, though she won’t discount them yet. There is a handful she wants to verify for good measure. But it’s rare for a tribute game to yield a glass-bearer, let alone several. These are spectacles for the public more than for the queen, who takes no interest. But given that Lussadh has found a potential bearer, it’s odd that Her Majesty hasn’t come to Sirapirat herself—normally shows little patience when it comes to the matter of her mirror’s pieces.
She spends the afternoon with the games. Initially she was concerned that she would have to share the hallucination, but the oneirologist behind it is ingenuous. The arenas, transmitted through specially treated beads, doesn’t require that Lussadh imbibe the drugs. The pane she uses is concave and immense, panoramic. An eagle’s eye view of the whole, then a focus on each combatant as she needs. It is orderly and she wishes the same could be had in the physical world, the vantage point of a god over battlefields. The way the queen saw the world before her mirror broke, so she says. She has never shared how it shattered, or why, or what she intends once she has found the last glass-bearer. I have been looking a long time, she would say, and there she would stop.
There are two bouts scheduled today. Two more tomorrow. Expedient, all told, four hundred whittled down to one dozen in no time.
The first arena is an occidental temple, long corridors like fingers and stained-glass images of the afterlife in fire and flagellation. Candelabras make shadows of duelists as they meet and fight in tabernacles, triumph in chapels, fall on altars. Like a studied painting, this arena too is made in detail, with an architect’s eye. It is tremendous work, like all the previous arenas, as much imagination as realism. She must meet the oneirologist, Lussadh decides. Perhaps she could commission them for the next tournament.
The next is an underground cavern built like a honeycomb. Quartz deposits pock its walls, small rutilated knuckles buried in blunt rock. The duelists are separated by chambers where water congeals drool-thick and ink-dark, and razorish forms scurry by in flocks. A backdrop less inspired than the rest, though Lussadh supposes from each duelist’s perspective it is more dimensional. More menacing. As battlefields go, the challenges lie in visibility, maneuverability.
Her attention pulls inevitably to Nuawa. The duelist is a si
lhouette, sharp animation obverse to the dark, running down a lopsided passage. She fights with a soldier’s economy, not a duelist’s sensibility for spectacle and grandeur. Lussadh thinks back to the university library, to the completed bounty she hears of afterward. When most duelists wage battle with exhibitionist flourish, Nuawa’s efficiency stands out.
It is not fast, and it is not neat, but out of twenty-five Nuawa is the last one standing.
* * *
Rakruthai pronounces her hale, in mercantile condition, a turn of phrase Nuawa has always found endearingly cynical. “Though not if you keep taking oneiric drugs.” He peels off his gloves, drops them into a septic jar, where they float deflated and bereft in the blue fluid: dead skin. “You’re verging on dependency. The doses you had were brutal and, long-term, they’ll fuck you up well and proper. I’ll give you something to ease it. Side effect is mild anemic symptoms for a couple weeks, three.”
“Will I be fit for combat?” Nuawa is on her stomach, the wood-and-stone slab hard under her, separated from her skin by a thin sheet.
“Sure. Someone would have to break most of your limbs to keep you out of the arena.” He frowns. “I’m not your mother.”
“For both our sakes, I would hope not.”
“What does your family think? I know you have some. Even you couldn’t spring fully formed from the ether.”
She puts her head back down, imagines herself that way, a creature of untouchable fortitude sloughing off ice: her bones would be iron, her skin hermetic as carapace. The idea cannot help but entice. To be something that self-contained, literally self-made. “Maybe I did.” Instead she was drawn out of a ghost kiln, should have been a corpse. Her memory does not predate being six, though she supposes the same is true for most. Preverbal, toddler years aren’t the most memorable. “Or maybe I’m an orphan and you’re being insensitive.”
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