Their secret task finally completed, they followed the sounds of the festivities to where they were at their loudest, in the high-raftered great hall at the north end of the building. They found Kasimir seated in a corner, still dressed in his Alvere clothes, close to the open hearth fire but well apart from the crowd. A troupe of masquers were performing on a wooden stage against the west wall, their backdrop consisting of a large tapestry of noctys silk intricately embroidered with stars and moons in silver threads of centicore wool. The performers were dancing to a reed flute that was played, simply but not unskilfully, by Gloriana’s chatelaine. Alvere courtiers, servants, and Brython officers had gathered around to watch the show, but the secretary seemed to have more time for the goblet of mead he was holding. Judging from the redness of his face, the dullness of his eyes, and the half-empty bottle on the table beside him, it was probably not the first.
“Audience not go so well, sir?” asked Maradith, gently. By way of reply, Kasimir raised a decidedly shaky hand and turned the thumb downwards. “Ah … The clothes do kind of suit you, though.” she ventured, encouragingly.
“Thank you,” he replied, his voice as cold and thick as a bucket of icy slush. “Care to join me, Delator … and Priest Lady? What’s she doing here, Maradith?”
“I was beginning to wonder,” said Saskia, contemptuously.
“She’s been very helpful, Lord Citizen,” said Maradith, diplomatically if not altogether accurately. Keep her feeling important though, that's the key thing. “We’re all on the same side.”
“I’ll take your word for that. Beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ll be lucky if I can find employment as a beggar after today’s debacle … May I take it your mission met with better fortune than mine?”
“That’ll be for you and the hierarch to judge, but I’ll say this: our Gloriana is not one of those types who doesn’t write her secrets down. The journal we found was a bit too securely hidden to just be some old address book, in my opinion.”
“Good show,” he congratulated her, lethargically. “You’ve copied it all down, then?”
“Err, no, Lord Citizen. We came straight to find you. I thought you might want to be there when I did, and get the information as quickly as possible.”
“Delator Maradith, tonight I’d struggle to read my own name in metre-high letters, never mind the blueprints for some ancient elvish fire weapon,” he slurred, while refilling his goblet. “This business will have to wait until tomorrow. Besides, I’m trying to enjoy the show. Failing, yes, but trying all the same.”
From what she had seen of the show, Maradith thought that an unnecessarily cynical remark. She did not comprehend the theme of the performance, and aside from the flute music it was a silent spectacle, but the dancing itself was beautiful: exuberant and flowing, with no artificial elegance. She had, on occasion, been assigned to bodyguard duty at the Odeonopolis when dignitaries had been attending the shows, and she thought that these Alvere dancers compared very favourably with their Lucinian equivalents, who were all formal routines and ostentatious costumes. Watching a modern Lucinian ballet was like watching a platoon of immaculately-drilled soldiers wearing far too much tulle, lace, and sequins … not that she could think of an appropriate amount of tulle, lace, and sequins to put on any given platoon. In contrast, the costumes of the Alvere dancers were as light and airy as the dancers themselves seemed to be: perhaps too airy for modern standards of decency, but the performers wore them with such innocent grace that there was no air of vulgarity nor lewdness in their routines.
Maybe I’ve had these folk all wrong, thought Maradith, rather guiltily. Maybe the only reason their young ones act up in the city is because we expect them to put up and shut up with being as miserable as the rest of us, or perhaps just a bit more, and be thankful for it. We wouldn’t even let them be themselves in their own country, but the Queen lets them. They’re free now, and they love her for it. Thank Alyssa I don’t have to be the one to take her away from them, at least if we’ve really got the information we need.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” she commented, although all she got by way of reply was an apathetic look from Kasimir and a disdainful scowl from Saskia. Fair enough, then. At least we Lucinians don’t have the monopoly on miserable bastards. “Err, what’s it all about, sir, if I might ask?”
Kasimir sighed, took another gulp of mead, and pointed a wobbly finger towards the stage before replying.
“Righty-ho, Delator. You see the buff chap in the leafy mask, the breechcloth, and not much else?”
“Kind of hard to miss him, sir.”
“That’s Ydril, the earth god. Now, see the twirly lady in the blue mask and the veils … not that she’s got many veils left,” he added, as the lady in question draped another one of her diaphanous silks over Ydril while wheeling past him.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s Azelia, goddess of the sky and of life. Every time one of her veils touches Ydril, he gives birth to a new creature, hence we have all of the boys and girls in the animal masks, frolicking backstage.” As if in confirmation, a new male dancer in a bull-shaped mask and a furred kilt leaped onto the stage, lowered his horns, and took a couple of playful charges at the backstage herd before falling into step with them.
“Kind of a creation story, then?” asked Maradith, interested. “Well that’s … Hold on. Why is Ydril the one giving birth? Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”
“A sound theological question,” said Kasimir. “Any comments, Priest Lady?”
“I wouldn’t expect an infidel … even a sober one to understand such mysteries,” replied Saskia, dripping scorn.
“Oh well. There’s you answer, Maradith. Any other questions?”
“Well, I was wondering about the creepy fellow in the black tights with the really ugly face, sir.”
“I thought he was sitting right next to us, drowning his sorrows,” said Saskia, with something not entirely unlike mirth. Maradith briefly wondered if she ought to rebuke her, but Kasimir just stared at her in hazy incredulity.
“Excuse me,” he asked, sounding almost alert. “My hearing’s probably going, but did you just make a joke?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to a drunkard,” she snapped back, as humourlessly as ever, although a little more awkwardly.
“That’s a relief,” said Kasimir, relaxing again. “I thought I’d fallen into another universe for a moment there, though I’m not sure how it could be any worse than this one. Where were we, Delator?”
“Fellow in the monster mask, sir.”
“Oh yes. That’s Evādon, the Corrupter. Lovely chap. Azelia’s brother. Bit pissed off right now, because he was really hoping to get it on with his sister, but she went for Ydril instead.”
“Ew. Can’t say I blame her.”
“Quite. It all starts to kick off now, if memory serves. Look,” he said, as Azelia, now naked apart from her mask, gave Ydril a quick parting kiss and flitted from the stage. “The happy couple have finished their affair. Ydril’s going to have a little nap now, while Azelia flies off to visit another of her lovers on another world. It’s one of those sort of relationships: nice and open. She’ll be back in ten thousand years, though. Wouldn’t want the poor man to oversleep.”
“Very charming allegory, sir,” commented Maradith, while Saskia sniffed derisively. On the stage, Ydril stretched out across the centre while Evādon, capering grotesquely at the very front, took a phial of green-tinted water out of his belt pouch, and brandished it at the audience. “This bit doesn’t look so friendly, mind.”
“Nothing gets past you, Delator,” deadpanned Kasimir, although under the circumstances she was happy to forgive him the sarcasm. Evādon, meanwhile, stalked up-stage with an exaggerated, sneaking gait, until he was leaning over the prostrate form of Ydril. “Yes indeed. Evādon, knowing that Ydril is pregnant with one more of Azelia’s offspring, decides to take his revenge. Here it comes,” announced Kasimir, as Evādon took the stopper from h
is bottle and emptied it over the sleeping earth-god. Ydril began to twist and shake as if in the grip of a nightmare, while his demonic poisoner sneaked off-stage with a triumphant swagger in his step. Ydril’s spasmodic movements became more violent, then suddenly stopped altogether, as he fell back onto the stage, completely still. “Just goes to prove the old adage, doesn’t it? Never fall asleep less than two metres away from a homicidally jealous primordial monster.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir. It’s curtains for poor old Ydril, then?”
“Alas, would that fate were that kind. I’m afraid not, Delator. ‘Poor old Ydril’ survives, but he presently gives birth to his final child, whom I am actually quite curious to … Not bad,” he commented, as a hideous new masquer took to the stage. Maradith did not share the sentiment, thinking the new arrival quite excessively bad, but after the initial shock she had to concede that the costume was at least ingeniously disturbing. It was made of the usual dark, skin-tight silk that was common to the Alvere, but the form and symmetry of the wearer were distorted by many tumour-like lumps. No doubt they were simply light, round objects like air bladders worn underneath the stretched spider-silk, but the illusion of deformity was so effective that Maradith could not even guess at the gender of the dancer. Their mask – a bloated, leering parody of a face – added to both the concealment and the vileness of the costume. This dancer did not move airily, but rather lurched clumsily yet rhythmically around the stage, scattering the terrified animal-masquers in all directions. None of them dared to approach it, and their fear was tragically justified as the deformed creature finally managed to catch hold of a passing bird-masquer, tore off her paper wings with savage fury, and left the poor, maimed thing to crawl off-stage while he lumbered away in search of fresh victims.
“That’s … less lovely,” said Maradith, although unable to tear her eyes away from the grotesque spectacle. “I mean … really good costume work, and all, but I kind of preferred it before, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, it gets better,” said Kasimir, sardonically. “You want to know the name of that loathsome, leprous despoiler of nature, Maradith? In the Alvere tongue it’s Lathnyn, which translates to ‘the human race.’ How about that, eh?”
“The human … ? Well that’s just charming, isn’t it?” said Maradith, indignantly, as Lathnyn continued to terrorise and brutalise its fellow-creatures to the accompaniment of the flute music, now shrill and mournful. “Oh, very diplomatic, I think not.”
“Yeah … Been a great day for that,” said Kasimir, sullenly, draining his goblet and immediately refilling it.
“Ydril’s back on his feet again,” pointed out Maradith, as the earth-god awoke to the scene of ongoing devastation. “He does not look happy.”
“That, Delator, is an undershtatement,” Kasimir just about managed to enunciate. “He is mosht unhappy with the new boy. So dishgusted, in fact, that he fliesh into a rage and threatens to deshtroy everything, thushly,” he explained, as Ydril seized a torch from a helpful stage-hand, used it to ignite several sparklers all around his mask, and with his new, flaming countenance, he loomed terrifyingly over the hideous, cowering Lathnyn and the surviving animals. So, we disgusting humans cause the end of all life, do we? thought Maradith, bitterly, a lot of her earlier goodwill vanishing. Well I suppose the Alvere have as much right to be as bigoted as I have, but I can’t say as I’ve ever been quite this extreme.
However, just as Ydril was raising his fists to strike and it was looking as if there could not possibly be a happy ending to this scene, Azelia twirled back onto the stage wearing a single veil. With a few soothing gestures, she calmed Ydril, then turned her attention to Lathnyn. Although the misshapen creature recoiled from her in fear, she did not shun it, but removed her veil and spread it over her youngest, corrupted child. The music paused, then in a sudden burst of activity, the Lathnyn-impersonator skilfully shed her entire costume and mask. Now altogether naked, she danced gracefully and joyously in the company of her divine parents and the animals, all now happy and reconciled to each other. This was with the obvious exception of Evādon the Corrupter, who raged and stomped with impotent pantomime fury backstage, but no doubt everyone felt that he had gotten off lightly.
“There you have it,” declared Kasimir, making a toast to the stage and slopping mead all over the floor in the process. “All’sh well that endsh well.”
“The goddess comes back … and she makes Lathnyn into an Alvere?” deduced Maradith, too astonished to be indignant any longer.
“She makes him as he was always intended to be,” explained Saskia, with stern solemnity. “Only a myth, of course. Were it literally true, your kind would not still be all over the place and our kind so few.”
“Yeah, try not to sound too overjoyed about it,” said Maradith, although she immediately felt awful, and much more deserving of Saskia’s next tongue-lashing:
“You expect us to rejoice in our impending extinction, do you? Of course you do, arrogant damn Lucinians … I expect you’d rather they performed your version of the creation story, in which your nameless god turns his back on his first children – the Alvere – for their blasphemy and decadence, and he creates his new offspring to be so much more industrious and progressive. Slashing and burning the ancient forests, spewing filth and poisons all over the land, waging endless wars over the pettiest of causes … Oh, such wonderful progress. Goddess knows how we ever lived without it.”
“Yeah, well … We don’t believe in all that stuff anymore, at any rate,” said Maradith, sheepishly. “We believe everyone’s equal … or we’re supposed to, anyway. It shouldn’t matter which of us came first, though I guess it makes you wonder. What do you think of it, Lord Citizen?”
“Who came firsht? A falshe dichotomy, Delator. We’re the thame … same specieth. Jusht racial differenshes, is all, though I suppothe in your plebeian mind thatsh as good as the Alvere being a different specieth,” he added, with a surprisingly haughty and hurtful tone for someone barely coherent. “You jusht ashk any Lyceum naturalisht, though. We’ve no more fund’mental differenshes with the Alvere than we have with the Axshumans or the Khurathans. Thientific fact.”
“If you say so,” replied Maradith, doubtfully and shamefully, “and you’re right, Lord Citizen: I’ve spent most of my life judging Alvere on sight without ever troubling myself to get to know them, which says a damn sight more about my ignorance than theirs. Having said that, though, the Axumans and the Khurassans don’t live for centuries, they do get sick as often as we do, and they can’t walk around in the freezing cold wearing nothing but thick cobwebs. No disrespect meant, but the Alvere can’t be the same species as us, surely? That makes no sense at all.”
“You may be arrogant, but you’re wiser than your oh-so clever master, I see,” said Saskia, wearing a smirk that did not warm her countenance in the slightest. “Even you see the truth of it: if the decline of the Alvere was by the gods’ hands, then why would they replace a better-designed race with a worse? If it was only by the hand of nature, like your prating scholars claim, then how does the weaker race come to prevail over the stronger? Yet such is manifestly the case. Still, the fools continue to delude themselves,” she added, with more sadness than scorn, as she gestured to the stage, where the dancers were making their final bows. “They continue to pretend that Azelia will one day finish her work and reconcile us all. I believed it too … years ago, though I cannot remember precisely how much time passed … how much land I saw taken violently from my people, how much beauty I saw raped by Lucinian progress, and how many friends I lost before it dawned on me that the gods are either dead, mad, or utterly indifferent. But I suppose we must allow the people to have hope. They have little enough else.”
“I kind of doubt your queen sees it that way. Is she a believer?”
“Her?” asked Saskia, sneeringly. “She thinks that she is God, if you want my opinion, but time will teach her differently. Do not look to her for any salvation.”
“I’ll say thish for her, mind: she’s good at the damning and the judgement partsh,” said Kasimir, filling his goblet and making another clumsy toast. “To Queen Gloriana, may her nazarlyk exshplode at an awkward moment.”
“Her what, sir?” asked Maradith, thinking the secretary had just picked that moment to be especially incoherent.
“I’ll exshplain later. A tad complexsh … and besides, we have company,” he added, as Gloriana’s chatelaine drifted over to their space. Pointedly ignoring the two women, she leaned over the mead-soaked table on her bare elbows and addressed herself directly to Kasimir.
“Did you enjoy my playing, Milord?”
“Exshquisite, dear lady,” he mumbled, throwing off another feeble toast, although fortunately he now had too little mead to spill.
“I just wanted to say … what you did today, apologising to Her Highness like that: it took such courage. We all thought so. You truly are our honoured guest. More if you wish it.” Kasimir managed a wan smile, but was evidently not feeling up to a verbal reply. “Why not come and see me after the festivities? I am sure you would find me more … stimulating company,” she added, throwing a decidedly nasty smile in Saskia’s direction, before tripping back to join the other revellers.
“Err …” began Maradith, watching the chatelaine’s departure in mild astonishment. “Did that lady just– ?”
“Looked very mush like it,” said Kasimir, draining the last dregs of mead.
“So, do you think you and she will– ?”
“No.”
“Oh … Well, you’re the ambassador, Lord Citizen. I suppose as long as she’s nobody so important that you need to worry about hurting her feelings–”
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