The Heart of the Mirage (2 page)

He interrupted. ‘If a desert land inhabited by shabby, ill-trained peasants can make a mockery of our legions, how long will it be before other subject nations—such as Assoria—sharpen their spears? We must make an example of these Kardi insurgents.’

‘Make a
mockery
of our legions? A few peasant rebels?’ It all seemed rather unlikely. I recalled the Exaltarch’s bitterness when he had spoken of Kardiastan. Rathrox’s reason for involving me might be valid as far as it went, but it wasn’t all; there was something I was not being told. ‘And what about the Brotherhood?’

‘There is no Brotherhood in Kardiastan.’

I stared at him in amazement. ‘
No
Brotherhood?’ I’d never had much to do directly with either the vassal states or the provinces, but every Brother knew we were responsible for security throughout the Exaltarchy, not just in Tyrans. It had never occurred to me there was any place where Tyr ruled that was free from the mandibles of the Brotherhood. ‘Why ever not?’

‘You can’t have a Brotherhood where there are no informants, where no one will spy on his neighbour, where no one can be bought, or cowed, or blackmailed.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘A point the public elsewhere tends to overlook, Ligea. They hate us, but it is they themselves who supply us with our power over them. Apparently the point is not overlooked in
Kardiastan. They are…different. A strange people we seem to have been unable to fathom in even twenty-five years of occupation.’ The cold, speculative look of the mantis staring at its prey. ‘Every single agent of the Brotherhood I have sent there has been dead within a year.’

I was chilled by a depth of fear I had not felt in years. Chilled—and stirred by the enticing whisper of danger. I said, ‘You think I might have a better chance because I was born a Kardi, because I speak the language, because I could pass for one of them. Because I once
was
one of them.’

‘Perhaps.’

His feelings rasped my consciousness, as tangible as grit in the eye. I thought,
Goddess! How he distrusts me…
Even after all the years of my service, he could still wonder about my loyalty to him.

We stood in the middle of the marbled hall, both motionless, both wary. Nearby, the life of the palace went on. An anxious-eyed slave scurried past carrying a basket of fruit; a small contingent of imperial guards marched by, their sandals squeaking on the highly polished floor. They escorted a royal courtesan, as thickly painted as a backstreet whore, on her way to the Exaltarch’s quarters. She giggled when she caught sight of me, her lack of manners as blatant as the trail of perfume she left behind. Neither Rathrox nor I took any notice.

I asked, ‘So I am to be sent to a land said to be so hellish it’s akin to the realm of the dead? Without anyone asking if that was what I wished.’

‘It is unwise to disobey the order of the Exaltarch.’

‘It was your idea.’

‘It is only a temporary thing. You will soon be back in Tyrans.’

I stared at him, hearing the lie. ‘You don’t intend me ever to return,’ I said flatly. ‘You think I will be too invaluable there.’
You wish to be rid of me…

‘Those in service to the Exaltarchy must serve where they are of greatest value.’

I interrupted. ‘And that is not the only reason which motivates you, Magister Officii. I think you have come to fear me. I am too good at my job. It worries you that you cannot lie to me, that I know the feelings seething behind that expressionless face of yours. So now it comes to this: a posting without hope of recall. What is it they say of Kardiastan?
A land so dry the dust is in the wind instead of underfoot and the only water is in one’s tears
.’ I gave a bitter smile. ‘Is that how my service to you, to the Brotherhood, to the Exaltarchy, is to be repaid? You wouldn’t do this, Magister Rathrox, if Gayed were alive. My father would never have allowed it.’ It was five years since his death, yet I felt the pang of loss still.

‘General Gayed put his Exaltarch and his nation before all else, as you must. The Exaltarchy has given you all that you own, all that you are. Now you must pay the reckoning.’ He shrugged. ‘Supply the information that will quell the Exaltarch’s rebellious subjects in Kardiastan and he will not forget you. Even now your salary is to be raised to six thousand sestus a year, while you remain in Kardiastan, and you go as a Legata, with the equivalent status of a Legatus.’

My eyes widened. A Legatus was someone with a special mission and they carried much of the status of the official who sent them. If my papers were signed by Rathrox, my power in Kardiastan would be extensive. It was telling that I’d never heard of the feminine form of the word. Such power was not normally given to a woman. ‘You must be very afraid of me to have
obtained those terms, Magister Officii. They are generous indeed.
If
I can stay alive, of course. Nonetheless, I think I would have preferred to resign the Brotherhood, had you given me the option.’

‘No one leaves the Brotherhood,’ he said, the words as curt as his tone. ‘Not ever. You know that. Besides, what would you do without the intrigue, without the power, without the challenge, Legata Ligea? The Brotherhood is your drug; you cannot survive without it. You would never make a pampered wife, and what other alternative is there for you?’ His voice softened a little. ‘I’m twice your age, Ligea. One day I’ll no longer head the Brotherhood. Take comfort from that thought.’

I hated knowing how well he read me. I turned abruptly, leaving him, and made my way to the palace entrance. The sentries swung open the massive carved doors, then sprang to attention and saluted as I passed. I’d identified myself as one of the Brotherhood on the way in, and they knew it paid to be respectful to a compeer.

Out once more in the dazzling sun, I looked around in relief. I’d never liked needless luxury and the extravagance of the Exaltarch’s palace was stifling, especially when coupled with the emotions still warring inside me even now: anger, bitterness, pride, frustration. I thought I knew now why the Exaltarch had been amused. The idea of sending a Kardi to deal with Kardi insurgents was not without irony, and when the Kardi in question was a woman raised as a highborn Tyranian—oh yes, the situation was amusing. Unless you were the one being banished to a desert hell. The muscles of my stomach tightened in rebellion.

Tyr, capital and hub of Tyrans—of the whole Exaltarchy—was my home; the only home I
remembered. It was the centre of the civilised world, the place where everything began, where all decisions that counted were made, where things happened. How could I bear to leave it?

I stood at the top of the stairs leading down from the palace doors and looked out over the Forum Publicum, the heart of Tyr. It was the hour before siesta and the Forum, a mile in length, was crowded in spite of the midday heat. The usual mixed throng: slaves and ambling highborn, merchants and workstained artisans, strolling scholars debating a theory. Fountains jetted spray into the air in the centre of the marbled concourse and water channels bordered the edges. They even warmed the water when the weather turned cold…

Damn you, Rathrox Ligatan. I am to lose all of this.

I thrust back the rising bubble of anger and made instead a conscious effort to absorb all I could see, as if by carving a bas-relief of images into my memory, I could ensure that at some time in the future I would be able to recall them to assuage the emptiness of loss.

On the far side of the square, the massive Hall of Justice brooded, its white columns catching the sun. White-robed lawyers were just emerging from a morning session with their lictors, arms full of ribboned scrolls, hurrying behind. Only two days before, I’d stood in the Praetor’s chambers there to give evidence in camera at a treason trial; the accused had led a rebellion against tax collection in one of the outliers of Tyrans. Two hundred people had died as a result of his ill-considered revolt. He’d been condemned, as he deserved, and I’d felt the satisfaction of a job well done. Our court system, where even a common man could argue his case, was one of the finest achievements of the Exaltarchy.

The next building along was the Public Library, separated from the Public Baths by the tree-lined Marketwalk. If I entered the quietness of the library reading room, doubtless I’d find Crispin the poet or Valetian the historian working on their latest creations; if I decided to bathe in the building opposite instead, I would be bound to meet my childhood friends, most of them now idle young matrons more inclined to eye the legionnaire officers in the massage room than to spend their time at the baths swimming, as I did. If I wandered down the Marketwalk, I could buy fruit from Altan, or ice from the Alps, or a talking bird from Pythia to the west. Jasper or jade, silk or sackcloth, peppercorns or pheasant livers: there was a saying in Tyr that the stalls of Marketwalk sold everything worth buying in the known world.

On my right, across the square opposite the baths, was the arched entrance of the Advisory Council Chambers, used as gaming rooms ever since the Exaltarch had dismissed his recalcitrant Councillors, never to recall them; and beyond that was the paveway to the Desert-Season Theatre, where two weeks previously I’d seen Merius immortalise himself with his powerful portrayal of the manipulative Cestuous, whose tainted love for his sister Caprice had almost doomed the fledgling Tyr, and whose name was now synonymous with the despised perversion of incest.

I shifted my gaze to the Academy of Learning on my left, where, as a citizen of Tyrans, I had often enjoyed the privilege of listening to the scholars’ debates. It had been an Academy scholar who’d been in charge of my education from my seventh anniversary day until I’d turned sixteen, a privilege not often granted to girls. I sometimes wondered why my father, a man much given to talking disparagingly of ‘a woman’s place’, had allowed—no,
had
encouraged
—my formal education. ‘You have a mind, Ligea,’ he was fond of saying. ‘Use it. Rely on it. Your emotions are those of a woman: foolish, unreliable and ruled from the heart. Ignore such stupidities. The heart is the foundation of ill-made decisions; the mind is where victories are forged.’ I smiled to myself: I could hear him still, stern tones deliberately softening when he spoke to me. Others may have feared General Gayed, the man they called the Winter Leopard after his snow-season victories quelling the fractious tribes of the Forests of Valur to the northwest, but I never did. To me he may have been firm and intolerant of nonsense, but he was always kind.

I lingered on the steps, remembering him. The pang of grief I felt was a weakness, inappropriate for a compeer, but I didn’t care. I decided I would head for his tomb at the other end of the Forum and pay homage to his memory. A long walk, although one I wanted to make. Masochism, in a way, I suppose; not because of the destination, but because all I passed en route would remind me of what I was about to miss. But I wanted those memories. I wanted to absorb the essence of these symbols of Tyr. For they weren’t just buildings; they were also the commerce, the learning, the law, the sport, the religion, the arts: they were all the things Tyr stood for. We were a cultured, refined people who respected both the human intellect and the human body.

And Kardiastan? In Kardiastan, the soil was as barren as its cultural heritage.

How would I be able to bear it?

Damn you, Rathrox.

The Temple of the Forum Publicum was built to honour the deity Melete. Other public buildings were
imposing, graceful even, but the temple was surely one of the loveliest structures ever built by mankind. The roof floated above lines of graceful caryatids, each supposedly a likeness of the Goddess in a different mood. The pediments and fascia were decorated with coloured friezes and statuary, the work of several centuries of the Exaltarchy’s finest artists. Marbled columns glowed rosy in both the dawn light and the last rays of dusk or, as now, gleamed white with painful intensity in the midday sun.

General Gayed’s tomb was not in the temple proper, but along the pilgrim’s way leading up to the main steps. There was nothing ornate about it; I had insisted on that. A flat oblong of marble marked his burial spot. A life-sized statue on a plinth engraved with his name was the only adornment. Not a man who liked frivolities, he would have approved of the tomb’s austerity. I knelt and prayed there, although my prayer was unorthodox. I spoke to him, not to any god, thanking him for the compassion that had prompted him to take a war orphan under his wing in the heat of battle, for all the kindnesses he had extended to me as his adopted daughter. I blessed him, as I had so often done before. Without him, I would have been a Kardi barbarian, and the thought was the subject of a recurring nightmare I’d had in my younger years. I’d had a narrow escape, and it was all due to him.

After I left Gayed’s tomb, I walked on up into the public concourse of the Meletian Temple.

Melete was the city’s patroness, the Goddess of Wisdom, Contemplation and Introspection. I always thought her a strange deity for a city ruling all the lands around the Sea of Iss by virtue of armed power. There were over a hundred deities in the pantheon, many more appropriate: Ocrastes, the many-headed
God of War, for example. Or Selede, Goddess of Cunning. But no, our founders had chosen Melete. People said the Goddess was the reason Tyr became a centre of learning and scholarship; some even maintained the caryatids wept each time Tyr conquered another nation with bloodshed rather than negotiation. I was not given to such fancies, myself.

I bought some perfumed oil from the stalls littering the forecourt of the temple and went on into the sanctum. I gave the oil to the priestess on duty, and she used it to fill one of the votary lamps for me. I lit it and knelt in prayer before the statue of Melete, and then, as countless thousands before me, kissed the cold marble of her feet. My prayers were for the success of my endeavours, and even more for my own safety. I’d long ago decided it was not much use being a hero if you were also dead.

Yet even as I prayed, I wondered if it were any use. The statue appeared lifeless, and so very manmade. A man’s vision of the perfect woman: mother, whore, temptress. If deities were so powerful, why did they not visit us in person, as legend told us they had once done? The old tales were full of stories of people who spoke to the gods, but I’d never met anyone who admitted he’d seen a deity face to face. I had a sneaking suspicion the gods had vanished. Or that they were man’s invention in the first place. Sacrilege, I knew, for the temple told us we were all the creation of the gods, not the other way around…