This Forsaken Earth (25 page)

“Eben, sir.” She clutched the wine decanter to her bosom as though it were a protective talisman. Rol stood up and cast aside his gutted stick. He pried the decanter from her warm fingers and looked her up and down dispassionately. She was a short, black-haired girl with fine green eyes and plump breasts that peered over the rim of her bodice. Rol took one of those breasts in his hand, staring down in her face. Her mouth opened, and he bent, kissed it shut again, his teeth biting down on her lips. His other hand seized her rump through the folds of her dress and kneaded it. She made piteous little squeaking sounds. He grasped her white throat, his tanned skin dark as leather about her windpipe. She moaned in fear, tears gathering thickly at the corners of her eyes.

“Get out,” he said, and slapped her on the buttocks. “Send in your damned valet.” He drank back a tall, bulbous goblet of red wine and felt it warm the black passageways of his innards. Ah, Psellos, he thought with bitter amusement, would you not be proud of me now.

“Sir, the Queen has requested that your wardrobe be refreshed in a manner fitting your station.” This from a tall, thin, whey-faced fellow whose nose and Adam’s apple vied for prominence in an otherwise forgettable face.

The
Queen.
I had almost forgotten.

“Indeed; well, show me your wares.” Rol sat down and began wolfing chunks of roast chicken, wedging slices of ham between slabs of bread and spreading all liberally with mustard. He was starved; he did not know if it was night or day outside, but his stomach had not eaten its fill in longer than he could remember. He bit into the food as though it had somehow slighted him, and washed it down with throat-aching swallows of wine. Damn you, he was thinking. Damn you. Damn ambition and the stupidity of people’s pride and the fucked-up fantasies of all damaged souls.

The valet stood perspiring, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a fisherman’s float. Rol finally wiped his mouth and rose from the wreckage of the table. His head swam, and his stomach performed a greasy, interminable roll. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Court clothes, stuff that looked well enough in a warm hall but which would be sodden rags within half a day if worn out in the elements. Rol picked through it in disgust. A shirt with a ruffled front as proud as the breast of a pouting pigeon. A wide scarlet sash more suited to opera than practical wear. He could not bring himself to pick anything else, but donned once more his travel-worn breeches and filthy boots, which had been piled beside the bed.

“What is this room?” he asked the valet, hauling on his damp footwear. He knew now it was not Rowen’s chamber. It had been touchingly absurd of him to even hope it.

“We’re in the East Wing, on the upper side, sir,” the valet said diffidently. “The Guest Wing.”

“Where are my friends?”

“Sir?”

“I should have been brought here with three others, one of them a halftroll.”

The valet’s brow cleared. “They have rooms in the Old Wing, near the ground.” He gave a significant look which passed Rol by. He simply nodded, and stamped his toes into the end of his boots. “And where is my sword?”

“I know of no sword, sir. You had best broach that matter with the commander of the Guard. It was his men who brought you to this room. You had no weapon on you that I could see.”

Rol smiled grimly. “I see. Thank you…”

“Harkenn, sir. Abel Harkenn. I am to be your bodyservant.”

“There’s a first for everything, I suppose. Right now, Harkenn, I want you to find me a bucket, because I believe breakfast is about to reappear.”

Rol had never walked the corridors of a palace before. Upon leaving his room, feeling a little hollow but no longer queasy, he was joined without invitation or fanfare by two sturdy fellows in well-made black livery that was trimmed in scarlet. They bore long poniards and a pair of pistols each, and as he caught their eye they nodded like men who have kept an appointment.

“What’s this, an escort?”

“Orders of the Queen herself, sir.”

“Why? To keep me from getting lost?”

They stared at him woodenly. Rol rubbed his forehead. “All right, then. Tell me, where can I find this Gideon Mirkady?”

“The commander of the Guard?”

“The very man. Take me to him, if you please.”

The two soldiers looked at each other. One shrugged fractionally. Preceded by one and followed by another, Rol made his way through a series of narrow and bewildering passageways, all built out of well-plastered and painted stone and lit by swarms of oil-fed lamps which flickered above head height. Passing them, there came in motley succession a traffic of maids, manservants, palace guards, who acknowledged Rol’s escorts with minute nods, no more, and much grander men and women who made walking into a processional and would have looked down their noses at Rol had they been tall enough to do so.

He realized that with his mismatched court finery and ragamuffin traveling clothes, he looked like nothing so much as a gypsy thief, and that thought gave him a little pleasure as he winked at noblemen and leered at their daughters. More than anything else at this moment, he would have liked one of them to take offense and seek redress in some time-honored manner that would result in the spilling of blood. He would never fit in here, and did not ever intend to, so he would play the part of boor. Why not? Much of his education and inclination lay that way.

Below all of these merriments there burned the blackened embers of a dream he had not even admitted to having, all these years. Whatever it was—and he did not care to examine it too closely—he knew that Rowen did not share it. He knew now that none of this would end happily.

Down they went, descending marble and granite stairways on which coaches could have passed without touching axles. The palace, or this wing of it, opened out. It seemed to have been built as a series of vast reception rooms interconnected by a bewildering series of passages and corridors and serviced by kitchens, storerooms, and servants’ quarters all tucked neatly in convenient but largely unseen orbits about these huge central spaces. Once, Rol found his way to a long avenue of windows as tall as Gallico, and he looked out of them upon a city that was not the greatest in the world, but which had certainly been the epicenter of the world’s greatest power. The winter-dark beyond the glass defied his efforts to decipher what time of day it was, and he had to ask one of his escorting soldiers. The man looked at him strangely.

“It’s late afternoon, sir.”

He had been unconscious longer than he had thought. This Mirkady packed a shrewd blow. And now he had Fleam, it seemed. Well, that would have to change.

The business of the palace seemed little affected by the fact that Myconn was under siege, and if anything it seemed to be mustering a surfeit of revelry. Rol passed packed ballrooms where dancing and masquerades were in full swing, and legions of waiters stood by with silver trays amid the hoot of woodwind and whine of strings. Admittedly, there seemed little enough upon those trays. More liquor than food, it seemed. Perhaps that added to the frenzied nature of the gaiety. He passed one gorgeously caparisoned masked couple fornicating in a less than discreet alcove, the lady’s skirts hitched up high over her silken thighs, the man pumping into her with clenched teeth, as though he were performing a noble but necessary chore. Rol turned to one of his taciturn escorts. “How many levels are there to this palace?”

“I don’t know, sir. Many. More than I have ever counted.”

“Is it all in one block?”

“The main part is, sir. It’s like a tower, hex-shaped. It rises high over the river, just by the Palace Bridge.”

“And who built it? How old is it?”

But the man clamped his mouth shut at a glare from his companion. After that they strode along in not-so-companionable silence, except for grunts from the soldiers to indicate the way. Rol’s head began to swim again, and he had to halt and be sick in the pot of some tall standing plant. Not much left to come up but bile. He fingered the black bump on the side of his head and staggered on.

Lower down, the stonework was more massive, and obviously older. Whereas the upper levels had been built for the pleasures of the nobility, it seemed that these parts were more akin to a fortress. And they had seen recent fighting. Rol could see blackened spots in the walls where shells had impacted, holes with the dull gray fragments of lead bullets still embedded. He guessed they dated from Rowen’s seizure of the palace from its former owner. There were more men in the livery of the guard here also, dour-faced bastards for the most part; they reminded him somehow of Miriam’s musketeers, obviously wedded to their duty and missing a sense of humor.

“Here,” his own particular dour-faced bastard said, pointing to tall double-doors of black bronze-bound oak. These, too, were pitted with bullet-holes, but the evidence of battle seemed merely to make them seem more indestructible. The wood of their making reminded Rol of the
Revenant
’s hull, and he realized that they were not oak, after all, but black Kassic teak, the same as that which comprised his ship’s timbers. He patted the doors affectionately as he passed through them. It was like the glimpse of an old friend in a strange place.

The legendary arrogance of the Bionari was reflected in their architecture. They were drawn to high, vaulted ceilings and broad pillars, platforms and daises that sought to embody authority in the relative heights of men’s eyes. Thus it was that Rol found Gideon Mirkady staring down at him from behind a long black desk of teak which looked almost as old as the door outside. This was set on a four-foot dais, and coming and going from its black height were dozens of guardsmen with messages and the like. Rol wondered how many were here to stride self-importantly about the palace, and how many were out in the snow and shrapnel of the city defenses, facing Bar Asfal’s army.

Mirkady was a good-looking fellow with economically padded bones and black ringleted hair which fell past his collar. He stared down at Rol and raised one eyebrow with just the right mixture of boredom and disdain.

“We meet again. Cortishane, is it not? I trust your quarters are adequate.”

“You have something of mine,” Rol said, and in the corners of the grand lobby about the dais, guardsmen paused discreetly to listen.

“What might that be?”

“A sword. I’ll have it back, thank you.”

Mirkady blinked. With a flash of his old training, Rol realized that he was weighing how far he could go. This man had been Rowen’s lover, and obviously was besotted by her. The arrival of a brother, a rival for her affections and her patronage, had goaded him into a single act of viciousness, and he was wondering if he had already overplayed his hand.

“By all means,” Mirkady said frostily. “A mere oversight. It should have been sent on to your quarters.” He leaned aside and spoke to a guardsman standing next to him with a pregnant bundle of papers. The man nodded, hurried off.

Rol stepped up to the dais; he did not appreciate being looked down on by a man like Mirkady. “How goes the siege?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected.”

“I’d have thought these popinjays of yours would be better employed out on the walls than running about in here conveying paperwork.”

Mirkady flushed, but give him credit, he managed a civil smile through the hatred in his eyes.

“We all do stints on the walls, but the business of a great city must go on, even in times such as these.”

Rol looked around the imposing chamber. It was hung with meaningless heraldic tapestries and antique weapons. The place was unheated, and cold as a tomb. The only windows were louvered openings high up on one wall, and through their slits he could see the dark blue of a winter’s afternoon nosing down into dusk. Oil lamps burned on the dais and in sockets on the walls, but by their smell, they were fueled more by tallow than anything else. Perhaps the siege was having an effect, after all.

“How far is it to the walls from here?”

“Just under a league. You’re quite safe, I assure you.” Rol and Gideon smiled at each other. A moment of complete understanding, almost a kind of respect. Here, Rol knew, was a man he would likely one day have to kill. He did not even question why.

The guardsman came back with Fleam, still in her scabbard. He handed the scimitar to Rol and wiped his hands down his breeches after, as though he had been touching something unclean. Some tense tightness about Rol’s chest loosened as he buckled the weapon at his waist. The sword felt warm against his thigh, and he patted it as a man might the head of a faithful hound. Mirkady’s eyes blazed up in brief, unalloyed interest.

“That’s a fine weapon.”

Rol did not reply, but turned and stepped down from the dais, walking away. He could almost smell the anger he left in his wake, and it made him smile.

Fourteen

PICTURES IN THE DARK

THE QUARTERS ASSIGNED TO GALLICO, CREED, AND GIFFON
looked to have been those of palace servants at one time. They were warm enough, situated next to the kitchens, but lightless, poky places. The trio hardly cared, being content to have eaten their fill along with the kitchen-staff, regale goggle-eyed maids with tall tales of derring-do, and then stretch out like logs to sleep without dream or fear of cockcrow. When Rol found them, they were back at the long refectory table in the kitchen; the immense cooking hearths to their rear were banked down to sulking coals, and they were supping on heavily watered, steaming oatmeal leavened with salt and a little barley spirit. Around them the night shift was turning up for duty, yawning and stretching and stirring the fires and consulting lists.