by Iain Banks
"An assassin prepared to risk the wrath of.my dear concubines would almost deserve to succeed," UrLeyn said, eyes twinkling as he pulled at his short grey moustache. "Providence knows their affection is rough enough at times." He reached out and tapped the younger man's elbow with one bunched fist. "Eh?"
"Indeed, sir. Still, I think the General could=
"Ah! The rest of the gang," UrLeyn said, clapping his hands as the double doors at the far end of the hall opened to admit a number of men — all clad similarly to the General — and a surrounding flock of aides in military uniforms, frock-coated clerks and assorted other helpers. "YetAmidous!" the Protector cried, walking quickly forward to greet the big, rough-faced man leading the group, shaking his hand and clapping his back. He greeted all of the other noble generals by name, then caught sight of his brother. "RuLeuin! Back from the Thrown Isles! Is all well?" He wrapped his arms round the taller, thicker-set man, who smiled slowly as he nodded and said, "Yes, sir." Then the Protector saw his son and bent down to lift him into his arms. "And Lattens! My favourite boy! You finished your studies!"
"Yes, Father!" the boy said. He was dressed like a little soldier, and flourished a wooden sword.
"Good! You can come and help us decide what to do about our rebellious barons in the marches!"
"Just for a while, brother," RuLeuin said. "This is a treat. His tutor needs him back on the bell."
"Ample time for Lattens to make all the difference to our plans," UrLeyn said, sitting the child on the map table.
Clerks and scribes scuttled over to the great wooden map lattice on one wall, fighting to be first. "Never mind!" the General called after them. "Here's the map!" he shouted, as his brother and fellow generals clustered round the great table. "Somebody already…" the General began, looking round the table for DeWar, then shaking his head and returning his attention to the map.
Behind him, hidden from the Protector by the taller men gathered about him but never more than a sword length away, his chief bodyguard stood, arms casually crossed, hands resting on the pommels of his most obvious weapons, unnoticed and almost unseen, gaze sweeping the surrounding crowd.
"Once there was a great Emperor who was much feared throughout what was then all the known world, save for the outer wastelands which nobody with any sense bothered about and where only savages lived. The Emperor had no equals and no rivals. His own realm covered the better part of the world and all the kings of all the rest of the world bowed down before him and offered him generous tribute. His power was absolute and he had come to fear nothing except death, which comes eventually for all men, even Emperors.
"He determined to try and cheat death too-by building a monumental palace so great, so magnificent, so spell-bindingly sumptuous that Death itself — which was believed to come for those of royal birth in the shape of a great fiery bird visible only to the dying — would be tempted to stay in the great monument and dwell there and not return to the depths of the sky with the Emperor clutched in its talons of flame.
"Accordingly the Emperor caused a great monumental palace to be built on an island in the centre of a great circular lake on the edge of the plains and the ocean, some way from his capital city. The palace was fashioned in the shape of a mighty conical tower half a hundred storeys tall. It was filled with every imaginable luxury and treasure the empire and kingdoms could provide, all secured deep within the furthest reaches of the monument, where they would be hidden from the common thief yet visible to the fiery bird when it came for the Emperor.
"There too were placed magical statues of all the Emperor's favourites, wives and concubines, all guaranteed by his holiest holy men to come alive when the Emperor died and the great bird of fire came to take him.
"The chief architect of the palace was a man called Munnosh who was renowned throughout the world as the greatest builder there had ever been, and it was his skill and cunning that made the whole great project possible. For this reason the Emperor showered Munnosh with riches, favours and concubines. But Munnosh was ten years younger than the Emperor, and as the Emperor grew old and the great monument neared completion, he knew that Munnosh would outlive him, and might speak, or be made to speak of how and where the great cache of riches had been placed within the palace, once the Emperor had died and was living there with the great bird of fire and the magically alive statues. Munnosh might even have time to complete a still greater monument for the next King who ascended to the Imperial throne and became Emperor.
"With this in mind, the Emperor waited until the great mausoleum was all but finished and then had Munnosh lured to the very deepest level of the vast edifice, and while the architect waited in a small chamber deep underground for what he had been promised would be a great surprise, he was walled in by the Imperial guards, who closed off all that part of the lowest level.
"The Emperor had his courtiers tell Munnosh's family that the architect had been killed when a great block of stone fell on him while he was inspecting the building, and they grieved loudly and terribly.
"But the Emperor had misjudged the cunning and wariness of the architect, who had long suspected something just like this might happen. Accordingly, he had had constructed a hidden passage from the lowest cellars of the great monumental palace to the outside. When Munnosh realised he had been immured, he uncovered the hidden passage and made his way to the ground above, where he waited until the night and then stole away on one of the workers" boats, gliding across the circular lake.
"When he returned to his home his wife, who thought she was a widow, and his children, who thought they were without a father, at first thought he was a ghost, and shrank from him in fear. Eventually he persuaded them that he was alive, and that they should accompany him into exile, away from the Empire. The whole family made their escape to a distant Kingdom where the King had need of a great builder to oversee the construction of fortifications to keep out the savages of the wastelands, and where everybody either did not know who this great architect was, or pretended not to for the sake of the fortifications and the safety of the Kingdom.
"However, the Emperor heard that a great architect was at work in this distant Kingdom, and, through various rumours and reports, came to suspect that this master builder was indeed Munnosh. The Emperor, who was by now very frail and elderly and near death, ordered the secret opening-up of the great mausoleum's lower levels. This was done, and of course Munnosh was not there, and the secret passage-way was discovered.
"The Emperor ordered the King to send his master builder to the Imperial capital. The King at first refused, asking for more time because the fortifications were not ready yet and the savages of the wasteland were proving more tenacious and better organised than had been anticipated, but the Emperor, still nearer to death now, insisted, and eventually the King gave in and with great reluctance sent the architect Munnosh to the capital. The architect's family treated his departure as they had the false news that he had been killed, those many years ago.
"The Emperor at this time was so close to dying that he spent almost all his time in the great death-defying palace Munnosh had constructed for him, and it was there that Munnosh was taken.
"When the Emperor saw Munnosh, and knew that it was his old chief architect, he cried out, 'Munnosh, treacherous Munnosh! Why did you desert me and your greatest creation?
"'Because you had me walled up within it and left to die, my Emperor, Munnosh replied.
"'It was done only to assure the safety of your Emperor and to preserve your own good name, the old tyrant told Munnosh. 'You ought to have accepted what was done and let your family mourn you decently and in peace. Instead you led them into benighted exile and only ensured that now they will have to mourn you a second time.
"When the Emperor said this, Munnosh fell to his knees and began to weep and to plead for forgiveness from the Emperor. The Emperor held out one thin, shaking hand and smiled and said, 'But that need not concern you, because I have sent my finest assassins to seek out y
our wife and your children and your grandchildren, to kill them all before they can learn of your disgrace and death.
"At this Munnosh, who had concealed a mason's store chisel beneath his robes, leapt forward and tried to strike the Emperor down, aiming the chisel straight at the old man's throat.
"Instead Munnosh was struck down, before his blow could fall, by the Emperor's chief bodyguard, who never left his master's side. The man who had once been Imperial chief architect landed dead at his Emperor's feet, head severed by a single terrible blow from the bodyguard's sword.
"But the chief bodyguard was so full of shame that Munnosh had come so close to the Emperor with a weapon, and also so appalled at the cruelty which the Emperor intended to visit on the innocent family of the architect — which was but the grain that breaks the bridge, for he had witnessed a lifetime's cruelty from the old tyrant — that he killed the Emperor and then himself, with another two swinging blows from his mighty sword, before anybody else could move to stop him.
"The Emperor got his wish then, dying within the great palatial mausoleum he had built. Whether he succeeded in cheating death or not we cannot know, but it is unlikely, as the Empire fell apart very soon after his death and the vast monument he caused to be constructed at such crippling expense to his empire was looted utterly within the year and fell quickly into disrepair, so that now it is used only as a ready source of dressed stone for the city of Haspide, which was founded a few centuries later on the same island, in what is now called Crater Lake, in the Kingdom of Haspidus."
"What a sad tale! But what happened to the family of Munnosh?" asked the lady Perrund. The lady Perrund had once been the first concubine of the Protector.
She remained a prized partner of the General's household and one whom he was still known to visit on occasion.
The bodyguard DeWar shrugged. "We don't know," he told her. "The Empire fell, the Kings fought amongst themselves, the barbarians invaded from all sides, fire fell from the sky and a dark age resulted that lasted many hundreds of years. Little historical detail survived the fall of the lesser kingdoms."
"But we may hope that the assassins heard their Emperor was dead and so did not carry out their mission, may we not? Or that they were caught up in the chaos of the Empire's collapse and had to look to their own safety. Would that not be likely?"
DeWar looked into the eyes of the lady Perrund and smiled. "Perfectly possible, my lady."
"Good," she said, crossing one arm across the other and settling back to lean over the game board again. "That is what I shall choose to believe, then. Now we can restart our game. It was my move, I believe."
DeWar smiled as he watched Perrund put one clenched fist to her mouth. Her gaze, beneath long fair lashes, flicked this way and that across the game board, coming to rest on pieces for a few moments, then sweeping away again.
She wore the long, plain red day-gown of the senior ladies of the court, one of the few fashions the Protectorate had inherited from the earlier Kingdom, which the Protector and his fellow generals had overthrown in the war of succession. It was a given within the court that Perrund's seniority was founded more upon the intensity of her earlier service to the Protector UrLeyn than on her physical age, a reputation — that of most favoured concubine to a man who had not yet chosen a wife — she was still fiercely proud of.
There.was another reason for her promotion to such seniority, and the mark of that was the second badge she wore, the sling — also red — that supported her withered left arm.
Perrund, anybody in the court would tell you, had given more of herself in the service of her beloved General than any other of his women, sacrificing the use of a limb to protect him from an assassin's blade and indeed very nearly losing her life altogether, for the same cut that had severed muscles and tendons and broken bone had opened an artery as well, and she had come close to bleeding to death even as UrLeyn had been hurried away from the melee by his guards and the assassin had been overpowered and disarmed.
The withered arm was her only blemish, even if it was a terrible one. Otherwise she was as tall and fair as any fairy-tale princess, and the younger women of the harem, who saw her naked in the baths, inspected her golden-brown skin in vain for the more obvious signs of encroaching age. Her face was broad — too broad, she thought, and so framed it carefully in her long blonde hair to make it look slimmer when she did not wear a head-dress, and chose head-dresses which performed the same function when she was to be seen in public. Her nose was slim and her mouth at first plain until she smiled, which she often did.
Her pupils were gold flecked with blue and her eyes were large and open and somehow innocent. They could quickly look hurt at insults and when she was told tales of cruelty and pain, but such expressions were like summer storms — over quickly and immediately replaced by a prevailing, temperate brightness. She seemed to take an almost childish delight in life in general which was never far from being embodied in the sparkle of those eyes, and people who thought they knew about such things said they believed she was the only person in the court whose force of gaze could match that of the Protector himself.
"There," she said composedly, moving a piece across the board into DeWar's territory and then sitting back. Her good hand massaged the withered one, which lay in the red sling, motionless and unresponding. DeWar thought it looked like the hand of a sickly child, it was so pale and thin and the skin so nearly translucent. He knew that she still experienced pain from the disabled limb, three years after the initial injury, and that she did not always realise when her good hand stroked and kneaded the sick one, as it did now. He saw this without looking at it, his gaze held by hers as she leaned further back into the couch's cushions, which were as plump, red and numerous as berries on a winter bush.
They sat in the visiting chamber of the outer harem, where on special occasions close relatives of the concubines were sometimes allowed to visit them. DeWar, once again waiting on UrLeyn while the General spent a while with the harem's most recent young recruits, had for some time been granted the singular dispensation of being allowed to enter the visiting chamber whenever the Protector was in the harem. This meant that DeWar was a little closer to UrLeyn than the General would ideally have preferred his chief bodyguard to be during such interludes, and much further away than DeWar felt comfortable with.
DeWar knew the sort of jokes that circulated the Court about him. It was said that his dream was to be so close to his master at all times that he could wipe the General's backside in the toilet and his prick in the harem-alcove. Another was that he secretly desired to be a woman, so that when the General wanted sex he need look no further than his faithful bodyguard, and no other bodily contact need be risked.
Whether Stike, the harem's chief eunuch, had heard that particular rumour was moot. Certainly he watched the bodyguard with what appeared to be great and professional suspicion. The chief eunuch sat massively in his pulpit at one end of the long chamber, which was lit from above by three porcelain light-domes. The chamber's walls were entirely covered with thickly pendulous swathes of ornately woven brocade, while further loops and bowls of fabric hung suspended from the roof spaces between the domes, ruffling in the breeze from the ceiling louvres. The chief eunuch Stike was dressed in great folds of white and his vast waist was girdled with the gold and silver key-chains of his office. He occasionally spared a glance for the few other veiled girls who had chosen the visiting chamber for their giggled conversations and petulant games of card and board, but he concentrated on the only man in the room and his game with the damaged concubine Perrund.
DeWar studied the board. "Ah-ha," he said. His Emperor piece was threatened, or certainly would be in another move or two. Perrund gave a dainty snort, and DeWar looked up to see his opponent's good hand held up flat against her mouth, painted finger-nails golden against her lips and an expression of innocence in her wide eyes.
"What?" she asked.
"You know what," he said, smiling. "You're afte
r my Emperor."
"DeWar," she said, tutting. "You mean I'm after your Protector."
"Hmm," he said, putting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his bunched fists. Officially the Emperor was called the Protector piece now, after the dissolution of the old Empire and fall of the last King of Tassasen. New sets of the game of "Monarch's Dispute" sold in Tassasen these days came in boxes which, to those who could read, proclaimed the game they contained to be "Leader's Dispute', and held revised pieces: a Protector instead of an Emperor, Generals in place of Kings, Colonels instead of Dukes, and Captains where before there had been Barons. Many people, either fearful of the new regime or simply wishing to show their allegiance to it, had thrown out their old sets of the game along with their portraits of the King. It seemed that only in the Palace of Vorifyr itself were people more relaxed.
DeWar lost himself studying the position of the pieces for a few moments. Then he heard Perrund make another noise, and looked up again to see her shaking her head at him, eyes glittering.
Now it was his turn to say, "What?"
"Oh, DeWar," she said. "I have heard people in the Court say you are the most cunning person they know in it, and thank Providence that you are so devoted to the General, because if you were a man of independent ambition they would fear you."
DeWar shrugged. "Really? I suppose I ought to feel flattered, but-"
"And yet you are so easy to play at Dispute," Perrund said, laughing.
"Am I?"
"Yes, and for the most obvious reason. You do too much to protect your Protector piece. You sacrifice everything to keep it free from threat." She nodded at the board. "Look. You are thinking about blocking my Mounted piece with your eastern General, leaving it open to my Tower after we've exchanged Caravels on the left flank. Well, aren't you?"
DeWar frowned deeply, staring at the board. He felt his face flush. He looked up again at those golden, mocking eyes. "Yes. So I am transparent, is that it?"
