by J. B. Lucas
“I like you, Loreticus,” stated Ferran. He stood, the length of his legs and his spine drawing attention as they uncurled as easily as snakes. “But we know each other well enough to understand our options now that Marcan is back on the scene. Those men of mine who have been stamping around behind you will butcher you and your guard in the street. Marcan will be thrown into a ditch and his assassination blamed on you and whichever of your dirty, little spies refuses to join us. The alternative is to make this work. To create stability and strength in the kingdom. To find a way to regain the zealots’ territory.”
He hadn’t moved nearer to Loreticus, and remained behind Antron. There was no doubt, however, that the lazy, spoiled cousin was the real power in this group. Loreticus smiled, seeing at last why they had managed to get this far.
“Then let’s be upfront,” replied Loreticus. “What is it that you want, what are you offering and what is it that you recommend I do?”
“Are you going to start working for the generals?” asked Pello. His eyes, at the best of times slightly unfocussed on the physical world, were now scrutinising his master’s face for some response.
Loreticus brushed dust from the top of his desk and looked over at his assistant, whose desktop was the opposite of his own. Pello seemed to collect paper and he built short, precarious columns of inked sheets. There was a complex and somehow intimidating mixture in Pello, which brought together the guileless and the commanding. There were areas in which he excelled – logic, presumption, memory and finding the only true connection between random events – but his ability to predict human emotions was impoverished.
“No, Pello, we’ll not be joining the generals. They were useful tools but now they are becoming rather dangerous.”
“To us?”
“To the whole country, my boy,” Loreticus retorted. “Never worry about us. Always worry about the empire.”
“Doesn’t that presume a certain over-confidence about the results of other people’s action? Why are you so certain that Antron and Iskandar wouldn’t bring in a new stability? Perhaps the most obvious thing to do is to take control of our neighbours.”
“Maybe. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. You are too young to realise the cost of such wars, the violence that intoxicates the cities and towns of both countries as the other people struggle with the new rulers. We’ve been through that and I can tell you flatly that Antron does not have the brains to manage such a strategy.”
“Does Iskandar?”
“He does, but he doesn’t have the personality. Yet.” “Loreticus,” began Pello slowly. “What you’re implying is that we don’t have anyone.”
“We do. When we get Marcan back on the throne.” “Marcan is dead. I know that you’ve told the other people something else, but I saw it in Demetrian’s face and I heard it in the way you talk. I don’t understand why you’d want someone on the throne who isn’t legitimate.”
“Pello, he would be legitimate if Alba, myself and Demetrian said so.”
Pello didn’t look pleased. He watched as the boy pinched his mouth with his fingertips, looking at Loreticus and then away, then back.
“Because the new Marcan is better?” “Yes, because he’s better.”
“How?”
“Because we could manage him more closely. An emperor is the pinnacle of the court, not a ruler on his own. Take the complex history away, and you have a man who can broker the deal we need with the zealots.”
Loreticus reached over to his pipe, which he had cleaned needlessly three or four times already that morning. He began to clean it again, then instead packed it full of a leaf which would help him to relax.
“How much did you have anything to do with his disappearance in the first place?” asked Pello.
“Who?”
“The original Marcan.”
“I had nothing to do with that murderous plot,” stated Loreticus firmly and puffed on the flame in his pipe bowl. “Who gave the guards extra leave that night?” Pello enquired.
Loreticus stood up.
“Don’t follow this route, Pello. I am guilty of many things, and I just don’t want to revisit them as I explain life in court to you. There is no start and no end to this. We’re just a stretch of the stream and you need to learn not to try to find the ancient spring because it will certainly be far away. Or it might simply not exist.”
Chapter 20
Marcan was thinner and grizzlier, and he felt unprepared as he walked through her door. He had started to compare himself to that beaten man in the hut in Bistrantium, as if he were the perfection of the Emperor Marcan. Gone were the darkly charming eyelashes, the sharply edged nose, the thick arms. Instead, here stood a different soul in the same body. Skinnier, calmer, more perceptive. More dangerous.
For moments after he arrived in her antechamber, Alba was ill at ease, constantly changing her seat or her posture. She smoothed the material of her dress across her lap.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you angry with me?”
Marcan had taken the seat next to her, contrite and ungainly. His mouth and cheeks crinkled and pursed as thoughts came to him, reactions he couldn’t control. Remorse was the strongest emotion in his body, not guilt. “Well, you could call me an idiot, a bloody imbecile,” he replied. “That is what I want you to do.”
She laughed. “Of course it is. Then it’s resolved for you but just the start for me.” She got up, and he stood quickly next to her. “No. You’re not getting off the hook quite so easily.”
Alba walked a little and he followed, one step behind her.
“Is it true that you can’t remember anything?” “Nothing. Certain faces or things create strong emotions, but I have little else from before. My memories are coming back. Then some things need to be taught before I remember them as true. It’s a humbling experience.”
“Do you remember me?” she asked flatly.
“Yes. I think so. I think I saw your eyes once in someone else. They were only there for a moment, but it scared me with how little I knew. I see you now and I remember you.”
“Do you remember what we had?”
“I believe so. I don’t know how I could forget. What people seem not to realise is just how much effort it would take to pretend I’d forgotten everything that I have. It’s painful keeping up with knowing whether I knew something in the first place or not.” Marcan stopped her and regarded her again, seeing her nerves. She was nothing like the maid in the village. Loreticus had told him many times that he was the lucky one in this relationship. She was the brighter, the one who was remembered for the right reasons. “Was I really that great an idiot?”
A glance came from the corner of her eye, assessing his honesty. She shrugged.
Everything felt like a bitter compromise of her pride, regardless of his intentions. Had the shoe been on the other foot, he would have extracted himself from the situation and would have nursed his pride.
Marcan was here, in her garden, within touching distance of her, and her fondness radiated despite everything that he had done. Even though he was innocent, how could he explain to her why he had vanished for so long? He felt phony when he tried to explain his forgetfulness, and every time he opened his mouth he sounded like a liar. She turned away from him, and he blamed his ineptitude.
Marcan studied her back and saw that it was perfect; the curve, the skin, the memory of her scent. He wanted to hold her again, not from desire but for comfort. Below the guilt, he felt detached from his normal coarse self with her, as if his head were above water because of her. He thought that there could not be such a fool in the world who would risk losing Alba for a reckless night in someone else’s bed. Her head turned and he saw the curve of her lip. A heavy but small lip, which acted like a purse’s clasp to keep her voice and thoughts permanently locked away until she was ready to spend. How he envied that ability, when all he expected himself to do was babble.
“If the world were different,” he asse
rted flatly, “I would win your heart again. I would make your hopes real, I would make you happy again. If the world were different, I would hold you whenever you felt alone, whenever you had a bad dream, whenever you felt cold. We would live on a beautiful farm away from drama. We would read and plant, cook and laugh. If it were different, I would love you as you deserve to be loved.”
Her head had lifted as if to hear better and turned in his direction. Eyes, cool with old hurt and a broken promise.
She surveyed him as if he had just offered a deal in the market.
“But it’s not different, is it?” she said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t need to define it as ‘different’. You have the choice, Marcan, to change your life. You’ve had no better opportunity to do so than right now. If you wanted to leave the politics far behind, you could–we could. But the world isn’t different and none of your unprepared, schoolboy poetry will change that. Look, Marcan, let me be frank. Marriage didn’t answer my questions, but it certainly gave me somewhere to devote my efforts.”
“I was emperor once, and I shall be again. I know that I have an unfinished fate in this palace, on the throne. At this moment, the empire needs stronger and wiser leadership than it has. That was your father’s choice, and returning was my choice.”
“No, Marcan, don’t use a dead man’s intentions to support your own petty ambition. If you want to continue playing politics, then be candid enough to say so. My father wanted you to be powerful and peaceful, and he wanted me to be happy. Because of you, he would be frustrated in both.
“We could find a beautiful estate tomorrow with vineyards, but I doubt that you want that dream to become true anymore than you want us to have a traditional marriage. You must realise, Marcan, that I will always be the fields and the hills of our empire, and you’ll always dream of the sea beyond our borders.” She studied him, her lips clipped tightly shut again. She willed his face to be familiar, and now she saw again the generous family nose and the wily eyes. The lips that were thin one moment and swollen the next. He was nothing but a boy waiting for permission to go play.
“Come back tomorrow,” she said.
Marcan emerged through the thick door into the patchy sunlight. The height of the wall dwarfed his bulk and his hood threw his face into shadows. He strode across without seeming to look up, gliding between the other hooded pedestrians, and came to a stop in front of the table.
Gentlemen,” he said, almost as a statement rather than a greeting.
They both nodded. Loreticus took a deep breath.
“It seems that you are going to be leaving on another sabbatical,” he said. “Your three old duelling partners are about to get involved in your life again. They know you’ve been found and they’re asking for help from people they’d previously not dared to approach.”
Let’s be clear–I wasn’t exactly found. I came back to the capital on my own, remember? Do I need to know details of what the generals are up to?”
Loreticus let the man’s brovado sit. Marcan’s greatest ability had always been to rework history and believe the more convenient version. “I don’t know their exact plans. I do know that we should leave as soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” replied Marcan. “Not soon enough,” said Selban.
“That’s soon enough. I have an appointment tomorrow morning which I cannot miss.”
Chapter 21
The management of markets in the city was constantly the fuel of discussion and debates. The main stretch of stalls by the palace went on for at least two miles, taking up the centre of the city three days a week. It effectively blocked any urgent foot traffic except imperial business and even then, the guards had to rattle their shields or prodded with their spear tips to get through.
Some merchants and traders complained of the violence and crime. Buyers complained because the market had no set zones. If you needed to buy a basket or bread, you might have to walk the entire length of this bustling ecosystem to find a competitive price. Lucky merchants loved the layout, many with stands held for generations.
Marcan had been shocked the first time he arrived back in the capital and entered the tangle of stalls. The smells of meat on coals, baked bread and blood on stone from the butchers mixed with sweat, perfumes and fresh leather. Flies moved in swarms, orbiting the food stalls and annoying the hooded masses as they sloped past bare-faced traders.
Shouted promotions, bantering cries and mock insults flew between the regulars. The sombre brown cloaks of Marcan’s clique faded amongst the blues and the yellows of the merchant classes, the black cloaks of the visiting religious men and the white of the city officials. Soldiers in private or public pay loitered by the food stands. The trio weaved through disorganised lines of stalls, their pyramids of fruit or spices piled in the shade.
Selban led them under a domineering building, a covered part of the bazaar. He swung to one side, dragging the others without comment, and all three stood back in the shadow of a merchant selling piles of chains. They waited, breath silent, their strange postures encouraging the stall owner to ignore them. A small group of seemingly random pedestrians coalesced by one of the four exits, in eyesight of the trio. They stood a little too close for strangers and then one began to make a series of gestures with his hand, indicating to different figures within the group. The gaggle split, two retracing their steps back towards the palace whilst the other pair headed east in the direction of the wealthier neighbourhood.
Selban started again, leading them out of the nearest doorway and into the throng. Marcan saw murder in every turn of a hood, and people began to crowd him. The sun covered everyone in a sticky and odorous sweat, and flies and dust made an effort to blind everyone. Marcan felt nauseous, jostled, unable to find control or sanity within this melee. A pain throbbed in his upper spine, his stomach rose up through its tubes to his mouth and suddenly his limbs shuddered.
Loreticus snatched at Selban’s sleeve as soon as he caught sight of Marcan’s pallor. They darted between shoulders of passers-by, the older men taking the falling emperor and catapulting him through the crowd. Loreticus let Selban lead, keeping one hand firmly around Marcan’s bicep and the other on the hidden hilt of his knife. He knew that they were tiring–it was a long time since either he or Selban had been in active physical shape. Marcan was lurching, chin down as if drunk. Five, ten minutes they powered through the throng, Loreticus thinking only of each step, in time, forgetting all else but vigilance for the assassins. Then the people started thinning in concentration, the air noticeably cooled and the trees came back to prominence, casting cold shadows on to the thoroughfare. Selban slowed, to catch his breath, then yanked at Marcan and dragged the three of them onwards again, down an alley between the houses, the coolness of the dark mitigating the midday heat. He made a motion with his hand for Loreticus to remain with the emperor and he slunk out of the shadows as a figure came into sight. Selban stepped forward, as if to pass the man and jabbed frantically against the man’s leg, his arm straight. There was a pitiful yelp, and Selban rammed the figure away, out of sight of Loreticus in the alley.
Selban took up speed again, dragging the other two with him. Loreticus looked behind but saw no silhouettes following them. He turned to look forward and saw a long, thin stiletto blade in Selban’s hand, gleaming darkly with someone’s blood.
Selban turned, turned again and then stopped, looked behind them and knocked on a servants’ entrance with his boot. It opened and the trio vanished into the buttery smell of a kitchen. The room was warm from the morning’s baking but empty other than the giant who had let them in. He stood back, settling a thick baton against his hip and looked distantly over their heads.
Selban looked up and said, “This is my spare house. Normally rented but luckily free at the moment.” He looked vexed by his statement.
Loreticus peered up at him quizzically as they settled Marcan into a chair.
“Sorry,” said Selban, “money matters. Of course - more pressing prob
lems and all that.” He collected Marcan’s lolling chin in his hand and opened one of his eyes with a thumb. “Smelling salts,” he ordered the guard. “Cold water for the patient and some wine for the old men.”
The colossus moved off with a surprisingly quiet step, slipping into a corridor in a dim corner of the kitchen.
Marcan started to move, a grease exuding from his white cheeks.
“Grumbling gods, my eyes hurt,” he said, pressing his palms against his face.
“Are you sick?” asked Selban, touching the back of his neck like a doting mother. He realised his awkward gesture and drew away, wiping his hands on the proffered cloth from the returning guard. Loreticus was watching Selban rather than the slumped figure in the chair. Selban’s obsequious nonsense amused more than annoyed him. Eventually, the host caught his eye and he stood, his loose jowls coming to a quiet stop. He jutted out his chin in rebuke.
Loreticus made a gesture for patience and to leave Marcan alone. They went together to the long table, which bore hundreds of cutting scars from years of meal preparation.
“That isn’t a sickness,” said Loreticus under the sound of the wine spilling into his cup. “That was panic. I’ve seen it in young soldiers in a fight when they rapidly realise where they are.” He passed a full cup to Selban.
“Are we in trouble?” “I don’t know.”
“You’re making me feel like I’ve made a bad bet.” Loreticus drank deeply. His answer came a little too late, perhaps intentionally. “Of course not. He’s only just back.” And then he turned, looking directly at Selban. “I realised where I had seen that motif of Dess’s family before. There was an urn with her at the red fort. It looked rather new if my memory holds. Has she lost anyone recently?”
“Not that I remember,” replied Selban. “She and Iskandar were out of the city for four or five seasons not so long ago. He was leading the military campaign behind the river, then leading the army along the new borders. Perhaps it pertains to that.”
