by Chris Bunch
Nicias’s profiteers whined loudly to the Rule of Ten, but they were frightened to stand against Tenedos.
Again Tenedos called for the tribunal, and the Rule of Ten was forced to give in. They took the opportunity to let him hopefully hang himself, and named him head inquirer, supposing, I guess, he’d muck up matters and show his incompetence. How they imagined a man who’d spent as much time in public debate as he had would ruin things was beyond me.
Their second weapon, calling for the tribunal to meet in camera, was blunted; Tenedos announced the hearings would be held in the city’s greatest amphitheater. All would be welcome to come and see, and judge for themselves.
The Rule of Ten fumed but could do little. Their utter incompetence was very clear now — they still hadn’t been able to name replacements, but buried themselves in bickering, with Barthou determined to find acolytes even more toadying than the ones slain in the riots. Scopas, according to Tenedos, tried to stand up to Barthou, less, the seer thought, from patriotism than from the desire to make sure his own powers weren’t lessened.
But the date of the tribunal was set, less than a week distant. Two things of interest happened during that time.
• • •
Marán had returned to her home beside the river. One morning, I received a note, asking if I could attend her at a certain hour. Unusually, she asked me to leave my horse at the public stables a block away, and come to the rear of the estate, where there was a small back entrance. A servant would be waiting.
There was but one door in the huge blank expanse behind her mansion. I tapped on it, and the door swung open. A rather plain-faced woman I thought I’d seen serving tidbits at Marán’s salon told me to follow her. I saw, in front of the house, a long line of freight wagons, and heard men shouting.
The woman led me in a circuitous path through the gardens of the house, to a rear entrance, and through the kitchens. The scullery workers and cooks were very busy, too busy about their work to pay me the slightest mind. The woman bade me wait for a moment, peered through a door, then said, “Hurry,” and we scurried across a bare corridor and up curving back stairs to the solarium where Marán and I had danced to the secret music of our hearts.
Marán was the only one in the room, and the woman bowed once more and left. I started to embrace her, but something in the way she was standing said I should not.
“Come here,” she said. “Look down there.”
I gazed down on that line of wagons, piled high with books, tables, wardrobes, and other furniture. Teamsters busied themselves packing the vehicles, and there was a man supervising them. It took a moment, for I’d met him but once, then I recognized Marán’s husband, Count Hernad Lavedan.
“He returned four days ago, and attempted to enter. I had my servants drive him away, and ordered him to have all his possessions out of here by this day or else I would have them piled in the drive and burnt.
“The last is being loaded at this moment.”
I saw that Lavedan was holding a small case in his hand, and remembered the small ship model he’d been so proud of. He handed it to one driver, who put it carefully on the floor of the wagon. The other teamsters were climbing into the wagons, and I faintly heard the cracking of whips. The wagons snaked out of the driveway and drove away down the street.
Count Lavedan walked to his horse, stopped, and looked up at the house. For a long moment he stared, and I fancied he could see me. Ironically, I felt like flinching, even though I didn’t fear him. I suppose it was because I still felt it was his wife I was in love with, and I was a trespasser. Then he mounted, and rode off, not looking back.
Marán stared after him, until he turned a corner and was gone.
“Now I live alone,” she said, her tone flat I couldn’t see her face, but knew it held that strange expression of a puppy awaiting punishment.
After a while, I said, carefully, “You don’t have to — unless you wish it.”
She turned to me.
“Damastes, are you sure of what you are saying? If you move in here, you’ll be revealed as the cause of my husband’s shame. He knows I’m having an affair — he told me so — but I don’t think he knows with who yet.
“The Lavedans are a powerful family, and I know he’ll go after you with every device he can imagine, and try to destroy you and your career.
“Am I worth that?” Her expression suggested she didn’t think she was.
I could have answered reasonably, saying I’d already reached a far greater rank than I had dreamed of and was content. I could have said, after the acclaim the rabble showered on me, that I doubted if the count, a man who had cut and run during the crisis, would, at least for the near future, be a danger. Even later, what could he do at the worst, but have me reduced to my former rank of captain and sent to one of the Frontier regiments, my constant dream? I could have answered logically, but, instead I said, “In a soldier’s words, fuck him and the horse he rode in on.”
A tiny smile touched Marán’s lips, then vanished.
“You might make another, more dangerous enemy,” she went on. “I don’t know what my family will think of all this — I sent a long letter to Irrigon after I’d returned, not naming you, of course. I don’t know if it was received, and am about to compose another one, since I’ve had no reply.
“I’m sure they’ll feel the Agramónte name is disgraced by my behavior, and may well seek revenge on the evil cocksman who brought me down. Are you prepared for that? I must add the Agramóntes are vastly more powerful than the Lavedans have ever dreamed.”
I made no answer, but took her hand, and led her to the side of the room, where a thick rug lay. My eyes never left hers as my fingers undressed her, very slowly. I removed my own clothes. I kissed her lips gently, then bent farther and kissed her nipples. Her breath tickled the back of my neck.
I laid her down gently on the rug, knelt over her, and she brought her knees up and apart. I kissed her clitoris, and ran my tongue into her. She shuddered, and her hands moved in my long hair as it fell across her thighs. I moved upward, and my cock glided into her, as if of its own will. We moved together, both of us with our eyes open, slowly, the wave lifting us gently, then breaking and I felt her throbbing around me.
“I guess,” she said, after our breathing slowed, “that’s an answer, isn’t it?”
It was more than an answer, it was the beginning of a pact.
We lay comfortably together.
“I’m having carpenters and painters in tomorrow,” she said.
“There’ll be no traces left of him when they’re finished. Do you wish to have anything to say about the redecorating?”
“How can I? This is your house, not mine.”
“If you live here, my Damastes, it is ours.”
I kissed her. “Very well. I have but one request. We should have but a single bedroom. Make it this one, if you would, here where we danced. I love the sun on our bodies.”
“I was hoping for that,” she whispered. “I never understood why he never wanted to just sleep with me. To hold me. I didn’t understand that and … and some other things.” She shuddered and turned the subject slightly. “What of his office? What do you wish done about that?”
“I don’t care. Turn it into a nursery.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, then she giggled. “Là, sir, you do presume.”
“Do I?” I murmured, my cock suddenly rigid. I thrust hard, deep, and she gasped and her hands pulled at my back. I lifted her knees against my chest, and laid hard on her, my hands cupping her buttocks as we crashed together, both of us shouting aloud at the final moment.
• • •
The broadsheets may have been incompetent at reporting the actual events of Numantia unless the Rule of Ten dictated it, but they were most skilled at scandal.
I’d no sooner moved Lucan, Rabbit, and my few possessions into Marán’s house … our house, as I kept reminding myself, without effect, being in fact the poorest as well as the younges
t of all Numantia’s dominas, yet resident in a great mansion not of my building, when our romance was trumpeted across the city. Now all knew me as Damastes the Fair, Damastes the Seducer, Damastes the Despoiler of Innocent Brides and Cuckolder of the Rich.
I heard snickers in the large tent the Lancers’ officers used for a mess, which of course I could never acknowledge or challenge, even if I wished to. I know not who talked — possibly some sharp-eyed soldiers from the Helms, more likely a servant or two who wished some silver to add to his wages. I didn’t seek the scalawag out; everyone lusts after scandal, and if it hadn’t been leaked by one, it would have been by another.
Tenedos jested with me as well: “Damastes the Fair. Well, Domina, you certainly are amassing a reputation once more. Now the city’s lovelies have testimony that you have two long swords at your disposal.”
All of the lonelies and fame-seekers who’d importuned me before redoubled their efforts to woo me or at least have the pleasure of spending an afternoon with me, and now their suggestions and desires were most explicit.
“But don’t they realize I’m happy with the woman I’m with? Otherwise, why the scandal?”
“If they don’t mind a bit on the side, as most of them seem to suggest,” Tenedos said, “why should you? You’re just a man, aren’t you? Don’t all of us spend most of our time trying to fornicate with anything that moves?”
“I, sir, am no Nician.”
“It’s not a bad reputation to have,” he said thoughtfully, although I noticed that, as far as I knew, he remained faithful to Rasenna in those days.
But that was not the second event of interest.
• • •
The demon was no larger than my thumb, and looked more like a tiger-fanged seal with four arms than any conventional fiend. It hissed when I came near.
“What is he?” I wondered.
“A useful little fiend,” Tenedos said. “At the moment, he is about to be a miner for gold.”
“It looks like quite a task for him,” I said skeptically.
“He’ll seek but one coin,” Tenedos said. “I’ll use that to obtain others. That is, if there’s anything where I hope it to be.” He bent over the tiny creature and chanted:
“Hararch
Felag
Meelash
M’rur.”
The demon squeaked something in an equally incomprehensible language and dove into the water.
Tenedos had asked if I could take an hour to witness something I might find interesting, and bade me attend him at the dock where the Tovieti hideout had been.
The wooden hatch still yawned wide, exposing a dark, oily expanse of water that had filled the passage when Thak had shaken the earth.
When I arrived, the demon had already been summoned, and allowed outside his small pentagram. Beside that was a greater figure, an eight-pointed star almost the size of a freight wagon, with various-sized circles and symbols carved into the dock’s wooden timbers. An open trunk with Tenedos’s paraphernalia stood beside it, and, not far away, a squad of soldiers waited by a large wagon with eight bullocks hitched to it.
I asked what the hells was going on, and Tenedos said, “I have been considering our mutual embarrassment of wealth, my friend. Even though we keep company with the nobility, and our ladies are quite rich, neither you nor I has a pot to piss in nor a window to pour it out of.”
That was certainly true of myself, but I doubted Tenedos was as poor.
“I propose to rectify this matter … I hope. Examine my logic, if you will. The Tovieti were … are a secret order, are they not?”
“Obvious.”
“Have you ever heard of a secret order who didn’t have vast riches?”
“No … but I never saw any order’s wealth, either. Of course, the only such group I was ever around were the stranglers, so I can’t generalize. But isn’t anybody who’s secretive rumored to be rich? I remember an old hermit who lived in the hills behind one of my father’s farms. Everyone knew him to be fabulously wealthy, but when he died all they found was a scrap of silk, two brass coins, and a spoon.”
“Ah, but we know the Tovieti amass wealth,” Tenedos said.
“We have heard how they are encouraged to loot their victims and we saw great mounds of it in the cavern in Kait, did we not? Well, no such trove has been uncovered from the Nician stranglers, and I thought I’d take a few hours to show my greedy, mercenary self.”
I realized we were both babbling a little, neither of our eyes leaving the surface of the murky water where the demon had vanished.
“I propose to share any of my findings with you, Damastes, since you were the first to discover this lair.”
I was utterly astonished, and from the smile on Tenedos’s face I knew I’d had the reaction he’d expected.
“I … I thank you, sir. But you owe me nothing.”
“I owe you what I choose to owe you, sir. And by the way, this is in no way repayment of that debt, but rather my decision to simplify life for the both of us.”
I stammered something, more thanks, then, “Actually, Kutulu found its entrance first,” I managed. “Since you’re being so generous, shouldn’t he be included while we’re gleefully dividing up all this so-far-invisible gold? He’d be welcome to half of my probably nonexistent half.”
“I asked him,” Tenedos said, suddenly turning sober, “and he said he had little use for money. I fear I know what he wants, and it’s something no one, not even myself, will be able to grant. Ah … here’s my sprite now.”
The tiny monster surfaced, holding, clenched in its claw, a single gold coin!
“Come up, come up, my little friend,” Tenedos said, and the spirit sprang from the water onto the wooden decking. Tenedos said something in that tongue, and the demon answered.
“Very good, very good, so there’s much, much more down there, eh?” the wizard said. “Now, I am in your debt, which you may require the repayment of at any time.” He said more in the demon’s language, and it scuttled back into the pentangle, turned, spun, my eyes ached, and the pentangle was empty.
Tenedos was turning the coin in his fingers.
“Interesting. It’s not a Numantian coin, or anyway not one which I’ve ever seen. Suddenly my conscience is lightened, because I’d worried that perhaps we’d have to be honorable, and make repayment to anyone who’s heirs of the stranglers’ victims.
“I could see the circular: ‘Will the owner of a certain gold coin please form a line at the Palace of the Rule of Ten?’ Perhaps this gold isn’t even from Nician victims, but part of a general hoard Thak amassed. I doubt if we’ll ever know, nor shall I make close inquiry.
“Now, we shall see what we shall see.” He put the coin in the center of the star, and paced back and forth, muttering. “Woodruff for luck … pomegranate — prosperity … almond for the gods’ blessing … and the two real herbs, clover and basil.”
He took vials from his chest, and sprinkled herbs into the four braziers set around the star. He lit them, and fragrant fumes filled the air. I noted, not for the first time, that the tiny amount of spices used in a ceremony should not spread so widely, but they always did. It was if I were in a pomegranate grove, with almond trees nearby, and basil growing wild underfoot.
“This will be an interesting spell,” Tenedos said, and began chanting:
“Gather my friends
Join your brother.
You’re of the sun.
Rise now
Linger not.
Your tomb is dark
Your tomb is dank.
Join your brother
As I touched him
Let me touch you.
Rise now
Rise up.
The sun waits to caress you.”
Nothing happened for some moments. “If I believed in the possibility of resurrecting the dead,” Tenedos commented, “I’d worry about this spell working on the wrong matter. We did leave some corpses down there when we departed so hastily,
and I imagine they would have fondled any riches. I’d hate to have them shamble out of the slime down there. But it looks as my spirit was either mistaken or mischievous, since nothing — ”
Tenedos had spoken too soon, as the area above the star shimmered, and then gold cascaded out of nowhere. There were gems, gold bars, coins, statuettes. The pile grew and grew until it was nearly the height of a man. I heard shouts of amazement from the soldiers.
Tenedos stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“It would appear, my good Damastes,” he said, “while we are tied to one Wheel for the nature and length of our lives, we have just freed ourselves from another, the Wheel of worry for our daily bread.” He grinned, and I saw a flash of what the boy named Laish might have looked like before he chose to don the solemn robes of a sorcerer. “We’re rich!”
And so we were.
Tenedos betrayed me later in many ways, but I still must remember this day. He could have called up the gold and kept it and I would never have thought anything else should have been done.
But he willingly chose to share it, and again I’m reminded the seer was perhaps the most complex man ever to be given life by Irisu.
• • •
Nothing to match the tribunal had occurred in Nicias, at least not within memory. For the first time the commoners were given a glimpse of how their rulers thought and talked, and of the decisions they made.
Tenedos ran the proceedings as if he were the judge, not Barthou and the Rule of Ten. Aided by Kutulu’s wardens, he produced witness after witness, who described how the Tovieti had slowly entered Nicias, slipping into each layer of society as subtly as their stranglers slid the yellow silk cord around their victims’ necks, precisely laying their plans for the uprising.
I saw with disgust that most of the prisoners were in sad shape. It was more than evident that Kutulu’s interrogators had used more than words in their interrogations. I liked it little, but force is the custom with our wardens, which is foolish since a man under torture will confess to anything to make the pain stop.
What was not the custom was that all of them had been tortured, rich or poor. When the Marchioness Fenelon was put on the stand, she began what was obviously a rote confession, memorized at the coaching of her tormentors. She became more and more emotional, and suddenly broke.
