Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain

by Rebecca Bradley

  "Memorian," said the Primate Mycri, sitting forward rather menacingly in the armchair, "we have some matters to discuss before you depart."

  Angel regarded him benignly. "Twice six plus seven," he remarked.

  "What?"

  "Nineteen." His pen scratched at the paper.

  "Memorian, I said—"

  Angel frowned at the column of figures. "And three more." He added a scribble, looked up and smiled shyly at the, Primate. "Twenty-two," he announced.

  "Hopeless. Where's that damned woman?"

  "Damned woman?" Angel repeated wonderingly. "Damned woman?"

  "The damned woman," said the Primate through tight lips, "who usually speaks for you."

  "Not here." Angel's eyes drifted back to his accounts.

  The Primate glared at him with an intensity that would have withered a less worthy opponent; he growled, "There are times I wish I had not made that bargain with the Dowager Dazeene. This is one of them. Kesi, you try."

  The First Flamen moved into our field of view and bent over the table. "Angel," he said gently, "where is Mallinna?"

  Angel glanced at him and placed his pen carefully on the rack. "She's out," he said. He picked up the blotter.

  Kesi sighed patiently. "Yes, Angel, but where is she?"

  "Harbour?" Angel suggested, staring hard into space. He put the blotter back and picked up the pen. He squinted at the paper.

  "She's gone to the harbour?" Kesi persisted.

  Angel nodded vaguely. "Yes, harbour. Eight times eight palots?"

  "Sixty-four palots. Will she be back soon?"

  "Plus twenty."

  "Eighty-four," the Primate broke in shrilly. "Listen to me, Memorian—"

  "And six makes ninety-two."

  "Ninety. Eighty-four plus six makes ninety. Sainted Scion, Kesi, can't you do something?"

  Kesi glanced nervously aside at the Primate and reached across the table to lift the pen out of Angel's hand. "Please, Angel, the Most Revered One wants to talk with you for a little while. It will be all right."

  Angel's ancient face split in a brilliant smile. "Of course, Kesi Flamen." He folded his hands on the tabletop in front of him and looked attentive.

  It was fortunate for us that the First Flamen took charge at that point. My sides were already aching with suppressed mirth; more arithmetic might have finished me. Tig was crouching beside me in the same friable state. All that sobered me was the thought of how awkward life would become if the Pain chose one of these moments to attack.

  Strange as it may seem, this was the Primate's idea of a goodwill visit. He was just not very good at goodwill. He glowered at Angel from the armchair, his whiskered old goatface in profile to us, often hidden by the intervening bulk of the First Flamen. Kesi, in his anxious and timorous way, was in fact an effective medium, but he had obdurate material to work with on both sides. Slowly and painfully, the goodwill visit dragged on.

  But once the pleasantries had been dispensed with, and the administrative details to do with the expedition disposed of, the Primate's other reasons for visiting the archives became apparent. So did the Council's motive in throwing the treasury wide open to outfit the Benthonic Survey so lavishly. The Primate's questions were illuminating, far more illuminating than Angel's answers. It seemed that Mycri was not interested in Sher's drowned ruins simply for reasons of scholarship, nor to extend the boundaries of knowledge; he expected and demanded that Angel should search for Sherkin ruins lying in water shallow enough so they could be mined for salvage, for resources, or simply for treasure.

  He mentioned the chalcedony and lapis quarries in the northern hills of Sher as desirable subjects for research, also the tar-wells in the east; he stressed the value of locating the site of the legendary Stronghouse of the Warcourt, filled to bursting with gold and copper looted from Sher's slave nations, notably Gil; he spoke of the Northern Stronghouse in Krin, and the salvageable goods that might still be recovered from the grand warehouses of Kishti in the far south. Through Kesi, Angel happily agreed to everything.

  The next item on the agenda concerned the mysterious previous owners who—in the old deceiver's words—had abandoned the fine little ship which had been granted to the memorians. The Primate was guardedly anxious to know: had Angel discovered any clues to their identity in the effects taken from the ship? Had their story been confirmed? Angel brought forth the keywords Tigrallef had primed him with, Gilborn, Calloon, copper. The Primate seemed satisfied, as far as could be told from a face capable of two basic expressions, annoyed and very annoyed.

  The final item raised by the Primate was a shock, though it was intended to be a favour and an honour. With great pleasure, the First Flamen informed the First Memorian that the Most Revered Primate had detailed a Warrior-grade windcatcher, the Scion Cirallef, to escort the Benthonic Survey Expedition on its important journey around the Sherkin Sea. Even better—worse—a guardsman seconded from the Flamens' Corps would sail with the survey ship as the First Memorian's personal bodyguard, also as flagman in communications with the Cirallef. Indeed, he was already on his way to the harbour, to take up his guard duties that very afternoon. No seawolves or fishmen, no pirates or monsters of the deep were going to interfere with the safety of an enterprise blessed by the Most Revered Primate in Gil.

  What could Angel say? He said thank you.

  The Primate and his damned armchair and most of his retinue bustled out of the archives a few minutes later, but Tigrallef put a restraining hand on my arm. Someone had remained behind. We could see Angel, still seated at the table, staring in the direction of the door with bemusement in his face and a wary tension in the way he held his shoulders. His hand moved in the fingerspeech.

  Don't even breathe.

  Soft footsteps hissed across the carpet but the visitor remained outside our field of view. "First Memorian, accept my apologies for continuing to disturb you." The voice was smooth and hard-edged, also familiar. Its associations were not happy ones. "May I leave a message with you?" he went on. "I've long been meaning to visit you again."

  "She's not here," Angel mumbled.

  "I know where she is, First Memorian, I heard you tell the Most Revered Primate." The tone was hardening. "You know, I've never believed you to be as thick or as tonguebound as you make out. I'm sure you can converse like a perfectly normal person when you feel like it. Am I right?"

  Angel sank a little deeper into his chair. "Normal," he said thoughtfully.

  The unknown sighed. "Never mind," he said, "You'll be more open with me someday, I'm sure. Why, we'll be practically family soon! Keep that in mind, First Memorian."

  Angel said nothing, but by this point I had placed the visitor's voice: Lestri, Second Flamen, great-grandspawn and probable successor to the Primate. No redeeming features. From the sound of his feet I gathered he was already moving towards the door, but he stopped before opening it. "Don't forget to tell her I was here, First Memorian; remind her I'll be finishing my time by midwinter. She'll understand. And if your work in the Sherkin Sea is not finished by then, you will send her back on the Scion Cirallef. I hope that's clear."

  A sullen expression was working its way across Angel's face. Pointedly, he took his pen from the rack and looked down at the accounts in front of him. "Nineteen palots and fourteen," he muttered.

  "Thirty-three palots," came Lestri's voice. "Don't forget to tell her." The door closed softly behind him.

  Tigrallef and I emerged from our hiding place in a mood rather less than cheerful. Angel was no happier, nor was he in one of his rare loquacious moods. Showing every minute of his eighty-odd years, he threw down his pen and looked up at us dolefully. "Bad," he said.

  "Bad," Tig agreed, "but not fatal. We'll find some way to slip the windcatcher's chain, don't worry. At worst we'll need to do a few days of genuine surveying until we can lose them, but wait till you see how fast the Fifth can cover those waves. And once we've lost the windcatcher, we'll put the Primate's guardsman ashore on some
deserted island—"

  "Lestri," Angel interrupted.

  "So?"

  "Lestri Flamen was here."

  "We know, Angel. What about him?"

  Angel slumped in his chair. "He wants Mallinna."

  "What?" That was me being outraged.

  "What for?" That was my father being obtuse.

  Angel gave him an eloquent look.

  "Oh," said my father.

  "You can't be serious," I protested, "not Mallinna and the Second Flamen, that—that—"

  "Devious power-crazed conniver at abduction and murder?" Tig suggested, being helpful. "That truthless underhanded scribe-slayer and thief of ships?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "You're quite right, he wouldn't do at all for a scholar of Mallinna's fibre," Tig said decisively. "He used to cheat in his writing exercises, and once he defaced a scroll. I caught him with the pen in his hand."

  The Second Flamen's childish sins in the archives, twenty years past, did not distract me. I was seething with indignation. "The idea's obscene. She could never marry that—"

  "Not marriage." Angel shook his head sadly. "Not offered."

  "What?" That was me being outraged again, this time to sputtering point. "You don't mean—not marry her—you mean, as a—as a—"

  Tig patted my shoulder. "Calm down, Vero. How could he marry her? He's going to succeed the Primate someday. He needs to make a brilliant marriage, preferably royal, a Satheli peeress, a Plaviset imbash, a Frath's daughter from Miishel. He can't father a new dynasty on the child of a dead doxy and a nameless Storican, now can he? Whereas he can look anywhere he likes for a concubine."

  "I'll kill him."

  Tig looked at me curiously. "Perhaps you should consult with Mallinna first."

  Angel stood up so quickly that his chair toppled, and the clatter it made stopped me short. "Mallinna," he said, faltering and starting again with greater force, "Mallinna will do what is best." After this exhausting burst of loquacity, he looked lingeringly, regretfully and very significantly around him at the massed treasures of the archives. Then he sank his chin on to his chest and gazed with sorrow at the accounts on the table. Silently I righted his chair for him and helped him into it. Perhaps I should have thanked him for the warning, but the meaning I perceived behind his words was depressing me beyond speech.

  Mallinna will do what is best. Best for the tupping archives, was what he meant.

  Tigrallef was watching me too closely and with far too much interest. I tightened my mouth and wandered off to the window in silence, bleak with jealousy. Not of Lestri, the Primate's pet parth-asp; Mallinna might let him bed her and keep her someday for the good of the archives, just as my father had accepted the dubious blessing of marriage with the Princess Rinn, but it would not be because Mallinna fancied the little toad. She might even let him sire the customary brood of bastard brats on her—the Flamens tended to be relentlessly prolific with both wives and concubines, as if to make up for the statutory decade of celibacy—but I could not imagine her smiling at the oily smooth-voiced road-rubbish over breakfast. No, I could not be jealous of Lestri Flamen.

  I was jealous of a collection of paper, inscribed clay and associated materials. It appeared the archives was to Mallinna what the Pain was to me: a responsibility that was unsought but inescapable, a responsibility we had each been reared and shaped to assume. It was fortunate, I told myself bitterly, that I had decided very early on not to become too attached to her.

  My eyes moved blindly across the harbour. Slowly I became aware that I was staring at the clean lines and peculiar rigging of the Fifth, tiny with distance; more than that, I discerned a cluster of gnats moving shorewards along the jetty where the ship was moored. The object of my thoughts was on her way home, complete with workparty.

  I stalked past Angel and my father to the stacks, grabbed a book at random from the shelves, and took it into Angel's workroom to read. There was no point in torturing myself by talking with Mallinna, and it would be good to forget about lustworthy females altogether for a while. How unfortunate, then, that the book I chose at random should be the second and more explicit volume of the Erotic Mistifalia.

  Early next morning, in the cool hour just around dawn, two archival assistants in hooded cloaks accompanied Mallinna to the harbour with a surprisingly large wainload of personal luggage, mostly hers and the First Memorian's. These assistants were Tigrallef and myself, sporting two weeks' growth of beard in case anyone manning the gate bothered to look at us closely. Nobody did. Mallinna was well known. So, apparently, was her status as mistress-elect of the Second Flamen. We were waved through the gate without even having to show the identity seals that Mallinna's anonymous friends had acquired for us.

  The wain trundled through the peaceful streets at a strolling pace, Mallinna at the reins, Tigrallef next to her, while I walked morosely beside the horse's blinkered head. Banners flapped in green and gold along both sides of the remarkably clean street, ribbons in the same colours bedizened the house fronts and the shrubbery, streamed from the window sills, wound in elaborate patterns around the signposts and the trunks of the few trees. I wondered about it all, but I was too depressed by Mallinna's presence to ask her. From the time she got back to the archives the afternoon before, I had managed to address not more than a dozen words to her.

  But with Tigrallef around, I did not need to ask. "About six weeks," Mallinna was explaining behind me. "The banners go up before the Day of the Lady, which is next week—we'll miss it—and come down in the autumn, after the Day of the Scion."

  "What a waste. They'll fade long before then," Tigrallef said disapprovingly.

  Mallinna laughed. "There's a patrol of street cleaners who spend their nights changing faded banners for fresh ones. It's the greatest festival of the year—pilgrims have been pouring into Gil City from all over the Empire for the last week. By tomorrow there won't be an empty bed in any hostel closer than Malvi. Do you feel honoured, Lord Tigrallef?"

  "Not especially," he answered, with a hollowness in his voice that caused me to snap my head around to check on him. I hoped the pale glimmer on his face was from the sunrise. The beard paradoxically made him look even younger than usual. Otherwise he appeared about normal, but I was not convinced. I plodded along grimly beside the horse, straining my ears for any note of danger in his voice, the subtlest whisper of the Pain.

  Mallinna had not noticed. "A few more miracles than usual this year, though," she went on. She chuckled. "You've been sighted every night this week, Lord Tigrallef, somewhere or other in the city—did you know, last night you were seen in a cloud of fire hovering over the Great Garden?"

  "Oh?" said Tig. He sounded uncomfortable.

  "Reflections off the clouds, I suppose, my lord. These omens and wonders spring up like mushrooms around festival time. Ludicrous, isn't it? Two nights ago, a hundred people swear you walked into a tavern on the Thread-of-Gold, spilled somebody's drink, and walked right out again. When they hurried out to the street to look for you, you were gone."

  "Well, well," said Tig.

  "You were described as ten feet tall, though, and lighted up like a giant glowfly. You had to bend double to get through the door."

  "How amusing." His voice was not quite right.

  Mallinna shook the reins. "And the Great Head at the harbour is reported to have spoken again."

  "Really?"

  "So it's said. It lectured briefly on botany to a watchman on the midnight round. The watchman was very surprised."

  "I should imagine so."

  I glanced back again. Tig was hunched stiffly on the box of the wain with a starched smile on his face. Mallinna, I saw at once, was not innocently passing the time with amusing snippets of rumour. She knew exactly what she was doing. She had the look of a cat following a trail of spilled cream—thirsty, eager, and full of hope that she'd find the jug itself just around the next turn. She was working her way up to a more dangerous question.

  Out it came.
"I was just wondering, Lord Tigrallef—did you and the Harashil have anything to do with those appearances?"

  Tig did not hesitate for a moment. "I have not set foot outside the archives for the last two weeks," he answered firmly and truthfully; but the timbre I was listening for was present in his voice, and the strength of attack it portended was not the sort of thing I wanted to deal with in a public roadway.

  "Tig! Mallinna!" I broke in with desperate cheerfulness, "look at that sunrise! Wonderful colours! The painting palette of the gods!"

  Silence behind me.

  "I don't think so," Mallinna said, surprised.

  "And look at the sea! Like a pond! Not a ripple!"

  "Is something the matter with you, Vero?" my father asked. "It's a pallid and unexciting sunrise, and the sea is choppy outside the breakwater."

  "I think he's just trying to change the subject," Mallinna said with her lethal directness. "Why don't you want me to ask Lord Tigrallef about the miracles, Vero?"

  "He's afraid it will upset me," my father answered on my behalf, "and bring on an attack of the Pain."

  "Is he always so protective of you?"

  "Yes, bless him, and with good reason."

  "But were you upset, Lord Tigrallef?"

  "I was getting close. Events like those miracles, as you call them, have been in my dreams every night this week, and all the while my body has been snoring in the archives. And it wasn't a lecture on botany, by the way, it was Curallef the Versifier's Enumeration of the Flowers."

  "Much the same thing," Mallinna said judiciously. "I can understand the watchman's mistake. Most of the verses of Curallef's middle period aren't so much poetry as natural history."

  "I think that's grossly overstated. He may not have returned to the classic themes until after Treefall, but he always kept to the classic forms."

  "You're forgetting the Verses of Intent," said Mallinna.