Gil Trilogy 3: Lady Pain

by Rebecca Bradley

  Tigrallef ignored them. A party of officials with green chestbands, waiting by the galley's gold-draped gangway, were the next to fall to their knees when they saw him coming. He ignored them too, rather coldly. The band faltered to a discordant halt. By the time the rest of us caught up, the two gold-robed figures were just limping together down the gangway, an elderly woman with a lovely calm face, a stately white-haired man, strangely familiar in his features, dribbling out of one corner of his beautiful vacant smile. The old woman held her arms out—Shree leapt to embrace her, she greeted Angel and Mallinna with a gesture signifying long friendship, smiled at Calla and Katla, stared at me with a kind of pleased wonder; but she was silent until Tigrallef permitted her to put her arms around him. Then she said, "Didn't I tell you, Tig, that we'd see each other again? Arko," she added, "say hello to your brother."

  It was obviously not the best time for an undiluted, full-strength reunion. Tigrallef kissed my grandmother, the Dowager Dazeene, gravely on the forehead—she took a good look at his eyes and her face sobered without losing any of its serenity. "Come, darling, we're going to ride in the pretty carriage," she said, taking my poor uncle Arkolef by the hand. She smiled at me but said nothing more. We moved in a tight group up the ramp that led to the corniche, unopposed but somewhat hampered by worshippers falling in inconvenient clusters in our path.

  "The Scion! The Blessed Scion has returned!"

  Tigrallef caught my eye on him and looked me full in the face. His expression chilled me. "They're not important," he said.

  At the top of the ramp was an extraordinary and appropriate vehicle, an ornate open carriage shaped like a grandiose rowboat on wheels, pulled by four sorrel horses in gilded harness. A young Flamen who seemed to be the intended driver backed away, awestruck. By the time we had settled Angel, my uncle Arkolef and the Dowager Dazeene on the carriage's silk-lined seats and piled in ourselves, ten of us in a space intended for six, Tigrallef was in the driver's box and ready to go. Ahead of us, straight and clear, stretched the grand avenue to the Gilgard Gate.

  The crowds on the corniche had been just a foretaste of the multitudes lining the route. All nations of the Primate's empire were represented—tens of thousands of the faithful in an excellent mood, held back by a double rank of dun tunics. They had come from all over, these multitudes, to honour the Dowager and the Priest-King on the Divine Scion's sacred day—and when the Divine Scion himself passed by, the response was predictably loud. The troopers were as jubilant as the rest, but they fortunately held their lines.

  In the front rank of silken seats, Calla and the Dowager Dazeene talked intently with their heads close together. My uncle Arkolef whimpered beside me at the tumult of the crowd and clutched my hand tightly. Angel was trying to disappear into the upholstery, the rest of us were trying to look as if we rode in religious processions all the time. Tigrallef looked nowhere but directly ahead.

  The Gilgard Gate, festooned and embellished, was already wide open. Tigrallef drove straight through it, past the astonished faces of a double guard of honour in the uniforms of the Flamens' Corps. Nobody tried to stop us. I saw that a massive dais had been erected on the portico overlooking the great flagged steppeland of the forecourt, draped in Scion's gold and Flamens' green, forested with banners in the same colours. A green-carpeted grand stairway led up to it, every tread flanked with black-tunicked guardsmen, gold banner-staffs in their hands, green plumes tossing in their helmets—a stirring sight. On the dais, three green figures sat in state on three low thrones: the Primate in the centre, Kesi First Flamen on the right, and the dreaded Lestri on the left. Directly behind them were three higher thrones, empty and glittering: one each for the Dowager and the Priest-King, the third and highest to be left empty in token of the Divine Scion's eventual return. Well, they had him now.

  The Primate was not the only person present whom I would rather have avoided. Though the forecourt was packed solid with people, one face near the gate caught my eye as we rode very slowly past him. He was standing in the front rank, a large man and richly dressed, made even more conspicuous by a high-piled crimson-cloth headdress pinned with a bar of white brilliants. His amazement when he saw me was the sort that everyone else was reserving for my father; then, as our eyes locked, his face grew as red as his headdress with rage. It took me a moment to place him, probably because I'd never seen him dressed as a prosperous burgher before—to be honest, the fisherman's garb had suited him better. But there was no doubt about the face, and I did not need to count his remaining fingers to be sure who he was. I leaned across several bodies to catch Mallinna's attention.

  "Malso's here—the Truant."

  "I saw him too," she shot back. "He—wait. That's odd . . ."

  "What?"

  "They're shutting the gate. They don't usually—"

  "That's true, they don't," said the Dowager Dazeene, twisting around in the seat ahead of us. She had a high clear voice with overtones of my father's. "Mallinna, my dear, perhaps you'd remember from past Days of the Scion: are there usually so many black tunics on the dais?"

  "Never half as many, Lady," said Mallinna after a moment. "And there are more than usual in the forecourt as well, and in the towers. I didn't know the Flamens' Corps had so many men in the whole empire."

  "Yes, well. And is it my imagination, or are the crowds outside the gate even noisier than before?"

  We listened. She was probably right, though any noise from outside the Gilgard gate had serious competition from inside the forecourt.

  "Where's Shree? Shree—such a wonder to see you with a grizzled beard, my dear, and streaks of white in your mane, you who became as my third son—Shree, does that sound to you like the beginning of a battle outside the gate? What do the instincts of your father's people tell you?"

  "They tell me yes, it sounds like a battle; and they add that more trouble is about five minutes away, but it may not be the kind of trouble you're thinking of, Lady Dazeene."

  "I'm thinking of several kinds of trouble—I saw my son Tigrallef's eyes. I suppose he'll be wanting to go down into the maze under the rock next. Verolef," she addressed me for the first time, "you will look after him down there, won't you, my dear? I imagine you've been looking after him all your life, but now is the time when he needs you the most."

  Maze under the rock? That was news to me, and sounded highly unlikely. If I had any prediction at all about Tig's forthcoming behaviour, it was that he'd stand up on the dais, pronounce all present to be not-Naar vermin, and proceed to raise the cruel empire of the Great Nameless Last. Either that or let loose a flaming cataclysm, which in some ways would be faster, cleaner and less painful. As for looking after him, a godman who could boil the seas dry if ever he felt like it could in theory look after himself. But I made a gesture of willing agreement.

  "Good man. And you, Katlefiya—what a lovely child you are—you must help your father as well, and look after your poor uncle. Don't let go of his hand, and remember he's frightened of the dark."

  "Yes, ma'am," said Katla.

  "Be careful if there are any stairs—he's got one wooden leg."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Do you swear to it?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Tigrallef was just pulling back on the reins as the Dowager Dazeene extracted these mystifying promises from us. At that moment, I thought my poor old granna's cargo must have shifted. A few minutes later, however, I remembered what my father used to say: that his mother Dazeene could be right about the damnedest things.

  The Primate was already halfway down the stairs as the carriage pulled up at the bottom. His back was bent in the shape of a fish-hook, and he was on his feet only, because Kesi and Lestri were supporting him on either side. Nobody had yet made to stop us, not even the great army of black tunics ornamenting the grand stairway like rows of wooden statues. The forecourt was in uproar, and so was the stand filled with foreign dignitaries, where a raddled woman with a crown of blue and silver twined in her thick bl
ue hair was contributing more than her share to the overall tumult. The Primate seemed divided between annoyance at her and rage at my father.

  "Somebody shut that damned woman up! As for you, young man," as my father stopped a few stairs below him to look around the forecourt with an abstracted air, "I don't know how you escaped the Gilgard, but it's fatally stupid of you to come back."

  Tig was frowning over his shoulder at the closed gateway. "We're not interested, Most Revered Primate, we're on our way to see someone important."

  The Primate was too outraged to speak for a few moments. By now the able-bodied among us had unloaded the others feverishly from the carriage; I tucked my arm under the Dowager's elbow and began to help her up the stairs. The Primate glared from her to my father to the raddled woman in the stand, who was now trying to climb along the shoulders of the Plaviset delegation; he recovered his voice and snarled at the captain of the black tunics, hovering at the top of the stairs.

  "You know who this is, Abro. He's not the Scion—he's that lad you told me threw himself out the window, and we'll need to have a talk about that later, won't we? Kill him."

  Captain Abro looked uncertain but did not move. Kesi, distressed, whispered in the Primate's ear.

  "There's already a riot, you fool. Dazeene, I'm shocked at you for taking up with this ragtag. Think how confusing it is for Arko."

  My grandmother chuckled and pressed my arm; the Primate seemed to shed about twenty years in his fury. He sputtered a moment, then turned to shake his fist at the woman still screeching among the foreign dignitaries.

  "By Oballef, won't somebody cut that woman's throat? Listen to me, you witless doxy," he shouted at her in his still-powerful voice, a shock from that withered body, "this is not your long-lost husband. Understand? Listen to me, all of you! This man is an impostor—he is not the Divine Scion, may he soon return, he's the son of an exiled coppermonger and a woman who whored for the Sherank. He brutally abducted the Dowager and the Priest-King and the First Memorian—yes, you ungrateful old loony, I see you there—but he will die for his blasphemies. Have no doubt about that! Oh, gods," he grated as the noise level increased in the stand, "Abro, tell Rinn of Miishel I'll have that pocketing crown back if she can't control herself, and I'll want her head to be still inside it."

  "You always did believe in a direct approach, Mycri." Tig turned on the stairs to face the trio of High Flamens. The Primate drew himself almost straight.

  "You dare address me like that? Knowing who I am?"

  "Of course we know you. You cuffed our ears often enough when we were a child. And now you're the tyrant who holds the puppet strings of a great empire—admirable except for a few murders and more than a few injustices. Truthfully, Most Revered Primate, we admire what you've done."

  "Captain Abro, kill this lunatic now."

  "You were angry with us when we destroyed the Lady—Gil was ruined, you said, doomed to obscurity; we could never rebuild the old glory. The joke is, you conquered more of the known world at one go than she ever did. We congratulate you, Mycri."

  "Abro! He is not the Scion, I tell you! Kill him!"

  "Actually," said Tig, "good Captain Abro doesn't think we're the Scion anyway. He's just wondering if it's too late to fit us into his plans or whether he'd better run a sword through us. We'd invite him to try it, but it's really not important."

  "Plans?" repeated the Primate.

  "Listen to those shrieks outside the gate. Yes, Mycri, plans. He's subverted about half the Flamens' Corps—the other half may protect you, but how will you know whom to trust? The duns would support you, but they've been locked out and they've got their hands full with the Opposition."

  "The Opposition?" thundered the Primate.

  "Oh yes. In fact the Truant himself is here in the forecourt. His agreement with Captain Abro—"

  Abro howled a battle-cry and leapt down the stairs with his sword aimed at Tigrallef's heart. A few stairs short, he did a convincing impression of a man running into an invisible stone wall; he followed this up with an even better impression of a man slumped unconscious and bleeding on the stairs.

  "—was that the Opposition forces would take over the city," Tig continued calmly, "while Abro secured the Gilgard and deposed the Flamens with a directness that you, Mycri, should properly admire. And when you were all dead, Abro was to install the Truant as Protector in the name of the Divine Scion and in the presence of these dignitaries—our mother and brother were to be respectfully preserved, of course, because any competent usurper takes pains to legitimize his claim. But something tells us the Truant was destined to be martyred in the fighting; and when the Gilgard gate was flung open again, Abro himself would inform the Opposition of their Truant's heroic death and humbly offer himself as leader—"

  "Madman!" snapped the Primate.

  "Abro or us? Oh well, have it your way. But look around at your picked pack of wolves, Mycri, and try to guess which of them were ready to cut your heart out."

  From the abrupt explosion of activity in the forecourt at that precise moment, one would think my father's words had been a signal. At least four of the black tunics on the stairway drew swords and converged on the High Flamens. Jonno leapt past me to their defence, Katla leapt past me to his defence, the Wicked Princess Rinn of Miishel, bogeywoman of our bedtime tales, marched up the stairs towards Tigrallef shrieking, "How dare you leave me, you [several words not in my Miisheli lexicon]"—and some kind of hell erupted at the end of the forecourt where the Truant was, but by then I was too busy to analyse it because someone in a black tunic was trying to snatch my grandmother. Sherkin full-trip and a toss—it was the stairs that broke his neck, not me; and then Tigrallef was hustling us up the steps and around the back of the dais, through a vast double-leafed doorway into an echoing foyer. The heavy doors silenced the racket from the forecourt. By now we were quite a crowd.

  There was the Primate propped against a wall looking thoughtfully at my father; Lestri glowering at Mallinna; Kesi embracing Jonno; the Dowager comforting the Priest-King; Rinn of Miishel, considerably more subdued—either because she was staring at Tigrallef's unnatural eyes, or because the thick blue hair had vanished along with the viper crown, and the greying wisps left on her scalp were hardly enough to cover a pikcherry. There were also five guardsmen of the Flamens' Corps who had been defending the Primate loyally, and a sixth who, at a sharp glance from my father, tottered glassy-eyed over to open the great door and pulled it shut behind him.

  "Scion," said the Primate flatly.

  "Yes, Mycri."

  "You really are the Scion Tigrallef."

  "Yes and no," said the Wind and the Tree.

  The Primate shrugged off the ambiguity. "But—did you indeed take on the Lady's powers, as I—as we—as the people have been told?"

  "Oh yes."

  A shock-wave passed over the Primate's ancient face; the shock, perhaps, of being caught out in a truth. His recovery was astonishing, though. "If you have such power," he said commandingly, "then you can—"

  "No," said my father. "No. It matters little or nothing who wins this battle. We will not interfere. We have important things to do."

  "But—"

  "We have to leave you now, anyway," said my father.

  I saw the old guard, Shree and Chasco and Calla, individually set their chins and prepare to be stubborn. "You're not going anywhere on your own," my mother said firmly.

  "Of course not. Vero, Kat, help your uncle Arkolef."

  My mother stiffened. "I'm coming too."

  "Not possible."

  "Tigrallef—"

  His look stopped her, and I can understand why. It was not my father standing there. The strangeness in his face was almost a deformity. She stepped backwards, bumped up against Shree. For the first time in my life, I saw Shree looking genuinely afraid.

  "Where are you going?" Calla whispered. "Why are you taking my son and daughter?"

  "We're going where only the Children of Naar can sa
fely go. They'll come to no harm, woman, the Harashil can do nothing to hurt them. Remember this is woven into the fabric of things."

  "Will you come back?" Her voice was anguished.

  "Maybe, maybe not. Verolef, Katlefiya, are you ready?"

  I glanced at the Dowager Dazeene. She murmured into the Priest-King's ear and gave him a gentle shove towards Katla, who took him by the hand.

  "We're ready."

  * * *

  18

  WE SAID NO goodbyes, nor did we risk any final embraces—leaving was hard enough already. The only truly single-minded attempt to follow us was made by Angel, and it took both Mallinna and Jonno to hold him back, with Kesi as the voice of reason in the background. The last we saw, Shree was hustling everyone into a more easily defensible position at the far end of the foyer. After that, we didn't look back.

  Tigrallef led us through some fine corridors and cloistered gardens, wonderfully adorned, mostly deserted. On the Day of the Scion, it appeared, the entire population gathered in the streets and shrines of the city. The major exception was around the kitchens, where a massive ceremonial banquet was in production—I suppose nobody had thought to inform the chefs that a civil war was getting nicely started outside. We skimmed past the sculleries and along a hallway, around a corner and through an unassuming door; and there Tigrallef stopped on the edge of a vast room, high-vaulted and glittering, furnished with enough costly clutter to finance the archives for a century. The huge expanse of floor was a mosaic of tiles that were no larger than a nail head, gold, silver and copper, depicting the adventures of an obviously brainless hero with a strong facial resemblance to my father. The Priest-King raised his head and looked around dreamily.

  "The Hall of Harps," Tig said. "This floor is new—scenes from the life of the Divine Scion Tigrallef. Notice the—"