He was so curious. He pounced on her in a fluid leap that knocked her back on to the rug she had been standing on. Midway through the act, as his hand made contact with her face to turn it, he was caught in what felt like a soft cloud that slowed them both down. Dark energy billowed around him, scented with violets and the sweetness of her heat. They collapsed slowly, limp and feathery where he was braced for hard impact but his palm ended up on her cheek, fingers gripping her skull and turning it away from him to the side, his body over hers, arm on arm, legs on legs, pinning her down. Everything that was hidden in her fine clothing became apparent. She was strong, but untried. Her face dropped with dismay as she attempted to heave him off and only lifted his clamped hand and ruthless knee an imaginary amount before falling back. Outrage and pleasure briefly warred in the half of her face he could see. He would have liked to look in her eyes but he knew that danger too well.
The fact he was alive now was a good sign. He coiled his tail carefully and bent his head down, nostrils distended to take in every scent of her, skin and breath, whiskers tasting the air around her to see how much of a threat she was.
A moment of sensory shock numbed him. Whatever Karoo was, it had so little human in it, and she had so very much human in her. Greed, intoxication, his nose filled with it until it was all he knew. She was talking but he didn’t hear. He felt the skin on his hands burst where he gripped her naked arm, the sting and flicker of needle tendrils plunging deep – his mind’s eye suddenly filled not with Night but a terrified Steppe girl squealing and running from him, her wrist red, ripping shreds off him in a bloody bracelet. Feels cold air on his bare teeth, icy, hurting. Pumping up his arm the knowledge comes rushing, explaining everything about those first humans he found, their camp, their lives, their weakness, their death. He licked his sore palm and left that place, running over rocks. When he came back later in the year he had significantly changed. He looked, spoke, almost like a man.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ZHARAZIN
Diary, Entries 166-8
I decided to ask what considerations the Sorority recommended for locating a mate, if we were to do away with the pronouns. Sister Auchie said it must be first the good health, then the Talent combination and its possible outcomes, after that the looks of the male (she assumed breeding-mate you see as I did not use the correct pronoun to indicate a loving partner of any suited gender), for beauty generally indicates a strong and robust constitution, after that his friends, since he may be judged well by those whose company he seeks and maintains: after that his character and after that his charisma and latent ‘appeal’. His gender only has bearing insofar as it may or may not impede said breeding. I said, fine, that covers Empire men. What about the rest? She looked blank. Finally she said, ‘One does not breed outside the Empire. What would be the point?’
It occurs to me that the Sorority has entirely missed the point sociologically. Surely the point is desire, which is the only impulse one does anything for? A walk behind my sister (a block behind, but she’s easy to follow as she never pays any attention to anyone except herself) puts a spanner in the cogs of the very notion that the desire for sex has its point anywhere near the Sorority rulebook. There are enough foreigners from the barracks creeping back in the early hours after midnight to prove that. I don’t think everyone is filling out forms and pursuing a rigorous algorithm of selection – unless they are doing that unconsciously, of course. If so, it is not an algorithm that the Sorority has heard of. An algorithm for desire would be so very useful! Although I might have to expand on the notation re the genders issue. I will ask Sister Auchie why it is that the inbuilt process for selection of mates is insufficient and they have attempted to impose another.
Cross. Idea of Algorithm of Desire met with derision. Auchie mentioned Night’s student, called him a halfbreed bloodmancing animal and made the sign of Annasward though there were no trace presences about. She said he would know it if noses could talk. I don’t know what she means by that but her expression indicated she was having some kind of intestinal problem so I didn’t ask.
Zharazin closed the diary and rested it on his stomach. He pondered what they were teaching girls these days. He’d always wanted to know. It was disappointing to find that it was as dull as this. He didn’t see how you got from this diary to sauntering full of confidence, naked, at the Rose. He longed to know what it was that went on in that pretty little head. He considered the Sorority of the Star: superficially they were a group of aesthetes and philosophers who had come to be considered valuable as a relic of older times and socially acceptable only because their scientific education in certain areas was unrivalled. Politically they were a negligible force. However, they originated in Spire’s city, Zenithpoint, and had migrated to Glimshard towards the end of the last Empress’ rule as part of a cultural exchange which the Infomancy had largely ignored. As far as he knew they didn’t have any involvement with spies, but he spoke aloud the notion it was time to review this assumption.
‘You’ve been a very busy man,’ Shrazade said to him from her lounging spot in the hammock a few metres away. Her perusal of what he had read and his own reactions to it were nearly simultaneous, even though it had also passed through the entire collected net of Infomancy minds in relay. ‘I should commend you if it weren’t for your deplorable lack of faith.’
He said nothing. He knew by now she only wanted answers to direct questions from her servers. Anything else was merely an irritation to her own trains of thought and you derailed her at your expense. The lack of faith was her perennial accusation, fairly levelled; he really had no faith at all in the infomancers as the active force for Glimshard’s good that she felt them to be. He, and they, simply knew much too much. Sometimes it felt that the infomancers were more like herdsmen, whose cattle were violent brutes that must be kept far from civilisation; the people are better off in ignorance rather than be aware of this vast galaxy of bitter brewing spites.
She plucked the image from his mind and examined it. He knew it pleased her because she said nothing, only stretched. The hammock’s silk knots creaked. He looked across at her and she smiled at him; an ordinary woman long past her prime, a little overweight, and very lazy, but with an expression that was as sharp and glittering as the edges of a secret stash of diamonds. She wore plain, easy clothing, tied her hair back without thought; since he’d known her it had silvered to white with only a few streaks of black left in it.
‘It is convenient that Huntingore finds you worthy of attention. We would be glad if you accompanied her to the ball. At her side you will find yourself drawn to conversations we will find most interesting. Particularly if she receives a call to the digsite by that time.’
Minister Alide, Huntingore’s bane, was the key supplier of news about the dig. Zharazin had assumed the precious crystals he was blackmailing out of Tralane were for the portal project, but it seemed not. A mole in the engineers said he hadn’t seen anything like that in the works. Shrazade was annoyed that she did not know what they were for either. She knew that Huntingore must know and now she was pleased to push Zharazin’s personal feelings. He was surprised to find that for the first time since he’d been admitted to her service he felt this an unwanted invasion. He wasn’t sure, had never been sure, exactly how much he would be able to conceal from her. He had simply thought it easier to assume the answer was nothing and until now it hadn’t mattered. He hadn’t mattered to himself.
Shrazade leapt on that without hesitation. ‘Night abandoned you, Mazhd, and I took you in. Don’t forget that when you feel so sorry. You kept your place in the world, thanks to me. Now read the book. There must be something in it worth the knowing.’
He’d become so adept at surrender, he realised, as he lifted the book and opened it again to the next page. Years of practice had left him with an empty place inside into which he poured the days to later unpack and see what he thought of them. Like this diary, but far larger they were vast memory palaces for privat
e consumption. As he read and processed the diary for Shrazade, he saved it for himself, knowing he would give it a different interpretation on his own, knowing it would write itself into him in ways that would emerge recognisably only now and again, through channels that Shrazade and all her mindpicks had no way to touch. It was only because he lived his memories in his body, in words and actions coming from within, that he knew he was still worthwhile after Night and he parted ways. It had been dark that day, and bitterly chilled, and his skull hurt with the aches of it even now. It had been so foolish and so unnecessary.
Now his eyes fell onto hasty writing in Isabeau’s scrawling, awkward hand and gradually he felt the same chill pass into him.
Entry 169
The Sorority claims that the Rose, the bath house, is a late addition to Glimshard society set in place by the Empress’ predecessor, Divit, as a result of her taking the philosophy of amoral love to heart in the wake of a tragic bereavement. The Sorority are prepared to accept the subjugation of men to women for the purposes of female entertainment as a matter of natural courses and in any case men are free to refuse the advances of women, although they would be sorry and stupid to refuse women of any power, as the scandal sheets can weekly testify. Powerful men are are another matter. And it was, the Sorority claim, as a gesture to pacify them, that Divit founded the Rose bath house and within it the sacred coils of desire.
I am still not sure what ‘sacred coils of desire’ means. I think it is a euphemism but a cross-reference to Parlumi Night’s seminal text on the Call, indicates it is both mystic and literal. Men walk a genuine spiral within the building to the place of their desire – this is representative of the journey of the spirit to carnal birth in the world and the sexual acts engaged therein are literal and spiritual in nature, sacred to all who participate in the spirit of the Rose. As they say, ‘Compassion’s born when two souls meet.’
The Sorority take a loftier and more intellectual view of this: they see it as a place where men of means may go to rut at their leisure without having to involve themselves in any form of intimacy whatsoever, with a woman or a man. They have nothing to say about what a woman might gain by taking the position of first lover other than that it is a charmless folly. Women of the Sorority have no need of such self-debasement as offering themselves anonymously to random strangers.
The one thing I can’t fail to agree with in all this is that one should not talk about what one does not know. I find it intolerable that there are things I ought to be held back from knowing. I am old enough to leave home and do as I please. I know very little about love but unlike my stupid sister I always know exactly what I feel about everything. I suspect that this is the ‘Royal Knowledge of the Self’ that Night goes on about. If so, I don’t understand why people find it all so difficult, but patently they do. Therefore there is something going on that I do not understand yet.
This must be remedied immediately.
Following the neat flourish of determination after this entry the pages of the book were blank.
Zharazin closed his eyes and rubbed them gently with his thumb and forefinger. Behind him the hammock creaked.
‘My my,’ Shrazade said dryly after a moment or two had passed. ‘I seem to be so old I can barely remember being that ruthlessly idealistic. Or is foolhardy the word I am looking for?’
Zharazin fought and struggled to remain silent in his mind, not to connect everything that resonated with the fearsome tolling of the bell because he didn’t want her to see it in its awful entirety; not just himself but Isabeau laid bare. He and Isabeau were different of course, but on the points where they crossed you could get enough data to start making maps. It took every bit of ability he had to wall off what else he knew that made Isabeau’s final statement so much more than a girlish, petulant demand. Yes, she was ruthless and she had a steel mind. But it was so much more so than Shrazade presently imagined and he felt he had to protect Isabeau from that.
His silence was noted.
‘And so she becomes Night’s student. Impressed by something. And Night must be so impressed with her. But you, of course – you know nothing about the details of that.’
In fact he didn’t, he only guessed, so it was no lie to say, ‘I don’t. I do know there is suspicion about a plot to dispose of the Empress and now I see a possible merit to investigating the Sorority But these things have no link that I can see.’
‘Alide’s plans or others beyond that?’
‘I have no idea. I would guess that with so many newcomers and mercenaries making their way into the city hoping for a longer war that this would be a good time to send assassins.’
‘The Warbeasts are massing to the east,’ Shrazade said, ‘Warbeasts’ being a code for all the minor enemies of the city and its environs who bore grudges against the Empire of one kind and another. ‘And tomorrow there is this ball, the grand spectacle of how well things are, the showing off of the outsider, the statement Alide will make about the war in order to get more money to fill his chests while he lies about the losses. Find out if Borze is making preparations for a defence of the city. And who from first. The Warbeasts or something closer to home.’
Information sifted out of her mind like dust and into his, pollen to stamen, burrowing tendrils here and there, searching for connections, for what he thought likely, for what his senses knew before they reported to his conscious mind. Yes, he was picking up signals all the time for her even if he didn’t know what they all meant. The process was something he couldn’t do anything about. Being in her employment demanded it. He saw himself mined and holed like a mountainside, gold dust in the streams prospected, veins searched for.
‘You know,’ Shrazade said thoughtfully as dusk finished falling. ‘If you want to impress Huntingore you should bring her a gift she will not expect. I have the very thing, as it happens. I’d like you to take it, as a goodwill gesture.’
Zharazin doubted it was that. But he took it at face value. ‘Of course. How thoughtful. Thank you.’ And let’s say nothing about picking my brains too far – it’s all about give and take.
‘Good. I’ll have it wrapped. If she asks say you bought it at the Antiquarian Palazzo from Asmik.’
Asmik was an infomancer operative, he’d confirm any story. Maybe he’d even sourced the object himself, though Zharazin didn’t credit Asmik with anything more than a natural scavenger’s eye for the main chance. Asking to see it beforehand was, however, pointless. He wouldn’t have known an adze from a zarapt.
The distraction was welcome. He felt Shrazade move out of his mind like a departing ghost. She may have left things behind. He’d find out. Meanwhile he checked his memory palace – nothing had moved. The white bark tree in the grey ground stood out stark and lonely. Sometimes it was hard to know what these things meant. He knew Isabeau was one of a kind. That at least was easy to see.
He left the book behind now that it was of no more use to him. Shrazade would archive it. He exited the room by the back way, hidden from most users, even her finest. It allowed him to leave the Ministry directly via a tunnel of passages that took him down near the barracks and let him free via the back of a hack dentist’s store.
A strong smell of alcohol and Fashspark’s Powders almost made him sneeze as he emerged into the operating room. In the chair someone groaned. It was the dentist, Morater, half passed out on his own cheap medicines. Zharazin stood on something hard where his path crossed the open doorway and in the light flickering through the grass strip fly-screening he saw it was a molar, black at the centre. Because there was money in teeth – for alchemical powders – he kicked it back into the shop before hurrying along.
Glimshard smouldered in the new night. The Barrack End Road was smug with horse droppings and witchlights, the print of so many strange boots in its mud that it was bloated with information. Westmen had come, he saw, and more Steppe-sons, and others from further afield whose cobbling he didn’t know at first sight. He kept to the edges, the parcel from Sh
razade in his hand because it was too heavy and wore his cloak down at one side in a distorting fashion. A glance up at the high windows where Borze kept his offices showed lights gleaming, men standing, talking, gesticulating, but idly, importantly. There was still time for speeches, then, and anecdotes and postures. Zharazin passed on.
As he reached the Upspiral he trod on the first paving slabs of Deyaut Place, one way that led to the Rose. It was the slab which in his mental copy of the city, opened the path to the last day he spent with Parlumi Night. As he moved rapidly through the light pedestrian traffic towards the stem and the social world of the artists at Monparauk Square, he simultaneously followed Deyaut Place’s hidden route into the past.
Parlumi Night’s office of business opened into the Courts. It was rare that anyone except a messenger of the Empress came through it, running and in tabard, but it was closed between midday and sundown when Night preferred to sleep. She didn’t like sleep very much, but she wasn’t able to avoid it entirely and being nocturnal meant this time was the best. Zharazin was only nocturnal by necessity and slept twice, once in the mid-afternoon and once in the early hours of the morning.
On the day in question they were both in the deep recesses of her twilit apartments behind the offices, where black and purple blinds screened out nearly all light from the generous windows overlooking the palace gardens. They lay on the bed, everything in the room made of blue and pale blue shadows, including themselves. A little music played, a recording of temple flute and chimes from Zharazin’s mountain home. The strange bulky box of the Repeater Coil hummed a little underneath the tones, off key, but not enough to spoil anything. It needed repair. They burned incense they both liked, sage and lavender. It kept out bugs.
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