‘Leoman! Can’t you keep your mind off that for one minute?’
He shrugged expansively. ‘You need to learn to relax when you have no control over a situation. There is nothing you can do, yes? Now I will rub your back.’
She snorted, but fought a rising grin. ‘Leoman … you can rub my back if you promise me one thing …’
Early in the morning Scholar Ebbin approached the main gates of the Eldra Iron Mongers in the west end of Darujhistan. Under the bored eyes of the door guards he waited as wagons and carts came and went, all stopped and inspected by tablet-wielding clerks, their contents counted, itemized and graded. Ebbin stood waiting. Smoke from the foundries belched overhead. A steady rain of soot added to the layers already blackening the helmets, shoulders and faces of the guards.
After waiting what seemed like half the morning – the guards staring ox-like at him the entire time – Ebbin thrust himself forward into the path of one of these soot-smeared scurrying clerks. ‘I’m here to see the master,’ he blurted out.
Sniggering laughs all around from the youthful clerks. ‘Hear that, Ollie?’ the addressed one said, and he turned his back on Ebbin to examine a wagonload of crates. ‘Here to see the master.’
The fellow Ebbin presumed to be Ollie answered with a mocking laugh. ‘I’ll just summon him then, shall I?’
More laughter answered that. Ebbin pulled a scroll from his shoulder bag. ‘He gave me this.’
The nearest clerk simply continued his tally. Finishing, he swung an exasperated glare to Ebbin. ‘What’s this then? You’d better not be wasting my time.’ He snatched the scroll from Ebbin’s hand and yanked it open, scanned it. He paused, returned to the top to go through it again, more slowly. After finishing the entire letter he raised his eyes to Ebbin; a kind of guarded resentment now filled them. ‘Follow me,’ said.
With the clerk leading, Ebbin wound his way across the busy yards of the ironworks. They crossed rails guiding wooden cars pulled by soot-blackened sickly mules, past great hangars where smoke billowed and sparks showered like glowing rain. They reached a building that looked to have once been a handsome estate house, but now stood almost entirely black beneath countless years of soot. Dead, or nearly dead, vines clung to its façade, some still bearing leaves thick with ash.
Just within the main doors they met some sort of reception secretary, or higher-ranked clerk. ‘Yes?’ the pale fellow asked without so much as glancing up. In answer Ebbin’s guide shoved the letter in front of him. The receptionist’s lips compressed and he took the now soot-smeared vellum between a forefinger and thumb as if it were a dead animal. He gave it a cursory glance, even in the act of tossing it away, then stopped suddenly and slowly flattened it before him. After reading the letter he said, ‘You may go.’ It was not clear to Ebbin whom the man meant. But the young clerk immediately turned on his heel and left without a word. The man blinked up at Ebbin. ‘Follow me.’
The receptionist led him up a wide set of ornate stairs of polished stone. Soot layered the balustrade and the steps were black with ground-in dirt and ash. The man knocked at a set of narrow double doors then pushed them open. Here in a slim but very high-roofed room waited another cadaverous fellow just like this one. The receptionist set the vellum sheet on the man’s desk then returned to the doors. He bowed to Ebbin and made a curt gesture that was somewhat like an invitation to enter. Ebbin did so; the man shut the doors behind him.
The secretary glanced at the letter as he continued writing. The scratching of the quill was quite loud in the upright crypt-like room. ‘You are lucky,’ he said without glancing up. ‘The master is rarely in. If you wait here I will announce you.’
Ebbin hardly trusted himself to speak. A breathless ‘Certainly’ was all he could manage.
The man set down his quill and blotted the document before him, then pushed back his chair. He knocked on the door beside the desk, then went through and quickly shut it behind him. Ebbin waited, rubbing his fingers nervously over the sweat-stained leather strap of his shoulder bag.
The door opened and the secretary brusquely waved him forward. Smiling and nodding, Ebbin edged in past the fellow, who closed the door so quickly he almost caught Ebbin’s fingers. The room within was quite large – it might have originally been a main bedroom, or private salon. Tables cluttered it, each burdened by great heaps of documents and folders. Maps covered the dark-grimed walls. Ebbin recognized schematic drawings of mineworks and street maps of Darujhistan, some very old indeed. One map on a far wall appeared remarkably ancient and he was about to head for it when someone spoke from where light shafted in from a bank of dirty windows. ‘Scholar Ebbin! Over here, if you please.’
‘Master Measure,’ he replied, squinting and bowing. ‘Good of you to see me.’
The master of Eldra Iron Mongers, rumoured to be the richest man in all Darujhistan, stood at one of the tables, his back to a window, studying a folder. He was rather short, going to fat. His northern background was evident in his black curly hair, now thin and greying. Ebbin recognized the folder in the man’s hands as his original project proposal.
‘So,’ the master announced, ‘you are here to request further funding, I take it?’
Ebbin’s throat was as dry as the dust swirling in the light shafts that crossed the room. His heart was hammering, perhaps reverberating with the pounding of the forges. ‘Yes, sir,’ he gasped weakly.
‘This would be your …’ he sorted through the papers, ‘third extension.’
‘Yes … sir.’
‘And what do you have to show for my investment?’
Ebbin struggled with the clasp of his shoulder bag. ‘Yes, of course. I have some shards that hint at decorative styles mentioned in the earliest accounts …’ He halted as the master curtly waved a hand.
‘No, no. I’m not interested in your knickknacks, or your odds and bobs. What have you found?’
Ebbin let go of his shoulder bag. Gods, dare I say it? What if I am laughed out of this office? Well, no more funding regardless … He took a deep breath. ‘I believe I have discovered a vault that may contain proof of the Darujhistan Imperial Age.’
Humble Measure dipped his head in thought, pursed his lips. He started out from behind the table. ‘A brave claim, scholar. Isn’t it orthodoxy that such an age is mere myth? Whimsical wish fulfilment of those yearning for some sort of past greatness?’
The master had walked to the centre of the room. Looking back at Ebbin, he added, ‘As the honoured members of the Philosophical Society point out: surely there would be evidence?’
‘Unless it was expunged with the last of the Tyrant Kings.’
The ironmonger crossed to a table bearing great heaps of papers, yellowed maps and dust-covered volumes. He picked something up and turned it in his hands, a card of some sort. He spoke while peering down at it. ‘One and the same, then? Scholar? The Tyrants and the city’s place as the true power of these lands?’
Ebbin nodded, said, ‘I believe so, yes. Back then.’
‘And what gives you reason to believe you may be close to such proof?’
‘The artistic style of the décor. The architecture of the burial chamber itself. Associated artefacts above from the earliest years of the Free Cities period. All evidence points to this conclusion.’
‘I see. And this vault?’
‘It looks undisturbed.’
‘And … just the one?’
Ebbin’s brows rose in surprise and appreciation at the astuteness of the query. ‘Why, no. One of twelve, in fact.’ And the thirteenth? The central figure? What of him? Shall you mention him? And the floor of skulls? No! Mere excesses of funerary devotional offerings, nothing more. He drew a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his face and the palms of his hands. He felt almost faint with thirst. The slanting yellow rays cut at his eyes.
‘Twelve,’ the master repeated. ‘Such a weighty, ill-omened number for Darujhistan. The twelve tormenting daemons come to take children away.’
Ebbin shrugged
. ‘Obviously some ritual significance of the number goes back even to the time of the Tyrants. Those old wives’ tales of the twelve fiends merely reveal how far we’ve fallen from the truth of the past.’
The Cat native glanced sharply back at him then, over a shoulder. ‘Indeed, scholar. Indeed.’ He returned to studying the card. ‘You shall have your funding. I will provide labourers, draught animals, cartage. And, because what you find may be valuable, armed guards as well.’
Ebbin now frowned his confusion. ‘Master Measure, there is no need for such measures – ah, that is, for such expenditures. Such a large party would only attract the attention of all the thieves and pot-hunters on the plain.’
‘Thus the armed guards, good scholar. Now, I own a warehouse close to the Cuttertown gate. My guards will know it. You will bring whatever you find there.’
‘But, sir. Really, it would be best if I made the arrangements—’ The ironmonger had raised a hand, silencing him.
‘I will protect my investment, scholar. That is all. Wait without.’
Over the years Scholar Ebbin had not begged and scraped for monies from this man, and many others like him, without learning when to argue and when to obey. And so, in an effort to salvage some modicum of dignity, he bowed and left.
Alone, the ironmonger Humble Measure returned to studying the card. It was an ancient artefact of the divinatory Dragons Deck. The single surviving example from an arcana of an age long gone. He held it up to the light and there, caught in the slanting afternoon rays, it blazed pearly white, revealing an image of one of the three major cards of power, rulership and authority … the Orb.
*
There is a steep gorge amid the hills east of Darujhistan that all the locals know to avoid. To some it is the lair of a giant. To those who have travelled, or spent time talking to those who have, it is merely home to a displaced Thelomen, or Toblakai, of the north.
Here he had lurked for nearly a year. And though several people had complained to the tribal authorities, no one had organized a war band to drive him out. Perhaps it was because while sullen, and an obvious foreigner, the giant had not actually killed anyone as yet. And the woman who was sometimes with him did eventually pay for the animals he took. And he did seem gruffly affectionate towards the two children with him. Or perhaps it was because he was a giant with a stone blade that looked taller than most men.
In any case, word spread, and the gorge came to be avoided, and developed an evil reputation as the haunt of whatever anyone wished to ascribe to it. The local tribes became comfortable with having someone conveniently nearby to blame every time a goat went missing or a pot of milk soured. A few unexplained pregnancies were even hung upon him – charges the foreign woman with him laughed off with irritating scorn. As she also did their subsequent angry threats to skin the creature.
In time, some locals claimed that in the dim light of the re-formed moon they had seen him crouched high on the hillside, glaring to the west, where one could just make out the blue flames of Darujhistan glowing on the very horizon.
Had he been cast out of that pit of sinfulness? Or escaped the dungeon of one of the twelve evil magi who clan elders claimed secretly ruled that nest of wickedness? Did he plot revenge? If so, perhaps he deserved their tolerance; for the destruction of that blot of iniquity was ever the goal of the clan elders – when they weren’t visiting its brothels, at least.
And so an accord of a sort was established between the clans of the Gadrobi hills and their foreign visitor. The elders hoped that flame and sword was what the giant held in his heart for Darujhistan, while the war band fighters were secretly relieved not to have to face his stone blade.
As for the creature himself, who could say what lay within his heart of stone? Had he been thrown out of the city as an irredeemable troublemaker and breaker of the peace? Or had he turned his back on that degenerate cesspool of vice and nobly taken up station in the hills, far from its corrupting influence? Who could say? Perhaps, as some elders darkly muttered, it merely depended upon which side of the walls one squatted.
*
In the estate district of Darujhistan a grey-haired but still hale-looking man walked through an ornamental garden, but he hardly saw the heavy blossoms, or registered their thick cloying scents. His hands were clasped behind his back and his path was wandering. He was a bard who went by the name of Fisher, and he was wrestling with a particularly thorny problem.
He was struggling with his growing impatience and lack of respect for his current lover. In the past such a falling away of allure would have proved no complication. All it took was a tender chaste kiss, a last lingering look, and he was on his way.
No, the problem was that his current lover was Lady Envy. And Envy did not take rejection well. He paused in his pacing, wincing in memory of their last parting. At least he had gotten away alive.
A woman’s voice rose in the distance, cursing, and Fisher ran for the white pavilion that graced the middle of the gardens. Here he found Envy sitting cross-legged before a low table of polished imported wood. A scattering of cards lay on the thick rich grain and Envy was cursing a streak of invective that would make a dock porter blush.
‘An unhappy future?’ he asked in mock innocence, then winced again.
‘This is nothing for you to joke about,’ Envy answered, imitating his tone. Thankfully she did not look up to catch his pained features.
He made an effort to pull his expression into one of serious concern. ‘What is it?’
She held up a card. ‘This bastard.’
The Orb. He frowned. ‘Yes?’
She eyed him aslant. A smile that hinted at oh so many secrets raised one edge of her lips. ‘You have no idea, do you?’
Fisher struggled to hide all signs of his exasperation. Keeping his voice light, he asked, ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to inform me?’
Envy tapped the card to her lips – lips that she had taken to painting a pale blue after the current fashion. She lowered her green eyes. ‘No. I think not. This could be … diverting.’
Fisher lurched to a sideboard to pour himself a crystal flute of wine. ‘A drink, m’lady?’ he asked, ever courtly.
‘No. Nor should you, I think. I note you are drinking more lately. You should stop. I find it … unflattering.’
He turned from the sideboard, leaned back against it and downed the entire glass in one long pull. He crossed his arms. ‘Really?’
Lady Envy pursed her sky-blue lips and began shuffling the Deck of Dragons. ‘Dearest Fisher,’ she said after a time, ‘you are a talented man … but still just a man. These are matters far beyond you.’
He carefully set the delicate flute on the table. ‘Well, then. Perhaps I should ask around.’
Already into a new casting, Envy was quiet for some time. A vexed frown creased her powdered white brow and she bit her lip. She had paused at the final card, which when turned would be the centre of her field. ‘Ask around?’ she echoed, distracted. She laughed throatily. ‘Oh yes. Do so. If you enjoy playing the façade of usefulness.’
Instead of the anger that ought to have answered such a dismissal, Fisher felt only sadness; an ache for what briefly had been, and for the fading promise of what might have been. He bowed to Envy. ‘I shall go and play then.’
She did not answer as he walked away.
~
Envy sat alone for a long time, unmoving, hand poised over the card that would lock the swirling pattern of futures before her. Orb high, of course. Card of authority and rulership. And Obelisk near. Past and future conflating. But what of her? What of Envy?
Shadows crept across the faces of the cards. The sky darkened. At long last Envy steeled herself sufficiently to slide the card from the top of its fellows and hold it over the centre position.
She turned it and immediately let go as if burnt. Her hands flew to her throat. She gasped, unable to speak. A great inhuman gurgling yell exploded from her and a burst of power erupted, blowing off the top
of the pavilion. Out of the billowing flames stalked Envy. She walked stiff-legged up a garden path, her rich robes scorched and smouldering. Heavy flower blossoms beamed and nodded at her. Snarling, she batted one into a flurry of crimson petals.
A rain of cards came fluttering down around the estate district that afternoon. Aristocratic couples out for a promenade watched, puzzled, as blackened rectangles flitted down on the roads. Servants pocketed many, recognizing the gold and silver paints and the exquisite, though ruined, quality of production. A tutor hired to knock some sense into the spoiled scions of one noble family saw a card lying on a back servants’ way, and bent to pick it up. Having some touch of access to the Mockra Warren, he immediately dropped the thing as accursed.
The focal card, the axis of the casting, fell into the deep shadows next to a hothouse, where it lay half-burnt on the cool wet earth. It bore on its face the barely discernible remnants of a hooded dark figure, crowned in jet night.
The King of High House Dark.
*
The guard walked his rounds of Despot’s Barbican as he did every evening. In the dusk the clamour of Darujhistan, the calls of the street merchants and the braying of draught animals, was dying down, although it was still too early for the grey-faces to start on their silent rounds from gas jet to gas jet, lighting the blue flames that would pierce the night.
Arfan expanded his chest, taking in a good breath of the cool air wafting in from the lake. It was a good sinecure, this post. If certain parties wanted an eye kept on these dusty ruined monuments to the city’s past, then so be it. This retired city Warden was happy to offer his services. There was nothing here to tempt any thief. The hilltop was abandoned. Not like Hinter’s Tower. Those ruins gave him chills. Everyone was right to think that place haunted. But not here. The tumbled weed-dotted white stone foundations were silent. On the darkest of nights he could even sometimes see the distant glow of the blue flames flickering through parts of the white stone walls. It was actually rather pretty.
Orb Sceptre Throne Page 8
