“Do not be so proud, Daniel. That is not the only reason. You must learn to hide your emotions better.”
“Yes, sir.” On that count, Lang was correct.
“You are nobody. More importantly, you are the right man for the task. The other aspirants are too young to pass as demi-masters, or have too little experience of the real world. You are a solid student and a tremendous warrior. Hernandez tells me he has never seen your equal. You have trained with us for five years and beaten your colleagues at every test you have been set.” That was almost true. “And you desperately want to become a censor.”
“Yes, sir.” Daniel wondered who had told Lang, and how he knew it to be true.
“I am the only person who can grant you that wish. This is your opportunity to earn my appreciation. I reward obedience.” Yes, you do, Daniel thought, and you prefer your loyalty baited, and with a hook on the end.
“So am I made censor?” Lang seemed surprised by the presumption, but more impressed than annoyed.
“For now you are made a country squire, but if you complete this behest to my satisfaction I will ordain you.”
“The grading? I passed the tests?”
“That remains to be seen,” Lang said, and Daniel wondered if the gods had somehow guided his hand without his knowing.
“May I patrol Turbulence when I return?”
“You may choose your first beat, as tradition dictates.”
“I’ll do everything I can to warrant your faith in me.”
“That is what I expect,” Lang replied. “We have a few more things to settle before I send you to the stables.”
The magistrate pulled on a cord beside the wall-map, and it slid smoothly upwards, exposing a cabinet. Displayed within was the finest assortment of weapons that Daniel had ever seen. Needle-pointed rapiers, broad-bladed hangers, riding swords and cutlasses. A two-hander as tall as a man. Strange exotica as well – cinqudeas from Etruria, tulwars from across the Middle Sea, gently curved blades from the Orient with patterned edges that swirled like mist or frost.
“My personal collection,” Lang explained. “Most of the weapons have provenance.”
“What’s that?” Daniel asked pointing at one shaped like an elongated sickle.
“A khopesh, from the time of the First Empire.”
“The Cradle of the Gods!” Daniel’s mind filled with images of desert lands far to the south, the vast pyramids at the heart of antiquity.
“It was forged long before the union of Kemet and Qart-Hadath. Ptolemy pronounced it to be the perfect shape for a sword, mathematically speaking. It is the most ancient in my collection.”
“May I?” Daniel asked. Lang nodded. He expected to heft the bronze weapon but found it surprisingly light and fast. He twirled it around his head in a deadly arc, and imagined what it might do to an unarmoured man. Then he replaced it in the display.
“Tradition dictates that when an aspirant becomes a censor he selects a companion weapon that he will carry for the rest of his life. You are not yet a censor, but I do not want to see you sent to the North poorly prepared. Choose a weapon.”
Daniel bowed deeply in true gratitude. He had already seen what he wanted, a sword with a chiselled hilt, three-foot long and sharp as a razor. Delicate vines decorated the fullered grooves of the blade, and its curved half-basket guard was encrusted with overlapping leaves of orichalcum set around the face of Melchior II, the previous emperor. A mortuary sword. It balanced exquisitely in his hand.
“A clever choice,” Lang said. “Ornate enough to be mistaken for a dress sword, but perfectly deadly. The stamp on the tang claims ‘D.M.’, a Tartessian smith of no small renown. The blade itself is genuine, the trappings are more recent.” Lang took the weapon. “Hold out your arm.”
Daniel did so without hesitation. Lang raised the sword over his head. The blade swept down with intractable speed. Daniel did not flinch, nor feel a thing. Lang caught the few drops of blood that trickled from the nick in Daniel’s forearm in a glass phial.
“For the hekamaphone. I want to know everything that happens in this investigation. Everything. The Convergence falls under the jurisdiction of Magistrate Clovis in Whitehaven, but matters affecting the Unity’s security fall to me. Assist Corbin as best you can, but reporting back to me must always be your primary concern.” There was the rub. Lang did not trust the investigation to Corbin. Or is it Corbin himself that he does not trust?
Lang handed Daniel a purse of coins and an unremarkable-looking locket. “That piece of jewellery contains a small phial of my blood. When you get to the Verge find a container and mix it with no more than one hundred parts of water. Gain access to a hekamaphone and report every development. I will be here to receive your reports on the sixth hour of the night.”
There was only one thing Daniel wanted from his dormitory, everything else he needed he would take from the storeroom next to the stables. He took the travelling case from the desk and saluted.
“I’m ready,” he said. Lang shuffled papers on his desk impatiently.
“Daniel, my years of service have made me an excellent judge of character. The true qualities of men are as visible to me as their raiment is to others. I can see the qualities in you. You have been trained well and you deserve a second chance. Now go forth and do as I command.”
Chairman Gleame
Miranda perched contently upon the windowsill, legs dangling safely inside her room, and marvelled. The Verge’s vast octagonal atrium, two hundred feet below and open to the elements, was so crowded with multi-coloured canopies and people that she could not tell the colour of the dirt beneath their feet. The sound of their labour drifted up to her as a soft murmur. A sea view would have been romantic, but this was more interesting – a circus in miniature for her entertainment. It was a long way down, enough to make her feel dizzy.
Her accommodation was small but dignified, one of several chambers the Convergence maintained for wealthy customers and the foreign scholars who were often its guests. It provided a bookshelf, a chest and a child-sized writing desk that nestled beneath the generous window she presently occupied. She wondered what great minds had previously slept in its unfamiliar bed.
Throughout history, all the big ideas, everything that really mattered, had come from the lands to the east. The gods, cunning, literature and philosophy, coffee, all had been discovered in deserts or the cities that somehow thrived within them. The Convergence was changing that, pivoting the world on its axis, shifting power northwards towards the frigid extremities of the world.
Now I am a part of that change. At its centre. A fulcrum.
She laughed at herself then, her tendency to sift for meaning in everything. It was so self-absorbed, and so unlike the boys with whom she had arrived. She pictured them twelve floors below, unpacking belongings, comparing their bunked accommodation to the luxury of family palaces, bemoaning designated roommates. No doubt, her boarding privileges would be seen as another reason to ostracise her.
She had three more days to settle in, then her contract would come into effect and she would become a demi-master. It was an opportunity to explore the Verge, to study and prepare while her rivals drank and played at games of chance. An opportunity to get ahead.
Duty to Mother came first.
Miranda slid from the sill to her desk, laid out her remembrance candle, an inkwell, a copper-nibbed quill and a sheet of fine paper, then set a ring on her writing hand – a fire opal surrounded with diamonds and engraved with the crest of the grand duchess.
She had seen that symbol nearly every day of her life – saw it in her dreams, imagined it as the first thing she had witnessed as a baby, being carried through the arched gateway of the Royal Orphanage.
That was a fantasy, of course. At the age she was adopted she would have been unable to focus past her hands. Her first real memory of it must have been the car
ving on her headboard in the dormitory. She remembered staring at it at night, terrified that she would be sent back to the streets as the nursemaids sometimes threatened. That had been a cruel threat to wield at a small child.
Miranda began to write. Mother would be distracted by her politicking; all of her attention for the last year had been focused on trying to convince the ministers of the Wise Council that the Unity needed a supreme leader to represent its power, the elected equivalent of a prince of the Empire, so Miranda decided to keep things brief.
There was a knock at the door.
She hissed in frustration. Interruptions always came just as the words began to flow. She placed her hand over the letter, pressed down on the opal of her ring and watched as the sentences rearranged themselves into a tangle of incomprehensible gibberish.
“What is it?” she called out.
“A message, milady, from Chairman Gleame,” came the muffled reply.
She opened her door to a messenger boy standing attentively in a crisp uniform. He pressed an ivory scroll case into her hand and she instinctively reached for her purse.
“No coin, milady; it’s not allowed,” he said. “If runners got paid by the delivery I’d be richer than a master by now.”
Miranda smiled. In Lundenwic, one was expected to tip a chimney sweep for blowing his nose.
“You need something delivered, there’s a whistle-tube next to your desk.”
“I was wondering what that was. Thank you for your service.” The boy performed a marching turn and sprinted away.
The cylindrical scroll case was a seamless whole, carved with cosmic runes. Miranda pulled hard at each end, but they were stuck fast. She tapped her foot on the floor as she pondered, examined the symbol. Gleame had obviously sent the scroll as some kind of test, but how was she supposed to break the spell with no training in magic?
A cracked voice rasped from the corridor. “May I?” Miranda turned and shrieked. The shadows in her room sparked and popped before her eyes. In her doorway stood a man wearing what appeared to be a black leather pincushion, complete with pins. His face was pierced with hooks and wires.
“I… err …this,” she babbled holding out the scroll case.
The man took it in both hands and, by way of demonstration, twisted it slowly clockwise. He handed the half-opened tube back to her and shuffled away, exposing a pair of flabby lashed buttocks that protruded limply from holes in the seat of his trousers. Miranda snapped her jaw shut. Master Somney’s cape and skullcap were eccentric enough. To clear her mind of the shocking image she turned her attention to the scroll.
Ward Miranda, Chairman Gleame requests an interview in the Gallery of Decadent Art upon the eighth hour of the morning. By his word.
That was no surprise. She was a ward of the duchess. Etiquette demanded a summons. She leafed through her wardrobe. If she dressed too plainly she might be taken for a maid, too prettily and she would not be taken seriously. I should have brought more clothes, she thought, and cursed the boys who could get along with two suits.
***
Up close, the bustle of the atrium was extraordinary. A constant stream of messengers, butlers, porters, chambermaids and waiters weaved between the stalls of metalworkers, tanners, fishmongers, bakers and jewellers.
Miranda ducked underneath a stretcher of mysterious objects being brought from the workshop. She had seen bigger markets in Lundenwic and Urikon, but they were filled with the stink of animals and the clamour of traders competing to hawk wares. Here there was banter, and money changed hands all around, but the buyers and sellers seemed to trade with a sense of common purpose. There was no pointless haggling – every good and service had a set price; every transaction seemed effortless and efficient.
She looked for a break in the crowd, to find her bearings. The sides of the atrium were a crazy mix of ladders, stairs and elevators. A squadron of waiters wheeling a roast bull on a thick steel platter emerged from a vault, hotly pursued by a dozen waitresses carrying casseroles, tureens and crystal condiment caddies. The place that could spawn such a marvel was worth investigating.
Smoke and steam battled for supremacy in the high-ceilinged cookery. Sea light refracted from the ocean windows sparkled on the walls. Chefs and cooks in spotless white worked in serried ranks along bench tables. Through openings in the seaward wall, Miranda could see the flames of ovens and the shadows of the men who worked them.
“Lost?” asked a plain-looking serving girl by a service hatch. Miranda’s governess would have been appalled to hear her addressed by a menial without invitation, but the rules in the Verge seemed different and her governess was not here.
“Why all this food in the middle of the morning?” Miranda asked.
“The masters keep odd hours. Some of them don’t keep hours at all. Breakfast time for one is supper for another.” Someone slid a laden tray into the girl’s hands.
“What in the world is that?”
“Naga chillies from the southern peninsula for Master Bohapemetys, so spicy you can’t touch them with bare hands. Flavourless gruel for Nohapness. It took the cooks years to come up with a recipe that didn’t taste of water. Poached badger eyes for Master Bolb.”
“Are all of the masters so peculiar?”
The girl eyed Miranda suspiciously, but her mouth got the better of her. “Half of them won’t answer the bloody door when I come calling. They get lost in their work, haven’t finished lashing themselves or whatever. They keep me waiting and then they have the cheek to complain that their food’s cold, or gone sluggish, or died in the waiting.”
“Man trouble?”
“What? From that lot? I get more attention from the chambermaids. There’s a handful of masters that way inclined, but they’re served by a special crew. Not my problem.”
“Do you like it here?”
“It’s a job.”
“Is that all?”
“The pay’s good. Otherwise, it’s like everywhere else. The ones up top think they know more than they do, and fool themselves that we at the bottom know less. Secrets don’t stay secret for long. Your arrival has raised a few eyebrows. A lot of the men say it’s unnatural – most of the women too.”
“What about you?”
She laughed. “If you’re the sort who worries about what’s natural and what ain’t, then I say you’re working in the wrong place.”
***
The glass-panelled doors of the gallery were opened for Miranda by two men of broad shoulder and inscrutable face. She swept past them into a stately room floored with intricate mosaics and lined with gaudily painted statues.
The man who waited inside seemed not to notice her entrance. Chairman Gleame. Miranda recognised him immediately. His walking stick that glittered with a thousand tiny crystals, his shock of hair the colour of shredded paper, the white silk robes that lit up his umber skin. He held himself with all of the quiet dignity that Her Grace had described, stood motionless, examining a statue of a muscular hero who wielded a club and held a lion skin.
Miranda called out, “This place is fascinating. I had no idea that the Company of Cunning maintained such a magnificent collection of antiquities.”
He turned with a subtle bow. “These works of art represent the systematic veneration of vanity by two irredeemably corrupt cultures. Notice how the gods are represented as idealised human beings. Absurd. The exaggerated softness of the women, the infantile penises of the men.” Gleame used his cane to point out examples. “No wonder those degenerate empires fell. Imagine a world of Attican values enforced by the brainless militarism of the Tiberians.”
Miranda curtsied broadly as she reached him. “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
This was comfortable territory for her, and for him, no doubt. Miranda knew vainglorious men were fascinated by history, probably because they see themselves as part of it.
/> Gleame said, “We should be open-minded. The Atticans believed that beauty and intelligence were inextricably linked. I had always thought the idea ridiculous, but maybe you are the proof.”
Miranda laughed gaily. It was expected of her.
“Flatterer.”
“Nonsense, you are delightful and I am very pleased to meet you. I trust my chaperons ensured you had a pleasant journey.”
“I was well looked after. There was some excitement on the last day.”
Gleame’s thick eyebrows furrowed. “An attempt to sabotage the bridge. The ignorant are frightened of that which they do not understand, and very few people understand what we do here. There is no reason to be afraid. We are well protected.”
Miranda had not supposed otherwise and something in his tone unnerved her.
“Her Grace relies upon you for my protection.”
“The duchess has been a great friend to the Convergence since the beginning. I am delighted that one of her own is finally participating in our works.”
Miranda cleared her throat, adopted a formal tone. “The Honourable Company’s monopoly has brought considerable wealth to the North, and elevated the duchess’s standing in the eyes of the Wise Council. She instructs me to inform you that she never expected her union with you to be so fruitful, and encourages you to build upon what has been accomplished already. Your licences remain assured.”
Mother’s message had been delivered word for word, and it seemed to please Gleame greatly.
“And here you are. It is excellent to see the fairer sex represented in these halls. I fully support the idea. We must be progressive if we are to advance our art. But tell me, who proposed it? Your mother?”
I did, Miranda thought, but the point was better left unsettled.
“My mother believes that to employ both sexes within the Convergence will lend the Unity an advantage that other less enlightened realms do not enjoy.”
“Your mother insists that you have a mind as sharp as any man’s.”
The Censor's Hand: Book One of the Thrice~Crossed Swords Trilogy Page 9
