by Sam Hawke
The Chancellor caught sight of us and beckoned, lips tight. He and Tain could have been brothers, sharing the same slight build, broad nose, and dark curls worn long enough to mask what Tain called “the family ears.” The tattoos circling Caslav’s bare arms were a more elaborate version of Tain’s, signifying his role as Chancellor. He was a handsome man, but unlike his nephew’s his face was solemn and humorless. Beside him, Etan faded into the background: a plain, bearded man in his fifties, shorter and stockier, with gentle eyes. I’d heard him called meek. I knew better.
Tain breezed up to Caslav, ignoring his uncle’s frown, and gave the older man a warm squeeze of the shoulders. “Glad to see you. I’m starving. Are those fish cakes?”
“You are three days early,” Caslav said, and I could have sworn the temperature dropped. “And am I to understand that you have returned without your retinue? I received a rather distraught bird from your cousins.”
“Well, it’s a very long journey, Tashi, so I imagine the poor thing got tired.” Failing to generate an answering smile, Tain switched to his most sincere manner. “I’m sorry, Uncle. They were a little over-zealous and I saw a way to come home a fraction early without the fuss. But at least it’s given me a chance to help greet our guest. I learned a little Talafan in Telasa. Shall I go and introduce myself?”
I shuffled back to stand beside Etan as they continued their conversation.
“Jovan,” Etan said, raising a brow.
“Tashi,” I replied with a shrug. A corner of my uncle’s mouth twitched.
In front of us, a big man in an ill-fitting paluma who had been waiting for food also stepped politely backward, trying not to intrude on the conversation between the Chancellor and his nephew. So out of context was his presence here that it took me a moment to recognize Marco, the head of training at the Warrior Guild. He’d taught me in compulsory classes years ago, and had been tutoring Tain for his recent sessions. He was not on the Council, but he must have been assigned temporary Warrior-Guilder status while Aven took the army south. Like a great tree stuffed into an ornamental pot, the soldier stood out in the refined company, his balding head well above the rest, muscular chest and shoulders straining the normally loose paluma. The garb constricted his movements as he tried awkwardly to accept from an unsympathetic servant a bowl for soup with one hand and a flat circle of bread with the other.
“Guilder Marco!”
Credo Bradomir—second only to the Chancellor’s family in honor and wealth—swept past in a cloud of fragrant oil and folds of white silk to accost Marco before he could be served any soup. “My dear man, my dear Guilder.” Bradomir snatched the soup bowl and held it between manicured fingernails as though Marco might have infected it. “Doubtless there are no such niceties in the army, but here there is a certain standard of behavior. The Chancellor is always offered the first serving at a gathering.”
Bradomir replaced the bowl with a chink of expensive ceramics. Marco wiped his forehead and took another step back, head down and eyes searching for an exit. I gave him a shrug in solidarity. I had little in common with Marco or his ilk; though they provided a necessary service to the city and the country more broadly, their skills and values were at odds with the rest of peaceful, cultured Silastian society. On the other hand, Bradomir was indisputably a sanctimonious ass.
“I’m sorry, Credo Bradomir,” Marco said, his voice an uncultured rumble, faintly accented despite his many decades in the city. He extended an uncertain hand, offering his bread to Bradomir as well.
At that, Tain stepped between the two men. “Don’t be ridiculous,” the Heir said. “Please keep your bread, Warrior-Guilder.” He raked Bradomir with a contemptuous glance and nodded to the sweating servant, who served two bowls of the bright soup. Tain made a show of handing one back to his uncle and smiled apologetically at Marco. “There, no harm done.”
Marco moved away, clumsy and silent as he pushed his way to the back of the group. Bradomir’s heavy-lashed gaze lingered on the back of Tain’s head as he allowed himself to be served. I stepped closer to Etan and we took our turn next. “Anything I should be worried about?” he murmured.
I shook my head. “You?” We were close to, but turned at an angle from, the Chancellor, who was now engaged in a discussion with the Stone-Guilder about road paving materials in the lower city.
“No. Well. Later.” Etan set down his bowl of soup next to the Chancellor’s to adjust the cording on his paluma, then, moments later, seemingly picked it up again. The switch of the bowls was so subtle, so effortless, it was all I could do to keep my eyes averted. Hard as I trained, I couldn’t imagine matching his skill as a proofer.
I wanted to ask him about Kalina, and Mother’s invitation, but a screech from the other side of the room interrupted my thought.
“What now?” Credo Lazar pushed through to the source of the disturbance: a servant dancing about on the spot, engaged in some kind of weird spasm with her arms slapping her own back. When her strange hopping spun her about to face us a few more people let out shrieks. A creature clung to her hair, gray and about the size of her head, and nimble enough to avoid her panicked slaps. As several other servants moved in to help her, the animal sprang from her hair onto one of the painted hanging silks dangling nearby and scrambled up it as effortlessly as a large spider.
“Not the silks!” Lazar moaned. “Get it down! Someone get it down!”
“What in all the hells is that thing?” Tain’s voice was a blend of horror and fascination as the animal sprang like a tiny acrobat between the fluttering silk panels. “Is it flying?”
It was, almost; with each leap of the lengths between panels a concertina of dark skin stretched out like wings between the creature’s front and rear legs then folded back to nothing as it landed. We were treated to an excellent view of gleaming black underwing as it flung itself from the silks onto a nearby cushioned stool.
“A gift for the Chancellor from our most generous guest, Lord Ectar,” Etan said, and added in an undertone, “It’s called a ‘leksot,’ I believe. It’s some kind of Talafan pet. It wasn’t received quite as well as Lord Ectar might have hoped; one of the servants fainted when he took it out, and another was convinced it was some kind of bad spirit given form. Oh, and it drooled on Credo Lazar.”
Herded by our anxious host, three servants closed in to capture the animal, while the Talafan nobleman Lord Ectar protested from the side. “It is just playful,” he was saying. “It does not hurt anyone. Please, allow me, allow me.…” Beside him, a servant moaned and mumbled as her gnarled arthritic fingers caressed the earther pendant she wore. Through it all, the leksot bounced on the cushion on light paws, tail coiled in a spring, like an athlete about to begin a race. It cocked its squashed head and regarded us speculatively.
“Perhaps our new Warrior-Guilder could dispose of it for us.” Bradomir’s sly tone raised a few titters in response.
One of the servants, prodded by Lazar, sprang forward to grab at the leksot, but it was far too swift, flattening itself to duck under grasping hands and scrambling up through the sea of legs, right into our group. Amidst shouts and a sudden crush of fleeing bodies, and the rising volume of the earther servant’s prayers, the creature emerged suddenly on my uncle’s bare legs. It scaled him as easily as the silks, faster than he could snatch at it, then leaped from Etan’s shoulder to the Chancellor’s. The flurry and panic intensified as the leksot hitched itself to the back of his paluma and let out a guttural grunt. The absurdity of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful men and women all attempting to rid the Honored Chancellor of the animal plaguing him while also being too afraid to touch it themselves might have been funny in other circumstances.
Lord Ectar himself extracted the creature in the end. The Talafan stammered apologies as he pushed through the crowd and scooped the leksot from the Chancellor’s clothing. “Forgive me, Honored Chancellor,” he said. “I do not know what happened. The cages should have been locked.” He looked abou
t helplessly and then, perhaps remembering that his own servants had been forced to wait outside, carried the leksot himself back to the gilded cage from which it had escaped.
Once clear, Lazar’s army of servants swooped in to fuss over the Chancellor and brush hairs from his paluma while the sweating host himself panted behind them like an overfilled sponge. Honor was as important a currency in Silasta as wealth, and embarrassing the Chancellor would cost Lazar deeply in Council politics. Credo Bradomir and the Theater-Guilder, Credola Varina, made a grand show of dusting themselves off, and Credola Nara took great delight in pointing out the damage the creature had caused to Lazar’s hanging silks with its claws and drool. Marco, free from Bradomir’s scrutiny and unfazed by the commotion, had taken the opportunity to tuck into his soup and bread at last.
The cause of all the excitement, the leksot, shrunk to docility now that its adventure had ended, grunting happily and nestling up against the Talafan’s arm as he put it back in the cage. “It is just excited,” he tried to explain, to nobody in particular. “They like play. They are the most beloved pet in the Emperor’s court.”
Tain elbowed me, deadpan. “Think it’ll catch on here?”
I did my best not to laugh.
The family ears apparently conferred additional functionality, because Chancellor Caslav’s gaze snapped over to his nephew. His tone was unamused as he said, “Credo Jovan, I wonder, would you be so good as to take my fine gift to the Manor? I think perhaps we’ve had sufficient excitement for one gathering, and you did mention you were heading back that way shortly.” Over his shoulder, Tain made a pained expression.
“Certainly, Honored Chancellor.”
“The glass garden will do.”
I inclined my head. A job for a servant, perhaps, but given the reaction most of Lazar’s were having to the animal it probably wasn’t wise to leave it to one of them. I masked a shudder. The thing might have been harmless, but it was messy and smelly, and my skin itched just looking at it.
Etan patted my shoulder. “I’ll see you at home later.”
Across the room, Tain gave me a mournful wave as I struggled out the door with the unwieldy cage.
* * *
At home, I washed my stinking, fur-sprinkled paluma and scrubbed myself clean in the bath. My back ached. I’d left the leksot leaping around the glass-walled garden in the Manor to wreak its mischief, and sent a silent apology to the gardeners there.
I’d finally settled down to a pot of tea and a book when Etan came home. The wooden beads hanging from my doorway clicked as he entered; I glanced up and my chest compressed as I took in my uncle’s swollen lips, shiny skin, and puffy eyes.
“Time to go, Jovan,” he said.
I sprang to my feet.
Etan shuffled gracelessly into the kitchen and pressed the underside of the stone bench, activating the mechanism that moved a section of cupboard and revealed our hidden proofing room. My heart rate increased as we packed a satchel full of antidotes: charcoal, sea snake scale powder, atrapis, panshar balls from the digestive tracts of wild lutra. “How long since you noticed?”
“I came straight here from the wharfs,” Etan said. I marked how many bottles and jars he took, and the lack of precision made me anxious. “Less than an hour. Dizziness first, then swelling, then perspiration. No stomach pains or nausea, but pressure in my chest.”
My throat dried. “The Chancellor?”
“At the Manor.”
“Sit down,” I told him, and took over packing the satchel, my stomach knotting. There had been other attempts to dose the Chancellor with various substances over the years, but never had I seen my uncle this way.
“Have you eaten since lunch?”
“No.”
“You proofed everything at Lazar’s?”
He might have been feeling ill but it hadn’t dampened his spirits entirely; the look he fired at me stung.
“Sorry, Tashi. I just know these functions are difficult.” Etan himself prepared the majority of the Chancellor’s food, or else proofed it long in advance. But functions like today’s were the bane of our profession: shared food, someone else’s kitchens, staff we didn’t know, and the scrutiny of canny eyes under which we must secretly test. Visibly proofing would expose open distrust and weakness—much like bringing one’s own servants to another’s home, or being surrounded by openly armed guards—something custom and honor dictated that the Chancellor must never do. Etan had to proof everything on the spot, before the Chancellor, without being noticed.
Etan tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I got into Lazar’s kitchens this morning and tested everything they’d prepared. I noticed nothing, and there were no masking flavors.” Food with a naturally bitter, sour, or acidic taste, or food so heavily spiced as to hide subtler flavors, would never be passed on to the Chancellor unless it had been proofed well in advance. “I don’t know much about Lord Ectar the Talafan, so I took no chances.” We knew of only two toxins that were effectively undetectable in food, even to a trained proofer; petra venom and a complicated compound known as Esto’s revenge. If Etan had consumed either of those, he’d be dead already.
I waited while he purged his stomach contents into a basin, and gave him two of the most generalized antidotes—charcoal and a panshar ball—after he had cleaned himself. “Without any stomach pain, the only thing that matches your symptoms is maidenbane, but obviously you’d have tasted that,” I said. That plant was so bitter even an untrained person would detect something amiss. “It might be an illness?”
Etan shrugged. He suddenly seemed so diminished. Older. Frailer. “I hope so.”
We hailed a litter but asked the men to move slowly. Up here, between the Credol residences, the streets were the original unpaved pathways, with no heavy wagon traffic to drive ruts into the packed surface. It made the journey smoother, but still fear and concern dogged me as we traveled in silence. The white azikta stone walls of the buildings around us glowed warmly in the afternoon light as we made our way up the heavy gradient pathway to the sprawling Chancellor’s Manor.
Argo, the Manor doorkeep, noted our passage in his visitors’ tome in silence, solemn as he stared at us through spectacles in need of repair.
“We have urgent business with the Chancellor,” Etan told him.
Argo pulled a cord hanging from the wall behind his desk and a middle-aged woman appeared through the beaded arch to escort us beyond the entrance hall. She had served the Chancellor for years and knew not to question the purpose of our visit. Her eyes followed me as she left the study, brows drawn together; it was rare for me to accompany my uncle here in daylight hours.
The Chancellor came soon after. His dark gaze swept over Etan, and I fancied a little color left his face. A slow-acting, undetected poison was our greatest fear: more than one Chancellor had lost his life that way.
Etan strode forward with renewed energy. “How do you feel?” He checked Caslav’s skin, eyes, mouth, and nose in turn. The Chancellor sat, mute, as Etan checked his temperature and smelled his breath. My mouth felt dry. No poison attempt had ever passed my uncle. Not one.
“I feel well,” Caslav said slowly.
I finished my own visual scan, and my breath—unconsciously held—hissed out. The Chancellor looked fine. Rattled, maybe, but healthy. Etan settled back on the desk and regarded his old friend with open relief.
“Take these, in case.” He handed the Chancellor a few small dark squares of charcoal to block the absorption of poison through the system. “But it looks like I’m just ill.”
“I’ll send someone to fetch a physic,” Caslav said. “I’d rather you didn’t go to the hospital.”
Etan nodded. Privacy and secrecy were the cornerstones of our role.
“Thank you.” The Chancellor rocked back on his chair and folded his hands into his armpits, a gesture that reminded me strongly of his nephew. We left him there, but the feeling of unease stayed with me.
* * *
Etan stayed b
ehind in a guest suite at the Manor in the care of Thendra, a square-jawed physic with the gleaming black skin of a western wetlander, who often treated Kalina. She knew my need for order well, and watched without comment with her slanted, unblinking eyes as I checked over Etan one last time. She even moved carefully so as not to disturb the arrangement of cloth, drinking glass, and book I had set on the bedside table.
My compulsions always grew in proportion to my anxiety, so sitting in a room berating myself and becoming increasingly erratic would help no one. Instead, I borrowed a Manor messenger and sent for my sister to watch Etan. Our family duty was our greatest honor and my first responsibility. Etan might merely be ill, but we could never assume that. Walking, I pictured the Council lunch, recalling the room, the food. There had been two courses I had seen—fish cakes eaten by hand, and the soup and bread. Etan had mentioned two more, plus drinks: pre-poured cups of kori and kavcha and, at the end of the event, tea served individually from the pot. He’d proofed it all. I counted my steps down the corridor—left, right, left, longer step right to dodge a crack in the stone, longer step left to compensate—out of the visitors’ wing and back through the entrance, nodding to Argo on the way past. There had been no seated meals and no plates designated for a particular person. Unless everyone at the lunch had been poisoned—and Etan was the first to show symptoms because he had proofed the food earlier in the morning—then any poisoner must have been there personally to directly tamper with the Chancellor’s food once he had selected it.
The Talafan nobleman was the obvious starting point. While the Empire was a valued trade partner, partners maneuvered against each other all the time, and Etan had said he knew little about Lord Ectar personally. Certainly the nervous, embarrassed man I had seen didn’t appear a likely poisoner, but looks, of course, meant little.
And if a poison attempt was targeted only at the Chancellor, our Talafan visitor wasn’t the only possible enemy. Most of the Council had been there—all six Credol Families had been represented, as well as four of the six Guilders. Beneath the overt civility of the Council always rippled quiet plays for power and influence; while the rules of honor kept ill feeling masked, the Chancellor had as many enemies as friends, particularly among the Families. A diminution of influence in one family left an opening for another, and this wouldn’t be the first time a subtle poisoning had been attempted. Indeed, our family’s historic role had developed out of a past with more aggressive maneuverings, when the Families jostled for power and quiet, civilized murder was a common tool. These days such things were far rarer, but not unheard of. I was a month behind on current politics, but Etan would know who stood to gain and lose if the Chancellor were harmed.
