by K. J. Parker
Aimeric and Orsella, therefore, slept on a bale of the finest Aelian silk. The barge was painfully slow. There would be no landfall between the City and Lonazep (a small settlement on the north end of the Boec peninsula; the south end, sixty miles away, was separated from the island of Scona by two miles of water). Orsella had made herself a sort of cabin by draping heavy brocades over bits of the rigging, and didn’t want to be disturbed, so Aimeric spent most of his time leaning on the rail, staring at the sea. He asked the captain and the first mate if there was anything he could do to help, but they just laughed.
The harbour at Lonazep was small and wind-blasted. The buildings were mostly wood, bleached a uniform grey by the salt air. The harbour master came out to peer at them over the folds of a huge, fat scarf, but nothing he saw seemed to interest him. The crew started to unload, with the slow, efficient movements of men who know they have a lot of work to get through.
Aimeric looked down at his smart, expensive City boots, their shiny toes clouded with encrustations of white salt. “Well,” he said, “we’d better start walking.”
“Not just yet,” Orsella said. She didn’t seem particularly affected by the general gloom of the place. “What we need is a bar.”
“Really.”
“That way,” she said, nodding, “assuming it’s still there. I haven’t been here in years.”
It was still there. It was the only brick-built building in town. It was empty, apart from a huge bald-headed man, asleep with his feet up on a chair.
“Hello, Rainault,” Orsella said.
The bald man woke up and rose to his feet like a startled bird. “Good God,” he said. “You.”
“That’s right. Don’t worry, I’m not stopping.”
“Too right you aren’t.”
“I’m here to sell.”
The bald man hesitated, then shrugged. “What’ve you got?”
Orsella frowned. “For pity’s sake, Rainault,” she said. “We’ve just got off the boat, we’re freezing cold and starving hungry.” This was news to Aimeric, but Orsella had a way of turning anything she said into the truth. He shivered. “Get us some bread and cheese and load up the fire. This is supposed to be a friendly, welcoming place.”
Rainault scowled at her, but did as he was told. The bread was close-grained and incredibly dense, but nowhere near as hard as the cheese. The fire made the room uncomfortably hot.
“Well?” Rainault said.
“Take a look at these.”
She put the long, flat case down on a table and unbuckled the straps. Rainault peered down, blinked a couple of times and rubbed his jaw, as though he’d been punched in the face.
“Dirty pictures,” he said, in a faintly awestruck voice. “Not a lot of call for that sort of thing round here.”
Orsella was smiling. “Not just any dirty pictures,” she said. “Look at the signature.”
A gleam in Rainault’s eye suggested he’d already done that. “Genuine?”
“You know me.”
Obviously he didn’t. “All right,” he said slowly. “What were you thinking of asking?”
“There’s more,” Orsella said. “Here, look.”
She turned over one of the sheets. In faded brown writing, spiky and sloped, Aimeric could just make out—
Directly as a consequence of the making of this picture, my son was born on the 17th day of the seventh month of the third year of Ortheric II. In the circumstances, I believe it would be appropriate to name him Calojan.
“Calojan means ‘little dog’ in Old Permian,” Orsella explained. “And the couple in the picture—”
“Yes,” Rainault said. His face was expressionless, but his eyes were bulging. “How much?”
“I think you’ll have no trouble finding a buyer,” Orsella said. “The Mezentine government, for instance. They’re probably looking round for a suitable coronation gift right now.”
“Ten tremisses.”
“Forty,” Orsella replied. “And I’m only selling because we’re cold and hungry.”
Rainault turned the sheet over, pursed his lips so tight that they showed white, walked to the counter, opened a jar and sloshed big silver coins into the palm of his hand. “Nice to see you again,” he said, with his back turned. “Where are you headed?”
“Scona,” Orsella said. “We need a ride.”
“I know for a chaise,” Rainault said. “Twelve tremisses.”
“Nine.”
The back of Rainault’s head moved up and down. “Give me an hour,” he said.
So it was that, just over an hour later, Orsella and Aimeric found themselves in a small dog-cart with flaking paint and a tattered canopy, rattling slowly over the bone-dry ruts on the transpeninsular road. In two days’ time, if they were lucky, they’d see the improbably tall, cone-shaped profile of Scona on the flat horizon. Once a volcano, always a volcano, the saying went, but it didn’t stop forty thousand people living there.
Orsella was making charcoal sketches, though the bumps in the road made it difficult. Clearly, a large number of hitherto unknown masterpieces by Calojan’s father were about to reach the market. Aimeric, doing his best with the reins and the footbrake, was muttering something over and over again, under his breath; twenty parts Scona oil, four parts turpentine, one part sulphur, one part sal draconis—
On the first day of the old moon in the sixth month of the regency of Calojan the Great, the empress gave birth to a boy. He was slightly undersized, but healthy. He was given the name Roumain, after the regent’s father. He had six fingers on his left hand.
Table of Contents
Savages
