Madness of Flowers

by Jay Lake

  He hit the ocean hard enough to knock his wind, breaking the surface amid a cloud of bright bubbles. The chill more than the impact robbed his will. Onesiphorous struggled for the light—he was no waterman, but panic had not yet trapped him.

  Gasping, he found the surface in time for a rope to hit him on the head.

  "Grab the line!" shouted Boudin.

  Onesiphorous grabbed. He was then offered the blunt end of a boathook. With help from the boy, the soaked dwarf tumbled into the boat. He felt wretched.

  "Here, sir," the boy said with a grin. "I have a blanket and some hot tea."

  "Real tea, or some swamp swill?" Onesiphorous immediately regretted his words. "I'm sorry, Boudin."

  "S'ok." The boy pulled at the oars, not meeting the dwarf's eyes. Then: "Don't make mock, sir."

  Snake eaters, he'd been told in the port city. Jungle rats with no more sense than monkeys, not living in real houses nor doing honest labor. Onesiphorous understood prejudice, but his work here was among the dwarf refugees, not the local underclass. Still, he knew nothing more than the dismissive rumors.

  "I didn't mean to." He huddled under the blanket. "I'm just . . . " He patted for the bell. It was still in the inner pocket.

  "Everywhere's got its magick," Boudin went on, stubbornly. "Herblore and whatnot. Jungle's no different."

  Onesiphorous shivered. "And it makes no matter to me, boy. Just take me home and I'll pay you double in thanks for the kindness of the blanket."

  "A lizard told me you was going to fall," said Boudin with a shy smile.

  "I see."

  All the way back to the jetty at Lentas, Onesiphorous could hear the bell faintly jingling with the movements of the boat.

  The day bells rang the trade exchanges closed just before Onesiphorous climbed the winding stair from the jetty. A group of clerks clattered by, the young full-men shouting as they pushed past him.

  They barely knew he was there.

  His joints ached. He made the first walkway, the tier known on most islands as the Tidewatch. There he paused a moment to let his legs tremble.

  A young dwarf approached. Sandy-haired, pale-skinned, eyes brown as a polished nut, wearing the traditional muslin wrappings of their kind. Perneto, that was the name. A runner and aspiring clerk to the Stone House Factoring Cooperative—one of the local businesses that some of the City dwarfs had bought into after fleeing south.

  Onesiphorous had been something of a rabble-rouser, to put it mildly, before he'd become a bureaucrat. In both lines of work, a good memory for names and faces was nigh essential. "Hello, Perneto."

  "S-s-s-sir." The young dwarf blushed. A distinct reek of sudden perspiration washed outward.

  By Dorgau's ruby testicle, thought Onesiphorous with a flood of pity, here's one not suited for a commercial life. He smiled, trying to breathe through his mouth without being obvious. "Yes?"

  "Master B-b-brace s-s-sent me."

  Surely the lad was used to how he affected people. Onesiphorous took a great gasp. "My best regards to Master Brace."

  Perneto looked confused. "B-b-but I have not d-d-d-delivered the m-m-message yet."

  "Of course." He waved a hand. "Please, carry on." It took an act of will not to echo the poor dwarf's stammer.

  "I am ch-ch-charged to t-t-tell you that B-b-b-orold S-s-s-even-sh-sh-sh—"

  "Sevenships," Onesiphorous said quickly, not waiting for Perneto to find his way out of the other end of the name.

  "Yes." The younger dwarf glared. "He is t-t-t-treating with c-c-corsairs. F-f-from the S-s-sunward Sea."

  "Ah." Onesiphorous didn't know what to make of this news. Corsairs and trade factors were natural enemies as much as wolves and shepherds. "Was there m-more?" Thunder and ruin, he'd gone and slipped into the boy's stammer.

  "I don't kn-n-n-ow." Perneto looked miserable.

  "My thanks."

  The young dwarf stood, shifting his weight. Did he want a tip? "Are you hungry, lad?"

  Perneto nodded.

  Onesiphorous fished into his pocket and found a silver obol. Far more than a few minutes of a messenger's time was worth, but he'd given the last of his chalkies to Boudin the boat boy. "Here," he said, "go eat well."

  As Perneto scuttled away, Onesiphorous walked slowly along the Tidewatch, jingling the Alate's bell. He wasn't certain this had anything to do with him, really, but Sevenships talking to corsairs didn't bode well. He wished he knew who he could trust here in Port Defiance.

  It was time to talk to Big Sister again. And add this news to his next letter to Imago.

  Imago

  They spent the next several hours looking over the map table. Not even the redoubtable Enero had been further north than Sourapple Roads, less than a day's ride past the River Gate.

  The map itself was an ancient masterpiece. It depicted the lands of the old empire, ranging from the Silver Ridges in the north to the Yellow Mountains in the west, and the great extent of plains and hills southeast along the Sunward Sea to the old tributary ports and the Tokhari deserts beyond. Cities and garrisons were marked with dusty pockholes which might once have contained gems. The boundaries of provinces lost to history were marked as well, painted borders crossing what were now wildlands or tribal strongholds or young nations with no memory of the Bladed Throne. Bright bars from the narrow windows marched across the map as the day went on.

  What interested Imago the most was the northern boundary. Where had this mountebank come from? What could she possibly have found that would have given up the little silver bell from the time of Imperator Terminus?

  "There are being only five good passes beyond the Silver Ridges," Enero said, pacing the north edge of the table—one of the longer sides. "To be seeing the marks? All of them were having a fortress at one time."

  Bijaz ran his finger along a border, leaving behind a trail of grime. "Presuming she didn't rob a museum or dig up some grave in the Rose Downs, she still could have found Terminus anywhere between here and there."

  "It is being your history."

  "No," said Imago. "If the Imperator Terminus had died within the borders of the old empire, he wouldn't be a mystery. He marched out of history, remember."

  "Or into it," said Bijaz.

  Marelle studied the map. "The Whitetowers archives are in the old Footsoldiers' Guild Hall. We should look there, see what they said about that."

  "What are the Whitetowers archives being?" asked Enero.

  Imago looked up. "I'm afraid I don't know."

  "The old universities," said Bijaz. Marelle nodded. "Abandoned, what, four, five hundred years ago?"

  The dwarfess pointed to a bend in the Saltus far to the north and west of the City Imperishable, where the river made its closest approach to the Silver Ridges. "Here. There were four of them in the old days. Imperatorial University, now over in the Wine District, is the only surviving school. They moved it down the river after the Grain Rebellion, anno 202 Imperator Terminus. When the empire was collapsing. The Saltus School was founded about the same time by refugee faculty from two of the other universities."

  Imago was fascinated. "The empire lost three universities? But kept their archives?"

  She looked up. "A dwarfess named Marja-Louisa saved them. She was a Whitetowers dwarf, boxed and raised there, but she could not stand to see the libraries burned. She held off the Bloody Scythes single-handedly, then rousted those who couldn't flee the siege to load the books onto the last of the grain barges."

  "What happened to her?"

  "Hanged from Lame Burgess Bridge here in the City Imperishable less than a year later," Marelle said in a distant voice. "By a mob of students." Her eyes met Imago's. "Marja-Louisa was only a housemistress, you see. A dwarf and a female, twice over forbidden to touch the books."

  "An ancestress of yours?" Imago asked, sympathetic.

  "No. Merely a woman. Just like me."

  "When we are done here, I would be pleased if you would show me the archives. I'm afraid I don't even k
now where the old Footsoldiers' Guild Hall is."

  "It is being east of the Green Market," said Enero. "Along Heliograph Hill."

  Imago had spent plenty of time on Heliograph Hill. A great deal of money lived in the fine houses on the crescents and closes up on that height, money which had firm opinions about how the City Imperishable should conduct its affairs. Still, he couldn't bring the building to mind.

  "We will look, then, and see where the Imperator Terminus is said to have met his end," the Lord Mayor announced. "I can recall a dozen stories told to me as a child, each stranger than the next. Maybe the archives hold the truth."

  "Or reliable rumor," Marelle said.

  Bijaz bent slightly to achieve a spider's eye view of the table. "You're assuming north, though."

  Imago nodded. "She came through the River Gate. She has Northmen in her train, and an ice bear."

  Bijaz looked up at the Lord Mayor. "It might be an albino."

  "Not that big."

  "I am agreeing," said Enero. "There are being great bear skins in the market, from hills to the north, but an albino would not be having black eyes."

  "North." Imago tossed the bell onto the table. "I want to know where she found this thing. I don't believe it was the tomb of the Imperator Terminus, but others will. At the same time, I want her gone from the City. In disgrace, or mockery. Something that will keep the people from following her." He looked at Bijaz.

  "I know," the dwarf said. "I will not contest her directly, but I understand your need."

  Enero rolled the bell idly in his hand. "It would be helping if we were to be knowing which pass she was using."

  They all stared at the map, willing there to be some epiphany in the ancient lines of pigment. None came.

  Imago and Marelle passed through town in an enclosed fiacre. Blue velvet curtains were drawn over the glass windows. A necessary subterfuge of his position, he was told time and again. Travel in closed carriages, keep armed riders close by. Sometimes carriages ran empty.

  No one had tried to kill him since the battle at Terminus Plaza. Not even a close call. Nonetheless, Marelle, Biggest Sister, old Ducôte, and his other counselors would not let him walk the streets, nor ride. He no longer had the length of leg to control a horse, sadly, and the pain of that day had never quite left him, so Imago supposed he must be a passenger in any event.

  "You said Marja-Louisa was a Whitetowers dwarf?"

  She nodded. "Boxed and raised."

  "I thought the boxes were peculiar to the City Imperishable."

  Marelle gave Imago a puzzled look. "In the days of the empire, Whitetowers was part of the City Imperishable."

  "They never boxed dwarfs down along the Sunward Sea," he pointed out.

  "Those were tributary cities, not vassals."

  He worked that out a moment. While the minutiae of urban governance had become all too familiar to Imago of late, the logic of empire was considerably more obscure. "Meaning they paid tribute to the City Imperishable but were not under its rule?"

  "Exactly." She gave him another puzzled look. "How can you rule this place and know so little of its history?"

  "I rule nothing." Imago laid his head back against the buttoned upholstery, took a deep breath of the musty, oily air. "I have limited authority over the affairs of some two hundred thousand people and several hundred trading houses, corporations, guilds, and great families. My powers are only persuasive. Even then, I only influence the City Imperishable, not the old empire. Such as it remains, the empire is the domain of the Assemblage of Burgesses. They rule over the River Saltus, the Rose Downs, and Port Defiance. As well as having the courts. What cities once paid tribute and what cities once paid vassalage, or whatever vassal cities do, is scarcely relevant to my concerns."

  "You used to be a barrator, right?"

  "Yes." Imago grinned. It had been an interesting life, though chronically underfunded. "Old statutes were my stock in trade. That's how I came to revive the office of Lord Mayor, after all."

  And in the bargain, diffusing the power which had concentrated sufficiently within the Inner Chamber to draw the Old Gods up from their stony tombs beneath the streets.

  "History is nothing but old statutes." She leaned close, grasping tight to his arm. "Consider this, Lord Mayor. A tributary city, or any tributary territory, would have been the concern of the Imperator and the Burgesses. The Tokhari, for example. But a clever man could argue that a vassal city was part and parcel of the City Imperishable. Should you feel the need to exert your influence."

  "Still history," said Imago. "We have no vassal cities anymore. The old empire is either empty lands or in other hands. Besides which, the very last thing I want to do is further undermine the Burgesses. Keeping the powers in our city spread out is far safer."

  "Port Defiance is a vassal city," she said.

  The fiacre lurched to halt. The Winter Boy atop the driver's bench banged on the passenger box.

  Imago found Marelle's remark about Port Defiance to be a curious thought as he lurched down to the cobbles. He still had sufficient pride to be annoyed by the little iron step provided for his convenience in making the descent.

  Marelle had brought him to the Whitetowers archives. They were in a winding alley that sloped uphill, though he didn't recognize it. He could smell the Green Market—that many tons of vegetables and grain carried its own odor in the spring warmth.

  The Footsoldiers' Guild Hall rose before them, a building in the late stages of terminal distress. It had a grand frontage for something that faced an alley—portico with six pillars in a classical style, though the plastering had long since shattered away to show the rotting laths beneath. Cheap construction. One would not have expected wealth from such a guild as this, even in its heyday. The location told the same story—far from the Limerock Palace and the seats of power, built in the days before Heliograph Hill became a posh address. Today the place was further from wealth than ever. The stoa was jammed with junk—everything from fruit baskets to velocipedes to old chaises longues rotting beneath the weight of birds' nests. Much of the mass was wired into place.

  The guildhall looked like a madwoman's attic turned inside out. Smelled like it, too, Imago realized as he waddled up the steps after Marelle. "This is an archive?"

  "No, it's a dump. The Whitetowers archives are inside because there was nowhere else for them to go."

  Imago imagined the endless halls of the Sudgate, layer on layer of vast chambers and tiny closets, so many of them containing only dust and mice. "I see."

  The entrance was certainly a footsoldier's door. It was higher than normal, to admit men carrying spears, and wider as well, for armored men who swaggered. Each pillar was carved as a soldier deep out of history—the right side carried a club and wore skins, the left side baroque armor and a short, wide sword. Under the portico roof, surrounded by junk, these carvings had survived centuries of weather. The building would have been unused four hundred years ago, he realized, for the archives to be deposited then. Land was available for the asking along the eastern wall, but it was hard to imagine that the wealth of Heliograph Hill hadn't since found better use for this building, or its location.

  The things a mayor never knew about his own city.

  Marelle tugged at the door. It slid partway open with a horrendous squeal, startling rats out of the porch junk piles. She squeezed into the darkness beyond. Glancing back at his man on the fiacre, Imago followed. Once he had entered the shadows, Marelle heaved the door to.

  "No one is here?" he whispered, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  "This is a vacant guild." Marelle's voice was normal. "Charter still stands, and there's money in trust to pay the fees every year. Hasn't been a guildmaster in centuries."

  Imago forced himself to a normal voice as well. "How do you know all this?"

  "I'm a City employee. You wouldn't believe the paperwork we handle." He could hear her grinning, even in the dark.

  "But the archives? And whatever
else is in here."

  "Think of this as a rent-free warehouse," she said. "It won't be torn down until the guild charter lapses, which won't happen until the trust runs out."

  They stood a few moments, taking in the tangled, quiet space.

  If the Sudgate is the attic of the City Imperishable, this is its midden, Imago thought. The mess on the portico had been a mere hint of the waste within. The bulking masses around him had an organic quality that spoke of long neglect.

  "A person could make a career out of mining this place." Marelle began following a path that wound through the clutter. He trailed behind her, ducking clusters of old dining chairs, stepping past barrels of metal rods, across ankle-deep fuzz.