I arched my eyebrows above the oval rims of the glasses. “Wrestling? Chanter Vas, the nobile children asked me to show them a few moves from my days in the fighting pit. It would have been rude to refuse.”
“Rude?” Gilliam repeated, baring artificially straightened teeth. “Rude?” He released me and took a lurching step back, as if saying the word twice had reminded him of its meaning. Standing straight as he could, the intus angled his chin upward. “Some among His Excellency’s retainers feel it is improper for a man of your . . . your station to commingle so obviously with the palatine caste.”
That earned Gilliam my most acerbic of grins, edged and knowing. “My station? The count himself requested that I attend his children.”
“Lord Balian has queer notions about propriety,” Gilliam said with edged glee. Was that a pun? The old prejudices were known to rear their heads from time to time, even among the palatine caste. Apparently aware of his error, Gilliam reddened. His mistake only made him angry, brows drawing down over those mismatched eyes. “Listen. You’re being too familiar with the count’s children. It isn’t . . . proper. Do you understand?” And this from an intus bastard, a mutant, the fleshly avatar of impropriety. Really, it was almost too much for my cultivated sense of irony to take. I stifled a narrow smile.
“Proper?” I echoed, playing dumb. “If you think I’ve touched Lady Anaïs, I assure you I’ve no intention of doing so.” What was Gilliam to them, or they to Gilliam? Was this court puritanism only that? The protection of palatine blood from the lowborn humanity Gilliam perceived me to be? He was palatine but marked by his affliction as less than a homunculus in many ways. Often I have found that such outsiders cling hardest to those labels that are denied them, Thus weak men are the most aggressive and unskilled ones loudest to boast. Gilliam was palatine, so the fact that he thought I was not was important to him. It was petulance and little more.
“Touch Lady Ana . . .” He trailed off, voice going tight in his throat as he repeated my words. “A degenerate like you and the young lords . . .” He shuddered, his jaw working as if trying to tear boiled leather, and for a moment I thought he might hit me.
Very carefully, drawing on my guess and my politest speaking voice, I said, “Your Reverence, I assure you that my intentions toward the young lord and lady are entirely innocent. I am only at court because of the count’s orders. Given a choice I would have been on the first ship out-system.” I did not add, But I’m a fugitive from my own house and trapped here to protect your lordship from the Inquisition. I shuddered to think what a Chantry inquisitor would do to a nobile house caught harboring a fugitive like myself.
“Then explain your espionage.”
“My . . . what?” I blinked at him behind my red glasses. “You mean my visit to the coliseum cells?”
Gilliam scowled. “You broke into His Excellency’s gaol. You can’t honestly tell me your intentions were innocent.”
“They were!” I objected, perhaps too hotly. “Well, perhaps not innocent, but harmless! I wanted to meet the creature. To speak with it.” Here at least was something reasonable. Even I had to admit that breaking in to see Makisomn looked far from innocent, which made the truth seem a weak excuse.
“Consortation is a grievous sin, M. Gibson. One of the Twelve,” the Chanter hissed, subconsciously making the sign of the sun disc at his side. “What could you learn from such a beast?”
“I’ve no idea. I only wanted to see it with eyes unclouded.”
“With eyes unclouded,” Gilliam mocked, voice stretching to a high note, though from the way his eyebrows relaxed from their intense frown, I knew this had surprised him. Not the answer he’d expected, then. Coldly he asked, “Why?”
“Innocent curiosity.” I shrugged, knowing this answer—while almost true—would not satisfy the man. Perhaps I ought to have said monomania. “I wanted to meet a member of the only species to ever challenge mankind’s primacy in the universe.”
“Blasphemy!” he snarled. “No species can challenge mankind’s place!” I thought he would grab me again.
Taking a step back, plastic sword twitching in my hand, I almost whispered, “Tell that to the warship recovering in orbit. Tell that to your guardsmen.” Some piece clicked into place. Gilliam’s dislike of me was not only due to the fact that he thought me baseborn. It was not only that he thought me a spy and a danger to his lord. He thought me a heretic. I suppose I was a heretic, given my interest in the xenobites.
The chanter’s lips quirked, and I could almost see the impulse to punch me spasm across the surface of his addled brain. Instead he changed tack. “I understand you can speak their vile tongue.”
“Not very well.”
“Perhaps that’s for the best.” Gilliam half turned to go. “Call it innocent curiosity all you wish, but there will come a time when the count loses interest in you, boy. You know the punishment for consortation, surely?”
“I surely do.” And despite the warmth of the day and my dislike for the malformed priest, I felt a chill, fancying that I heard the sharpening of ceramic knives and the sound of quenching iron on the wind. The cathar-torturers of the Holy Terran Chantry did not have their reputation without reason. Heretics so heinous as to consort with the inhuman were flayed, crucified, and left to die.
His threat spoken, Gilliam smiled. “Do consider what I’ve said, and stay away from the young lords.”
He was halfway back to the doors and to his two foederati guardsmen before I said, “Your Reverence, a moment.” Gilliam turned, lumbering to a halt—was one of his legs shorter than the other? He waited. So as not to make his famously twitchy guards point stunners in my direction, I stayed under the arbor. I wanted to say something threatening, something impressive. I wanted to cow the little gargoyle of a cleric. But all that came were insults about his condition, and whatever my personal feelings about his sort, I would not stoop to such low behavior. Instead I took a step forward, removing my glasses to fix the priest with my best, most violet stare. “Don’t assume you know everything.”
CHAPTER 52
LITTLE TALKS
I DID NOT PAY Gilliam Vas much mind. Though he was a priest of the Holy Chantry—a chanter, no less, and no mere anagnost—my childhood on Delos had acquainted me with such high-powered antagonists. Besides, the intus’s appearances were few and far between. And I had other things to distract me. My outings with Dorian and Anaïs continued as before, and their Jaddian improved, which was well. Emesh was expecting an ambassadorial visit from the Principalities, and the count and Lord Luthor wanted to impress the soon-to-be-visiting Jaddian satrap governor with their family’s fluency and culture.
I had never met a Jaddian palatine, one of the vaunted eali al’aqran. The Jaddians had been Imperial citizens once. Drawn together by their ethnic identity—their distant ancestors had peopled the Mediterranean and were among the last to leave Old Earth—they had rebelled against Forum and the Solar Throne more than nine thousand years ago. Against all odds, those once-provincial worlds on the outer edge of the galaxy had won their independence and the right of their nobiles to control the genetic destiny of their own children. Few as they were—a mere eighty-some princely families and their leal vassals—they were mighty, with armies of cloned mamluk soldiers and a strong tradition of military service that shamed even imperialist Turkey of old. Never again would those rebel princes kneel before our holy Emperor. Free of the Chantry’s grasp—though many in the Principalities still worshipped Mother Earth—those foreign nobiles bred themselves beyond anything the Imperium would allow. They embraced eugenics in ways Sol never would, reassured by the supremacy of their genetics program and their way of life. They were a nation of supermen, of demigods.
I hoped to meet them. Tales of the crystal courts of the Alcaz du Badr, of the harems of Prince Aldia, and of the inhuman speed and skill of the Maeskoloi swordmasters were legend in the Imperium, exotic as the vi
cious Cielcin, strange as the whispers of Vorgossos and of the Extrasolarians who hid between the stars.
After that afternoon at the Ulakiel alienage, Valka and I had spent more time together. Whatever our differences, we had found common ground in our respect for the xenobites and in our contempt for the Chantry. She knew I had spoken truly that day on the beach, out from under the Imperial thumb for a moment. She had seen me, the boy who had fled Delos rather than be shipped away to Vesperad, and she had not despised me.
But I was still not allowed outside the palace unsupervised, and so speaking further truth to Valka was not in the cards. Doubtless there were places in Borosevo Castle where we could truly speak in private, but only the count and his senior staff would know about them, and asking them was out of the question. And so I found myself outside Valka’s door, not for the first time and not for the last. She never let me inside, but we walked the palace colonnades and the vaulted halls or else descended to the terraced gardens that studded the south face of the castle ziggurat.
This time she did not open at my first knock, nor my second. I stood there in uncomfortable silence for a long while, counting the herringbone tiles—black and tawny—that covered the floor. A logothete hurried by, escorting an offworld dignitary in Durantine robes. Neither spared me more than a passing glance, and I pretended to be absorbed in the holograph display on the wall opposite the doctor’s room: a swirling, impressionistic cloudscape of rose and violet mist enveloping the white geometries of a stone monastery of Mandari design. A panel in the corner of the misty image said it was the Bashang Temple on Cai Shen.
Cai Shen was gone. Laid waste by the Cielcin. I wondered if those white stones still stood or if war had turned them black. What cruel joke of gods or Fate had tuned that holograph plate to Cai Shen? I ran a hand through the image, pressed my fingers to the metal of the wall behind. I turned away, trying not to think about how the temple and its whole world were glass now. The image fizzled, and the lights dimmed so that only the evening sunlight pierced the high windows to either side of the holograph. The brownouts had grown so common that I didn’t even blink but knocked on the doctor’s door again and rattled the knob. “Valka?”
It wasn’t locked. Had it been left that way? Or had the power malfunction fouled the electronic lock? In any case I found myself opening the door to a room I ought not to have opened. All right, boy. In or out?
Despite the lack of illumination, I could see that Valka’s rooms were finer than my own and larger. For all that, they were a mess. I stopped for a moment, reminded by a green undergarment left on the floor that I was intruding. The clutter humanized her, though like all young men I clung to my shattering image of Valka’s perfection. Clothing littered the floor, hung from the backs of chairs, lay atop printouts and storage chits strewn on the low drinking table and the higher dining one. I forced myself to reevaluate the doctor, to remind myself that at the other end of my private affections was a person and not the dream of one. Remembering myself, I cleared my throat and said in a weak voice, “Doctor Onderra? The door was unlocked. I . . . Are we still on for this evening?” No answer. The sense that I was intruding only grew stronger—and rightly—but I felt I had pressed too far to give up yet. Unwilling to go much farther into the room, I repeated myself. “Doctor Onderra? Valka? It’s Hadrian.”
I spied her at last, seated with her back to me on the broad sill of one window, obscured by the hangings. Padding softly around a pair of abandoned pants, fighting the conflicting emotions accompanying the thought that Valka might be undressed, I moved carefully into her line of sight. She was dressed, but her eyes were closed. Asleep? “Doctor?”
Her eyes opened, and only by degrees did she seem to become aware of where she was or who I was. “Hadrian? How did you get in here?”
Offering my deepest, most effusive bow, I said, “The door was unlocked. I wasn’t sure if you’d left it that way or if the power . . .” I waved my hand around the darkened room. “They really ought to do something about it. These are the diplomatic apartments, and if doors are coming unlocked in these outages—”
Valka smirked. “’Tis fortunate for me, then, that I’ve a young man like you bursting into my room to defend me.” Her wording confused me, and I stalled out before I remembered that Valka was much older than I was, the product of Demarchist gene editing not unlike my own.
I knew when I was being mocked and had the good grace to blush and look away. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll let it go,” she said, an edged smile cutting the white planes of her face. “This time.”
The lights chose that moment to flicker back on, accompanied by that quiet machine whir that we do not notice until it is gone. Under the overhead lamps, Valka’s clutter looked even worse. Embarrassed, I backed off, looked down at the drinking table by a couch covered in a tangled blanket. Beneath the remains of a half-eaten meal, the table was coated in papers, some fresh, some yellowed and likely older than I was. In contrast to her housekeeping, Valka’s handwriting was remarkably neat. I could not read the swirling Tavrosi script, but I recognized her sketches of the Umandh anaglyphs. She had drawn several of them linked together like soap bubbles. It reminded me of . . . of . . .
“Have you ever seen Cielcin Udaritanu?” I patted myself down, remembered belatedly that I had neither a pen nor journal with me. There were some examples mixed in with the portraits and landscapes and illuminated quotations that were my custom.
She blinked at me. “Come again?”
“Their writing!” I smiled brightly. “Do you have a . . .”
Valka produced a pen from nowhere and lobbed it at me. I caught it without thinking and perched on the edge of the couch. Finding an unused sheet of paper in the mess, I held it up. “May I?” She signaled assent with an upraised hand, and I began scratching at the page. The ink was poor, but I set about my task. “The Pale use this nonlinear calligraphy. For artwork. Poetry, monuments, and the like.” I held the sheet out to her, marked with a few quick glyphs. While she looked at it, I stood to peer past the curtains and over her shoulder where she sat on the sill. “See, they use the relative size and position of the logograms to convey grammatical structure.” I pointed out a curling train of glyphs diminishing in size. “So this whole string—this clause—is subordinate to this subject.” She looked up at me, one winged eyebrow raised. Suddenly sheepish, I scratched at the back of my head. “I’m sure I got one of the logograms wrong somewhere, but you see the principle.”
“You think the Umandh anaglyphs are like this?”
She handed the sheet back, and I retook my seat. “I can’t say—they only looked like them. Gi—My tutor used to draw blocks around the different elements in a sentence when I was learning. It looked sort of like this.” I tugged her own paper free, showing her the interlocking Umandh circles. “Do the Umandh ever link their symbols up like this? Or are they just on those bone chimes you showed me at Ulakiel?” She was smiling at me. Widely. Too widely. “What?”
The lights sputtered as she reached out to snatch her notes from my hands. “I was saving paper, you idiot.” She did not stop smiling, and so her words had no sting.
“Oh.” I smiled too and wadded up the markings I had made.
“Don’t do that!” Valka objected, rising from her place at the window. She’d dragged pillows from the other room to better make her seat by the glass. She held out a hand, waving for me to give her my drawing. “May I keep them?” I must have made a face, for she added, “For inspiration.” Outside it was starting to rain again, and in the distance, over the green waters, the umbral mass of a storm scraped its back against the roof of the world, casting heat lightning like sparks from a grindstone.
Sensing a break in the conversation, I asked, “Why were you sitting here in the dark?”
“What?” She turned toward me, plainly distracted by something I could not see. That was strange, for she wasn’t starin
g out the window but into the corner by the kitchen, where there was nothing. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking. You know the tides will be in retreat at Calagah before long?”
I leaned back a little against the cushions. She had the same couch in her rooms as was in mine, a plush thing upholstered in brown leather. “Will you be leaving then?”
“Only for a season,” she replied, “and not for a while yet. ’Tis long, the local year. Soon does not mean the same thing on Emesh as it does out there.” She twirled a finger at the beamed ceiling, pointing through it to the sky beyond. Valka moved to the kitchen area, and I watched her go, watched her pour a glass of water, her hair in her eyes, and slam it back in one swallow.
I’d seen the gesture before in my fellow myrmidons and in myself after a night of hard drinking following a victory in the arena. “Are you all right?”
“I get headaches,” she said, putting a hand to her eyes in absent emphasis. “’Tis nothing, really.”
“Can I get you anything?” I asked, unsure of what else to say.
Her smile returned. “We’re in my apartments, M. Gibson.” She poured another glass of water and returned, settling onto the edge of the sill. Framed there—curved lines against square glass, against the rain—she looked larger than she was, a statue like the bright carvings of my home. “You’re staring.”
“Sorry.” I shook myself, looked sharply down. Unconsciously mirroring her, I said, “I was just thinking.” Not strictly true, not in any concrete sense. I had been lost in some vague dreamscape of thought without lodestone or compass, caught amongst my family, the Chantry, Demetri, Cat, my myrmidons, Valka and House Mataro and the Umandh. My world had grown so large, and I was so small. I couldn’t tell her any of that, couldn’t be myself as I had been at Ulakiel, not with the cameras watching. Instead I asked, “Do you like it here?”
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