Jovan came back up into the carriage. He had water in a gourd, and he helped Torien sit up a little to drink. “They must be going to Modigne,” he said, “if they are crossing the river here.”
“The question is whether they’re staying in Modigne.”
“You think they are for Tasso?”
“They could be hunting cicadas for sport on the sunlit plains, for all I know. If this is Pavo’s idea of shutting us up, it isn’t exactly subtle.”
“Perhaps it is trouble on the Road. Perhaps Tasso has called for reinforcement.”
Torien paused with the gourd in his hands. “We’d have seen the beacons lit at the border,” he said. It was more for himself than for Jovan, who was looking out through the slats and not really listening.
The column passed by in a cloud of dust. Jovan straightened from the slats. “Antoni will take it as a comment on his cooking that you didn’t eat,” he said. “Give me your bowl. I’ll warm it in the ashes.”
The oldest families of Choiro held the land between the river and the road on the eastern bank. The estates were mostly slave-run but occasionally, when the summers or the politics got too hot, the high-wheeled carriages came whisking down from the city and the scions of the oldest families, sipping chilled wine in their country houses, could flatter themselves that they were farmers, as their forebears had been.
The burden of tradition lay heavier on some than on others: Alluin, he knew, had spent his boyhood on one of these estates—he was not sure which. Alvero Senna was as arch-conservative regarding his firstborn son’s education as he was with his politics. Other families, even the oldest families, might be content to leave the administration of their estates in the hands of overseers or freedmen, but Alluin, on his father’s insistence, had learned the appropriate arts and skills for himself: accounting and viniculture, hunting and the management of slaves.
In effect, he had grown up in the company of slaves and tutors and hired help and tenants, accordingly lax when it came to social hierarchy. It was not quite what Alvero had intended, and his method of correcting the shear was to put a whip into Alluin’s hands and order him to redraw in blood the line between master and servant. This had failed entirely. Alluin had dropped the whip and turned on his heel and left the estate without another word to his father. He had ridden that day to the fort at Vione and put down a false name in the recruiting rolls and was two weeks into the probation as a common foot-soldier before one of the officers had recognized him as a Senna—or as formerly a Senna, because by then Alvero had publicly disowned him.
He had not lost his citizenship, but he had lost his inheritance and any hope for a political career, and unless he won a battlefield commission he would never rank higher than lieutenant. He had done a great deal since then to convince others that really he found it very freeing and there were no regrets in having done it, but no matter how he pretended he had never quite managed to convince himself; and Torien imagined it would be harder and harder to convince himself the older he got—assuming he got any older and was not already dead in the desert as the price of a failed truce. Torien had spent the last few days since the crossing thinking of reasons why there might be a full cavalry column outfitted for campaign on the road to Modigne. None were appealing, but the least appealing was the most likely.
The sun was dipping to the western hills and there were long blue shadows stretching across the road when Jovan navigated the carriage into an inn yard. The river was below, curving back lazily eastward under the city walls. The road ran ahead up the bank to the city. Above the crenellated walls—pausing in the carriage doorway to hitch up Jovan’s long priest’s robe at his waist—Torien could see the tenements of the River Quarter. In the hazy distance, he could see the Hill, walled in white marble, pushing up from the lower city like a crowned head. A sluggish breeze was moving down the riverbank. Through the doorway, the sound and smell of the city hit him as solidly as a slap in the face. He closed his eyes as he stepped down into the soft mud of the yard: God knew he had not missed Choiro.
He sat cross-legged on the thin straw pallet in the inn dormitory, clenching his teeth and hands so as not to wince, while Antoni dressed and wrapped the wound. He knew Antoni saw it. The old priest’s lips were pressed tight and he was shaking his head intermittently as though the stupidity of it were striking him again and again, each time from a different angle; but neither of them spoke. When Antoni had finished the bandaging, Torien pulled his own tunic over his head, Jovan’s robe after it. He took his knife and wallet from Ædyn. Tucking the knife at his belt, he shook out his key ring and a handful of bronzes from the wallet. With one hand on the boy’s shoulder, he bent to open the collar at the boy’s throat. He looked up at the priests, who were watching silently. “One of you will have to file his manumission.”
“You must be there to seal it, Lord Risto,” Jovan said, gently.
“No. I’ve signed him over to the Order—a charitable donation. The documents are in the wallet, and enough in gold for the manumission tax.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them exchange glances. Ædyn was frozen under his hands. Antoni said, “The gold it is not necessary. I have explained this.”
“Also enough for your travel expenses,” Torien said, sliding the collar free, “if I’m unable to see him home myself. You understand I don’t want him freed just to be put out on the street. He’ll be on a block again in a week.”
Jovan said, “Of course it will be done as you say, Lord Risto.”
“Unnecessary precaution, I hope. With any luck, I’ll meet you at the chapel this time tomorrow.” He squeezed Ædyn’s shoulders. “If I’m unlucky, I would recommend you lose my sword in the river and pretend you’ve never heard my name. I imagine Pavo will be interested to know who brought me to the city.”
“We will expect you at the chapel, Lord Risto,” Jovan said.
They were firing the braziers on the city walls when he went outside. The city glowed red-gold like embers in the twilight. A lamp-lit houseboat was slipping by at the middle of the river, where the water still ran deep enough for the draft. He crossed the road and walked on the foot-stones along the leftward embankment toward the city, the river below him.
There was traffic on the road: lumbering mule carts and light two-wheeled flies and tall closed carriages, flanked by mounted guards, bound for dinner parties on the Hill, and a mass of common folk and slaves on foot flattening quickly against the embankments as the vehicles pushed past. Just before the gate, he broke away from the crowd and went down the steps which curved down from the road to the water.
He walked for a while at the waterside, northward along the base of the wall, until the clamor at the gate had died away behind him and he could hear the wake of the houseboat, just ahead, lapping gently on the shore. The wall towered above him. The far bank of the river was empty and dark. The houseboat passed slowly out of his sight under a bridge further down the wall. He dropped flat to the sand and slid on his belly under the grating of a low, arched culvert which carried the drainage of the street above down to the river.
They sluiced the drains with water through the day, and if one handed oneself very carefully along the sides one could keep oneself above the sludge at the bottom, but he had never tried it in a priest’s robe before, or with a four-inch gash still healing under his arm, and both these things presented difficulties he had not anticipated. He could not hold his weight on his right arm, and the hem of the robe did not allow for much movement of his legs. He gave up trying to move up the sides. He lowered himself to the floor and felt his way forward on his hands and knees, swearing softly through his teeth. He reached the top and sat dripping and shivering for a moment, looking out into the street.
A huddled figure in a cloak was moving away from him up the foot-stones on the far side of the street. A mule cart was creaking slowly toward him. The cart passed by with a clatter of studded wheels, and he pulled himself out from the culvert
onto the street. With some difficulty in the priest’s robe, he found his feet and sank into the shadow of the low shop doorway at his back—but the cloaked figure had turned aside into one of the tenements, and the mule cart had vanished around a corner. The street was deserted. He hitched up the robe at his waist and stepped out from the doorway and went a little way northward up the street and then cut eastward on a cross street, putting the river to his back.
He paid in bronze for a private cell in the bathhouse on the next block, waving away the slave who came to attend him, drawing the curtain shut. He stripped off robe and tunic and washed himself using only the tepid water and oil in the cell, careful to avoid the dressing around his ribs. Pulling his tunic back over his head, he came across the near-two-weeks’ growth of beard on his chin. He had not shaved since Modigne. His first inclination was to ignore it in the interest of time, but he would make a better case before this Ceno woman if he at least looked as though he might belong to the Prince’s circles. He belted the tunic and tucked his knife at his waist. He opened the curtain and called for the slave to bring a razor.
Afterward, his bare chin still smarting a little and his cheek stinging in a line where the knife cut had not yet scarred, he went out into the street and disposed of Jovan’s robe down a drain. He worked his way north and east through the River Quarter toward the Hill. The woman had money enough to move out of the brick tenement blocks, if she hadn’t the name to move up on the Hill. Her apartment was on a wide, quiet street running parallel to the river at the Hill’s western foot. It was a two-story orange stucco building with wood-shuttered windows and a red tile roof. There were almond trees and fig trees and myrtles in the yard, and a tall stucco gate wall overgrown with ivy. Torien hung back for a moment at the end of the torch-lit wall. He had not anticipated there might be a gateman. He squared his shoulders and went up to the gatehouse. He took off his seal ring and slid it through the aperture. “For Chæla Ceno,” he said. “My name is Risto.”
He followed a silent slave across the yard and up the steps to the second story. On the landing, the slave peeled aside before the open doorway, and Torien went in alone to the vestibule. He paused there, looking in uncertainly through the archway to the long main room. The room was lamp-lit but empty. There was no furniture besides a dining couch and low table. The couch was dressed in silk, and the table was lacquered ebony. Thin gold leaf glittered in the lamplight on the frescoed walls.
There was a curtained doorway on the rear wall, the western wall, and four tall windows on the eastern wall facing the Hill. The shutters were open, the sheer sashes fluttering in the breeze from the street. The scent of lavender drifted to him through the archway. He stood looking back at himself dimly in a sheet of gold leaf on the far wall. The curtain parted in the doorway. A dark-skinned woman in black silk came toward him across the room, the gold beads in her braided hair clinking as she walked, the silk rustling at her ankles. Her bare arms were long and muscular, her shoulders broad. She was tall: standing at the archway, she had to look down to him in the vestibule. She bowed. “Lord Risto.”
“You’re Ceno?”
She pushed back her beaded hair with one hand as she raised her head—deliberately, so that he could see the dagger sheathed on her forearm. “I am Vaiz, Lord. Her assistant.”
He eyed the dagger. “Her bodyguard?”
“If need be. My duties are not always so pedestrian.” She stood aside in the archway. “Come, Lord. Let me prepare you a drink.”
He glanced over his shoulder to the landing. The slave had vanished. He went slowly past her into the room. “For a bodyguard, you don’t seem particularly interested in my business here.”
She went over to the table. She poured wine into a bowl on the tabletop, holding the jug expertly in the crook of her right arm, the wine falling in a long, sparkling stream from jug to bowl. She brought the bowl to him in both hands, as though she were making a libation. “My business is hers. Her business is not mine. She has permitted you to enter, Lord Risto. Beyond that, I ask nothing.”
He took the bowl from her, looking at it in his hands so she would not see the color in his face. He tipped the bowl to his mouth. Over the rim, he saw the curtain part again. Another woman came into the room. She was younger than Vaiz. He guessed she was sixteen or seventeen—younger than he had expected. She was dressed in plain linen, her throat and arms unadorned, her dark-honey skin unpainted, her black hair falling in loose curls to her slim waist. She smiled at him across the room, her lips not quite parting, the corners of her eyes creasing very slightly; she studied him as she smiled. “I am sorry to keep you waiting, Lord Risto. Vaiz has not offered you a seat?”
He remembered, too late, the wine bowl at his lips. He swallowed and lowered the bowl. Wine sloshed over his hand. “I prefer to stand,” he said. The wine ran down his fingers and dripped to the floor.
“I prefer you sit,” Ceno said, “because I would like to sit. You are the only one here of noble blood. None of the rest of us can sit until you do.” She was smiling at him and pretending not to see the dripping wine.
He sat, obediently, on the edge of the couch. She sat down very gracefully beside him in a breath of lavender. Her hands were folded on her lap and he saw, with interest, the long, slim fingers callused, the knuckles reddened—a commoner’s hands, accustomed to work. She said, following his gaze, “My mother’s people are farm folk. I have the mark of the breed.” There was something savage in the way she said it, though the smile had not left her lips. She slid her hands from her lap. “The gateman didn’t mention the purpose of your visit.”
“I didn’t tell him the purpose of my visit.”
“He assumed he knew, I suppose.” Ceno’s voice was dry.
Torien felt the color come back into his face. He looked away to the windows. “I came to make a request of you.”
“You’re terribly direct, Lord Risto. At least you might tell me how much you’re enjoying the wine.”
He glanced down to the bowl on his knee, distracted. Ceno laughed. “A joke. To be honest, I find it refreshing. One doesn’t often encounter directness this close to the Hill. Make your request, Lord Risto.”
“If we could speak privately,” he said.
“A sensitive matter, I take it?”
“Political. Not personal.”
“You needn’t be concerned about Vaiz.”
He did not say anything. He lifted the bowl from his knee and swallowed a mouthful of wine. Ceno watched him. “Oh, very well,” she said, “but it had better be interesting. You can go, Vaiz.”
Vaiz went out wordlessly onto the landing. “Shall I shutter the windows, too?” Ceno said. “Or would that fuel the gateman’s misconceptions?”
“I need to speak with the Prince.”
She looked at him for a moment, silently. Then she let out a quick, derisive breath through her nose. “Is that what I sent Vaiz out for? Go up the Hill if you want to speak with the Prince.”
“I can’t. I came to you because I’ve no other choice.”
“Not typically what a girl wants to hear, but admittedly intriguing.” Her eyes lingered on his face, running the line of the cut across his cheek. “Have you killed someone, Lord Risto? Or is there an irate senatorial father at your heels? Or perhaps in combination.”
“I was told the Prince has seen you here before.”
“You avoid my question.”
“It’s not the issue.”
“How disappointing for both of us. You seem to expect His Highness answers to me like a hound. I assure you, Lord Risto, he will need a reason.”
“The only thing that should matter to you is that if you do not do as I ask, your father will be arrested tonight for trafficking Imperial citizens into the salt mines at Tasso. Is that direct enough for you?”
Ceno bent over the table to pour herself a bowl of wine. Her hands were steady and unhurried. “It will do,” she said, “but I can do better.” She st
raightened and smiled at him over the rim of the bowl. “You will have to take up the matter of my father’s arrest with the Imperial Guard. Commander Pavo is a business partner and a personal friend.”
“Three weeks ago Pavo ordered the torture and death of one of his own officers in Tasso. I wouldn’t count too much on his friendship, and I would consider very carefully what will happen when your father ceases to be useful to him.”
“Meaning?”
“If I expose the sort of business your father is doing on his behalf, I promise you Pavo will press harder than any of them for his sentencing. Or he will kill him himself to stop his tongue.”
Ceno swirled the wine in her bowl. She did not say anything.
“Help me now and I will do what I can to protect him,” Torien said.
“Or I could have Vaiz kill you,” Ceno said, “which would be much simpler.”
“There are at least two witnesses to my entering this apartment. That’s two others you’ll have to—”
“This is Choiro, Lord Risto.” Ceno’s voice was bland. “No one ever notices or cares about anything in Choiro, least of all about one half-blood provincial lordling making a nuisance of himself among Maris Pavo’s clients. Anyway, the gateman is loyal to me and the slave means nothing to a court.”
When he said nothing, she laughed. “I’m not going to kill you,” she said, “though I like that you know I can—or that Vaiz can, rather. But I think you’re far too amusing to kill, and if I’m not going to kill you, I suppose I might as well help you.” She put her bowl down on the table and stood. She took his bowl from his knee and refilled it from the jug. Her fingers brushed the scar on his palm. “The mark of the breed?” she said.
He said, quietly, “I’m in your debt, Ceno.”
Blood Road Page 21
