by Mary Corran
The overall effect should have been garish in the extreme, but the sheer scale of the hall made the display impressive rather than vulgar, an effective showroom for Avorian’s business, which was what it was. Asher wondered whether he ever thought of the disparity between this and the confined spaces of the old quarter where so many of the poorest women lived.
The old man reappeared, beckoning.
‘The Chief Councillor will see you now. Make sure you don’t take up much of his time, he’s a busy man,’ he said testily. ‘In there.’ Unnecessarily, he pointed to the only open door in the hall. Asher picked up her ledgers and walked past him without comment.
‘Mistress Asher?’ Avorian stood as she entered, an unexpected courtesy; two other figures stood by the hearth. ‘I hope Oban did not keep you waiting long.’
Surmising he referred to the old clerk, Asher merely inclined her head in polite confirmation. Compared to the lavishness of the hall, Avorian’s private office was plain, the shelved walls only painted, the floor bare. A large desk covered with papers dominated the room, which contained little else.
‘Please, be seated.’ Avorian gestured to a chair opposite the desk. ‘Thank you for your promptness. Do you have the figures I asked for?’ He sat down and leaned forward expectantly.
‘Certainly, Councillor.’ She placed the ledgers before him; but, instead of opening them, he gestured to his companions.
‘Mistress, do you know Lassar, my diviner?’ Asher bobbed her head, her earlier fears reviving in the presence of the toad-like figure who surveyed her with an unblinking stare. He was dressed from head to foot in black, emphasizing a round, squat figure. ‘And my daughter, Menna?’
‘A pleasure to meet you, Mistress Asher.’ The girl stepped forward gracefully, her ease of manner suggesting she was accustomed to act as mistress of the household. Asher, returning the greeting, remembered Avorian was a widower and had no sons. The girl was not very like him in appearance; wide brown eyes were set deep in an oval face framed by a mantle of hair a shade darker which she wore in a flat cap covering her ears, braided neatly at the nape of the neck into a plait reaching her waist. Her gown was a rich, dark red, cut square at the neck, about which she wore a simple choker of opals that matched the single gemstone set in a thin gold circlet about her forehead. She was not beautiful, but Asher thought there was strength of character and intelligence in the firm mouth and expressive face.
Menna returned her frank inspection with a smile, then looked enquiringly at Avorian. ‘Do you wish me to stay, sir? I should be interested to hear Mistress Asher’s report, if you have no objection?’
‘Perhaps — ’ But whatever he was about to say was lost in the sound of a loud crash as a small boy, burdened by a heavy yoke slung across his shoulders, stumbled against the door and fell into the room. He froze at finding it occupied and his load slipped from his shoulders, discharging logs of applewood all over the floor. He stared at them helplessly as they rolled noisily in every direction.
‘I — I’m sorry, master,’ he stammered, looking frightened. With his face turned to Avorian, it was possible to see the slave-brand on his cheek; he was very young — no more than ten or eleven — and his skin, a pale golden brown, told Asher he was an Asiri.
‘Pick up this mess!’ Avorian did not raise his voice, but the boy flinched.
‘Come, Koris. I’ll help you.’ Menna put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, then bent to pick up two of the nearest logs. Encouraged, Koris knelt and began to gather his load, shooting furtive glances at his master from time to time. Asher caught sight of dark bruises on his face and arms.
In Avorian’s house? The fact unsettled her, not according with her initial, favourable impression of the man. She, too, stooped to retrieve some of the wood, handing the logs to Koris.
‘Leave it, Menna! Let the boy do it!’
The girl deposited her load in a pile by the hearth and stood up. ‘If you wish, sir,’ she said pleasantly, dusting her hands on her dress. ‘But the load was far too heavy for him. One of the men-servants should have brought it.’
Avorian frowned. The boy scurried about collecting the few remaining errant logs, and, when he had finished, Menna helped him replace the heavy yoke across his shoulders, then led him to the door.
‘Now, Koris,’ she said firmly, ‘another time, come to me if they try to give you tasks beyond your strength.’ The boy ducked his head and Menna sighed. ‘And what has happened to your new clothes?’ She plucked at a torn sleeve. ‘These are only fit for the rag pile!’
The boy mumbled what was to Asher an inaudible reply, and Menna shook her head sadly. ‘Very well, I will send others. Off with you to the housekeeper. Tell her I sent you, and you’re to do only light work today.’
‘Yes, mistress.’ It was a mere whisper; it was plain he wanted to escape further notice, and Menna let him go.
‘Menna!’
She turned back enquiringly, apparently surprised at the tone in which Avorian addressed her. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘I have told you before: you do the boy no kindness in singling him out for attention. The other servants already resent him, and you only make the situation worse!’
‘I am sorry to have displeased you, sir.’ Asher could not, however, discover any visible sign of regret. ‘But Koris is very young and I don’t like to see him bullied. His lot is hard enough, poor boy.’
‘The Fates have dictated his place in life; they have decreed his slavery as much as our own wealth. There is only so much luck in the world, and it is not shared out in equal measures; his state is predestined, and nothing you or I can do will change the natural order of the world.’
‘So you have told me, sir,’ Menna replied demurely.
‘Then remember it!’ Avorian must have noticed a lack of conviction in her response, for he continued: ‘If it were not so, then no one could read the future as Lassar here has the power to do; there would be no Oracle. Our lot is fixed, unalterable. Poverty and slavery exist because they must, because the Fates will it. If it were not so, there would be no slaves, no poor.’
Menna bowed her head obediently, but Asher thought the stubborn set to her mouth suggested only filial duty kept her from arguing the point. He’s wrong, he must be, Asher thought, suddenly angry. The poor and slaves are unlucky, yes, but it’s men who make slaves, who keep wages so low that the poor have no hope of altering their condition. And am I unlucky, too, in being born a woman, as the saying is? But she, too, remained silent; it was not her place to express her views to the Chief Councillor. She caught Menna looking at her quizzically, and hastily forced a smile.
‘Ah, mistress,’ the girl said lightly. ‘The problem is the servants — they know the presence of slaves in our cities keeps their own wages low, so they mistreat poor Koris, as if that would change anything. My father was given him in place of a debt, and there has been trouble ever since.’
Avorian tapped his fingers on the wooden surface of his desk as if impatient at the conversation. ‘The figures?’ he inquired mildly.
‘Here, Councillor.’ Hastily, Asher stood and opened the ledgers at the relevant pages; there were five in all, representing the organizational districts of the city and its environs. Lassar, who had remained by the hearth during the whole of the incident, came to join Avorian, his bulging eyes and lack of neck making him look more like a toad than ever. He touched each of the ledgers with caressing, oddly sensitive, fingers.
‘As I thought.’ Avorian frowned at the totals at the bottom of the pages. ‘There has been a considerable decline in tribute contributions this year. Do you have a final estimate of the shortfall?’
Asher subtracted a loose piece of paper from one of the ledgers and handed it to him. ‘I estimate twenty thousand gold pieces, Councillor.’
‘So much?’ He seemed momentarily disconcerted, which was not surprising; it was a massive sum. ‘Lassar?’
The diviner licked his full lips. ‘I will ascertain, Councillor.’ He walked ro
und the desk and returned to his former place by the hearth, reaching inside his jacket for something.
Avorian turned back to Asher. ‘Let me assure you, mistress,’ he said smoothly, ‘I mean you no discourtesy. I always verify significant calculations with Lassar. Your figures are, after all, reliant on the accuracy of the information you are given which is so often — shall we say — distorted?’ His look invited her to agree.
‘Certainly.’ He was right, of course; fraud was commonplace, no matter how hard they tried to guard against it. She wondered what exactly Lassar was going to do as Menna retreated to sit in the window embrasure behind Avorian, watching the diviner with detached interest, as though his actions were, to her, a familiar sight.
‘Lassar is never mistaken, he’s worth more than his weight in gold,’ Avorian observed conversationally. ‘No ship of mine leaves the harbour without his accord. I buy nothing, bet on nothing he has not approved. Some diviners have the sight in regard to health, or the tides and the winds, or general good fortune, or for far-seeing, but my diviner has more than most. He is a man of many talents, although he has a special affinity with gold.’ Seeing Asher’s interest, he went on: ‘Did you know that though gold itself is lifeless, there are fortunes and emotions which attach themselves to its flow: greed, envy, desire? Lassar has the power to concentrate his will on these, to see them as points of a compass. As you will discover.’
The diviner had subtracted a small leather pouch from a pocket of his coat. Drawing a stool towards him, he sat down and sprinkled the contents of the pouch on the fire, breathing in the blue-grey smoke that instantly rose up from the burning wood. There was suddenly a metallic smell in the room, and Asher’s eyes began to water as the smoke reached her. The diviner continued to inhale deeply.
At last he spoke, in a voice sounding distant and deeper than his normal tones.
‘Ask your questions, Councillor.’
Asher’s sight began to blur as smoke from the fire thickened and spread out towards her seat; she blinked several times, trying to clear her eyes.
‘Is the figure Mistress Asher has given me correct? And, if it is not, is this through falsification, miscalculation, or misinformation?’
Asher was less concerned with the questions — for she knew her calculations to be accurate, as far as such a thing was possible — than with the diviner. Was it possible he could, by some arcane means, discover the answers Avorian sought? Was this also a means of looking into the future, that Lassar could somehow see where the gold might be? But if that were true, then did his sight somehow alter events? For if the gold were, in the future, to be in the Treasury vaults, why need it be sought at all? None of it seemed likely to Asher’s confused mind. The room was now hot and stuffy, and a wave of dizziness struck her; more blue smoke drifted from the fireplace, and she tried to breathe in shallow inhalations.
‘Awry, yet true. I see falsehood in all, but most strongly to the south and to the west.’
Avorian nodded, listening intently. ‘Inside the city, or without?’
Again, Lassar leaned forward, inhaling the choking smoke. It reminded Asher of the pit of the Oracle.
‘Not here. Towards the boundaries with Chance.’
‘How much may be recovered?’
‘Much. Perhaps five thousand gold, in all. The emanations are strongest at a point south-south-west.’
The diviner had begun to sway, an unpleasantly hypnotic motion. Asher found herself unconsciously mimicking the movement; her head swam as she breathed in more of the metallic scent.
I shall fall asleep in a moment! She felt her eyelids begin to close, unable to resist the pressure. They were heavy, and she let them fall.
‘Is there more?’
Asher could hear Avorian’s voice, but only from a great distance. Her chin dropped to her chest, her mind whirling as shadow-images confronted her from behind her closed eyelids. They appeared as a series of coloured lines, like the kaleidoscope she remembered Callith owning as a child, but these stretched out and away from her, along a straight pathway. The strings did not stay still but seemed in constant movement, shifting, reaching out, curving to touch one another before moving away again. Some of the lines were much thicker than others, as if drawn by a pen with a heavy nib, but others were mere scratchings, barely visible.
They look like snakes, Asher thought dreamily. She tried to open her eyes, but it was too great an effort. The lines continued their writhing motion, repeating their previous patterns; their ceaseless action was urgent and disturbing, as if their movements held a meaning beyond her present ability to understand. Irritated, Asher tried to blank them out, wondering what would happen if she followed them; it almost seemed as if they were inviting her to do so.
‘I have no more questions. My thanks, Lassar, as ever.’ His voice broke through Asher’s dream, and she stirred, shaking herself awake. The metallic smell lessened, and she could open her eyes again as the smoke turned white, then brownish-grey as the diviner poured a new substance on to the fire.
‘You see?’
It was a moment before Asher realized Avorian was speaking to her. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, still dizzy. An unwelcome thought occurred to her: if Lassar were capable of detecting such distant fraud, surely it would be possible for him to uncover her part in the theft from Avorian’s warehouse? But almost at once she berated herself for her gullibility; there was no proof that he was correct in his accusations.
Avorian coughed. ‘And have you any suggestions as to how the monies can be recovered, mistress? We have only some seven weeks before the tribute must be sent. Obviously I shall dispatch a new warden to the district, but we shall need new assessments, and we cannot trust our local representatives. Fraud on such a scale suggests a wide circle of complicity.’
Asher forced herself to concentrate. ‘I — yes.’ She had almost missed the opportunity she had been looking for. ‘This is not the first time accounts from the south-west have been falsified. I would be willing to travel there and perform any necessary calculations and checks. I’ve done so before.’
Avorian did not reply at once. Lassar turned and was now watching her intently.
‘I hesitate,’ Avorian asserted at last, ‘because I do not approve of young women travelling unaccompanied. And in particular attractive young women,’ he added, as if he meant it as a compliment. ‘You would need at least one female companion, and an armed escort. The road south through the Forest of Marl is not safe.’
Asher strove to keep irritation out of her voice. ‘There’s a cashier in the Treasury I’m sure would be willing to come with me; she’s done so before. And I have a friend with family near Chance who might be willing to travel with us.’
‘Have I offended you?’ He gave her a warm, unnerving smile, but she did not care for the accuracy of his reading of her thoughts. ‘Then I apologize, but not for my concern for your well-being, mistress. I should be pleased if you would undertake this task, for you are, I think, a lucky person, or you would not have risen to your present post. But you must be protected from those who would see you only as a woman alone and thus vulnerable. If these two women will accompany you, then I agree to your suggestion. In fact, if the timing suits, my nephew, Kerrick, is to visit our clan’s estates near Chance in a week or so. You could travel in his party for much of the way, which would be added protection.’
‘That is very thoughtful of you, Councillor.’
‘Then I will make the necessary arrangements — travel passes, horses, and so on, and I shall speak to the Treasurer. You shall have my own authority for your searches, and I shall, of course, fund the journey for you and your companions, since it is for my benefit.’
Is this happening because of what the Oracle said, or could it be just another coincidence? But it all seemed too neat, too easy. Despite a lingering queasiness, Asher spared a thought for Mallory’s discomfiture when he heard the news; he would not be pleased. Kerrick’s reputation with women was not of the best; a fact whic
h appeared to have escaped his uncle’s awareness.
‘You are very good,’ she said formally.
‘Ah, but it is you who are to save me several thousand in gold!’ Asher thought there was mischief in his eyes, as if he found her entertaining in a fashion she did not quite like.
‘Sir, we have offered Mistress Asher no refreshment, and I’m sure she has given up many of her leisure hours to do this work for us.’ Menna had risen from the embrasure. ‘If you have finished with your business, let me remedy this lack.’
‘Of course.’ Avorian looked to his daughter with approval. ‘What should I do without you, child?’ There was deep affection in his voice, and Asher listened to the exchange with interest. Perhaps, having no sons, he was willing to allow a greater freedom to his daughter than was the norm, for although very young — perhaps the same age as Mylura — Menna had an air of confidence rare for a woman from the secluded upbringing usual among her caste.
‘Will you come with me?’ Menna asked Asher in her clear voice.
‘Thank you.’ She made to stand up, but another powerful wave of dizziness struck her; her legs buckled, and she felt herself falling, the ground opening at her feet.
When she next opened her eyes, Avorian’s arm was round her waist, supporting her in imitation of an embrace.
‘Mistress?’
She tried to free herself, uncomfortable at his proximity, but he did not release her. ‘I — forgive me. I felt faint.’
