“You can't keep a wolf for a pet!” Even Alythia knew that. “They can't be tamed, no matter how friendly they are when they're little! And they grow up so fast!”
“Doubtless M'Lady has much highland knowledge of such things that we lowlanders have not learned,” said the soldier. “I think the animal should be killed, myself, for its own sake as much as others’. But the children still recall the little cub, and cannot bring themselves to…”
“Wait…highland knowledge?” Alythia looked back toward the gate. “It's a Lenay wolf?”
“Yes, M'Lady.” The soldier's look was quizzical. “There are few wolves left in Torovan, they kill the farmers’ livestock. The dukes of many regions offer great rewards for wolf pelts. The merchant who brought this cub had just returned from Lenayin. What happened to its mother, I do not know.”
Alythia ventured cautiously back toward the gate. The second soldier stood aside, with a questioning look to his companion. Alythia ignored them, and peered over the gate. The wolf now huddled in a far corner, mostly invisible in the dark. A Lenay wolf. She'd heard them howling, once or twice, when she'd visited Baen-Tar town nearer the forest at the bottom of Baen-Tar hill. Now it was here, chained in a Petrodor mansion, where no Lenayin wolf had any business being.
Strangely, she found herself recalling a silly argument her wild brat sister Sashandra had had with their brother Damon upon one of her rare visits to Baen-Tar many years ago. “They don't attack people, Damon!” Sashandra had insisted, as loudly as always. “That's a Verenthane myth! They might eat you once you're already dead, but they're scared of people, mostly. They'll only attack if they're scared and cornered, or if they're protecting their cubs!” Sashandra might have been a crazy, selfish tomboy, but she certainly knew animals.
Scared. She'd walked into its enclosure, a stranger in the dark. Those snarling teeth, those laid-back ears…they'd certainly scared her well enough, but it'd been the wolf who'd been terrified first. Perhaps it had cause to be terrified. Perhaps it had learned to be. Now it huddled in the dark, beaten, bruised and chained.
“Perhaps,” said the small, dark voice in the back of her head, “in a few more years, that will be you.”
The narrow path climbed steeply up a flight of crumbling stairs, then took a sharp turn past a garden wall. Sasha moved quietly in Rhillian's wake, hoping she could be half as quiet as the graceful serrin. Errollyn followed and Aisha brought up the rear, their blades drawn. The alley narrowed, then opened and suddenly there was a marvellous view of the harbour, and light enough to see the path clearly. The three serrin and Sasha pressed close to an uphill wall, and the protective shadow. Directly below were people's yards, small vegetable gardens. From here, agile people could climb onto roofs, run along walltops, and into courtyards. For people who knew Petrodor's alleys, and had the vision to move through them at night, the city lay exposed.
The alley turned uphill again; a steep, ragged stairway between walls so close Sasha had to keep her arms tight to her sides. A cat sprinted before them in panic, and leapt a wall. Rhillian jogged easily, leaving the steps where they curled around a large tree growing from the rock, finding foot holds on its big, exposed roots. Then she paused, and pointed at the step ahead with her blade, for Sasha's benefit. When she hurdled the step in question, Sasha vaguely saw a trip-string in the gloom, doubtless rigged through a gap in the neighbouring wall, where it would ring a bell and warn of wraiths passing in the night. Petrodor's alleys were full of such devices, more use against night-blind humans than serrin. Sasha pointed to the step for Errollyn, hurdled it and jogged onward up the steep, winding stairs.
They crossed several narrow roads that wove their way across the slope, past brick and stone buildings with shutters tightly closed. The din of voices and music seemed to grow louder as they climbed. Further along one road, Sasha saw a great mass of people gathered outside a bar, with fires, music and dancing. At another crossroad, a stray dog barked madly and charged them, but Aisha hit it with a stone from her pocket and it sprinted yelping in the other direction. Its companion, however, chased them up the alley, growling and barking, and another of Aisha's well-thrown stones only seemed to infuriate it.
Aisha prepared her blade, but Errollyn pushed back past her, fake-stepped left, then hook-kicked with his right, crunching the dog so hard to the head it fairly spun about and rebounded off the wall. It lay still, then tried to rise, then fell again.
“Errollyn!” Aisha said with annoyance, moving back to kneel by the scraggly, bony animal. She felt its neck, then made a face, drew her blade and cut its throat. “Why not just use your sword? It's kinder.”
“My tel'shan'til needs practice,” Errollyn explained easily. It was a form of unarmed combat, mastered in Saalshen, like the svaalverd. Aisha wiped her blade on the dog's mangy coat and waved them onward, irritated. The path was briefly wide enough for two and Sasha fell back to Errollyn's side.
“And here I thought you loved animals,” she remarked. She had no great love of the stray mutts of Petrodor, but Errollyn's methods seemed needlessly callous. Sometimes, he just seemed…unpredictable. Dangerous, even.
His green eyes flashed in the dark as he looked at her. He was not a small man, nor a weak one, yet his presence seemed to fill more of her awareness than mere size could explain. “The strays around here are diseased,” he said. “The aggressive ones are either so hungry they're insensible, or possibly rabid. In the wild, nature culls the weak and sick. Here, they are kept alive.”
“You could have used your sword,” Sasha echoed Aisha's scolding.
“When a mouse attacks a bear in the woods,” Errollyn continued, “and the bear swallows the mouse whole, do you feel sorry for the mouse?”
“If one happens to have a soft spot for suicidal mice, I suppose one might.”
“There's a great difference,” Errollyn replied with a smile, “between those who say they merely love nature, and those who proclaim to learn from it.” Sasha gave him a long, wary look…but then the path was narrowing again and she had to move ahead to keep in single file.
Finally, as the noise ahead seemed at its peak, Rhillian paused beside a wall where the growing trunk of a tree had cracked the bricks outward. Rhillian climbed with ease while Sasha sheathed her sword and clambered over branches in Rhillian's wake, then along the wall to a flat rooftop. Along the hard tiles of the rooftop, then a stiff-fingered climb up a short length of vertical, stone wall, and pulled herself over the top.
Here was a wide, flat roof of paved tiles, flanked on all sides by plants in clay pots and walls made light with patterned holes. There were also some chairs, a little table and a trapdoor in the centre of the roof.
The noise from the street below was deafening. Rhillian sat on a bench behind the low wall, and peered over. Sasha, Errollyn and Aisha gathered alongside. The street was broad enough for two carts, and cut diagonally up the slope. Its sides were lined with crowds of people. Directly below, a team of shirtless men were manoeuvring a big, open cart down the hill, backward. Towering within its tray loomed a great, stone statue of a half-naked man with enormous muscles, a sword in one hand, a staff in the other. The statue looked to be solid rock, and more men stood within the cart to keep it from toppling on the sloping cobbles.
The statue stood adorned in a giant, purple cloak with golden arrowheads, and had a huge, eight-pointed Verenthane medallion about its neck. Around its great, muscular arms were flower garlands, silk tresses and silver bells. The men on the ropes heaved and yelled, muscles straining, while others moved ahead downslope, directing the way or helping to steer. Several carried great wooden blocks to jam under the wheels and the cart tried to run away. The crowd yelled and threw things. Musicians followed the descent, a colourful, unholy racket of trumpets and drums.
“House Firis!” Errollyn shouted over the noise, grinning. “They look to be struggling a little! The night's young yet, perhaps they went out too hard on the first climb!”
Sasha stared down
in wide-eyed amazement. Behind the musicians trailing House Firis, another cart was descending into view between close, roadside walls. What happened if one of them lost control? The thought didn't seem to bother the roadside crowds, many of whom moved alongside their chosen team yelling encouragement. The Endurance would go on all night. Surely not all of these teams would have enough fit men to make the final, dawn climb back up the incline.
The statues, Sasha knew, were of Saint Sadis himself. It had astonished her when she'd first seen them. Her knowledge of Verenthane saints was limited to Saint Ambellion, the man who had brought the faith to Lenayin. He was depicted as an old man in robes, walking in worn sandals with the help of a gnarled staff. Saint Sadis was, by comparison, sexy.
When Saint Sadis had first come from the Bacosh, Petrodor was just a little fishing village ruled by a local duke who lived in a castle atop the incline. Legend had it that Sadis's preaching had insulted the duke, who sentenced Sadis to ten days of the worst labour in Petrodor-hauling carts up and down the slope from the shoreline below. In those ten days, the story went, Sadis had borne incredible loads with tireless determination, and had shown no sign of weakness. Men had asked for the secret of his strength, and had learned that it came from the Verenthane gods. From that inspiration, the Verenthane faith had grown strong in Petrodor. Every Sadisi, men spent one day, and all of the night, hauling laden carts up and down the slopes to commemorate Sadis's efforts, and to demonstrate their own faith-through-endurance to the gods. They'd been going since dawn, and the strain was showing.
“Whose house are we standing on?” Sasha thought to ask.
“Friends,” said Rhillian, with a vague shrug. Despite her usual directness, Rhillian could be as obtuse as any serrin where questions of security were concerned. “I don't see any of the Firis sons present.”
“Busy elsewhere, no doubt,” Errollyn agreed. “The sons are usually the most eager to represent their house. I see a few cousins I recognise, some uncles, lots of minor related houses. No, wait…there's Georgy Firis. At the end of the second rope.”
“Only a grandson,” said Rhillian, with a faint shake of the head. “Not a great commitment from a senior Steiner ally to the Endurance. Evidently they have matters more pressing.”
“More talks?” Sasha asked, frowning. “Even on Sadisi?”
“House Steiner holds a great festival celebration at the Steiner Mansion,” said Rhillian. “Everyone shall be there. Your sisters included.”
Marya and Alythia. It felt strange to be so far from home, and to know that two of her sisters were so near. Marya was wife to Symon Steiner, the eldest son of Patachi Marlen Steiner. Once the patachi died, Marya would be the wife of the most powerful man in Petrodor. There were four children, none of whom Sasha had met. It had been fourteen years, in fact, since she'd last seen Marya. Sometimes she hoped, perhaps forlornly, for a reunion. She doubted that the grand house of Steiner would be pleased at the prospect.
She'd beaten Alythia's wedding train into Petrodor by ten days. The wedding had been five days after that…two weeks ago now. She'd only seen the wedding from a distance. She was not insulted at having been excluded from the invitations. She greatly doubted that House Halmady would have been any more thrilled to see her than House Steiner. And, unlike Marya, Alythia would most likely have shared the sentiment.
By such ties did the greatest trading city in all Rhodia bind itself to the highlands barbarian kingdom. Houses that were not even royal-made noble only by their colossal, garish accumulation of wealth-wedded various princesses of Lenayin in order to ensure the loyalty of their uncivilised neighbours. Sasha had never been one to place much store in the divine rights of noble birth, and yet she still found something about it all distasteful. Well, she thought grimly, watching the men of House Firis straining against their burden, this is one Princess of Lenayin who's not for sale.
“You didn't just invite me up here to watch the parade, did you?” Sasha asked Rhillian, warily. Rhillian gave her a brilliant, faintly dangerous smile.
“Ar'mahler t'eign,” she said, reproachfully. Arnai, meaning “indelicate” or “graceless,” elided to leimahler, meaning “opinion”…but very close to leimas, meaning “view.” And eign from rhe'leign, meaning “future”…but elided to the omnipresent tas, implying the subjective, rather than the objective. Implying, perhaps, that the holder of such an indelicate opinion (suspicion?) was…paranoid? Was not thinking clearly? Had struck close in her suggestion, but not accurately? Or all of the above…or none?
“Ny as'sere sa'toth khan,” Sasha retorted. “Don't play games with me.” Saalsi was poetic, and obtuse, and could be read backward, forward and any combination in between. A language of poets, philosophers and dreamers, for whom the form was often more important than the function. She'd learned it well, by human standards, in her twelve years in the Lenayin wilds with Kessligh. When she was younger, he'd sometimes insisted they spoke nothing but Saalsi for months. But it still confused her at times, to hear those familiar forms upon the lips of serrin. Serrin who used words as a dockside juggler tossed knives, a dazzling play of surprise and misdirection.
“You can often tell who's plotting what just by watching people,” Aisha said cheerfully in Saalsi, gazing down on the road. Aisha was usually cheerful, and had the good manners not to twist her Saalsi into knots that strained a poor human's comprehension. Being half-human herself, she had more sympathy for their shortcomings. “For instance, look…up the road here, at the next cart. That's House Esheron. And here carrying the wheel blocks is Ellot Esheron, Patachi Esheron's brother…only his arm is in a sling, and he appears to be limping, which explains why he's carrying the blocks instead of manning a rope. An accident, or has he been fighting with someone?”
“It's rumoured he and his brother don't get along well,” Errollyn said thoughtfully. “There was that missing Ameryn shipment, and the shortchanging of the moneylenders.”
“Perhaps the moneylenders tried to get even,” Rhillian suggested.
“Or perhaps his wife beat him up again!” Aisha laughed. “She's a fierce one!”
The three serrin continued the commentary as house after house passed with their laden carts down the Corkscrew. Their knowledge of the inner doings of the Petrodor families seemed inexhaustible. But then, the talmaad served Saalshen. It was their business to know, and they had plenty of gold to spend for the knowing.
Sasha's interest increased considerably as the cart of House Halmady came into view. The livery was black and red, the statue of Saint Sadis pointing with one accusing forefinger, eyes intent above a flowing beard. The crowd of followers about the Halmady cart seemed particularly large and vocal. The trailing musicians made a din that could barely be described as music.
“You'd think the second-most powerful house in Petrodor could afford some decent musicians,” Sasha suggested with a wince.
“Look,” said Rhillian, with a deadly straight stare. “By the left wheel. He wears a silver bracelet.”
“Oh yes,” Aisha agreed, leaning on the wall to peer closely. Errollyn, Sasha noticed, was watching the windows and rooftops of surrounding buildings. His vision was even sharper than Rhillian's and he'd strung his bow. His skill with that bow had to be seen to be believed. “That's a silver chain. Pretty.”
“So what?” Sasha said.
“Duke Tarabai's men have a liking for silver jewellery,” Aisha explained, her blue eyes not leaving the scene. In the confusion of men, alive with shadows in the light from many torches and lamps, Sasha had no idea how they could make out individual pieces of jewellery. “Danor has some marvellous silver mines. We trade for silver quite frequently, there's not much in Saalshen.”
“Thieves,” Errollyn added. “We've not had a fair price from them yet, since there's so little competition. Tassi was the only one who came close.” There was a sadness in his voice. Aisha looked sad, too. Sasha remembered their friend Tassi, and then the sadness was hers as well.
“To his
left now is Daneri Belary,” Rhillian added.
“Truly?” Aisha peered more closely. “Errollyn, can you see?”
Errollyn spared the approaching cart a brief glance. “Daneri Belary, and Jonti Maer,” he said.
“Where?” Rhillian searched. “Oh yes, in the cart, supporting the statue.”
“Daneri Belary would be Duke Belary's heir?” Sasha wondered.
“No, second son,” said Rhillian. “Duke Belary and heir will be at the Steiner Mansion. The Endurance is a boy's adventure. A symbol of trust and allegiance between the dukes and House Steiner. Jonti Maer is the heir to Family Maer, another of Vedichi's most prominent.”
“Steiner's allegiance grows wide,” Sasha observed.
Rhillian nodded. “The question is how wide?”
Duke Tarabai was the feudal lord of the northern Torovan province of Danor. Duke Belary was the lord of western Vedichi. Sasha knew little enough of Torovan lords and their doings, except that here, the land was worked and owned in feudal ways that had not yet been successfully introduced in Lenayin, and spirits willing never would be. Sasha had led a rebellion, in part, to prevent such a thing. And had been exiled from her homeland by her own father, King Torvaal of Lenayin, for her trouble.
The relationship between the city of Petrodor and its feudal provinces, she was gathering, was curious. Most of Petrodor, when drawn upon a map, fell within the province of Coroman, but two hundred years of accumulated wealth and power had made the city a power unto itself, far beyond the control of feudal dukes. Petrodor was also the seat of Verenthane power in Torovan, and indeed in all northern Rhodia. Most of Torovan's wealth found its way through Petrodor at one time or another, and regional dukes and nobles who knew what was good for them paid homage, and were rewarded.
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