by K. J. Parker
He left, and the paneled, heavily molded and studded door closed behind him with the softest and firmest of clicks. She sat still and quiet for a minute or so; five, ten, and then she lost track. The windows were behind her, and for some reason she felt reluctant to get out of her chair and move, even for something as innocuous as looking out of the window to see where the sun was in the sky. After what felt like an hour, her back started to hurt. She wriggled, but it didn’t help. She turned round as far as she could without actually getting up, but the window was just beyond the edge of her vision.
They must know something, she thought. But they can’t know about the letter. They were at the house when I came back from handing it over. They couldn’t have known I was going to write it, because I didn’t know I was going to until Falier told me about … She shivered. There was still plenty of time before Moritsa needed to be fetched from school, but she couldn’t help worrying. She told herself to calm down. She’d been in worse situations before, and without the letter there wasn’t anything they could prove.
Had that man’s coughing fit been genuine? Hard to believe it wasn’t; in which case, maybe the delay was simply because he’d gone somewhere to lie down and drink honey and hot water until he felt better. As for all that stuff about a toolbox, she couldn’t make head or tail of it. They must’ve known she wouldn’t know anything about tools, so why had they asked her?
Didn’t matter. No need to understand, so long as she kept up a solid defense, kept her head and didn’t contradict herself. The good thing about the toolbox questions was that she could tell the truth; so much less effort than making things up.
The door opened, and a soldier (armor but no weapons) came in. He glowered at her as though she was making the place look untidy, and said, “If you’ll follow me.” Her legs were stiff and wobbly from sitting still for so long.
He led her up a huge, wide stone staircase, along a broad, high-ceilinged corridor that seemed to go on forever, up another staircase, along some smaller corridors to a dead end with a small door in it. He knocked and waited before opening it and beckoning her in. Once she was inside, he shut it behind her. She listened, but couldn’t hear the sound of his boot-heels clumping away across the tiles.
This room was much smaller, about the size of her kitchen. There was a plain board table, and one four-square Type 19 chair, which she sat on. Nothing else. The light came in through a skylight, what there was of it. No fireplace; she felt cold. The man who’d designed the room had done his job well. You couldn’t sit in it on your own for more than a minute or so without realizing that you were in a lot of trouble, which presumably was the intention. She’d heard somewhere that architects design buildings with all sorts of mathematical calculations; ratios of height to width, that sort of thing. Was there a special sum you could do to figure out the most depressing possible dimensions for a room? If so, there’d be a specification somewhere in the Guilds’ books, like there was for everything else. All in all, this place made it very hard to believe in the existence of a concept such as love, even though almost certainly that was what had got her here. A room like this could kill love, like the clever jars the silk-makers use for killing silkworms; seal love in the jar and it quickly, painlessly suffocates, leaving the valuable remains undamaged.
When the door opened again, it startled her. She sat up, and saw a tall, slim, rather beautiful young man, her own age or maybe a year younger. He smiled at her and said, “If you’d care to follow me.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, but he didn’t seem to have heard her. He was holding the door open for her, the smile still completely incongruous on his face, like a scorpion in the salad bowl. She got up, and he led the way; along different corridors, down different stairs, through an enormous, deserted hall, out into a cloister surrounding a garden.
“We’ll take the short cut,” the young man said, with a conspiratorial smile, and led her across the lawn, past a fountain and a small arbor of flowering cherries to a little, low door in a massive wall, so high she couldn’t see the top of it. The young man searched in his pocket and found a key; it was stiff in the lock and he had to have several goes at it before he got it open.
“Thank you for your time,” he said.
On the other side of the gate she could see a street. In fact, she recognized it: Drapers’ Way, leading to the long row of warehouses beside the mill-leet for the brass foundry. She hesitated.
“Can I go?” she said.
He smiled again. “Of course.”
There was something scary about the gate; she could feel herself shying at it, like a nervous horse. The nice young man simply stood there, no trace of impatience, as though he was some kind of mechanical door-opening device cunningly made in the shape of a human being. If I close my eyes, she thought; if I close my eyes and run …
“Excuse me,” the nice young man said.
“Yes?”
He looked more than a little shy. “I know I shouldn’t ask this,” he said, “but is it true? Are you really the ex-wife of Vaatzes the abominator?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”
He looked at her for a long time; like an engineer who sees a rival’s secret prototype, and tries to memorize every detail of it, so he can go away and build a copy. “Thank you for your time,” he said.
Later, she picked Moritsa up from school. She was in a sulk because she hadn’t done well in her spinning test.
“Your own fault. You should’ve practiced, like I told you to.”
“I hate practicing. It’s boring.”
She made Falier’s dinner. There was the leftover mutton in the meat safe; she’d been saving it for the end of the week, but it didn’t look like it’d keep till then. Leeks, barley and a few beans to go with it. The bread wasn’t quite stale yet. When he got home, she asked him if anything had happened at work. He looked at her and said, “No, should it have?” He was in one of his moods.
When he’d gone to bed, she sat in front of the fire, watching it burn down.
28
At least the Aram Chantat weren’t vegetarians, as the late Duke Orsea had believed. On the contrary, if it moved (but not fast enough to escape) they ate it. Sand-grouse and quail weren’t too bad, but the funny little birds they served up spit-roasted on arrow shafts just tasted of gristle and grit. She reckoned they were thrushes, but he inclined to the view that they were too small for that. Some kind of starling, was his guess.
And a wonderful improvement on nothing at all, no question about that. To begin with, the gratitude was so thick in the air, walking through the camp was like swimming in mud. There was so much to be grateful for: the Aram Chantat had saved them from the Mezentines, fed them, given them warm blankets for the freezing-cold nights, brought up ox-carts for them to ride in so they wouldn’t have to walk the rest of the way across the desert; they’d bound up and dressed their wounds, cured their heatstroke and dysentery with revolting little drinks in tiny clay beakers, even buried the dead in an efficient and respectful manner. The one thing they didn’t do was talk, if it could possibly be avoided; but nobody seemed to mind that, at least to start with.
They made an exception in Valens’ case. When the convoy reached the edge of the desert (at least, they assumed that was what it was, because of the arrow-straight, deeply rutted road they came to, and the fact that the stunted thorn bushes were slightly closer together), they were met by a coach; an extraordinarily, breathtakingly ornate coach, that looked as though it was on fire until you got close enough to see that every square inch of it was covered in gold leaf. Looking at it hurt the eyes, so instead you gazed at the eight immaculately perfect milk-white horses, or the twenty escort riders, covered like their horses from head to foot in gilded scale armor, apparently unaware of the murderous heat. Out of the burning carriage came a prodigiously tall young man in a pure white robe and gold slippers. He approached the head of the column and snapped at the captain of the Aram Chantat escort, who murmured someth
ing back in a voice so soft that none of the Vadani could make out what he’d said. But the vision in white must’ve understood enough, because he walked slowly and directly to Valens, ignoring the existence of everybody else, and dipped his head in the slightest of bows.
“Duke Valens,” he said, in a perfect received-Mezentine accent. “Perhaps you would care to come with me.”
It would have been a monstrous sin to deny this perfect creature anything. For some reason, none of the Vadani showed any inclination to go with him. Painfully aware of his filthy clothes and unshaven face, Valens nodded and followed, heading toward the glowing, blinding coach. When he was five yards away from it, two little girls in white smocks scuttled forward from the shadow of the wheels and unrolled a magnificent purple carpet, which the godlike man in white stepped on without looking down. A folding step evolved out of the side of the carriage; simultaneously, a cloth-of-gold awning leaned silently out over the coach door.
Well, Valens thought, I’ve seen worse. He put his foot on the step and climbed out of the penumbra of the gold fire into total darkness. He heard the door click precisely behind him.
“We have the honor of greeting our son-in-law,” said a tiny voice.
Not pitch dark after all; a faint gleam of light leaked out through a gold gauze lampshade surrounding a single small oil lamp. By its meager glow Valens could see a tiny, shriveled little man,completely bald, smooth forehead, cheeks gaunt as a corpse, thin lips, no more than seven teeth, wrapped up like a baby in a massive swathe of heavy white wool blankets. There were figures on either side of the little man, but all he could see of them were dim, bulging shapes.
The little man was waiting for a reply, but Valens couldn’t think of anything to say. Someone cleared his throat, a short, clipped sound.
“I take it I have the privilege of addressing Duke Valens Valentinianus,” the little man said, in the most perfectly correct Mezentine accent Valens had ever heard. “Allow me to offer my heartiest greetings, despite the tragic circumstances of this meeting.”
Son-in-law, he remembered. This exquisite maggot must be her father. He realized with a dull ache of horror that he couldn’t remember her name.
“Pleased to meet you,” he mumbled. “And thank you. I …”
Whatever he’d been intending to say, it didn’t seem to want to clot into words. The little man raised a claw about an eighth of an inch. More would have been mere vulgar display.
“When your Major Nennius contacted our frontier patrol, they quite properly sent a messenger to inform us. He rode at top speed until his horse died under him; fortuitously, he was able to requisition another horse within a matter of minutes. He too died shortly after reaching us, but not before delivering his message. We came at once, not stopping to change our clothes or provision ourselves for the journey. We have driven without pause, stopping only to change horses. We are greatly relieved to have arrived here in time to greet you ourselves, instead of delegating such a momentous privilege to others. We are pleased that you have come, and await with trepidation your confirmation that our soldiers have served you adequately.”
Valens blinked. He had no idea what the little man was trying to say.
“They saved our lives,” he said. “I’m very grateful.”
The claws came together in a silent clap. “Excellent,” said the little man. “Words cannot express my delight. And now we must have some tea.”
Something tinkled faintly, and from somewhere in the darkness a small gold tray appeared, held steady as a rock by two tiny pale hands. On it rested a little gold bowl, from which steam rose.
“For me?” Valens asked stupidly.
“If you would care for it,” the little man said.
It burned his mouth and tasted of slightly stale water. As soon as he put the cup back on the tray, it disappeared completely.
“Please sit.” Valens had forgotten he was standing. Pale hands, not the same ones that had produced the tea, put down a plain low white stool. It was made of bleached ivory, and proved to be as uncomfortable as it looked.
Deep breath. “I’m very sorry,” Valens said, “about your daughter.”
“My great-granddaughter.” The voice was small and precise as the point of a needle. “All my children and grandchildren are dead. Your wife was, indeed, the last of my family. Accordingly, her loss is more than usually unfortunate.” He could have said inconvenient just as easily. “I must confess that when I heard the news of her death, I was greatly distressed. However, the circumstances under which the news reached me have done much to reconcile me to her loss.” The pitch of the voice changed very slightly, but enough to make Valens’ flesh crawl. “Is it really true? Did you cross the desert in nine days?”
Valens nodded.
For a moment, the little man’s eyes seemed to flare, like embers blasted by the bellows. “You must tell me all about it,” he said. “The circumstances of her death, and your remarkable journey.”
For the next hour, Valens did just that; and if the little man found his imprecision and woeful carelessness in observing details annoying, he masked it behind a tiny fixed smile, except when he was asking one of his innumerable, razor-sharp questions. Every few minutes, someone he couldn’t see would mutter something; each interruption must have registered with the little man,because he would acknowledge it with a flicker of his little finger; a full crook of the top joint apparently showing approval, a waggle indicating irrelevance or stupidity. All the time, his eyes stayed fixed on Valens’ face, and if he blinked once, Valens must have missed it.
“Thank you,” he said, when Valens had answered his last question. “It comforts me to know the truth.” A tiny sniff. “Now you must be very tired.” (An order more than an observation.) “A suitable coach will be at your disposal very soon. We will convey you and your followers” — an infinity of contempt in that word — “to our camp, where you can rest and recover your strength before we speak again. I am most grateful to you for talking to me. If there is anything at all that you or your people require, please tell one of my officers, and the matter will be dealt with immediately.”
Behind him, the coach door opened, flooding the world with painful scorching light. Someone covered the little man’s head with a lace cloth. A finger, pressed very gently on Valens’ shoulder, told him it was time for him to leave.
Outside, the sun was unbelievably bright. The immaculate young man in white led him to another coach, just as blinding but silvered rather than gilded. The carpet, step and awning appeared by the same magic. Valens followed the man in white like a sheep being led into a crush. There was one seat in the coach, and the blinds were drawn. As soon as the door clicked behind him, the coach started to move.
He could have lifted the blind, of course, but he knew he wasn’t meant to; so he sat in the dark for an indeterminate period, somewhere between hours and days. The coach stopped twice; each time, the door opened just enough to admit a little silver tray (one silver cup of the hot dishwater and three tiny, rock-hard cakes) and a spotlessly clean silver chamber-pot, exquisitely decorated with scroll-and-foliage engraving. The coach’s suspension was so perfect that pissing in the chamber-pot at the gallop was simplicity itself. Curiously, it wasn’t removed at the second stop; but not a drop had been spilled, so that was presumably all right.
He was asleep when the coach stopped for the third time, and ferocious light woke him up out of a half-dream in which he was talking to the little man but couldn’t hear a word either of them was saying. The door was open, and a different tall young man in white was beckoning to him. His back and legs ached unbearably, and the light was like nails driven into both sides of his head at once.
The first thing he noticed was tents; an ocean of them, all brilliant white, like a bumper crop of absurdly large mushrooms. Then he realized that there weren’t any other coaches apart from his and the little man’s golden miracle.
“Where are … ?” he started to say. The young man smiled.
/> “They are being taken care of,” he said. “Please follow me.”
He had to walk a whole ten yards, five of them on the dusty, gravelly soil rather than carpet. He could feel the young man’s embarrassment, but obviously there was nothing he could do about that. The tent he was led into was about the size of an average farm barn, brilliant white on the outside, dark as a bag inside. These people, he decided, must regard light the way the Vadani felt about mud; there’s a lot of it about, but the better sort of people take reasonable steps to avoid getting covered in it. He sat down on a heap of cushions, which were the only visible artifacts in the tent, apart from a solid gold chamber-pot the size of a rain bucket. He was alone again.
Presumably he must have fallen asleep when the tent flap opened and yet another tall young man in white brought him a tray of food. This time, it wasn’t a sparse little snack of cakes; in fact, he was amazed that someone so slight-looking could carry that much weight, let alone put it down so effortlessly, without grunting. It was all, needless to say, lean roast meat. He guzzled as much of it as he could bear, and washed it down with the thimbleful and a half of water that came with it, in a dear little silver bottle.
Nobody could stay awake for very long after that. He woke up some time later, tortured with indigestion and dry as parchment, in the dark. No trace of light seeped through the heavy fabric of the tent, which suggested it was night. He lay on his back, too uncomfortable to sleep. The likeliest explanation was that at some point he’d died without noticing it, and this was the afterlife they promised you in the old stories; whether it was one reserved for the very good or the very bad he wasn’t quite sure.
Dawn came painfully slowly, gradually building up a glow in the tent walls. He couldn’t hear anything at all — he had to prove to himself that he hadn’t gone deaf by dropping the silver bottle onto the tray. While he was doing that, he noticed that his filthy clothes had somehow turned into spotlessly clean white robes, like the ones worn by the tall young men, and his boots had evolved into ridiculous little silver-thread slippers with pointy toes and no backs. It was that which helped him clarify his newly found religious faith. This had to be the very bad people’s place.
