by Vale Aida
“Shall I throw him out, milord?” Cahal asked.
“Yes, of co—”
“But why?” said Lucien, who had regained enough sobriety to speak. Once more, his chair was rocking on its back legs. “You are not, I presume, leading an armed coup? Why let the boy dismay you?”
Willon almost ricocheted to his feet. “You invited him? You planned this? You want to be Governor?”
With diabolic timing, Savonn had tiptoed round to the far side of the pavilion so Cahal could not extract him without climbing over Lucien. Josit’s serene voice answered him again. The creature spoke Falwynian like a native. “I invited him, Willon. At a meeting where Kedris’s successor is to be decided, it seems only natural to invite Kedris’s son. His mode of entrance, I fear, was of his own devising.” She smiled, showing a flash of white teeth. “Tell your man to stand down. It’s rude to brawl in a graveyard.”
“Mother Above,” said Oriane, rolling her eyes skywards. “Now we’ll really be here all day.”
Willon, breathing hard, was beginning to regret convening the Council here of all places. Since there was nothing short of unseemly violence he could do to dislodge the intruder, he dismissed Cahal with a withering look and reseated himself, clutching at his dignity. “Stay, if you insist. Though I would sooner welcome a kidney stone.”
“I wish you good health, my lord.” Savonn’s smile was rapturous. “Now I will find myself a seat… Oh, no, Lord Safin, it is quite all right. Nobody get up. I shall bestow my person on the lip of this flower pot, while Lord Efren reconciles himself to my presence.”
With a dancer’s agility, he stepped around Josit and Lucien and arranged himself on the edge of a large ceramic planter filled with tulips. Willon watched with sick fascination as an elegant hand, sheathed in a fingerless glove, sallied forth like a cat’s paw. It ensnared one orange blossom, plucked it, and stuck it in a coil of inky hair. Then, freshly adorned, Savonn beamed round at them once more. “There. Now, where were we? On the brink of electing Willon Efren, the loyal servant of two Governors before him, as our most puissant and majestic liege?”
Under that farcical gaze, all of Willon’s steam had dissipated. He could not glance at his sleeves now without looking a fool. He said, “I served Kedris all through his reign, and Raedon Sydell before him.”
“Unfortunately,” said Savonn, wide-eyed, “it seems you were not privy to their innermost confidences. I don’t suppose you know why the Lord Governor was at Medrai?”
He did not, Willon noted, refer to the dead man as his father. “A matter of trade,” he snapped. Poor Kedris. His own sons were impeccably brought up. Two were helping their mother manage the country estate, and the youngest, Vesmer, was in the city guard. He would have died of shame if he caught any of them prancing around with flowers in their hair. “If you are otherwise informed, do dispense with the rhetoric and enlighten us.”
“Gladly,” said Savonn. “Lord Lucien could have done the same, if you cared to listen. Lord Kedris suspected that the marauders in the Farfallens are no mere bandits. They are too many, and too organised. He’s been concerned about the prospect of an invasion over the passes for years now. It’s why he wanted an eye he could trust at Betronett.”
“You?” asked Oriane, gracelessly dubious.
“I am not quite certain,” said Yannick, speaking up for the first time in his watery quaver, “why one would entrust a matter of military espionage to an actor.”
“Me neither,” said Savonn cheerfully. “But it pleased him to send me, and so, while my lord Willon polished his oratory skills and acquired baubles for his mansion, I spent the last six years defending our realm from brigands and thieves. When he was killed, Lord Kedris was on his way to Astorre to take counsel with Lady Celisse, whose forces guard the passes. He wanted evidence that the outlaws were in the pay of a higher authority. Conveniently, he died before he could find any.”
He gazed around the table, one leg drawn up to his chin, the other dangling boyishly beneath him. “The fact is,” he said, “that Kedris Andalle was not killed by bandits. He was assassinated on the orders of Marguerit of Sarei.”
A dull throb was insinuating into Willon’s temples. The damned boy had muddied the waters beyond hope. Even if he was ejected from the pavilion now, there was no way Willon could get the Council, distracted as they were, to consent to his election today. His careful plans, the speech he had so lovingly crafted, were all gone to waste. “Where in hell do you get this nonsense from? We’ve been at peace with the bitch queen and her halfwit barbarians since you were a child piddling in your nursery. The last war cost her ten thousand men and her ugly palace’s entire weight in gold. She isn’t so foolish as to cross us again.”
Josit’s long-fringed eyes were on him. “She is a sore loser.”
“Oh, for the Mother’s sake,” said Lucien. There was a thud as his chair slammed back to equilibrium. “Look, Willon. We were going up that goddamned mountain with enough silver and spices for Celisse to make even you look destitute. Our escort was over a hundred strong. No one in their right mind would have dared assail us. But these thugs, they knew their business. We were riding through a canyon, only about this wide”—he gestured to the breadth of the pavilion—“and then the rocks started falling, when we were strung out like prayer beads in single file and able to do damned all about it. And as soon as the rocks settled, they came.”
Oriane arched her eyebrows. “I suppose you fought very bravely, Lord Lucien?”
Unable to resist the opening, Willon chortled. “No,” said Lucien. Spots of high colour appeared in his round face. “No, I hid under a wagon because I was afraid for my life, and I’m not ashamed to say it. They were vicious brutes, clad in mail and armed with good steel. They outnumbered us, and they struck to kill. And when they were gone, and I clambered out to find two-thirds of our men dead or dying—”
His eyes glazed over for a moment. “—all the wagons were intact. None of the goods were stolen. The silver, the spices, all untouched. What imbecile robber launches an attack like that and flees without taking anything? What imbecile,” said Lucien, his voice rising, “could believe that is the work of bandits?”
“But,” said Yannick, and flinched as Lucien made a noise of disgust and sagged back in his chair, “but if Kedris had so dire a hunch, why did he say nothing to us?”
“If I had to hazard a guess,” said Josit, “he didn’t want to alarm the people before he had gathered proof.”
“You mean,” said Willon, with undeserved gentleness, “he didn’t want public opinion to turn against you, his Saraian councillor?”
Savonn made a near-imperceptible movement, then subsided into stillness. It was uncanny, really, how quiet he could be when he put his mind to it. “Yes,” said Josit, unflustered. “Me, and all our Sarei-born freedmen. Kedris and I took great trouble to settle them into their new lives. An untimely rumour would have ruined all our work. But of course,” she said, glancing at Lucien, “we now know that this is no mere rumour.”
“Do we?” said Willon. “You lack proof. Kedris learned nothing before he was attacked, and now we have to take your word for it. I must say, Lucien, if you wished to put yourself forth as Governor instead of me, you could have done it in a less circuitous way.”
“Gods!” said Lucien. His palm met his forehead with an audible smack. “Gods, no. I haven’t the stomach for haranguing and dodging the point, as you do. And there’s someone better qualified for it than either of us.”
For one baffled moment, Willon stared at him. Then the ridiculous orange tulip drew his eye once more, and he turned to Savonn Andalle. His mouth fell open.
He said, “You jest.”
Between lines and stage directions, the Silvertongue’s face was inexpressive, a silent lute waiting with its strings in good order for the next song. It was impossible to tell what went on behind it. “A poor jest, if no one is laughing,” said Savonn. “Perhaps you have forgotten that Lord Kedris was not only Gov
ernor of this city, but also High Commander of its army. Peacetime is over. If you insist on burying your head in the sand, someone else will have to fight this war—someone,” he added, “who knows one end of a sword from the other.”
Flabbergasted, Willon chanced a look at his allies. Yannick looked terrified as usual, but Oriane appeared to be rigid with suppressed laughter. The sight prodded him into rage once more. “It has been a long time, perhaps, since I took the field,” he conceded. He had seen one or two engagements in his distant youth, during which he vaguely remembered marching around holding flags and being very bored. “But you! A boy from the theatre, who grew up on stage with—with fire-jugglers and snake-swallowers and gods only know what else! You cocky, clueless, irreverent—”
His adjectives failed him. “Sword-swallowers,” Savonn corrected. “They charm the snakes, my lord, they don’t eat them.”
“Have a care for what you say,” added Josit. “Savonn has fought under the banner of Betronett since he was seventeen. He knows the Farfallens like the back of his hand.”
“Then,” Willon said, finding his tongue once more, “pray tell me how the Queen of Sarei is purported to have moved in and set up shop on his watch.”
“Perhaps,” said Oriane, backing him up for once, “Betronett is incompetently led? Kedris is dead, pardon me, because his escort failed to show up.”
Savonn did not take the bait. If anything, his mincing smile broadened. “That, I suppose, is always a possibility.”
Yannick mopped his brow with his sleeve. “But you see, my lord Silvertongue,” he said, “however qualified you may be, it is, ah, improper to elect you after Lord Kedris. People will talk—they will accuse us of nepotism, and other unsavoury things—and besides, well, your family history on the point is, I should say, delicate—”
“He means,” said Willon brusquely, “that Savonn Andalle is descended from a long line of violent lunatics who, having founded Cassarah, thought it was their divine right to rule in perpetuity and died for it. Three generations ago, most of you were dead or howling mad in prison. Lord Raedon took a chance on your father and it paid off, but that was because Kedris was thrice the man most others are. The same, I’m afraid, does not apply to you.”
“Oh, now we invoke my ancestors,” said Savonn, with an air of long-suffering. “Did you know one of them built a palace and made himself a king? It’s a haunted ruin now.” He grinned at Lucien. “Hiraen and I tried to find it the time we ran away from home, but we lost our way. Or rather, our nerve… but pardon the digression.” He swung himself off the pot, dislodging a few petals. “We have both made ourselves clear. If you do not relent, and neither will I, the Council stands divided. Whatever shall we do?”
“The usual procedure,” said Yannick, who could always be counted on to know such things, “is, naturally, a public hearing. The—contenders—will make a speech before the people, and they will cast their vote.” He dabbed his brow again. “But surely it is a waste of time. Lord Silvertongue, they will not vote for you.”
Revolted, Willon remembered the applause at the funeral. A tasteless performance, yes, but the crowd had liked it all the same. Which was the whole point. The boy was more cunning than he had thought possible.
“No,” he said. His knuckles had gone white. “Let him do what he wants. Let the people see how this scheming clownfish means to turn the office his father held with honour for sixteen years into a joke to amuse his charlatan friends. Let them be the judge.”
The wide eyes gleamed. “Well said, my lord,” said Savonn. “Now, if you will excuse me, I had better go see my charlatan friends. Else they won’t vote for me.”
He plucked the tulip from his hair and, with ostentatious courtesy, presented it to Josit. Then he went out the way he had come, humming as he went. They gazed after him in amazement. Lucien, Willon observed, looked like a man beginning to question the wisdom of his recent decisions.
“He has lost his mind,” said Yannick, quivering. “I fear grief has turned him mad.”
“Grief?” said Willon. He shook out his sleeves and gazed, sorrowing, at the half of the speech he would never deliver now. “Grief? I have never seen anyone so happy.”
3
The next day Rendell, Second Captain of Betronett, set out to dissuade Savonn Silvertongue from inflicting himself on the city of Cassarah.
It was a futile gesture, as the man in question seemed to have already done so. But Rendell supposed the least a friend could do—if they were friends, which changed from one day to the next—was make an effort. Emaris had told him that Savonn could be found idling in the theatre. These days Emaris prided himself on being an expert in all matters pertaining to the Captain, which was useful in some ways and worrisome in others. Rendell no longer remembered why he had allowed his impressionable son to squire for Cassarah’s greatest wastrel, except that Emaris had begged and Savonn had enumerated the prospects for promotion in his reasonable voice and, like so many other things, it all seemed like a good idea at the time.
Mid-morning saw him in the Arena of White Sand, keeping an eye out for the social pyrotechnics that followed his commander wherever he went. The theatre was so named because duels and bullfights had been held there once, when Cassarah was young and her people more savage, and someone had decided that blood showed up better against white. But these were enlightened times, and not a grain of sand was to be found in the Arena now. The riggers and carpenters had begun hammering together the set for the Midsummer play, and the stage, built over the old duelling ring, was a confection of spires and cupolas and little spindly wooden balconies painted to look like ivory and gold. Behind were the levers and pulleys that would make the gates open and shut on cue, and the doors slam, and the banners flutter as if in a wind. Tomorrow the speeches would be given here, the only place where so many people could gather at once; and then the citizens would choose their Governor.
The stage itself lay at the bottom of a colossal bowl of granite, surrounded by hundreds of rows of stone benches, enough to seat some sixty thousand. The theatre’s faultless acoustics caught and amplified Rendell’s footsteps as he descended, and a passing group of stagehands looked up, arrested by the sound. He beckoned to them. “Is the Silvertongue here?”
“Over there,” said one of them, gesturing. Set below the lowest circle of benches was a heavy oak door carved with a grotesque unicorn head, scowling ferociously, its twelve-inch horn serving as a door-handle. “In the catacomb.”
As Rendell well knew, having had to extricate Savonn from one too many raucous subterranean parties, the catacomb was a maze of tunnels and rooms that underlay the entire Arena. Twisting passages led to the curious chambers from which the machinery was operated, and a sprawling hive of dressing rooms, workshops, and prop stores nestled under the rings of seats. With trepidation, Rendell asked, “Who’s with him?”
“Just the Safin boy. The others have left.”
This was more luck than he had expected. He crossed to the unicorn door and pushed it open. It emitted a screech that must have announced his arrival to everyone in a one-mile radius, a failure of housekeeping which he guessed was deliberate: the theatre’s denizens liked to have ample warning when their patrons came seeking them. He was in a long, sepulchral tunnel, lit at intervals by wall cressets and interrupted by several unmarked doors on either side. Thirty yards down, the path curved sharply and disappeared into shadow.
So early in the day, the place was quiet. The still air carried the faint smell of fresh paint and wood shavings, and under that, a lingering vestige of jasmine perfume. Rendell caterwauled the door shut and started down the tunnel. “Savonn?”
A few beats of silence. He crashed his fist on the nearest door. “Savonn!”
A voice drifted down the passage, hollow and echoing. “Pick a door, mortal. And ‘ware the Sphinx, lest she devour you.”
Once in a great long while, it was possible to get a sensible sentence out of Savonn. Today his stars were not alig
ned. Making up his mind to be stoic, Rendell went down the passageway, counting the doors. Savonn’s voice had not been far off. “I am not for eating,” he called. He picked the sixth door to his left, and flung it open. “The Sphinx will have to go hungr—Gods!”
A head burst snarling out at him. He flinched back reflexively, colliding with the doorframe. Three rolling pupils stared from each white, insectile eye, like marbles in a bowl. Great wings protruded from the temples, hued in the blues and greens and golds of peacock feathers. Violet serpents dripped out of the cavernous ears, dangling like monstrous earrings over the shoulders. A fathomless mouth yawned open, and yellow fangs stretched towards his face, long and sharp as blades.
And then the Sphinx snorted, her serpents shivering as she suppressed a laugh.
“Fetching,” said Rendell, shoving the head back through the doorway. His pulse was rattling in his throat. Savonn had been Captain of Betronett for three years now, having been promoted straight over Rendell’s head on old Merrott’s sudden death, but now and then he still behaved like a schoolboy. “Terribly grown-up.”
Savonn pulled the mask off and let it clatter to the floor. Beneath was another sphinxlike smile, complacent and unknowable, all the more alarming for being human. “You made so much noise coming in.”
“I didn’t want to walk in on a tryst,” said Rendell. Ever since the foreigner in Astorre, Savonn’s private life had been attended only by prodigious rumour, never any physical entity one could observe, but his friends were not usually as chaste.
“Do you hear that?” said Savonn, glancing back over his shoulder. “We must be on our best behaviour, Hiraen. Come in and help yourself to the floor. I’m sorry the mosaic is so ugly.”
It was one of the small storerooms, with a low slanting roof and a vent high in the wall that let in some measure of fresh air. Here and there the floor was paved with colourful pebbles that must once have been part of said mosaic, but most of it had been chipped away by time and vandals. A rainbow of wigs hung on a rusty iron stand by the door, encompassing every shade from silver-blond to bright blue to pure black. Beyond that was a lute on a stand, and a number of music scores.
