Elegy (The Magpie Ballads Book 1)

by Vale Aida

  “Rather,” said Savonn, “I broke it up.”

  There was no mistaking Astorre for Cassarah. There were no stately bridges, no aerial gardens. While the buildings at home were solid and ponderous, like castle bulwarks, Astorre’s were sleekly sinuous, roofs and balconies and curving window-frames flashing like brass jewellery in the sun. The roads were not paved with stone, but a strange amber-brown brick. Stained-glass lamps swung on every street corner, already lit against the encroaching dark. They passed one shaped like a shark’s maw, and another like a lion’s head. It was as warm as Vion had foretold, which—as far as Emaris was concerned—made this the only place to be for the next year or so.

  The great serrated dome that gave Celisse’s home its name was painted, white on bronze, with intricate star-maps of the constellations and planets in orbit. Beneath, the palace was full of fluted marble columns and slender archways under elaborate wooden friezes. Windchimes sang in echoing stairways; golden carp swam in deep murmuring pools. They were received by a clucking chamberlain and made to comb their hair and wash their feet in a powder room. Then, newly presentable, they were taken to the Lady’s solar.

  It was on the second floor, with casement windows overlooking a garden where children were playing ball among the rhododendrons. There were no tables or chairs. Instead a number of multicoloured mattresses and rugs were laid out on the painted tiles, strewn all over with cushions. A low stool in the midst held three glasses of some pale orange liquid. Sitting cross-legged on one of the carpets, sipping from a fourth glass, was Lady Celisse.

  She was not yet forty, with long gold-bronze hair and skin like polished mahogany. Her blue chiffon gown had moonstones sewn into the collar and hems, and a silver shawl twined around her shoulders. Rings glittered on all her fingers. “Did you bring your choir, Lord Silvertongue?” she asked, smiling. Like Gelmir’s, her front teeth were gold. “The Saraians had a lutenist. I could put you together and make you sing for your supper.”

  Once more, Emaris failed to catch Savonn’s eye. “I didn’t bring my lute,” said Savonn. “I suppose I could always juggle knives and conjure fire.” He approached her rug and, kneeling, bent to kiss her hand. “Allow me to present my friends. This is Hiraen Safin, who fetches things from high shelves for me; and Emaris, who laces me into my corsets. You knew his father.”

  “Your deputy and your squire, in other words,” said Celisse. “Come, sit and drink. I was very sorry to hear about Lord Kedris. We used to keep up a most salacious correspondence.”

  Emaris managed, in time, to straighten out his face. They sat down on the rugs. “And yet,” said Savonn, handing out the glasses without taking his eyes from her, “you admitted the Saraians?”

  “Your feuds are none of my business,” said Celisse. “Marguerit is a dear friend. With this fellow Isemain around, the roads have been remarkably clear of bandits. He’s been here for a few weeks, you know,” she added. “The Marshal of Sarei himself, with a force of two hundred. A decent if unimaginative fellow. The lutenist was more interesting.”

  They must have split their forces. The Marshal had gone ahead to Astorre, while the Empath tarried on his errand to Onaressi, stalking the Betronett company across the Pass. “Perhaps so,” said Hiraen. “But the bandits are in their pay.”

  “Which keeps them from waylaying merchants for their gold,” said Celisse. “So all parties are pleased except, sadly, you. I’m surprised you didn’t come to clear out the forts sooner. The bandits have occupied some of the smaller ones for two or three years now.”

  “They moved in around the same time as Merrott died?” asked Hiraen.

  “Thereabouts.”

  Hiraen glanced at Savonn, who seemed oblivious. Emaris did not understand. He was sampling the drink, which tasted like honey but burned like brandy going down his gullet, and had started up a steady smoulder in his stomach. His head felt light, and in danger of detaching from his neck. “I see,” said Savonn. “So, if—hypothetically—we were hoping you would throw out the Saraians and bar the passes against them, we would be disappointed?”

  Celisse’s smile was small but tolerant. “Hypothetically, yes. I would be breaking my own truce, and Marguerit would be very cross with me. If it helps, the weather will close the passes soon enough. The Saraians will have to go home soon or risk being stuck here till the spring. The same goes for you, of course… Oh, by the way, that’s Astorrian summerwine.”

  Emaris, who had been frowning with concentration into his glass, looked up with a start. The Lady winked at him. “It’s something of a legend. The ingredients are a secret the brewers will keep with their lives.”

  Without comment, Savonn returned to the discussion at hand. “There are several more forts along Ilsa’s Pass to be cleared of bandits before autumn sets in. We hoped you might help us. Your traders would be glad of it.”

  “What?” said Celisse, looking amused. “Send your friend Gelmir to garrison a few frosty rocks? The poor man. I may think about it for the sake of our friendship. Give me some time to decide.”

  She rose from the carpet with easy grace, and so did they. “I don’t like lodging opposing armies under my eaves, but I’ll make an exception for you. You may stay here as long as you like, provided you keep out of trouble. In a few days we are throwing a masquerade to honour Amitei, our deity of love. The Saraians are invited. So are you.”

  “It is an honour,” said Savonn. There was no trace of the grinning youngster who had so charmed Gelmir. His handclasp was formal, his expression bland. “But as you say, we ought to hurry home.”

  Hiraen led the way out, followed by Emaris, dazed from the summerwine and rather disappointed to hear they were not staying long. Celisse called after them as they reached the hallway. “The Savonn Silvertongue I knew would not have passed up the chance to attend a masked ball for love or money.”

  “That,” said Savonn pleasantly, “was years ago, my lady.”

  The chamberlain escorted them downstairs, and invited them to take their ease in the garden while suitable lodgings were found for them. The sun had set while they were talking. A rainbow of lamps glowed among the fragrant hedgerows, and fireflies flitted in the dark that lingered in between. But far beyond the city wall, there loomed another, more sinister light.

  “Look!” said Emaris. “The mountain is bleeding!”

  In the daytime he would have laughed at himself. But now, rearing her white-capped pate above the twilit city, Lady Fidelity glowed brilliant red, her slopes stained like an altar after a sacrifice, and he could think of no other way to put it. The lesser peaks in the distance were tinted the same hue, as if every stone in the Farfallens had been lit from within by some great conflagration. Even Hiraen was wide-eyed. But Savonn’s countenance did not change. “Alpenglow,” he said. “The air captures the light and clings to it after the sun has set. When it happens, the Astorrians say the Lady is in red.”

  Emaris had never seen anything so beautiful, or so disturbing. The chamberlain hurried up, beaming, to explain. “Milord Captain knows the local lore? Alpenglow is a sign of Amitei’s blessing, and the most auspicious of omens for lovers. It is said that if a couple takes their vows on an evening like this, their passion will endure forever.”

  “Gods deliver them,” said Savonn dryly.

  Hiraen grinned. “He isn’t superstitious.”

  But Emaris was no longer paying attention. The children had left with their ball, and in their place half a dozen newcomers in leather and mail were strolling among the rhododendrons. Sluggish with wine, he had not noticed that they were speaking Saraian. One of them stopped under a lamp to examine a carved fresco. It was hard not to stare at him: he had the shoulders and legs of a marble king on a plinth, and twice the poise; and his hair was the same auburn as the mountain.

  Emaris hissed, “Savonn!”

  Unthinking, he seized Savonn’s arm. Savonn, who had been in the midst of what sounded like a philosophical dispute with the chamberlain, jerked as if he had b
een shot, and Emaris released him at once. “It’s him! It’s the Empath!”

  Here, at last, was corporeal proof that he had not hallucinated the man. The redhead had given up his sword like the rest of them, but he still had his black and red cloak and his lute slung over his shoulder in its leather case. He was too far off to have caught Emaris’s whisper, but all the same, just as Savonn was looking around, he turned.

  They stared at each other across the garden. In the first shock of the impact, both faces were inexpressive. Emaris shivered, beset by the absurd urge to duck behind Hiraen. But the Empath did not so much as glance at him. His features were straight and chiselled and haughty, his brow creased as if in thought, and his gaze was for Savonn alone.

  Behind them, the chamberlain chattered on unheard. The mountain glowed. Red, and red, and red.

  After what felt like a long time, the Empath dipped his head in greeting. Savonn exhaled audibly, a breath Emaris realised he had been holding for a while. His eyes were large and ruinously bright between their long lashes, and his lips were parted as if to speak.

  Slowly, fastidiously, he returned the nod of acknowledgement. Then he turned around and cut the chamberlain off in midsentence.

  “Sir,” he said. “Will you take a message to Lady Celisse? Tell her we shall be pleased to attend her masquerade after all.”

  13

  In the morning Savonn was chiefly preoccupied with preparations for the ball, and could not be made to discourse intelligibly on any matter besides heeled shoes and fancy hats. Emaris, approaching with a question, was offered an unsolicited and highly critical opinion on the state of his hair, and summarily dispatched to a barber so he would “stop looking like a very blond bear,” as Savonn put it. And then: “Take Nikas with you. His mop will benefit from the experience. You may repeat that to him, if you wish.”

  This proved more entertaining than he expected. Brought out shopping for evening wear after they had been washed and shaved and barbered, Nikas dispensed a constant stream of commentary on the sights and history of Astorre, only interrupting himself at one point to haul Emaris to a booth selling animal masks. “Put on that mask and look behind us,” he said, holding up a hand mirror in front of them. “That man at the opposite stall is our unwitting sponsor. Isemain Dalissos, Marshal of Sarei.”

  Just this morning Daine and Hiraen had parcelled up the Onaressi loot and handed it out to the men. Breakfast had been a jovial affair, and already Emaris had glimpsed Vion and Lomas spilling out of a tavern, shrieking with laughter and bedecked in new clothes from head to foot. He put on the long-horned gazelle mask he was holding and pretended to appraise his reflection in the mirror. There was a man in his fifties at the stall across the street, so tall his forehead threatened to bump the scaffolding, the muscles of his back more than evident even through his long-sleeved white brigantine. His skin was tanned brown as a nut, his wiry greying hair cropped unfashionably short and combed in a no-nonsense part. One or two of the faces around him were familiar: Emaris thought he recognised them from the ravine on his disastrous scouting trip. “Is he the Empath’s commander?”

  Nikas laughed, setting the mirror down. “Only in name. No one commands the Empath. He comes and goes as he pleases, just like our own Lord Silvertongue. Tell me, why do you think Savonn decided to attend the masquerade?”

  Emaris frowned. “I suppose he wanted to meet the fellow.”

  “Did he really?” asked Nikas. “The Empath spends a great deal of time in Astorre. So did Savonn once. I would be astonished to learn that their paths had never crossed before.”

  He grinned like a dolphin. Emaris had seen those in Bayarre a long time ago, when he and Shandei and their father spent a summer there: strange grey creatures that spun and danced and wove through the sea-foam, smiling as though they knew all the world’s secrets. He pulled the mask off. “Have they?”

  “That,” said Nikas, “is something you ought to ask Savonn yourself. The gazelle suits you. You should buy it.”

  * * *

  On the third evening, a gong sounded at sundown, and they streamed to the Dome with the other partygoers to attend the ball thrown in Amitei’s honour.

  The Astorrian deity of love was never depicted in sculpture or painting, for they were legion, and could take many forms: young or old, fair or dark, man or woman or both or neither. There were no altars or incense-burners in Celisse’s banquet hall, only music and food and people, all of them in masks. The walls were bedecked with gold and silver streamers, the painted windows flung open to let air into the crowded room. Tables groaned under the weight of luxuries—poached eggs, honeyed oats, veal, venison and so on, and a veritable river of that blessed summerwine. But there were no chairs, except for the elderly. Astorrians did not believe in sitting down when they could be dancing. Accompanied by spinet, lyre and drums, a quartet of singers was belting its way through its repertoire, and people were already getting up to twirl each other across the hall.

  Emaris was in his gazelle mask. He had grown another inch over the summer, and his antlers necessitated caution when passing through low doorways. Nikas had settled on a feathery cockatiel for himself, which he kept switching for Lomas’s wolfhound and Daine’s white-maned horse, causing a great deal of confusion. Hiraen, a lion, surfaced now and then from the hordes who wanted to dance with him in order to offer Emaris some pastry or other. By far the most daunting was a fruit tart the size of a small tortoise, covered in peach slices and raisins and leaking chocolate fudge thick as mulch. He leaned in to whisper as he handed it over, nearly impaling his ear on Emaris’s antlers. “Try not to get too drunk. The mammoth, the pony, and the—what the hell is that, some kind of sentient plant?—are Saraians. I haven’t seen the Empath.”

  Their masks only covered them to the nose, so as to make eating possible. Altogether too possible. Unarmed and stuffed full of food, Emaris was aware that if their redhead friend tried anything clever, he had no weapon except his dinner knife with which to fend him off. “Where’s Savonn?”

  They had glimpsed him once, gliding into the hall behind Celisse at the start of the banquet. The Lady of Astorre turned all heads in her snow leopard mask and sleeveless silver gown; and Savonn was, aptly, a magpie, with a rhinestone-encrusted beak and elaborate black and white plumage that belled around his face like a fan. Like Emaris, he had spent a productive half-hour with the barber the day before. His curls tumbled past his ears and over the high embroidered collar of his doublet, so deep a black they shone, and beneath the mask his smile was smug and sharp-tipped. “I’ve no idea,” said Hiraen. “Dancing, probably. I’ll keep a lookout. You enjoy yourself.”

  An octopus had flung its tentacles around his arm, and was trying to lead him onto the dance floor. “All right,” said Emaris, backing out of their way. “Have fun.”

  He ate the tart, which was as alarming as it looked. Then he found himself drawn into a circle of dancers and flirted with in four languages simultaneously, none of which he understood. People kept pressing drinks into his hands. After the fourth or fifth he learned to say No, thank you, in Bayarric; and then, But you too are beautiful, in Pierosi. A new song had started, this one much louder and faster than the ones before. Couples and trios and quartets flitted round him against a wild pulsing of drums. One of his companions, an unfortunately short giraffe, called to him over the music. “The new spinet player is very good.”

  He glanced at the dais at the end of the hall, where the musicians were playing. A moment ago the person at the spinet had been a wolverine in a spangled dress. Now, he saw, it was a magpie.

  Emaris plastered a smile on his face, already weaving away from his protesting partner. “Let me fetch you another drink.”

  The dance floor was overflowing with people. Three collisions and half the song later, he had gotten close enough to the dais to ascertain that the spinet player was, in fact, Savonn. When he had replaced the wolverine was a mystery. The party was spilling out onto the garden, where several naked
acrobats were piling themselves into a pyramid to raucous cheers. Vion and the others were nowhere to be seen. Hiraen was now dancing with Celisse, surrounded by their combined flock of admirers. Two of the Saraians were helping themselves to more dessert, and the third was dancing with the octopus. No one was paying attention to the musicians, save Emaris himself.

  And another. At the very edge of the floor, near the banquet tables, a nightingale stood sipping from a goblet. Tawny feathers plumed from the rim of his cedar mask. His pourpoint shimmered gold, his belt was studded with topaz and sunstone, and his hair, falling to his elbows in a thick careless braid, was a deep auburn.

  Emaris’s full stomach gave a half-hearted lurch. The nightingale glanced briefly in his direction, then back at the spinet. Savonn, too, had noticed his audience. Beneath the rim of his jewelled mask, the corners of his mouth lifted.

  A pause like a held breath. The singers wailed in seamless harmony, drawing the song into its final chorus. Across the hall, the lion dipped the snow leopard, who was laughing. The lion was not. The music seemed to leap from summit to summit beneath Savonn’s fingers, fierce, irresistible, so joyous as to be a mockery; and at last the Empath lifted his goblet in a silent toast and smiled.

  Before the last notes of the song had quite faded away, approving hoots erupted from the throng of dancers, and one or two yelled for an encore. But Savonn had already risen from the bench to sidle round the spinet. And in the next moment, as if by accident, the magpie and the nightingale met on the dance floor, in the midst of the swaying couples and the lingering backbeat of the drums.

  “I thought,” said Savonn, “some good music ought to lure you out of hiding.”

  Emaris crept closer under the pretext of fetching himself another tart. Neither of them took any notice. The drums died away. Someone started a new song on the spinet—this one was slow and soft, and Emaris had no trouble making out the nightingale’s response. “Not hiding,” he said. Unlike Nikas, he spoke Falwynian with the slightest of accents, a minute elongation of the vowels and a softening of the fricatives. “I have been in the garden, seeking fresh air. The crowd is excitable, and my senses are… delicate. Have you a thirst?”