Waleck eased to a more moderate pace after the bridge was a hundred armlengths behind them, but continued to stride confidently, as if he were on completely familiar territory.
Mar followed carefully, maintaining the requisite distance between a master and a bondsman. Idly, he wondered ruefully if he would be condemned to scuttle behind the crazy old fool for the rest of his life. With a mental shrug, he dismissed the complaint as unproductive and, recognizing his opportunity, decided to sightsee.
Though Mar had visited the seat of Imperial authority on numerous occasions, he had not before had the luxury of simply just looking. Banging a drum or waving cymbals while buried in a hoarsely chanting mass of pilgrims did not lend itself to gawking. Likewise, slipping from a hiding place to skulk through the night with the Imperials close on his heels left little time for observation. The clandestine nature of his excursions had never permitted him to reflect upon what someone – maybe Waleck – had told him was the most extensive remaining example of the classical architecture of the Empire in existence.
To be truthful, Mar had not actually spent a great deal of time traveling through the Old City, but more accurately above it. He found it more comfortable – and safer – to traverse the city that Rhwalkahn’s legions had built along the unguarded highways of its rooftops. Once he had learned to climb competently, he had seldom chosen to do otherwise. In most areas, the buildings were packed so closely together that their roofs adjoined. Arcades or balconies completely spanned many of the narrower streets, making their crossings amount to no more than leisurely strolls. From the Merchant District in the east all the way north to the Civil Quarter, there was hardly a place that could not be reached with more than a single descent to ground level.
And so, to a great extent, the Seat of the Viceroy was a foreign land to him, even though he had lived the majority of his life within a league of it. His knowledge of the Old City was like that of a bird, as a landscape spread below the heights along which he flew.
Somewhat to his dismay, he found himself gaping. A concern briefly crossed his mind that this behavior might attract undue attention, but he quickly dismissed it. Bondsmen and other servants, especially here in the Old City, were invisible to the upper classes. Within the haughty ranks of the bureaucrats and merchants, social etiquette made public recognition of the presence of underlings unmannerly and discourteous. In some, this custom approached an almost literal blindness to the existence of the mean or poor. Mar had no intrinsic objection to this aristocratic arrogance. In point of fact, it pleased him to no end, as self-inflicted ignorance was a vulnerability that he thoroughly enjoyed exploiting.
The old city was a marvel of order. Each and every aspect was aligned, confined, routed, straightened, numbered, and scheduled -- the buildings, the traffic, the people. Amazingly, the Square of the Municipal Prefecture was in fact, square.
Mar, when he chanced to consider it, had never approved of this plague of order; it struck him as grossly unnatural. In his experience, men ignored lines, broke confinement, failed to comprehend direction, were most often crooked in some fashion or other, could not count, and would certainly not be bothered with the time of day.
While he had still been young enough to have a desire to listen to such, Mar had been told that the Old City was the last refuge of an emaciated, frightened dream striving desperately to fend off the onslaught of reality. The drunken wreck who had relayed this bit of wisdom, an outlawed scholar hiding from scandal and persecution (as he had styled himself), had made a strong impression with his studied phrases and idealistic manner. It had been some time before Mar had experienced enough of life to conclude that this insight had been of no more value that the corrupt breath of the sot who had related it. He had come to realize not only that the reeking reprobate’s judgment was self-evidently false, but misleading in a seductive fashion. Mar’s acceptance of it had been no less than a product of his own immature desire to believe that the Old City and the powerful who dwelled there were somehow at fault, in some way directly responsible for the poverty, ignorance, and hunger that gripped his life.
The truth of the matter had nothing to do with dreams. Although Mar knew the inhabitants of the Imperial center to be decadent, neither fantasy nor weakness diluted their power. The original section of Khalar was no refuge of vanished aspirations, but a stronghold, the core of all strength and wealth in the Khalarii’n province. The rule of the Patriarchs through the Viceroy was absolute. They maintained authority in every aspect of Khalarii life. All money, ultimately, entered in and emerged from their counting houses. All laws were conceived in their council chambers. All justice originated from their high seats. The Viceroy's Dominion of Khalar remained a vibrant, thriving city, and the Old City was its fiercely beating heart.
And, as was now readily apparent, that heart was truly a vain one. Every Viceroy, no matter the briefness of his reign or the pettiness of his accomplishments, had his monument. Some, in apparent spasms of self-aggrandizement, had constructed identical statues within sight of one another. Every battle and every general, including quite a few engagements which barely qualified as skirmishes and as many officers who had never once swung a sword at an enemy, was celebrated by plaque, pylon, obelisk, statue, or mark. In places the tributes, of every type of stone and metal known, clustered so closely that they came near obstructing the broad public thoroughfares. No building of any significance was without dedication to some famous -- sometimes infamous -- figure.
Mar almost enjoyed himself, spinning his head about, trying to read all the inscriptions and scan all the noble twisted lips and broken noses captured so faithfully for posterity. He became amused by the inconstant fortunes of Khalar's heroes. On one corner, a certain glorified son might be praised for the salvation of the Empire, the marker twice Mar's height. While on another, later detractors denounced the same for vile, traitorous acts, and a statue even larger than the first erected to give witness to his execution.
Unexpectedly, Waleck left Emperor Djajhansr's Boulevard at the next intersection, heading south on a narrower street identified by a plaque as Prefect Mhrovel’s Place.
Mar knew the great civic buildings only as landmarks -- there was little in them that could be sold for coin -- but he was more than familiar with the location of the Viceroy's Library. The highest structure in all of Khalar, the five-storey mass of it towered high above the magnificent temples gathered about it on the Plaza of the Empire. It was sited directly northeast from the head of the Blue Ice Bridge, near the center of the Civic Quarter, on the north end of the Plaza. It seemed to him that the most direct route, at least on the ground, would lead them farther up the boulevard. They would have needed only to travel east until they reached the Avenue of Rhwalkahn’s Ascension and then turn north. Rhwalkahn’s Ascension led directly north to the Plaza.
"Where now, old man?” Mar whispered at the wasteminer’s back
"The docks,” Waleck answered quietly without turning. “To book passage to The Greatest City in All the World."
“Where?” Mar hissed.
The old man laughed. “The Crown of the Principate!
“I don’t understand.”
“One would think you had no education, Mar,” Waleck offered amusedly. “We travel south and so must go to the seaport at Mhajhkaei near the mouth of the Ice River, known everywhere as The Greatest City in All the World.”
Mar did know of Mhajhkaei, but in detail only from books. And he did remember, now, that he had read that phase before. In Khalar, the common attitude considered the heartland of the old empire, for all practical purposes, to be on the other side of the world, a place of which one was aware but not really interested. Mar, himself, preferred history if he was moved to read, but had found travelogues suitable for casual winter reading. A thick tome would provide him with excuse to lounge by the fire in a tavern for hours, nursing the cheap watered wine that purchased his right to a stool.
He dredged his memories of the several books he
had read. Mhajhkaei was reputed to have more than an incredible two hundred thousand inhabitants. It was also home to some of the greatest, according to one effusive author, architectural marvels known since the fall of the Empire. Mhajhkaei was the strongest, both economically and militarily, of the independent city-states of the southern coast and the titular head of the confederation known as the Principate. By virtue of her self-declared Mhajhkaeirii’n Peace, she held sway over many of the islands of the northern Silver Sea.
And, now that he considered it, he could readily follow the old man’s reasoning. The Mother of the Seas, whatever it was, was unlikely to be near Khalar. To the west were the great depression and the Waste City. No Khalarii had knowledge of the extent of the Waste or what lay beyond it. North and east from the city lay thick forest, a few small Army outposts, and the scattered villages of the Mheckel tribes. Beyond those were uncharted and, as far as any cartographer knew, unending forest. The bulk of the inhabited world, the Silver Sea and the former lands of the Empire, were south.
Barges bound down river departed frequently from Khalar and were the only practical means of travel south. There was a road, of sorts. It began at the eastern end of the Red Ice Bridge at the gates of the Red Fortress and ran guttered and paved (another Imperial relic) southeast for ten leagues through the ring of farms and estates that fed the city. Then, turning due south, for another ten it trudged, gravel over clay, across the river flood plain, serving the outlying steads. After that, it became an overgrown wagon track that snaked through better than fifty leagues of old growth hills, avoiding the wanderings of the river, with neither town nor inn to ease the length of the journey. The track ended at a farming village in the northernmost Mhajhkaeirii’n province yet some thirty odd leagues short of the great city. Caravans made that passage perhaps a dozen times a year, but always bound north. These returned the barge crews and their profits (the barges were sold and broken up for their timbers) and brought what trade goods the city could afford.
The stone quays and wooden docks that served the Old City clung to a broken shelf on the eastern side of the promontory. Prefect Mhrovel’s Place dropped down the steep slope with switchbacks and sections of broad steps, passing between warehouses and storage yards to reach the Merchant’s Promenade.
Small riverboats lined the plank and piling docks, but those never went farther than a few leagues up or down the Ice. Waleck ignored these and walked on to the large quay where the barges were docked. The barges were built solely to float cargo and followed a standard, uncomplicated design. For the most part, they were broad of beam and shallow of draft, none longer than thirty armlengths. All had single lines of oarlocks on open rowing decks and a centered stubby mast with a furled square sail.
Of the five vessels present, three were still in the process of outfitting, with bondsmen working unhurriedly under the lax supervision of shipwrights. One was no more than a just floated hull, its green timbers still oozing sap. Of the other two, the nearest was idle, watched by a dozing bargeman. Only the last, farthest out along the quay, showed any sign of preparations to depart.
The captain of this barge, a short fellow with a bushy beard who was shaped much like his ship, admitted grudgingly that his vessel was scheduled to depart on that very day, but was at first adamantly opposed to shipping passengers.
"Agin the Reg’lations o’ the Company," he proclaimed in dismissal, swinging his arm to direct bondsmen working cargo on the quay.
"We have coin," Waleck insisted, opening his hand to reveal two silver thal.
The captain continued to bark orders from time to time as sailors hoisted a large crate aboard. His eyes flicked toward the old man's palm.
"Sorry, can’t help ya," he stated flatly, but did not turn his attention back to the cargo.
Waleck's hand went to the pouch at his side. Four more thal made their way into his hand. The captain grimaced, showing the gaps in his teeth.
"The lines will be cast off four hours past noon,” the captain indicated, reaching to shake Waleck's hand. “Straight away, mind, by the bell. Be no waiting for tardy passengers."
Waleck quickly took his leave of the bargeman and retraced their steps to Emperor Djajhansr's Boulevard. With the delay at the bridge and the side trip to the docks, the morning had ripened well toward midday. Many of the denizens of the Old City were now about the streets. They were a varied lot: craftsmen of all sorts, bondsmen and other servants, clerks and scribes, others not easily categorized.
When Mar had been very young, he had believed that only merchants and emperors lived in the dominant heart of the Imperial City. There were merchants and bureaucrats and their associated functionaries aplenty, yes, but no one wanted to walk more than two streets away to buy bread. The Old City was populated as well with many people of more mundane occupation. There were bakers and butchers and all the other trades necessary for life, nearly all in businesses established by their father’s father back many generations to the founding of the city.
Waleck stopped at a fountain that commanded the intersection of Emperor Djajhansr's Boulevard and the Avenue of Viceroy Phalh’s Victory Over the Chriveth Savages. Hiking his boot onto the back of a prostrate marble savage, he adjusted his laces.
“We will drop your package on the step of a house down that alley two blocks up,” he said, without looking directly at Mar.
“That’s good,” Mar answered in a low voice. “I’m more than tired of carrying it.”
“I have detected no one trailing us,” Waleck confided, swapping his other boot to the back of the conquered tribesman. “But the Imperials are out in force today.”
Mar had already recognized this unsettling fact. Motivated by a longstanding keen personal interest, it was his habit to make mental notes of the dispositions of the Guard. It was indeed unusual for so many guardsmen to be deployed on any but festival days. A quad or more had been stationed at nearly every intersection and often at other strategic points. Also, a mounted patrol of two files, a quite uncommon sight, had rode by to the west just moments ago.
“They aren’t actively searching for us,” Mar stated.
“True,” the old man agreed. “Just waiting.”
“Do you think they know we’re here?”
“The Phaelle’n? Or the Guard? But, in answer to both, no, I very much doubt it. If either knew our exact location, then we would already have been taken. I am sure that they suspect our destination, but they cannot barricade the Plaza or the Library. They know we are coming, but not when. Therefore, we must not tarry. Come.”
The Plaza of the Empire was, of course, free of guardsmen. Attempts by Viceroys in the past to post armsmen within its boundaries had met with strident opposition from the priests. The faithful proclaimed the Plaza, its many temples, numerous altars, and uncounted shrines the sole province of the Forty-Nine Gods (and their assorted illegitimate and half-breed sons, daughters, and other offspring), and reacted violently to the extension of civil authority over the holy places. Zealots had assassinated Viceroy Trevhoth the Forty-Nine Times Damned over just such an incursion.
Mar had witnessed several riots over the years supposedly in protest of some Viceregal insult to the honor of the Gods, but he was convinced that the disturbances were more likely motivated by the simple greed of Khalarii hoping to profit from the looting that inevitably ensued. Of course, he always suspected the basest of motives in every human enterprise.
Which was not to say that he had not been eager to participate in reclaiming the dignity of the Forty-nine. A silver inkwell from the Praefect’s desk had fed him for over a month.
Waleck dodged around a shrine to Nhish as a damp cloud of grain smoke pushed in their direction.
“Stay close, Mar,” the old man ordered. “There will be no throng of pilgrims here as on thirdday, but I do not wish us to become separated.”
Mar quickly realized that the old man was correct in his concern. The head of the Avenue of Rhwalkahn’s Ascension was a warren of altars,
tombs, and shrines and was well populated with attending priests, novitiates, and even the occasional worshiper. Seemingly clear paths often ended in prayer mat filled alcoves, tiny theatres centered on sacrificial pyres, or convocations of chanting monks, but after several false starts, Waleck succeeded in navigating their way clear of the maze.
Relieved, Mar sniffed his clothes as they started toward the Library. The stench of incense, candle wax, and animal blood had already begun to sink into them.
The center of the Plaza was more or less clear, save for scattered religious statuary and an obelisk commemorating some forgotten religious epiphany. The vast open space between the obelisk and the white marble façade of the Library was, on clear days, the unchallenged domain of the scholars, who brought their classes into the open air to practice their oratory free of the constrictions of the Library’s cell-like study alcoves. Today, with the sun beaming down, the expanse of eight-sided flagstones was awash with mobs of adolescents enduring onslaughts of pedantic instruction.
Most of the scholars affected the traditional uniform, white or green robes of flowing cloth and open sandals, but some of the instructors had determined to champion modern dress, usually a jacket of a subdued color over shirt and trousers. These later were also more likely to posses portable stools and lap desks rather than sitting cross-legged upon the pavement as did their more conservative brethren.
As Waleck paused beside the obelisk to chart his path through the haphazardly placed schools, Mar turned a half-curious ear to the lectures of the nearest scholars.
One just to their right appeared to be a philosopher of some sort and was prattling inane nonsense about the forms of pure epistemology. Another, slightly off to the left, was a historian and Mar listened avidly for a moment.
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