by T L Greylock
Eska laughed. “The name isn’t the problem. It’s the people attached to it. Come, the crew tells me the fishing was good this morning.”
As she led Perrin back toward the camp and the excavation site, Eska’s gaze wandered to a small barge floating downriver, the crew lazily poling their way through the shallower waters—except for one man. Eska froze as Perrin went on ahead, her attention fixed on a lone bearded figure standing at the aft of the barge. He seemed as intent on Eska as she was on him. She was meant to see him, to feel the weight of his gaze. And if she was not mistaken, he had a badge of golden daggers sewn onto the sleeve of his black jacket.
Eska trailed behind Perrin after the barge floated out of sight. She told no one that Thibault de Venescu, the Iron Baron, apparently wasn’t satisfied with restricting his threats to narrow streets in Arconia—he was sending out shadows to stalk her.
Chapter Thirteen
“I fear I will fail that task.”
“My dear Chancellor, you don’t look at all well.”
The Ambassador-Superior of Arconia’s voice conveyed sympathy, compassion, and not even a hint of awareness that perhaps poor Chancellor Fiorlieu was suffering just as much from her negotiation tactics as from his stomach ailment.
The morning had begun politely enough—an exchange of gifts, ceremonial tea, a moment of silence at the large round table. There had even been birds singing in the hedges outside the windows, filigree shutters flung wide to let in the soft light and the smell of earth dampened by the rain that fell from the stars the night before. But then Eska watched her mother disarm, dismantle, and dismember—metaphorically speaking—Chancellors Pelle and Fiorlieu, leaving the latter grimacing under the weight of her devastating logic, unparalleled rhetorical eloquence, and charming smile. It wasn’t even time to break for the noon meal and Sorina de Caraval had already gained concessions about the shoddy state of the roads branching out from Toridium, roads the Vismarch was obligated to maintain, and caused Chancellor Pelle to admit his government had been withholding information on known bands of renegades who preyed upon travelers of said roads.
It all left Eska with little to do but admire her mother’s skill, and she longed to return to her work by the river.
“I assure you, I am well enough, Ambassador-Superior,” Chancellor Fiorlieu managed, his jaw working beneath the short, thick beard he wore. He was the tougher opponent, Eska quickly realized, and had not bothered to hide his annoyance at Pelle’s misstep. On his own and unbothered by a pain in his gut, he might be formidable. But the Vismarch had named them equal partners in the negotiations, Eska knew, and Fiorlieu would have to make what he could of the arrangement—and the Arconians would do what they could to drive the wedge between the Chancellors deeper.
“Perhaps a brief respite,” Sorina de Caraval said, smiling gently. “The room has grown quite warm, has it not?”
Fiorlieu agreed with a begrudging nod and snapped his fingers, summoning a pair of servants with a cart bearing pitchers of refreshing beverages. They began to pour, the sound of ice clinking against silver and crystal filling the room. Eska rose from her chair and went to a window, finding her gaze drawn to the south. Towers and rooftops and air gardens—not to mention a large wall—stood between her and the excavation, but that did not stop her from looking. A whisper of fabric at her elbow alerted Eska to her mother’s presence.
“Don’t make me ask you if your mind is fully engaged here in this chamber.” Sorina kept her voice low, unthreatening, excessively mild. It made Eska long for a pair of wings like those of the sparrows chattering below the window, wings that could carry her out of the city.
“I assure you, Mama, I will do my duty.” Eska turned a carefully composed face to her mother and the older woman studied her for a long moment. Quiet conversations in the room behind them went unheeded.
“You see, Eska. There, right there. You have everything it takes to do what I do, what your father does. Your face right now is truly a wonder. I know that deep inside you, you clamor to be let loose, you chafe against the obligations that keep you here. But I only know that because I am your mother. You can fool everyone else in this room, perhaps even in all the Seven Cities and beyond.”
Eska could think of one or two individuals who could likely see through any façade she might put up—and both their names happened to begin with A—but she kept this to herself.
“You cannot always be torn in two, Eska,” Sorina murmured. “Some day you will have to choose between serving your city and running your uncle’s company. And though you may be loathe to admit it, it will not be an easy choice for you in the end.”
Eska was saved from having to acknowledge the truth of her mother’s statement by the dismissal of the servants. Chairs scraped back, bottoms lowered to begin the process of going numb once again. And Eska took her seat having resolved to think no more of the excavation—at least not until she stepped foot outside the negotiation chamber at the end of the day.
The Ambassador-Superior took charge once more. “Now, Chancellors, if we may, might I suggest we take a momentary break from discussing the Toridium roads and turn our attention to the fungus that has affected Arconia’s lumber production?”
It was a masterful stroke, a sudden change in tactic that would blind the Chancellors to the ambush being prepared for them. Rather than continue to enumerate Toridium’s deficiencies, Sorina de Caraval was turning attention to her own city and feeding the Chancellors an opportunity to find their footing and express a momentary superiority. Never mind they were standing on quicksand.
Chancellor Pelle pounced. Very predictable. Eager to make up for his mistake, the younger official expounded at length about the dearth of lumber and demanded to know how the Archduke meant to make up for it.
After some back and forth, during which Eska provided a few key financial details, the Ambassador-Superior of Arconia was forced to concede to a reduction in the price of lumber, to be revisited in three years.
Pelle was triumphant. He tried not to smile, tried to maintain his decorum. It turned his usually pleasant face into something that looked like it had half-swallowed an eel. For their part, the members of the Arconian delegation went into the midday break between sessions wearing suitably distressed faces. But it was Fiorlieu Eska watched as the chamber emptied. The older man was either truly ill or suspicious of the minor victory his colleague had won. Likely both.
Eska approached him as he gathered his sheaf of papers. “Chancellor.” They were the only people left in the room. “May I offer a suggestion?”
Chancellor Fiorlieu glanced up from below greying eyebrows. “That depends. Is this suggestion made in an official capacity? If so, I cannot and will not hear it, not until we have resumed.”
“Very unofficial, I assure you.”
The Chancellor frowned. “Then I suppose I cannot stop you.”
He was certainly determined to be obstinate. Eska was tempted to swallow her well-meaning advice. Instead, she offered a slight smile. “Eldergrass.” His frown deepened, if that was possible. “Eldergrass and finallian root. Brewed like a tea. For your stomach pains.”
Though she was certain his persistent frown was caused at least in part by unrelenting pain in his belly, she half expected him to insist he was experiencing no pain. Instead he grunted. “Sweet and soothing is it? Sounds as useless as honeywater.”
“Actually, it’s really quite unpleasant,” Eska said mildly. “Eldergrass ferments in the presence of hot water and the starch in the finallian root. And it will sting your throat all the way down.” The Chancellor’s grimace altered ever so slightly. “But it’s a touch more effective than honeywater, I’d say.” She swept from the room without waiting for a response. Either he’d try it and be grateful, thereby earning the Arconians some good will, or he would refuse it out of spite, the pain would not improve, and he’d lash out as a result. Arconian or Toridua, it made no difference at whom he lashed out. Either way, her mother would use his an
ger against him.
***
Eska took her meal in the Vismarch’s treasure hall. Rather, she stashed a cheese-stuffed roll in the pocket of her trousers, plucked a pear from the overflowing fruit bowl laid out for the negotiators, and slipped through the still, cool halls of the palace.
The treasure hall was guarded, of course, and Eska contemplated a not insignificant number of stories to explain her request to enter—some more plausible than others. She settled, just for the fun of it, on telling the guard on duty that she had been sent to measure the golden abdominal muscles of the statue of Helionicus—the mythical figure who, well, was mythical precisely because of his muscles—for a portrait of the Vismarch’s paramour. In the end, she didn’t have to say a word. Evidently the Vismarch had given notice to allow entry to a young woman sporting a hint of sunburn on her cheeks.
Eska entered the treasure hall quietly, chewing a mouthful of pear as the door closed with a muted click behind her.
Unlike her first visit, the hall was lit brilliantly by the sun and the Vismarch’s collection quite literally sparkled and gleamed so brightly, Eska had to blink twice before she could take it in. It was hard to know where to look first. She settled on the chiseled statue of Helionicus because the ancient hero was on her mind.
From him she moved on to a ruby the size of a goose egg, then the splintered shield of Kyr—well and truly splintered, and the amulet of the prophet Xenia. The amulet gave her pause, for it was of the same smooth obsidian as her fox sculpture. It too had its origins in Mehatha, but where the fox was a symbol of the god Nehar, Xenia was the priestess who had foreseen the end of the Mehathuen empire and the rise of Irabor. The amulet and its beaded chain lay on black velvet, the obsidian stone sucking in the light around it. Eska reached out a hand, wanting to feel the smooth planes of the amulet’s many faces, wondering if Xenia had welcomed the truth of her prophecy or if she had wept for what was lost. Hers was a shadowed story, pieces of a life cobbled together only after her name became a permanent part of Mehathuen history, no doubt made of as many lies invented by her enemies as truths known to her friends. Eska could not help but wonder who she really was and what she had wanted from life.
Eska wandered from display to display after leaving Xenia’s amulet behind, but her mind was unfocused, her thoughts on the long-dead priestess and her mother’s words about Eska having her own choice ahead of her. The Vismarch’s treasures offered no answer. They were beautiful, they were rare, and they were clearly adored and protected. But they were not studied, not as Eska would if she had possession of them. They were only there to be seen, admired, but not understood. The Vismarch, for all his attention to detail, was not very different from Valentin de Caraval.
A vision of her uncle prowling that hall brought Eska back once more to the question her mother had posed, but the passage of time saved Eska from allowing herself to ponder whether her future lay with Firenzia Company or in the governance of her city, and she left the treasure hall behind to return to the negotiations.
So lost in thought was Eska that she nearly ran into the grey-haired woman kneeling in the middle of the vast floor of the Hall of the Lions, directly beneath the point of the pyramid. She begged very many pardons and the woman smiled.
“You’re not the first I’ve seen to leave the Vismarch’s treasure hall in a state of wonder.” There was an accent on her tongue that Eska could not quite place.
“Have you seen it yourself?” Eska asked, trying to think why the woman had been kneeling in the empty pyramid, praying to no one, beseeching only the polished tiles.
The woman shook her head. “The Vismarch does not let me enter, though that is the sole purpose of my presence in this city.”
“What do you mean?”
The woman sighed, waved away Eska’s offer to help her stand, and spread her hands on her thighs. “Every day I come here to seek an audience with the Vismarch. Some days he speaks with me. Most he does not. It’s not that he’s unkind. He is polite and respectful. But he refuses to hear my request. We do not even speak of it.”
“Your request?”
“Behind that door is an artifact that belongs to my people, to the land I come from. It is valuable, yes, but it is more than the gold it would take to buy it, indeed, if such an amount exists. It is part of the story of my country, our heritage, our hearts, the blood we have shed.” The woman glanced up at Eska, her hands raised as if in supplication. “And it belongs with us.” At last she got to her feet, the top of her head coming no higher than Eska’s chin. “Perhaps you have seen it? A stone black as night on a chain of silver beads.”
“The amulet of Xenia,” Eska breathed. “You are from Mehatha.”
The woman nodded solemnly. “I am. And each day for thirty years I have risen with the sun and come to the Hall of the Lions to ask the Vismarch to return it to us.”
“Thirty years,” Eska repeated, unable to fathom the single-minded dedication it would take to live such a life.
The woman nodded again. “I was a young woman when I came here. I had dreams and a man I loved and who loved me. But I came to do my duty. Thirty years away from my homeland, my people. Thirty years speaking a language not my own. Thirty years with one task on my shoulders.” She sighed, sadness creeping into her face. “My bones grow weary of kneeling on this floor. My joints are stiff from years of supplication. My hearing is not what it once was. I fear I will fail that task.” She turned away from Eska and began a slow, lonely procession to the towering doors of the pyramid.
Stunned, full of questions, but able to put words to only one, Eska called after her. “What is your name?”
The woman stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Why do you ask?”
Eska shook her head. “I don’t know.”
The woman turned to face Eska fully, but did not speak for a moment. At last she touched her fingertips to her forehead before extending her hand out from her torso, the traditional Mehathuen greeting.
“I am Parisia of Mehatha.”
She turned on slippered feet and walked silently from the pyramid, leaving behind only the weight of her sadness.
***
The afternoon session of negotiations, as it turned out, never commenced.
Chancellor Pelle greeted Sorina de Caraval, Eska, and the rest of the Arconian delegation outside the chamber with the round table and the filigreed shutters. Bowing slightly, he informed them that Chancellor Fiorlieu had taken to his bed once again. He acknowledged that the Ambassador-Superior could choose to demand the work continue, with or without Fiorlieu, but begged that she might consider breaking official diplomatic protocol—which stated that a strict negotiation schedule must be followed—and grant a recess of a single day. Sorina de Caraval—let no one call her ungracious—agreed.
And Eska, well, upon finding herself with the afternoon unexpectedly at her disposal, she left the city in short order, taking a horse from the Vismarch’s stable and discovering a squashed cheese roll in her pocket halfway between Toridium and the Firenzia site.
It was, therefore, with said roll in one hand and a small brush in the other, that she acquired the attention of the three newest crewmembers over the hole they had been digging.
They had, to her delight, discovered the very refuse pit she hoped they might come across, and a number of small, broken objects had already been pulled from the dirt.
Eska swallowed the last of her cheese roll, crouched on the ground, and picked up one of the objects. “See this, Dea?” Eska brushed soil from the thing in her palm. Dea, a skinny girl from an orphanage in Arconia, squatted next to her in the dirt. “It’s marvelous. I’ve seen them before, but usually cracked and broken. This one is quite well-preserved.”
“What is it?” The girl was on her first contract with Firenzia Company and likely on her first journey away from home.
Eska set the slender wooden cylinder in Dea’s hand. Unskilled she might be, but the girl had shown more than a spoonful of curiosity. “S
ee the grooves?” Eska pointed to the three slight indentations that encircled the smooth wood. “And just there. That fiber.” Eska pointed again, this time to a single rope fiber embedded in a tiny crack in the wood.
“It looks like a hair. From a dog, maybe.”
Eska laughed. “You’re not far off. It’s goat, most likely. Imagine now three slim ropes made of that hair tied in each of these grooves. They’re delicate.” Eska reached over and pinched a small lock of Dea’s hair between her thumb and forefinger. “No bigger than this.”
“What was it for?”
“The Onandya people traded a great many things with their neighbors. Animal skins, pottery, woven baskets. In exchange, they would receive many goods they could not make from the materials native to their lands. One of the items they treasured most were beads of all colors and sizes. It’s believed that these,” Eska tapped the piece of wood in the girl’s hand, “were created to display a prized collection, the beads arranged, perhaps in order of size or shape or material, on the little ropes. A very great collection might even have been able to make a distinct pattern, for this would indicate that the owner had so many beads, he or she could pick and choose which to display. What’s difficult to make out is why this was put in the refuse pit. It’s not broken. And if I’m not mistaken,” Eska said, gaze narrowing as she leaned in close, “it may even bear traces of pigmentation—ochre. Painting, you or I would say, for decoration,” Eska went on to explain, noting the girl’s furrowed brow. “Very curious. This was an important item. The Onandya did not throw things away lightly.”
Eska straightened and rolled her neck to work out the stiffness in it, leaving Dea to contemplate the object further. At least there in the hole, with her tools, Eska could forget, if only for a moment, the Mehathuen woman and her thirty-year ordeal—not to mention her own discomfort at the niggling thought that Firenzia Company had contributed to, no, caused, uncounted situations just like that of Parisia and Xenia’s amulet. Around her, the site hummed with activity. The trench progressed nicely and a second was being marked out for digging.
