To say how lonely he was.
But it would have been selfishness. What could she do about any of it? He made himself smile. “It’s all very boring. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Not there with the boxes, over there!” The familiar sound of their mother scolding the servants echoed from the hallway. “And for the Fates’ sakes, have a care!”
Carlot puffed out her cheeks. “You’ve brought me plenty to worry about already.”
“Couldn’t you have got pregnant or something?” murmured Orso from the corner of his mouth. “That would have been a perfect diversion.”
“My womb does not exist so you can distract our mother. A sentence I had hoped I would never have to utter.” She grinned as she nudged Orso in the ribs. “It isn’t for lack of trying, I can tell you. Sotty’s quite exhausted with his nightly efforts. For a big man, he’s surprisingly agile.”
Sotty was Carlot’s name for her husband, Chancellor Sotorius, something like the fifteenth ruler of Sipani to bear the name, only a few years younger than Orso’s mother and probably twice the weight. He could be something of a bore, but he doted on Carlot and had one of the best cellars in the world, so he was all right as far as Orso was concerned. The image of the chancellor’s nightly efforts with his sister was not one he wanted to be haunted by, however, agile or otherwise.
“That is… somewhat more detail than I required.”
“You’re the one who brought my pregnancy into this. Prudery really doesn’t suit you, Orso— Mother!”
As the Queen Dowager swept into the room, Carlot rushed over and administered a loving embrace. Her technique, which Orso had long admired, was to treat their mother as if she was being a tender and obliging parent regardless of her actual behaviour. “I’m so glad you came!”
“Your husband is not here?”
“Sadly, no.” Carlot flung herself down like a tragic heroine, shrugging off her mother’s displeasure with a flounce, like a duck flicking off rain. “Sotty’s got trouble with the assembly again. Sotty’s always got trouble. If we eat together two nights a week we’re lucky. If it isn’t the assembly it’s the merchants, and if the merchants are happy it’s the criminals, and if the criminals take a week off it’s the pimps.”
“I know just how he feels,” murmured Orso.
His mother raised a brow. “About the pimps?”
“Not that.” He thought about it. “Well, yes, that, but I was referring more to the demands of power.”
“Indeed?” said his mother with withering sarcasm. “Still, I suppose we three can dine together. Apart from Cathil it will be like having the family back together.”
There was an awkward silence. “Well, and Father,” said Carlot.
Another awkward silence. “And him,” said their mother. In all honesty, the only times Orso could remember them dining as a family had been the weddings of his two sisters, and even then his parents had only come within arm’s length of each other when etiquette strictly demanded.
“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend, either,” said Orso. “I have an engagement this evening. But we can dine together tomorrow. With Sotty, too, one can only hope. Then, sadly, I have to go back to Adua. Trouble with the lords of the Open Council, you know. If it’s not the Open Council it’s the Closed, and if the Closed are happy—”
“We can’t stay longer?” snapped his mother. “I wanted to spend some time with my daughter!”
The silence went beyond awkward and into ugly. Orso glanced at Carlot, hoping vainly that she might do the hard work for him. She gave a helpless little shrug, batting the responsibility back his way.
“What have the two of you arranged?” demanded his mother.
He gathered his courage, then puffed out his chest and met her raised chin with his own. “Mother. For the time being, I want you to stay in Sipani.”
“Absolutely not!” Her tone was so icy, it was a surprise her breath did not smoke. “My place is in Adua.”
“You’re always telling me how much you despise Adua.”
“I despise Sipani just as much.”
“You love Sipani.”
“Did you bring me here just to get rid of me?”
“No.” Even if he had. “Mother, listen to me—”
“I always do!”
“You never do!” He brought his voice back under control. “But this time you must. At the demonstration of Curnsbick’s engine, you were nearly killed.”
“Come now, don’t exaggerate—”
“High Justice Bruckel was sitting beside you and had his head cut in half by a piece of flying metal. He fell dead in your lap!”
“Is that true?” asked Carlot, wide-eyed.
“It will take more than flying metal to keep me from my son.”
“Things have got no better,” said Orso. “If anything, they’ve got worse. We have enemies everywhere.”
“Then you need me. You need my advice. You need—”
“What I need is to know that you’re safe. And Carlot deserves some time with you.” Over his mother’s shoulder, Carlot theatrically rolled her eyes. Orso ignored her. “I’ve been monopolising your attention ever since I was born.”
He noticed there were grey streaks in her hair. Wrinkles around her eyes, at the corners of her mouth. When had she started to look old? It made him feel deeply uneasy. He had always supposed she was indestructible.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“I have made my decision, Mother. I hope you will accept it.”
He had expected a ferocious dressing-down. A furious Styrian tirade. Or, worse yet, the deadly gliding off followed by days of icy silence. But all the Queen Dowager of the Union did was cock her head on one side and calmly consider him.
“You have grown up, Orso. A bittersweet moment for a mother.”
“One you were no doubt hoping would arrive a dozen years ago.”
“Better late than never. The time comes when you realise the world is not yours any more. The best you can do is pass it on to your children.” She touched him very gently on the cheek. “You understand why I was always so demanding, don’t you? Because I know you have it in you to make a great king.”
“Your approval means… everything to me. It always has. And there is one thing I need you to do while you are here. One thing with which I trust no one else. Certainly not myself.”
“Name it.”
“Find me a wife.” He counted the points off on his fingers. “I only ask that she be beautiful, tasteful, passionate, cunning and superbly bred. And Carlot, make sure she has a sense of humour.”
Carlot waved it away. “That would only be wasted on you.”
A flicker of interest had crossed his mother’s face. “A Styrian bride?”
“You know as well as I do that they make the best women in the world here. Speaking of which, has our guest arrived?”
“She has.” And Carlot gave a loud clap.
The door was swung open to reveal a tall woman in extremely impressive middle age. Orso had not seen her in ten years, but she looked every bit as elegant as the day she left Adua. If there was anyone in the world who rivalled his mother for deportment, after all, it was her oldest friend, and far more than a friend, Countess Shalere.
“Orso, you beautiful creature!” she said. “It has been far too long.”
“Countess.” Orso snapped his heels together and gave an extravagant bow. “Or should I say sorceress, since you have not aged a day.”
“And people say you have no talents!” She clasped his head and kissed him on both cheeks in a waft of perfume that took him straight back to being a boy. “I swear there are no better liars in the Circle of the World.”
Orso’s mother had not taken her eyes from Shalere since she came into the room. “This is… a surprise.”
“A pleasant one, I hope.” Shalere raised one brow. “I have been waiting for you for a long time.”
“I… told you not to do that.”
&nbs
p; “Everyone must be disobeyed occasionally.”
A naïve observer might have thought it an insignificant meeting. But Orso knew his mother far better than that. He saw the slight parting of her lips, the slight glimmer at the corners of her eyes, the slight movement of her collarbones with her quick breath.
For her, that was a whirlwind of passion.
“Well,” said Carlot, making for the door and jerking her head significantly towards it. “I have some… things to do.”
“As do I.” Orso felt suddenly as if he was intruding on something painfully intimate. “Immensely important… things.”
No one acknowledged him. He glanced back as Carlot drew him through the door by his elbow. Long enough to see Shalere had taken both of his mother’s hands, their eyes fixed on each other, unwavering. His mother was smiling. Her face lit up with it. He wondered how long it had been since he saw her smile like that. Since he saw her smile at all.
He had been desperate to escape her smothering influence for years. Now that he had finally done it, he had to push the door shut before anyone noticed the melodramatic quivering of his lip.
All Tastes, No Judgements
If there was one thing Leo valued, it was honesty, and Cardotti’s House of Leisure might’ve been the most dishonest place in the world. A place where everything was pretending to be something else.
It was decorated like the palace of some dissolute emperor, all fake marble columns and false velvet, lulling music and forced laughter, clinking glass and whispered secrets. There were bronzes of naked people, paintings of naked people, colossal urns decorated with naked people. If it was possible to make nakedness boring, the decorators of Cardotti’s had managed it.
Women glided about the hallway with high shoes and hungry smiles, with hair piled and twisted, with clinging clothes of shimmering pearl-white and glistening oil-black. Clothes that gave tricking glimpses of thigh and shoulder through slits and slashes, showed the laces and buckles of elaborate underwear.
“By the dead,” muttered Glaward.
“Very much so,” croaked Antaup, staring around with eyes wide in his mask.
Everybody wore one. A Sipanese tradition, like fog, deceit and the cock-rot. Masks of crushed crystal and lace, leering devils and porcelain dolls. Glaward’s was a whale, appropriately enough, and Jurand’s a bird, Jin’s a gatehouse and Antaup’s a unicorn complete with crystal prong. Leo had, of course, a lion. What else? It had felt foolish when he put it on but now, among so many others, it started to feel dangerous. No one knowing who anyone was. No one having to take responsibility for what they did. No one bound by the usual rules, or by any rules at all. The thought made him excited and worried both at once. His palms itched from it.
A woman swayed towards them across the mosaic floor, snake-hipped, feathers fluttering at her shoulders, holding long arms out in a showman’s flourish. “Welcome to Cardotti’s House of Leisure, my lords!” she crooned in a voice overripe with Styrian song.
“Who says we’re lords?” asked Glaward, grinning.
“We treat every visitor as if they are.” She brushed him under the chin with a gloved fingertip, then looked at Leo. “You are the Young Lion?”
“Some people call me that.”
“It is our honour to entertain so famous a hero.”
He would’ve enjoyed the compliment more if he’d felt she was telling the truth. If he’d felt she was capable of it. “Well, thank you—”
“King Jappo is most keen to speak with you but… otherwise engaged just now. The entertainments of Cardotti’s stand entirely at your disposal in the meantime.”
“I like the sound o’ that,” said Jin, giving Leo a punch on the arm that sent his weight onto his bad side and caused him a twinge of pain. It had been a mistake to walk here. Antaup’s map had led them wrong three times and the damn leg was hurting worse than ever.
“Here at Cardotti’s, we cater for all tastes and make no judgements.” The greeter led them past a half-open door, three figures lurking by lamplight beyond. They were dressed, or perhaps undressed, in much the same way as the women, but they were decidedly not women. Stubbled jaws. Chiselled bodies. By the dead, did he glimpse a muscular pair of buttocks in the shadows? “We stand ready to indulge every whim.”
“Perhaps we’ll just gamble to begin with,” snapped Leo, disgusted. And strangely hot around the ears.
She led them into a panelled room noisy with the flutter of cards, the click of dice, the whirr of the lucky wheel, surely the unluckiest invention of all history for its players. A band with masks like leering faces stroked and tickled and kissed out music which managed to sound somehow dirty. Masked guards lurked. Masked men pushed gambling chips wearily through pools of light stained by coloured Visserine glass. Masked women hung upon them, giggled at tiresome comments, swayed with the music and caressed old grotesques as if they never saw such beautiful gallants.
The place looked like bribery, smelled like lust and sounded like blackmail.
The greeter spirited a box of chips into Leo’s hand. “Enjoy yourselves, my lords.”
“This place is vile,” he muttered as she glided off. He reached up to wipe his sweaty forehead, realised he couldn’t because of the mask.
“You need to live a little!” Glaward swept two drinks from the tray of a waitress with a mask like a golden octopus and started to swill one back while holding out the other.
“I’d best stay sober. I’ve a deal to strike with one of the most powerful men in the world.”
“I haven’t.” Antaup plucked the drink from Glaward’s hand, took a mouthful, then bared his teeth. “Bit sweet.”
“Like everything here—” Leo gasped at a touch on his shoulder and spun about. No assassin at his back, but a willowy blonde in a mask like a butterfly.
“No need to startle, my lord,” she pouted at him.
“I’m not startled!” Though he obviously had been.
She giggled as if anxious bad temper was her favourite quality in a man. “I just wondered if I could be of any—”
“No,” he snapped, turning away.
“Yes,” said Jin, nipping in front of Antaup with surprising agility and slipping his arm through hers.
“Aren’t you a strong one,” Leo heard her cooing as they headed for the door.
“Glad someone’s enjoying themselves,” he grumbled, under his breath.
It was absurd for a red-blooded young hero to wish his wife was with him in a place like this, but he wished Savine was there. He was coming to rely on her more and more. To admire her taste, and her judgement, and… well, everything really. But she trusted him to do this. He couldn’t let her down.
“Don’t worry.” Jurand, slipping up close to speak softly. Knowing Leo’s feelings without a word said, like always. He guided Leo over to the dice table. It was the right height to lean on, at least, and take the weight off his throbbing leg without showing any weakness. “You’re the Young Lion! You convinced Rikke and Stour to join you. United two bitter enemies under your banner! Just be honest, and strong, and generous. Just be you.” Jurand leaned closer, grinning. “Only a bit more ruthless. This is Styria, after all.”
“You’re right.” Leo took a hard breath. Good old Jurand. Always knew what to say. He had united Rikke and Stour. He was the great persuader, and if he could add Jappo to his alliance, the game would be won before it began.
A solid, silent, grey-haired man with a mask like a pair of dice was running the table. His eyes flicked to Leo, as blank as double ones. “Care to throw?”
“Why not?” Leo tossed a few chips onto the baize and flung the dice.
“Two fives,” droned the dealer. “Player wins.”
And he shuffled some chips towards Leo. As easily as that, he was the winner. Leo wanted to grab Jurand and kiss him on the forehead but, given that odd moment earlier, he threw a rough arm around him instead and put him in a manly headlock. “What the hell would I do without you?”
He
shoved a larger stack of chips out onto the table and snapped his fingers at Antaup. “Pass me those dice!”
The greeter at Cardotti’s House of Leisure was a work of art in herself, a moving sculpture of black silk, paint and feathers, the very personification of Sipani’s succulent corruption. Or corrupt succulence. Whichever, really.
“Your Majesty,” she said, dropping into a deep and graceful curtsy. Almost as deep and graceful as the ones Savine used to perform, though her skirts had never split all the way to her hips in quite so mesmerising a way.
“Probably best you don’t call me that,” murmured Orso, tapping the side of his nose. “Incognito, you know.”
“Everyone is incognito here.” Her accent reminded him rather of his mother’s, which most certainly shouldn’t have been an arousing thought, but somehow rather was. “At Cardotti’s, we are notorious for our discretion.” She leaned close. Even masked she managed to look magnificently sly. “Among many other things.”
“Indeed, I believe you once hosted my father?”
The greeter looked somewhat pained. “The night of the great fire. A sad moment in a proud history.” Gorst, for some reason, gave a kind of strangled cough. The greeter took Orso by the elbow, resting against him as lightly as a fur sits on a lady’s shoulder, purring in his ear. “But the building has been completely rebuilt since and our security is second to none.” She gestured to six armed guards, standing still as suits of armour against the walls. “You could not be safer locked in a vault, I assure you.”
“And we’d have a lot less fun there, eh, Gorst?”
Gorst followed in brooding silence, glaring about with fists clenched.
“King Jappo is most keen to speak with you but… otherwise engaged just at the moment. The entertainments of Cardotti’s stand entirely at your disposal in the meantime.”
“What entertainments have you got, exactly?” asked Tunny, adjusting the fit of a mask shaped like a silver star.
“All of them.” The greeter led them into a dark-panelled hall where games of skill, chance and ruination were being played. Groups of men sat talking, laughing, smoking, drinking. Girls cooed and crooned and fluttered fans between them. Coloured light gleamed on fine glassware and soft skin, filtered through amber drinks and curling smoke. Rarely if ever had such a tableau of high-class debauchery been assembled in one place, and Orso had arranged quite a few himself, in his misspent youth. And his misspent adulthood, for that matter.
The Trouble with Peace Page 36
