Cold Iron

by Miles Cameron

  ‘Magistera Oroma, this is Aranthur Timos …’

  ‘An Arnaut,’ the dancer said. But she smiled.

  ‘Your dancing is amazing,’ Aranthur managed.

  Even without her mask and make-up, the woman projected an aura not unlike that cast by Iralia, if less … sexual.

  ‘Do you dance, young giant?’ Oroma asked.

  Aranthur grinned. ‘I love to dance. But our dances are nothing like yours.’

  ‘Dance is dance,’ Oroma said. ‘Look at Dahlia fight with a sword, and you see the same muscles her sister uses to dance.’

  She turned as a man in a mask approached. The man, an elegant fop in wine-coloured velvet covered in pearls, bowed low over her hand, performed a pirouette, and produced a rose from the air.

  Oroma laughed and took the rose. ‘The most beautiful clown.’

  The man lowered his mask, and Aranthur was looking at the dark-skinned man who’d been at the fencing tavern.

  ‘Darling,’ the man said. ‘Suddenly you are everywhere.’

  Dahlia rolled her eyes. ‘Hands off, Harlequin.’

  The dark-skinned man bowed low. ‘Your very devoted slave, Columbina.’

  Magistera Oroma leant up for an unmistakably amorous kiss with ‘Harlequin’. Aranthur followed Dahlia further into the backstage darkness, to where a young man was shrugging into his doublet and having trouble with it.

  ‘Oh,’ Dahlia said. ‘I expected Bouboulis.’

  The man turned and Aranthur laughed, because the young man fighting his doublet was his friend Mikal Kallinikos.

  Kallinikos raised his eyebrows. ‘Caught,’ he said.

  ‘You were the magiker?’ Aranthur asked after a warm embrace.

  Kallinikos was back to playing with his laces.

  ‘Yes and no,’ he said enigmatically. ‘Magistera Bouboulis is sick. They had no one else. I can run the simpler effects and a … highly placed personage … did the rest.’

  ‘The effects were perfect,’ Oroma said as she passed. ‘You can work with us any time.’

  Kallinikos shrugged and turned back.

  ‘This is Myr Dahlia Tarkas …’

  ‘I know,’ Kallinikos said, with a civil kiss on each cheek.

  Dahlia turned and shook her head. ‘Somehow you really seem to know everyone.’

  Aranthur shrugged.

  Dahlia looked aback at Kallinikos. ‘Are you on my marriage list?’

  Kallinikos nodded. ‘Sadly, I am.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Are you being paid?’ Dahlia asked.

  ‘I am, too,’ Kallinikos said, as if it was a guilty secret. ‘I’ll call myself Kalagathos, Theatrical Thaumaturge.’

  ‘Try and remember us little people when you make it.’ Dahlia pulled on Aranthur and he followed her.

  ‘What’s wrong with being paid?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘It’s sort of forbidden for aristocrats. We have estates, supposedly, and should not engage in commerce.’ She shrugged. ‘Mostly, we just fight among ourselves.’

  Aranthur looked back at Kallinikos. ‘What does that mean?’

  Dahlia smiled. ‘Aristocrats inhabit a whole world of factions and alliances – marriage, lovers, creditors and debtors, old vendettas and insults that must be avenged, all tinged with City politics and Imperial policy. Surely you know the Lions and the Whites?’

  Aranthur frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said automatically, and then he grinned. ‘Not enough. Tell me. I mean, I know the Lions from the Academy. No friends of my kind.’

  Dahlia shrugged. ‘Hard to know where to begin.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Fifty years ago, one of the Cerchi had an illicit affair with a Thanatos boy who was actually on her marriage list. Then she ditched him for a better marriage with one of the Ultroi – who, by the way, are cousins of the Kallinikoi and an Imperial House—’

  ‘You’re making this up,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘I’m not. When she ditched him, she was deemed to have insulted his House. There was already political trouble – this was back when the guilds were first allowing nobles to join. Anyway, more than a thousand people died. The Whites are the faction that backed her, and the Cerchi and the Brusias – modernists. The Lions were – and still are – the old families, like the Kallinikoi. They claim to be loyal to the Emperor and the constitution, but really they are only loyal to their own power. Like my family, of course, except that I think they’re all fools. My mother was always against the Lions, even though she’s a Roaris. My father’s brother is … Bah, never mind. And there’s Blacks and the pious Reds and I think Greens … Those are old racing factions from chariot-racing days in the hippodrome. Once there were Blues, but they were all executed. That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Roaris?’ Aranthur asked, although he was alarmed by the name Brusias. He made himself smile. ‘All still fighting over a marriage gone wrong?’

  ‘It’s not funny, farm boy! The Roarii are another old family. Verit Roaris is the acknowledged head of the Lions – he’s also Tribane’s rival to be the Capitan of all the Imperial armies. I have three Roaris boys on my marriage list.’ She frowned. ‘No. I know it sounds foolish, but the fighting is always over what matters to them – money and power. The causes may seem petty, but the power is genuine.’

  ‘And what is a marriage list?’ Aranthur asked, a little too sharply.

  ‘Oh,’ Dahlia laughed, her rich voice rippling in the darkness. ‘We all have them. Twenty-four approved matches, based on House business and alliances. Kallinikos isn’t bad. He used to be very conservative indeed, but he’s coming around. I like seeing that he wants to work and not be a drone. He used to belong to one of the Academy clubs … The nasty ones for the old boys – the Lions. He’s left it. Come. I’m fighting that disgusting prat in the morning, and I want to make love first.’

  ‘There’s a party,’ Kallinikos shouted from the darkness. ‘Come on, Aranthur!’

  ‘But there’s a party …’ Dahlia said. ‘I might be dead tomorrow. Party or love?’

  Aranthur thought of his desire to be a daesia.

  ‘How about both?’ he offered.

  Dahlia was dressed like a man, in a doublet and hose. Aranthur wore an Arnaut fustanella and dark blue turban out of a perverse urge to annoy the Northerners, and carried his own long sword. Kallinikos and Dahlia’s sister Rose came along, as did Oroma’s lover, whom they all called Harlequin. They were armed, because no one trusted the men of the Iron Ring not to cheat.

  Dahlia chose Aranthur as her second. He was aware that he probably was not the best blade, and that perhaps she chose him to flatter him.

  ‘Don’t die,’ she said. ‘Drako would kill me.’

  That was another unfathomable comment, although even half-drunk, Aranthur had noticed how much time Drako, the life of the party, had spent in an apparent argument with Dahlia. Aranthur had spent most of the party being surprised at how easily the Byzas aristos accepted him. Rose, the dancer, called him by the familiar ‘di’ before the singing started. He’d danced with Kallinikos’ sister Elena, and Mikal had repeated, drunkenly, the faction talk that Dahlia had given him.

  ‘Everything is gods-damned factions,’ the young man said bitterly. ‘Maybe it is time to finish what Tirase started. Disestablish the nobility.’

  ‘From the Lions to the Whites,’ Dahlia said, slapping him lightly.

  Kallinikos drank off a cup of wine. ‘Maybe. Maybe it’s time for me to say what I think.’ He shrugged. ‘Except that my father would have me killed.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘He might cut off your money.’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ Kallinikos muttered.

  It had, altogether, been a very interesting party.

  The square was not empty as they crossed towards the Temple and the cloister behind, which was apparently where the gentry fought their duels. There were farm carts rolling noisily through the Great Gate, dozens of huge wains filled with produce, and little knots of Easterner refugees. A pair of prostitutes, d
rinking from a glass bottle and obviously hoping to see a duel, giggled and followed them. A dozen soldiers were asleep on the ground for whatever reason.

  ‘Here they come.’ Dahlia was sober, but all of them had been awake all night.

  Aranthur was just drunk enough to be unafraid. Neither excited nor scared.

  ‘Which of you is the second?’ Aranthur addressed the seven men in dark cloaks. They wore black leather masks.

  ‘They’re going to charge us,’ Rose said. ‘Fucking morons.’

  Harlequin, still in his outrageous velvet doublet, shook his head.

  ‘Don’t do it, boys,’ he said. ‘More than two on two is against the law, and the law …’

  All seven Westerners dropped their cloaks and drew. They had an assortment of weapons – three small swords, two arming swords, and two long swords.

  ‘Make it quick,’ Earrings said in his odd Liote. ‘Kill them all.’

  Three of the Westerners drew puffers. One pointed his at Aranthur, and even as he raised his shield, Harlequin snapped his fingers and the puffer exploded, pulverising a hand. The Westerner dropped to his knees as the acrid reek of saar wafted past Aranthur and clashed with the rotten egg smell of the puffer.

  Aranthur had the oddest feeling that the tall black man was protecting him. He got his shield up anyway, his first such casting under pressure. The edges of the little red shield seemed to waver.

  The second man fired, but his ball exploded against Aranthur’s little ruby shield. The other pulled his trigger. The shot hit Dahlia’s sister and she went down with an ugly whimper.

  Aranthur didn’t wait for his friends. He ran at the man who’d shot Rose. He wore a black mask, and he had a heavy arming sword with a complex hilt.

  Aranthur swung at him from his last stride, anger powering his heavy overhead stroke. The man made a classic overhead parry, and used his pistol barrel to clear his sword.

  Aranthur took a stinging blow to his left arm. He was two steps ahead of his friends, and alone against three men. He made a wide swing, right to left, across all three blades, and his strength and his heavy blade kept him alive. One man actually stepped back. The pistoleer hacked at him and Aranthur responded without thought – a cover, a rotation of his wrist – and he won the bind. His point scraped across the other man’s face and eye, even as the other man’s blade snapped. He screamed and stumbled back and Aranthur hit him again, a wrist cut to the crown of his head that dropped him, dead or wounded.

  Aranthur turned, a simple pivot. Harlequin had his sword through one Westerner’s body. As Aranthur watched, he turned like a dancer, whipping the blade free and pinking another man in the hand – luck or extreme skill. He whirled again, and his left hand seemed to pulse with violet light, and the man who had stepped back was choking on something that smelt like expensive perfume.

  Dahlia was standing over her sister, her sword moving in precise arcs. She was facing Earrings, who was cutting at her with heavy blows from a long sword.

  Mikal Kallinikos was backing from his man, making simple parries.

  The choking man facing Harlequin dropped his sword, reached into his sash and produced a long puffer. As he raised it, Aranthur’s sword cut into his neck.

  Kallinikos’ opponent looked around and took a hit in the bicep from Kallinikos. He dropped his sword and ran.

  ‘Mine!’ Dahlia shouted. ‘Don’t you touch him!’

  Earrings cut at her, and cut again. And again. But Rose was not dead. She was crawling away, to where Harlequin simply picked her up and began to carry her away, casting as he walked.

  Dahlia now had room, and she used it, backing, darting, and retreating again.

  Kallinikos was as white as a sheet, but he cleaned his blade on a downed adversary and then turned.

  ‘Drop your weapon. Don’t be a fool!’ he called. ‘These people need a doctor.’

  Dahlia backed, and Earrings cut at her again; his three-step combo – cut, cut …

  Dahlia’s sword went right through his right forearm in her stop-thrust, almost to the hilt with the force of his own arm. Then she reached in and took the heavy sword from his hands, whirled it around her head, and her blow decapitated him.

  ‘Potnia!’ Kallinikos said, and threw up.

  Harlequin laughed his deep laugh. He managed a deep bow, even with Rose’s body in his arms.

  They spent some hours – some very uncomfortable hours – with the City Watch. The presence of four aristocrats both helped and hindered them. The corroboration of both prostitutes that the Westerners had puffers and used them, as well as the evidence of the Watch magiker, saved them from worse. The Watch’s medico cleaned the wound in Aranthur’s left bicep.

  ‘Get an Imoter to knit the muscle or you’ll never have full use of the arm,’ he said. ‘And while I’m giving advice … Don’t get mixed up with this faction shit, kid. People like you and me – we aren’t shit to they aristos.’

  Aranthur started. ‘This wasn’t faction! They tried to kill us!’

  The City Watch officer shrugged. ‘Sure, whatever you say,’ he opined. ‘Looked like a bunch of Lions going for some White aristos to me, but what do I know?’ He smiled grimly. ‘When you have a belly full of steel, don’t say I didn’t try to warn you. Now get to an Imoter.’

  Imoters had once been priests of Imotep, the God of Healing, but now they were usually magikers with a specialty in medicine.

  ‘Aploun!’ Aranthur cursed to Dahlia. ‘All my word lists are due tomorrow.’

  ‘Aploun,’ Dahlia said. ‘We’re alive. Don’t be such a prig.’

  Aranthur helped Kallinikos home. The aristocrat was silent and withdrawn.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kallinikos gave him a bitter smile. ‘Have you ever done something you really regret?’

  Aranthur shrugged.

  Kallinikos shook his head. ‘Never mind.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m having a fight with my father.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  Mikal shrugged. ‘No way I can think of. I just don’t believe things I used to believe. That makes everything … complicated.’

  Aranthur thought of his father and mother as he walked home, and nodded in sympathy.

  Whatever crisis Drako expected did not materialise. Over the next weeks, Aranthur worked on his Safiri, attended a lecture series on moral philosophy with Dahlia, went to work and did dyeing, and started a belt-purse for Dahlia with Ghazala’s support. The furniture for his new sword took the cutler almost two weeks to make – not just a day or two – but when it was finished, it was beautiful, polished like a mirror on a water wheel. Aranthur took the sword and the various pieces to his employers, and negotiated for a scabbard and belts. He worked on Dahlia’s belt-purse, his own sword belt and scabbard, and a purse for himself, all while doing his own work, his Academy work, and his sword work. He tried not to think about the men he’d killed.

  Mikal Kallinikos was now very much his friend, as if the early morning fight had taken them over some divide or other, and Aranthur took Kallinikos to Master Sparthos. Sparthos was courteous to the young aristocrat. He sent Aranthur to train with Mikal Sapu, the young duellist from Volta who had lost the first fight at the Inn of Fosse. He taught Aranthur a rule, a little like a dance, very different from the way Master Vladith taught. The ‘first rule’ had sixteen postures or stances, but they were merely stopping points between actions – cuts, slashes, thrusts, parries. He spent two hours on Aranthur alone, which cost half a sequin. After that, as often as Aranthur could attend, he was in a class with a dozen other men and women, learning other rules (it proved there were forty-seven), or unpacking one into the details of weight change, or action – drills to force the student to imagine what facing an opponent would be like. There was a great deal of memorisation. Aranthur thanked the Eagle that Vladith and Sparthos at least used all the same terms, most of them in Ellene, for gardes, postures, and attacks.

  Sometimes Kallinikos joined the class, and sometimes he
took a private lesson with Sparthos. There were various weapons: the long sword, the arming sword, even the master’s weapon, the five-foot long montante. The last was one that no one ever actually carried – Masters used them when judging duels, or when marching in city processions. Aranthur was astounded at the speed of the huge weapon, and its elegance, and the strength it took to wield it.

  The master stopped him one day. ‘You were born to wield this,’ he said simply.

  Aranthur flushed with pleasure. ‘Thank you, Master.’

  ‘Thank you. You brought me an excellent student – talented enough, and willing to pay.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Starving wastrels like you do not keep my child in school.’

  Aranthur was aware that he did not pay what Kallinikos paid. So he bowed, and hurried off to find Dahlia, who spent as much time in his rooms as in her own. She seemed busy all the time and yet never seemed to do any work related to school or her Ars. Sometimes her sister joined them for fish soup, or took them out for polpo, the city’s famous octopus dish. She had been healed within an hour of the duel.

  ‘Harlequin is a great man,’ she said with a shrug.

  ‘Did he heal you himself?’ Dahlia asked.

  ‘Who is he?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘He’s a Magos, and a great one. From Masr, or so people say. In fact, no one knows anything about him.’ Rose smiled. ‘He took me to Kurvenos, the Lightbringer. Some people say he’s a Lightbringer himself.’

  ‘Aploun! As my lover likes to say all of a sudden. Kurvenos? Harlequin knows Kurvenos? You are living in a fabulous tale, sister.’ Dahlia laughed. ‘And Lightbringers don’t fight duels. They are forbidden to kill.’

  ‘Oroma is his lover. She must know more.’ Rose made a face. ‘But Kurvenos knows you, sister. Why do you pretend not to know him?’

  Dahlia was clearly disconcerted, and Aranthur thought she behaved exactly like someone caught in a lie.

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t know him,’ she said gaily.

  Rose looked quizzical and then relented. ‘Well – maybe Oroma will know, anyway.’

  Dahlia shrugged. ‘Timos is my lover, and I really don’t know much about him.’