City of Bones (16 page)

“Oh,” Elen said, uncomfortable herself now. She asked finally, “How can you stay here with that hanging over your head?”

“The best relics are here,” he said as if it were self-evident, which it was. “Besides, you can die anywhere.”

At the upward gate to the Second Tier, under the shadow of the gate pylons, he waited for Elen to handle it, wondering how she was going to get herself, let alone him, past the well-guarded portal.

Elen simply produced an engraved seal about the size of a trade token and showed it to the vigil. He bowed to her and waved hurriedly for the others to open the embossed-metal gate.

“If relics are so valuable, why aren’t you and Sagai rich?” she asked as they went up a wide street that was entirely free of sewer stink. High walls enclosing private courts lined it, the buildings behind them huge structures with domes, glittering spires, or narrow towers topped by gilded tiles. Everything was faced with limestone or marble, and even the street walls were set with inlay of semiprecious stone or mosaics of enamel and glass. It was nearly midday, and few people were out: some servants on errands, who stared curiously at them, and a few Patricians, veiled, their attendants shielding them from the sun with white parasols. Sweating bearers carrying an overelaborate litter with diaphanous silk curtains and gold sunburst ornaments on the poles trotted by.

“Neither of us can get a trade license to handle Imperial minted gold, so if by some miracle we run across a rare piece, we can’t sell it outright to a collector,” Khat told her. They had only come a short distance from the gate, and the street was already making him nervous. It was too clean, too quiet, too closely watched, and he was drawing attention simply by being there. On the Third Tier there had been more activity, tradesmen, street sweepers, and he hadn’t felt so conspicuous. “We can only deal the pieces that are cheap enough to be sold for trade tokens, and take commissions on valuations or sales we help someone else with, if the seller doesn’t cheat us out of it. And Sagai gives good deals to people he feels sorry for.”

“Sagai does that.” Elen sounded amused, for some reason.

“He does. Besides, for the Sixth Tier, we’re comfortably well off. As far as the Seventh and Eighth are concerned, we are rich.”

Several passersby gave them wide berth, one old woman ostentatiously snatching her robes away, as if she feared contamination. Elen ignored them as thoroughly as Khat did.

They went further up the street, until Elen took a pebbled path that led off through what was apparently a public garden, with stone tubs holding swift-blooming desert flowers and stunted, thorny acacia trees. They came to a high gate shaped into vines and leaves, and as Elen reached for the latch it was opened from the inside by a white-robed lictor, an air gun slung over one shoulder.

Khat stopped where he was.

Elen looked back at him from the gate. “Come on. It’s a private way up to the First Tier. It’s much quicker than going around to the tier gate.”

Khat hesitated. He had known this would probably involve going into places where there would be men with guns between himself and the way out, but it hadn’t really hit home until this moment exactly how far into enemy territory this venture would take him. Elen was beginning to look puzzled.
It’s too late to back out now
, he told himself, and followed her through the gate.

The lictor watched them both with unreadable eyes.

The way led deeper into the garden, Patricians’ manses rising up on either side, the black stone wall that was the base of the First Tier looming ahead. Khat noticed the area between the tubs of flowers and trees was covered with silversword, a tiny plant with narrow leaves like white spires and shiny hairs that reflected the sunlight and made the ground a glowing carpet. He wondered if the Patricians of this tier knew it was a plant that thrived in the sand pockets of the deep Waste. If they learned that, they would probably have their servants burn it out.

They reached the tier wall before he saw the passage Elen had said was there. An alcove was cut into the wall with narrow steps leading up. Anyone climbing them would be sheltered from view by a fold of rocky, uneven wall, and the cut would be all but impossible to spot from the street outside the garden.

“This goes right up to Riathen’s house,” Elen explained, climbing the steps that were almost as steep as a ladder. “You mustn’t tell anyone about it, of course.” He didn’t answer, and she added, “And I must say, you’re containing your enthusiasm at seeing the First Tier very well.”

She reached the top, where the steps gave onto a courtyard paved ‘with blue and gold tiles, surrounded on the other three sides by the Polished limestone walls of what was undoubtedly a very large and very fine house. Khat followed her more slowly, and said, “On the way down, I’ll be enthusiastic for you.”

Elen stopped to scrutinize him seriously. “You really aren’t enjoying this, are you?”

There was a wide porch set back into the inner wall opposite them, guarded by another gate with two more imperturbable air gun-armed lictors on the other side. It was only a sensible precaution. Anyone forcing their way up the stairs would find themselves in a trap. The narrow slits of windows that looked down from the second floor were probably more for firing from cover than for ventilation, as well. Khat was beginning to feel like a goat invited cordially into the slaughterhouse. He said, “Of course I am.”

These lictors recognized Elen too, opening the gate for them without comment and locking it again behind them. The inside of the porch was tiled with all different shades of blue, giving an illusion of coolness, and a three-level fountain played at the base of a wide stair leading up into the house.

They went up past landings with carved arches opening into other rooms. Netta’s house would’ve fit easily into the stairwell, roof and all. The walls that weren’t tiled were faced with polished marble, and it actually felt cooler inside than it had out in the court. There was, of course, no sewer stink, and no odor of unwashed people; the only scent was the lightest fragrance of sandalwood incense.

But the oddest thing was the quiet. No noise from the street, or leaking through cracks in the walls from other houses, or from the noisy inhabitants of this one. It was a kind of stillness Khat had thought was possible only in the open Waste. Despite it, or perhaps because of it, his shoulders kept hunching in anticipation of an attack from behind.

At the next landing a large door curtained by sheets of gauze led into an interior court open to the sky, and Khat stopped to look out, intrigued in spite of himself. On the sun-warmed gray stone of the court were ten people, all Elen’s age if not younger, moving through the steps of what looked like a formalized ritual dance. Khat recognized it as one of the first preparations for learning infighting, the only Ancient Art to be passed down almost entirely intact. The magic of the Warders was an Ancient Art too, but it was unnatural, like the rise of the Waste was unnatural, and perhaps that was why most of the Survivors had abandoned it.

The dance the students in the court moved slowly through was exercise only, teaching the muscles to move in certain ways. The dances that taught the more graceful—and deadly—moves came later.
So this is where Elen learned to kill pirates
, he thought.

Elen came up beside him to look and said, “So few of them. Fewer initiates each year, Riathen says.”

Khat didn’t comment. In his opinion there were far too many of them already.

There were footsteps above them coming down the tiled stairs, and without thinking Khat shifted to put his back against the wall.

It was Gandin, the young and excessively earnest young Warder who had accompanied Riathen and Seul yesterday, and he was followed by an armed lictor. Gandin was dressed in Warder white, and in the privacy of the house his veil had carelessly slipped down around his neck. “Elen, you’re finally here. Riathen was called to speak to the Heir. He wants you to join him.”

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Khat told her, relieved. Outside on the Third Tier, if he could get past the gates.

“No,” Gandin said. “He wants you there too.”

“Me?”

Elen glanced down at herself and bit her lip. “I’ll have to change. They wouldn’t let me past the first portals dressed like this.” She looked at Khat. “And you too. There would be too much curiosity about who you were and why you were here, otherwise.”

“Me?”

Before he could form a more articulate protest, the lictor had his arm and was urging him away down the passage in the opposite direction.

The room he was not quite shoved into was high-ceilinged and cool, with a round shallow pool in the center and lit by an open air shaft overhead. An expensive expanse of mirror was set in one wall. Khat freed his arm with an annoyed jerk, and found himself facing Gandin, who said, “First, hand over your weapons.”

If Khat had had any weapons he would have used them by now, rather than be trapped in a little room with a Warder. “I don’t have any.”

Perhaps naturally skeptical of this statement, Gandin said, “You had a knife out on the Waste yesterday.”

“Your lictors stole it. And a flea glass. Tiny glass lenses must be very dangerous where they come from.” That glass and the amber bead in his knife hilt had cost him months of honest work, but he doubted that would mean anything to the Warders.

“I don’t believe that,” Gandin said flatly. “Search him.”

The lictor stepped forward, and Khat dropped his robe and lifted his arms obligingly. The search was thorough but not rough, and Khat put up with it, knowing there wasn’t anything for them to find. He kept his eyes locked on Gandin’s, and was rewarded by seeing the younger man’s cheeks flush. Finally the lictor stepped back and said, “Nothing. Not even a fruit knife.”

“We don’t have fruit on the Sixth Tier,” Khat said, folding his arms.

Gandin was flustered by being proved wrong and determined not to show it. Another lictor entered, carrying a bundle of clothes. Gandin took the bundle and shoved it at Khat, saying brusquely, “Put those on.”

Khat found himself holding a stretch of bleached cotton, soft as silk, a veil of spiderweb-fine gauze, and a wide belt made of silver beads and a higher grade of leather than he had ever touched before. And it was probably their second best, if that. “Say please.”

Neither of the lictors laughed. Either they were well disciplined or Khat would have to revise his estimate of Gandin’s status. Gandin gritted his teeth and said, “Now.”

“All right. Get out.”

Gandin was startled. It was a commonly held belief of the upper tiers that servants, noncitizens, and other nonpersons did not have the right to or desire for privacy that the Patricians guarded so jealously. It was part of the reason Gandin and the other male Warders let their veils slip in front of Khat without embarrassment. Since he wasn’t a person, it hardly mattered if he saw them unveiled. Recovering, Gandin said, “I don’t have time for—”

“Oh, are we in a hurry?” Khat interrupted. Bodily modesty didn’t matter much to him, especially since he had been using the public bathhouses on the lower tiers, but he knew it mattered to them, and he was determined to push the issue.

“Fine,” Gandin snapped, beaten and knowing it. “Just be quick about it.” He gestured the lictors ahead of him and followed them out. Khat wasn’t fooled; he knew a retreat when he saw one.

He hurried, because apparently there really was some urgency in the proceedings, but mainly because the sooner this was over with the better. He stripped, got the underrobe and the mantle on, and belted and kilted them correctly so he wouldn’t trip over the skirts. He kept his own boots, because he wasn’t accustomed to sandals and they would interfere with his ability to run, then caught a look at himself in the mirror and lost all squeamishness about putting on the veil and headcloth. Without them, he looked like an upper-tier working boy.

Gandin came back in then, and this time he had his own veil properly in place. The Warder watched Khat’s fumbling attempts to wind the veil, then said grudgingly, “Let me do that.”

Khat hesitated. There were only a few people that he didn’t mind coming that close to him, and all of them lived in Netta’s house down on the Sixth Tier. Exasperated, he reminded himself that this whole business was because his presence was urgently required somewhere else, and if Gandin had wanted to kill him he could have done it just as well in front of his lictors as not. Still, it took self-control to turn his back on the young Warder long enough to let him adjust the veil.

Out in the cool passage Elen was waiting, dressed in a kaftan and mantle of white silk, with a cloisonne cap. A narrow silver chain held her painrod at her waist. “What took so long?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Gandin told her. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Khat interrupted, determined not to be dragged along any faster than was absolutely necessary. “One thing first.”

“What?” Elen asked, a worried frown creasing her brow. Gandin was ready to explode.

“The tokens you still owe me.”

“Oh, that.” She looked relieved. She had probably been expecting him to refuse to go altogether. “You want them now?”

“No, I want you to send someone to deliver them to the house of a relic broker. It’s on the Fourth Tier, the biggest house in the third court off the Theater Way.” There was no need to mention Lushan’s name; he was the only relic broker in that court.

Puzzled, Elen called a lictor over and gave instructions, ignoring Gandin’s fuming impatience.

After that, Khat followed them. The filmy soft veil was trying to climb down his throat, and he felt horridly out of place. They went down more cool empty halls, past two more locked and guarded gates, then outside into an open rectangular court, larger even than the public forum on the Fourth Tier. It was paved with slabs of dark marble and encircled by a colonnade of red onyx. Khat gave up estimating the cost of things.

“This is where the new Electors are acclaimed by the Patricians,” Elen explained as they crossed the court. She pointed to the immense structure now visible over the top of the colonnade. “And that’s the palace. It’s a model of the city.”

It rose in eight concentric levels like Charisat, but the outside walls were layered with polished limestone so it glowed in the sunlight, the creamy surface broken by balconies and open terraces.

“Does that mean the bottom five tiers have bad water?” Khat asked her.

Gandin glanced at him sharply, but Elen replied equably, “It’s not an exact model.”

Other buildings were visible over the top of the colonnade, their domes and pinnacles catching the sunlight with gemlike reflections—except for one. Its dome was pitch black against the hard blue of the sky, and it might have been carved entirely out of obsidian or onyx. Khat had to ask, “What’s that?”

Elen shaded her eyes to look, and her expression went grim. “That’s the Citadel of the Winds. It was a prison for … well, for Warders who used their power unwisely and lost their sanity. It belongs to Aristai Constans now. The Elector gave it to him.”

Khat had heard the place mentioned before, usually by fakirs invoking it as some sort of place of power, like the Dead Lands or the Mountains of the Sun; he had thought it just as mythical as those places. “Didn’t they use to kill the Warders who went mad?” Elen had said something about being “sent away” if she went mad, but he had thought it a polite euphemism.

“They did. But they needed somewhere to hold them before the Justices could meet. Now they still send them there, but only to serve Constans.” She glanced up at Khat. “Everyone says the last Mages built the Citadel in the Survivor Time.”

“It doesn’t look Survivor,” Khat said, always skeptical of such claims. The only authentic Survivor Time structures in Charisat were several bare, cavernous stone buildings in the dock area, still in use as warehouses. The Survivors, Mages or not, hadn’t had the resources to build fancy palaces.

“How can you possibly tell from here?” Gandin demanded.

Khat didn’t bother to answer.

The square gave on to a wide avenue lined on either side with a double-tiered arcade for viewing ceremonial processions. They were passing more people now, Patricians in lavish robes with gold and silver beadwork and embroidery, sumptuous litters so large they were carried by six or eight bearers, court officials with gold skullcaps, trailing entourages of servants and archivists. Khat fought the irrational feeling that everyone was staring at him, knowing that if they were staring, it was because they thought he was a Warder, not because of some preternatural ability to tell that he didn’t belong here.

The arcade ended in another forum, and then they were in the shadow of the palace. A wide sweep of steps led up to a triple arch that gave entrance to the first level, and the glare of the white surface of the walls was almost blinding.

The lictors at the arches wore the heavy gold chain of Imperial service. Gandin stopped them at the base of the steps and turned away to tell his own men to wait for them out here.

“Private guardsmen aren’t allowed in the palace or the Elector’s presence,” Elen explained. She looked over Khat critically. “With the veil, no one’s going to notice your teeth. But don’t smile, just in case.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

“Hmm. I hope they don’t notice your eyes.”

“There’s a trick of not looking at someone directly,” he admitted, looking away partly to demonstrate and partly to marvel at how many Imperial lictors were stationed around the plaza before the palace’s entrance. Apparently the Elector was expecting an armed uprising at any moment. “Not many people are that observant.”