Inversions (12 page)

A: Ah-ha. Would you like to see that happen?

W: I know it is unlikely while she retains the King’s favour, though that might not last for ever. In any event, there are ways. She might simply disappear and be questioned … informally, as it were.

A: Nolieti?

W: I have . . . not discussed this with him as such, but I have already ascertained most reliably that he would be more than happy to oblige. He suspects strongly that she released through death one of those he was questioning.

A: Yes, he mentioned that to me.

W: Did you think to do anything?

A: I told him he should be more careful.

W: Hmm. At any rate, she might be discovered in such a manner, though that would be somewhat risky, and she would have to be killed thereafter anyway. Working to force her from the King’s favour might take longer and could, pressing the matter as one may have to, entail risks which were hardly less than those attached to the former course of action.

A: Obviously you have given the matter considerable thought.

W: Of course. But if she was to be taken, without the King’s knowledge, the help of the guard commander might be crucial.

A: It might, mightn’t it?

W: So? Would you help?

A: In what way?

W: Provide the men, perhaps?

A: I think not. We might have one lot of the palace guard fighting their fellows, and that would never do.

W: Well then, otherwise?

A: Otherwise?

W: Damn it, man! You know what I must mean!

A: Blind eyes? Gaps in rosters? That sort of thing?

W: Yes, that.

A: Sins of omission rather than commission.

W: Expressed however you wish. It is the acts, or lack of them I would know about.

A: Then, perhaps.

W: No more? Merely, ‘perhaps’?

A: Were you thinking of doing this in close proximity to the present, dear Duke?

W: Perhaps.

A: Ha. Now, you see, unless you

W: I don’t mean today, or tomorrow. I am looking for an understanding that should it become necessary, such a plan might be put into effect with as little delay as possible.

A: Then, if I was convinced of the urgency of the cause, it might.

W: Good. That is better. At last. Providence, you are the most

A: But I would have to believe that the safety of the monarch was threatened. Doctor Vosill is a personal appointee of the King. To move against her might be seen as moving against our beloved Quience himself. His health is in her hands, perhaps as much as it is in mine. I do my modest best to keep at bay assassins and others who might wish the King ill, while she combats the illnesses that come from within.

W: Yes, yes, I know. She is close. He depends on her. It is already too late to act before her influence achieves its zenith. We might only work to hasten the descent. But by then it might be too late.

A: You think that she means to kill the King? Or influence him? Or does she merely spy, reporting to another power?

W: Her brief might include all of those, depending.

A: Or none.

W: You seem less concerned in this than I imagined, Adlain. She has come from the ends of the world, entered the city barely two years ago, doctored to one merchant and one noble both briefly and then suddenly she’s closer to our King than anybody else! Providence, a wife would spend less time with him!

A: Yes. One might wonder whether she performs any of the more intimate duties of a wife.

W: Hmm. I think not. To bed one’s physician is unusual, but that only arises from the unnaturalness of having a woman claiming to be a doctor in the first place. But, no, I have seen no sign. Why, do you know?

A: I merely wondered if you knew.

W: Hmm.

A: Of course, she does seem to be a rather good doctor. At the very least she has done the King no obvious harm, and that in my experience is far more than one might reasonably expect from a court physician. Perhaps we should leave her alone for now, while we have nothing more definite than your suspicions, however reliable they have proved in the past.

W: We might. Will you have her watched?

A: Well, no more than at present.

W: Hmm. And besides, I have another investment in the truth or otherwise of her story that may yet yield her.

A: You do? How so?

W: I shall not trouble you with the details, but I have my doubts concerning certain of her claims and hope presently to bring before the King one who can discredit her and show her to have borne false witness to him. It is a long-term investment but it should bear interest during our time at the Summer Palace or, if not, then shortly thereafter.

A: I see. Well, we must hope that you do not lose your capital. Can you tell me what form it takes?

W: Oh, it is the coin of man. And land, and tongue. But I must hold mine. I’ll say no more.

A: I think I shall have more wine. Will you join me?

W: Thank you, no. I have other matters to attend to.

A: Allow me . . .

W: Thank you. Ah. My old bones . . . at least I am able to ride, though next year I may take carriage. I thank Providence the way back is easier. And that we are not far from Lep now.

A: I’m sure in the hunt you can out-jump men half your age, Duke.

W: I am sure I cannot, but your flattery is still gratifying. Good day.

A: Good day, Duke . . . Epline!

All this I copied with a few deletions to make the narrative less tedious from the part of the Doctor’s journal written in Imperial. I never did show it to my Master.

Could she have overheard all this? It seems inconceivable. The guard commander Adlain had his own physician and I’m sure he never once called upon the Doctor’s services. What would she have been doing anywhere near his tent?

Could they have been lovers and she was hiding under some bed covers all the time? That seems no more likely. I was with her almost all of the time, every single day. Also, she confided in me, sincerely, I am convinced. She simply did not like Adlain. Indeed she felt threatened by him. How could she suddenly have tumbled into bed with a man she feared, never giving the remotest sign before that she desired to, or afterwards that she had? I know that illicit lovers can be ingenious in the extreme and suddenly find within themselves reserves of guile and the ability to act that even they did not until then know they possessed, but to imagine the Doctor and the guard commander in such a sexual conspiracy is surely to draw the bow one notch too far.

Was Epline the source? Did she have some sort of hold over him? I do not know. They seemed not really to know each other, but who can tell? They may have been lovers, but the same unlikeliness attaches to that liaison as does to that of her and Adlain.

I cannot think who else could have heard all of this. It did occur to me that she might have made it all up, that what she wrote here constituted her darkest imaginings regarding what others in the Court might be planning for her, yet somehow that too does not feel right either. In the end I am left with something that I am certain reflects a genuine conversation, but with no clear idea how the Doctor came by it.

But there we are. Some things never do make perfect sense. There must be some explanation, and it is perhaps a little like the Doctrine of the Perfect Partner. We must be content to know that she exists, somewhere in the world, and try not to care overmuch that we will probably never meet her.

*    *    *

We arrived without incident at the city of Lep-Skatacheis. On the morning after we arrived the Doctor and I went to the King’s chambers before the business of the day was due to start. As usual on such occasions, the King’s business and much of the Court’s comprised of hearing certain legal disputes which had been deemed too complicated or too important for the city authorities and the Marshal to decide upon. According to my experience, gained during the three previous years I had travelled this way, such sitting in judgment was not a function of his responsibilities the King relished.

The King’s chambers were on a corner of the City-Marshal’s palace, overlooking the reflecting terraces of the pools which led down towards the distant river. Swifts and darts played in the warm air outside, wheeling and tumbling beyond the cool stone of the balcony balustrades. The chamberlain Wiester let us in, fussing as usual.

‘Oh. Are you on time? Was there the bell? Or a cannon? I did not hear the bell. Did you?’

‘A few moments ago,’ the Doctor told him, following him across the reception room to the King’s dressing chamber.

‘Providence!’ he said, and opened the doors.

‘Ah, the good Doctor Vosill!’ the King exclaimed. He was standing on a small stool in the centre of the great dressing chamber, being dressed in his ceremonial judicial robes by four servants. One wall of plaster windows, south facing, flooded the room with soft, creamy light. Duke Ormin stood nearby, tall and slightly stooped and dressed in judicial robes. ‘How are you today?’ the King asked.

‘I am well, your majesty.’

‘A very good morning to you, Doctor Vosill,’ Duke Ormin said, smiling. Duke Ormin was ten or so years older than the King. He was a lanky-legged sort of a fellow with a very broad head and a surprisingly large torso which always looked, to me at least, stuffed, as though he had a couple of pillows forced up his shirt. An odd-looking fellow, then, but most civil and kind, as I knew myself, having been briefly in his employ, though at a fairly menial level. The Doctor, too, had been retained by him, more recently, when she had been his personal physician before she had become the King’s.

‘Duke Ormin,’ the Doctor said, bowing.

‘Ah!’ the King said. ‘And I was favoured with a “your majesty”! Usually I am lucky to escape with a “sir”.’

‘I beg the King’s pardon,’ the Doctor said, bowing now to him.

‘Granted,’ Quience said, putting back his head and letting a couple of servants gather his blond curls together and pin a skull cap in place. ‘I am obviously in a magnanimous mood this morning. Wiester?’

‘Sire?’

‘Inform the good lord judges I shall be joining that I am in such a good mood they will have to be certain to be at their most sourly pitiless in court this morning to provide a balance for my irrepressible leniency. Take heed, Ormin.’

Duke Ormin beamed, his eyes almost disappearing as his face screwed up in a grin.

Wiester hesitated, then started to make for the door. ‘At once, sire.’

‘Wiester.’

‘Sire?’

‘I was joking.’

‘Ah. Ha ha.’ The chamberlain laughed.

The Doctor put her bag down on a seat near the door.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ the King asked.

The Doctor blinked. ‘You asked me to attend you this morning, sir.’

‘Did I?’ The King looked mystified.

‘Yes, last night.’ (This was true.)

‘Oh, so I did.’ The King looked surprised as his arms were raised and a sleeveless black robe edged in some shiningly white fur was placed over his shoulders and fastened. He flexed, shifting his weight from stockinged foot to stockinged foot, clenching his fists, executing a sort of rolling motion with his shoulders and his head and then declaring, ‘You see, Ormin? I am becoming quite forgetful in my old age.’

‘Why now, sir, you have barely left your youth,’ the Duke told him. ‘If you go calling yourself old as though by royal decree, what must we think who are significantly older than you and yet who still fondly harbour the belief that we are not yet old? Have mercy, please.’

‘Very well,’ the King agreed, with a roll of the hand. ‘I declare myself young again. And well,’ he added, with a renewed look of surprise as he glanced at the Doctor and me. ‘Why, I seem to be quite bereft of any aches and pains for you to treat this morning, Doctor.’

‘Oh.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘Well, that’s good news,’ she said, picking up her bag and turning for the door. ‘I’ll bid you good day then, sir.’

‘Ah!’ the King said suddenly. We each turned again.

‘Sir?’

The King looked most thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, Doctor, I can think of nothing with which to detain you. You may go. I shall call you when I need you next.’

‘Of course, sir.’

Wiester opened the doors for us.

‘Doctor?’ the King said as we were in the doorway. ‘Duke Ormin and I go hunting this afternoon. I usually fall off my mount or get torn up by a barb bush, so I may well have something for you to treat later.’

Duke Ormin laughed politely and shook his head.

‘I shall start to prepare the relevant potions now,’ the Doctor said. ‘Your majesty.’

‘Providence, twice.’

‘Am I so trusted now?

‘Or I am. Probably because I am regarded as being beyond the interest of any but the most desperate of men. Or because the General does not intend to visit me again and so’

‘Careful!’

DeWar grabbed at Perrund’s arm just as she was about to step from the street-side into the path of a ten-team of mounts hauling a war carriage. He pulled her back towards him as first the panting, sweat-lathered team and then the great swaying bulk of the cannon-wagon itself raced past, shaking the cobblestones beneath their feet. A smell of sweat and oil rolled over them. He felt her draw away from it all, pressing her back against his chest. Behind him, the stone counter of a butcher’s shop dug into his back. The noise of the wagon’s man-high wheels resounded between the cracked, uneven walls of the two- and three-storey buildings leaning over the street.

On top of the huge black gun carriage a bombardier uniformed in the colours of Duke Ralboute stood lashing wildly at the mounts. The wagon was followed by two smaller carriages full of men and wooden cases. These in turn were trailed by a ragged pack of shouting children. The wagons thundered through the open gates set within the inner city’s walls and disappeared from view. People on the street who had shrunk back from the speeding vehicles flowed back into the thoroughfare again, muttering and shaking their heads.

DeWar let Perrund go and she turned to him. He realised with a flush of embarrassment that in his instinctive reaction to the danger he had taken hold of her by the withered arm. The memory of its touch, through the sleeve of her gown, the sling and the fold of her cloak, seemed imprinted in the bones of his hand as something thin, fragile and childlike.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, blurting the words.

She was still very close to him. She stepped away, smiling uncertainly. The hood of her cloak had fallen, revealing her lace-veiled face and her golden hair, which was gathered inside a black net. She drew the hood back up. ‘Oh, DeWar,’ she chided. ‘You save somebody’s life and then you apologise. You really are oh, I don’t know,’ she said, readjusting the hood. DeWar had time to be surprised. He had never known the lady Perrund lost for words. The hood she was struggling with fell back again, caught by a gust of wind. ‘Damn thing,’ she said, taking hold of it with her good arm and pulling it back once more. He had started to put his hand up, to help her with the hood, but now had to let his hand fall back. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s better. Here. I’ll take your arm. Now, let us walk.’

DeWar checked the street and then they crossed it, carefully avoiding the small piles of animal dung. A warm wind blew up between the buildings, lifting whirls of straw from the cobblestones. Perrund held DeWar’s arm with her good hand, her forearm laid lightly on his. In DeWar’s other hand he held a cane basket she had asked him to carry for her when they’d left the palace. ‘Obviously I am not fit to be let out by myself,’ she told him. ‘I have spent far too long in rooms and courtyards, and on terraces and lawns. Everywhere, in fact, where there is no traffic any larger or more threatening than a eunuch with an urgently needed tray of scented waters.’

‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’ DeWar asked, glancing at her.

‘No, but if you had I think I might still count it better than being mangled beneath the iron wheels of a piece of siege artillery proceeding at a charge. Where do you think they are going in such a hurry?’

‘Well, they won’t go anywhere very far at that rate. The mounts already looked half exhausted and that was before they’d left the city. I imagine that was a show for the locals. But they will be heading for Ladenscion eventually, I imagine.’

‘Is the war begun, then?’

‘What war, my lady?’

‘The war against the troublesome barons of Ladenscion, DeWar. I am not an idiot.’

DeWar sighed and looked around, checking that nobody in the street was paying them too close attention. ‘It is not officially begun yet,’ he said, putting his lips close to the hood of her cloak she turned towards him and he smelled her perfume, sweet and musky ‘but I think one might safely say it is inevitable.’

‘How far away is Ladenscion?’ she asked. They ducked under displays of fruit hanging outside a grocer’s.

‘About twenty days’ ride to the border hills.’

‘Will the Protector have to go himself?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘DeWar,’ she said softly, with what sounded like disappointment.

He sighed and looked around again. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he said. ‘He has much to do here, and there are more than enough generals for the job. It . . . it shouldn’t take too long.’

‘You sound unconvinced.’

‘Do I?’ They stopped at a side street to let a small herd of hauls pass, heading for the auction grounds. ‘I seem to be in a minority of one in thinking the war . . . suspicious.’

‘Suspicious?’ Perrund sounded amused.

‘The barons’ complaints and their stubbornness, their refusal to negotiate, seem disproportionate.’

‘You think they’re inviting war for its own sake?’

‘Yes. Well, not just for its own sake. Only a madman would do that. But for some further reason than the desire to assert their independence from Tassasen.’

‘But what else could their motive be?’

‘It is not their motive that troubles me.’

‘Then whose?’

‘Someone behind them.’

‘They are being encouraged to make war?’

‘It feels so to me, but I am just a bodyguard. The Protector is cloistered with his generals now and believes he needs neither my presence nor my opinion.’

‘And I am grateful for your company. But I had formed the impression the Protector valued your counsel.’

‘It is most valued when it most closely accords with his own view.’

‘DeWar, you are not jealous, are you?’ She stopped and turned to him. He looked into her face, shaded and half hidden by the hood of the cloak and the thin veil. Her skin seemed to glow in that darkness like a hoard of gold at the back of a cave.

‘Maybe I am,’ he admitted, with a bashful grin. ‘Or perhaps I am once again exercising my duties in areas which are inappropriate.’

‘As in our game.’

‘As in our game.’

They turned together and walked on. She took his arm again. ‘Well then, who do you think might be behind the vexatious barons?’

‘Kizitz, Breistler, Velfasse. Any one or combination of our three claimant Emperors. Kizitz will make mischief wherever he can. Breistler has a claim to part of Ladenscion itself and might seek to offer his forces as compromise occupants to keep the barons’ and our armies apart. Velfasse has his eye on our eastern provinces. Drawing our forces to the west might be a feint. Faross would like the Thrown Isles back, and may have a similar strategy. Then there’s Haspidus.’

‘Haspidus?’ she said. ‘I thought King Quience supported UrLeyn.’

‘It may suit him to be seen to support UrLeyn for now. But Haspidus lies behind beyond Ladenscion. It would be easier for Quience to provide the barons with materiel than anybody else.’

‘And you think Quience opposes the Protector out of Regal principle? Because UrLeyn dared to kill a king?’

‘Quience knew the old king. He and Beddun were as close to being friends as two kings can be, so there might be something of the personal in his animosity. But even without that, Quience is no fool, and he has no pressing problems to occupy him at the moment. He has the luxury of time to think long, and the brains to know that UrLeyn’s example cannot go unopposed for ever if he wishes to pass on the crown to his heirs.’

‘But Quience has no children yet, does he?’

‘None that are regarded as mattering, and he has yet to decide who to marry, but even if he was concerned only for his own reign, he might still want to see the Protectorate fail.’

‘Dear me. I had no idea we were quite so surrounded by enemies.’

‘I’m afraid we are, my lady.’

‘Ah. Here we are.’

The old stone-built building across the crowded street from them was the paupers’ hospital. It was here Perrund had wanted to come with her basket of foods and medicines. ‘My old home,’ she said, staring over the heads of the people. A small troop of colourfully dressed soldiers appeared round a corner and came marching down the street, attended by a boy drummer at their head, tearful women to each side and capering children behind. Everybody turned to look except Perrund. Her gaze remained fixed on the worn, stained stones of the old hospital across the street.

DeWar looked this way and that. ‘Have you been back since?’ he asked.

‘No. But I have kept in touch. I have sent them some little things in the past. I thought it would be amusing to deliver them myself this time. Oh. What are those?’ The troop of soldiers was passing in front of them. The soldiers wore bright red and yellow uniforms and polished metal hats. Each carried a long wood-mounted metal tube slung slanted across their shoulders and waving in the air above their gleaming helmets.

‘Musketeers, my lady,’ DeWar told her. ‘And that is Duke Simalg’s banner at their head.’

‘Ah. These are the musket guns. I have heard about them.’

DeWar watched the troop pass with a troubled, distracted look. ‘UrLeyn won’t have them in the palace,’ he said eventually. ‘They can be useful on the battlefield.’

The sound of the beating drum faded. The street filled again with its ordinary commerce. A gap opened in the traffic of carts and carriages between them and the hospital, and DeWar thought they would take advantage of it, but Perrund lingered on the pavement, her hand clutching at his forearm while she stared at the ornate and time-stained stonework of the ancient building.

DeWar cleared his throat. ‘Will there be anybody there from when you were?’

‘The present matron was a nurse when I was here. It’s her I’ve corresponded with.’ Still she did not move.

‘Were you here long?’

‘Only ten days or so. It was only five years ago, but it seems much longer.’ She kept staring at the building.

DeWar was not sure what to say. ‘It must have been a difficult time.’

From what he had succeeded in teasing from her over the past few years, DeWar knew that Perrund had been brought here suffering from a terrible fever. She and eight of her sisters, brothers and cousins had been refugees from the war of succession during which UrLeyn had taken control of Tassasen following the fall of the Empire. Travelling from the southlands where the fighting had been worst, they had made for Crough, along with a large part of the rest of the population of Tassasen’s south. The family had been traders in a market town, but most of them had been killed by the King’s forces when they had taken the town from UrLeyn’s troops. The General’s men had retaken it, with UrLeyn at their head, but by then Perrund and her few remaining relatives were on the road for the capital.

They had all contracted some form of plague on the journey and only a hefty bribe had got them through the city gates at all. The least sick of them had driven their wagon to one of the old royal parks where refugees could camp and the last of their money had paid for a doctor and medicines. Most of them had died then. Perrund had been found a place in the paupers’ hospital. She had come close to death but then recovered. When she had gone in search of the rest of her family her quest had ended at the lime pits beyond the city walls where people had been buried hundreds at a time.

She had thought of killing herself then, but was afraid to, and besides considered that as Providence had seen fit to have her recover from the plague, perhaps she was not meant to die quite yet. There was, anyway, a general feeling that the worst of times might be over. The war had ended, the plague had all but disappeared and order had returned to Crough and was returning to the rest of Tassasen.

Perrund had helped out at the hospital, sleeping on the floor of one of the great open wards where people wept and shouted and moaned throughout the day and night. She had begged for food in the street and she had turned down many an offer that would have let her buy food and comfort with her sex, but then a eunuch of the palace harem UrLeyn’s, now that the old King was dead had visited the hospital. The doctor who had found Perrund a place in the hospital had told a friend at court that she was a great beauty, and once she had been persuaded to clean her face and put on a dress the eunuch had thought her suitable.

So she was recruited to the languid opulence of the harem, and became a frequent choice of the Protector. What would have seemed like a restrictive kind of luxury, even a sort of well-furnished prison to the young woman she had been a year earlier, when she and her family were living together and peaceably in their prosperous little market town, she saw instead, after the war and everything that had come with it, as a blessed sanctuary.

Then had come the day when UrLeyn and various of his court favourites, including some of his concubines, were to be painted by a famous artist. The artist brought with him a new assistant who turned out to have a mission of rather more serious intent than simply helping to fix UrLeyn’s and the others’ likenesses in paint, and only Perrund throwing herself between his knife and UrLeyn had saved the Protector’s life.

‘Shall we?’ DeWar asked, when Perrund still had not moved from the pavement.

She looked at him as though she had forgotten he was there, then she smiled from the depths of the hood. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, let’s.’

She held his arm tightly as they crossed the street.

‘Tell me more about Lavishia.’

‘Where? Oh, Lavishia. Let me think. Well now, in Lavishia everybody is able to fly.’

‘Like birds? Lattens asked.

‘Just like birds,’ DeWar confirmed. ‘They can leap from cliffs and tall buildings of which there are a great many in Lavishia or they can just run along the street and jump into the air and soar away up into the sky.’

‘Do they have wings??

‘They do have wings but they are invisible wings.’

‘Can they fly to the suns?’

‘Not on their own. To fly to the suns they have to use ships. Ships with invisible sails.’

‘Don’t they burn in the heat of the suns??