Inversions (7 page)

‘Well, ambassador,’ he said, holding his hands out to each side. ‘You asked for an audience.’

The young man’s eyes went wider still. ‘Yes. An audience.’ He slowly took the belt from round his neck and then looked down at the polished hide cylinder in his lap. ‘First of all, sir,’ he said, ‘I have a gift for you. From the Fleet Captain Vritten.’ He looked up expectantly at UrLeyn.

‘I confess I have not heard of Fleet Captain Vritten, but continue.’

The young fellow cleared his throat. He wiped sweat from his brow. Perhaps, UrLeyn thought, he has a fever. It is a little warm in here, but insufficiently so to make a man sweat like that. The Sea Companies spend much of their time in the tropics so it cannot be that he is unused to heat, sea breezes or not.

The captain undid the buttoned end of the cylinder and withdrew another cylinder, also clad in gold-inscribed hide, though its ends appeared to be gold, or brass, and one end was tapered by a series of shining metal rings. ‘What I have here, sir,’ the ambassador said, looking down at the cylinder, which he now held in both hands, ‘is a seeing-piece. An optiscope, or telescope as such instruments are also known.’

‘Yes,’ UrLeyn said. ‘I have heard of such things. Naharajast, the last Imperial mathematician, claimed to have used one directed at the skies to make his predictions concerning the fire-rocks which appeared in the year of the Empire’s fall. Last year an inventor or someone who claimed to be an inventor came to our palace and showed us one. I had a look through it myself. It was interesting. The view was cloudy, but it was undeniably closer.’

The young ambassador seemed not to hear. ‘The telescope is a fascinating device . . . a most fascinating device, sir, and this one is a particularly fine example.’ He pulled the device apart so that it clicked out to three or so times its compacted length, then held it up to one eye, looking at UrLeyn, then round the painted panels of the room. UrLeyn formed the impression he was hearing a memorised script. ‘Hmm,’ the young ambassador said, nodding his head. ‘Extraordinary. Would you care to try it, sir?’ He stood and held out the instrument to the Protector, who motioned the ambassador to approach. Clutching the hide instrument’s protective cylinder awkwardly in his other hand, the captain stepped forward, offering the eye-piece end of the device to UrLeyn, who leant forward in his chair and duly took hold of it. The ambassador let go of the thicker end of the instrument. It began to fall to the floor.

‘Oh, heavy, isn’t it?’ UrLeyn said, quickly bringing his other hand round to save the device. He had almost to jump out of the chair to keep his balance, going down on one knee towards the young captain, who took a single step back.

Ambassador Oestrile’s hand suddenly held a long, thin dagger which he swept up and then brought swinging down. UrLeyn saw this even as his knee hit the dais and he finally caught the seeing-piece. With his hands full, still off-balance and kneeling beneath the other man, UrLeyn knew instantly that there was nothing he could do to parry the blow.

The crossbow bolt slammed into Ambassador Oestrile’s head an instant after glancing off the high collar of his coat. The bolt lodged in his skull just above his left ear, most of its length protruding. If either man had had the time and inclination to look, they would have seen that a small hole had appeared in the painting of the bustling city square. Oestrile staggered back still clutching the dagger, his feet slipping on the polished wooden floor. UrLeyn let himself fall back against the chair, putting both hands to the eye-piece end of the telescope. He started to swing it back behind him, thinking to use it as a club.

Ambassador Oestrile gave a roaring bellow of pain and rage, put one hand to the crossbow bolt and gripped it, shaking his head, then suddenly threw himself forward again at UrLeyn, dagger first.

With a resounding crash DeWar burst through the thin plaster panel depicting the city square. A wave of dust rolled out across the gleaming floor and plaster shards scattered everywhere as DeWar, sword already drawn, thrust the blade straight at the ambassador’s midriff. The blade broke. DeWar’s momentum carried him onwards so that he side-charged into the ambassador. Still roaring, the ambassador was toppled to the floor with a thud, waving his dagger. DeWar threw away the broken sword, spun to one side and drew his own dagger.

UrLeyn had dropped the heavy telescope and stood. He drew a small knife from his jacket and took shelter behind the tall chair. Oestrile reared to his feet, the crossbow bolt still in his skull. His boots struggled to find purchase on the polished wooden floor as he stumbled towards the Protector. DeWar, bare footed, was on him before he’d taken half a step, coming quickly up behind him, putting one hand over his face and pulling his head back with fingers stuck into the man’s nostrils and one eye. Ambassador Oestrile screamed as DeWar sliced his dagger across the man’s exposed throat. Blood sprayed and bubbled as the scream was drowned.

Oestrile crashed to his knees, finally dropped the dagger, then fell sideways, neck spurting blood on to the gleaming floor.

‘Sir?’ DeWar asked UrLeyn breathlessly, still half watching the body twitching on the floor. Sounds of a commotion came from outside the chamber’s doors. Thuds sounded. ‘Sir! Protector! General!’ a dozen voices babbled.

‘I’m fine! Stop breaking the damn door down!’ UrLeyn shouted. The commotion became a little less intense. He looked at where the painted plaster scene of the busy city square had been. In the little cupboard-sized room which had been revealed behind there was a stout wooden post with a crossbow fastened to it. UrLeyn looked back at DeWar, and put his own small knife back in its pocket sheath. ‘No damage done, thank you, DeWar. And you?’

‘I am uninjured too, sir. Sorry I had to kill him.’ He looked down at the body, which gave out one final bubbling sigh and then seemed to collapse in on itself a little. The pool of blood on the floor was deep and dark and still spreading viscously. DeWar knelt, keeping his dagger at what was left of the man’s throat as he felt for a pulse. .

‘Never mind,’ the Protector said. ‘Took some killing, too, did you not think?’ He gave an almost girlish chuckle.

‘I think some of his strength and his bravery came from a potion or some such drug-brew, sir.’

‘Hmm,’ UrLeyn said, then looked to the doors. ‘Will you shut up!’ he yelled. ‘I’m perfectly all right, but this piece of shit tried to kill me! Palace guard?’

‘Aye, sir! Five present!’ shouted a muffled voice.

‘Get Commander ZeSpiole. Tell him to find the rest of the diplomatic mission and arrest them. Clear everybody away from those doors, then enter. Nobody but the palace guards are allowed in here until I say so. Got all that?’

‘Sir!’ The commotion intensified for a while, then began to subside again until there was almost no noise in the painted chamber.

DeWar had unbuttoned the failed assassin’s coat. ‘Chain mail,’ he said, fingering the coat’s lining. He tapped the garment’s collar. ‘And metal.’ He gripped the shaft of the crossbow bolt, strained, then stood and put one bare foot on Ambassador Oestrile’s head, eventually pulling the bolt free with a delicate crunching noise. ‘No wonder it was deflected.’

UrLeyn stepped to the side of the dais. ‘Where did the dagger come from? I didn’t see.’

DeWar crossed to the tall chair, leaving bloody footprints. He lifted first the telescope and then the hide cylinder it had been transported within. He peered into the case. ‘There’s some sort of clip at the bottom.’ He inspected the telescope. ‘There is no glass at the large end. The dagger must have nested inside the device when it was inside the case.’

‘Sir?’ a voice came from the door.

‘What?’ UrLeyn shouted.

‘Guard Sergeant HieLiris and three others here, sir.’

‘Come in,’ UrLeyn told them. The guards entered, looking warily about. All looked surprised at the hole where the city painting had been. ‘You have not seen that,’ the Protector told them. They nodded. DeWar stood cleaning his dagger on a piece of cloth. UrLeyn stepped forward and kicked the dead man in the shoulder, sending him flopping on to his back.

‘Take this away,’ he told the guards. Two of them sheathed their swords and took one end of the body each.

‘Better take a limb each, lads,’ DeWar told them. ‘That coat’s heavy.’

‘See to the clear-up, will you, DeWar?’ asked UrLeyn.

‘I should be at your side, sir. If this is a determined attack there might be two assassins, the second waiting for us to relax when we think the attack has failed.’

UrLeyn drew himself up and took a deep breath. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m going off to lie down now,’ he said.

DeWar frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, sir?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, DeWar,’ the Protector said, following the trail of blood as the guards carried the body to the doors. ‘I’m going off to lie down on top of somebody very young and plump and firm.’ He grinned back at DeWar from the doors. ‘Proximity to death does this to me,’ he announced. He laughed, looking down at the trail of blood, then at the black pool of it by the dais. ‘I should have been an undertaker.’

Master, it was now about the time of year when the Court works itself into the most excited and febrile state as everyone prepares for the Circuition and the move to the Summer Palace. The Doctor was busy with her preparations just as everybody else was busy with theirs, though of course in her case there might have been expected to be an added excitement given that this would be her first Circuition. I did all that I could to help her, though I was constrained in this for a while by a slight fever which kept me in my bed for a few days.

I confess I hid the symptoms of my illness for as long as I could, feeling that the Doctor would think me weak, and also because I had heard from the apprentices of other doctors that however kindly and pleasant their masters might be with their paying patients, when their own devoted helpers took poorly they were, to a man (which naturally they all were), notoriously brusque and unsympathetic.

Doctor Vosill was, however, a very agreeable and understanding doctor to me while I was ill, and tended to my needs as though she were my mother (which I do not think she is quite old enough to be).

I would not record anything beyond my brief infirmity, and might even have skipped over it entirely, save to explain to my Master why there was a gap in my reports, but for the following, which struck me as possibly shedding some light on the Doctor’s mysterious past before she appeared in the city two years ago.

I was, I freely confess, in a strange state at the height of my sickness, devoid of appetite, sweating freely and falling into a state of semi-unconsciousness. Whenever I closed my eyes I was convinced I was seeing odd and vexatious shapes and figures who tormented me with their manic and incomprehensible shiftings and cavortings.

My greatest fear, as may be imagined, was that I might say something that would reveal to the Doctor the fact that I had been charged with reporting on her actions. Of course, given that she is obviously a good and trustworthy person from all that I have seen and reported so far (and so evidently devoted to our good King), it may be that no ultimate damage would result from such a revelation, but however that may be I will of course heed my Master’s wishes and keep my mission a secret.

Be assured then, Master, that no word or hint of that assignment was transmitted by me, and the Doctor remains none the wiser regarding these reports. Still, while that most precious confidence remained locked well within myself, other of my normal inhibitions and self-constraints had slackened off due to the influence of the fever, and I found myself on my bed in my cell one day, while the Doctor who had just returned from treating the King (he had a bad neck around this time, I think) was washing my much-sweated upper body.

‘You are too good to me, Doctor. A nurse should do this.’

‘A nurse will do this if I am called away to the King again.

‘Our dear King! How I love him!’ I cried (which was sincere, if a little embarrassing).

‘As do we all, Oelph,’ the Doctor said, squeezing water from a cloth over my chest and with what seemed like a thoughtful look rubbing my skin clean. She was crouched at the side of my bed, which is a very low one due to the constraints of space within my cell.

I looked into the Doctor’s face, which seemed sad just then, I thought. ‘Don’t fear, Doctor. You will keep him well! He worries that his father was the stronger man and he died young, but you’ll keep him well, won’t you?’

‘What? Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Oh! You weren’t worried about me, were you?’ (And I confess my heart gave a little leap within my hot and breathless chest, for what young man would not be taken with the idea of a good and handsome woman, especially one tending so intimately to his bodily needs as at that point, worrying about and caring for him?) ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, putting out a hand. ‘I’m not going to die.’ She looked uncertain, so I added, ‘Am I?’

‘No, Oelph,’ she said, and smiled kindly. ‘No, you’re not going to die. You’re young and strong and I’ll look after you. Another half-day and you should start to come round again.’ She looked down at the hand I had extended to her, which I now realised was on her knee. I gulped.

‘Ah, this old dagger of yours,’ I said, not so fevered that I could not feel embarrassed. I tapped the old knife’s pommel where it protruded from the top of the Doctor’s boot, near where my hand had rested. ‘It has, ah, always fascinated me. What sort of knife is it? Have you ever had to use it? I dare say it cannot be a surgical tool. It looks too dull. Or is it some ceremonial token? What ?’

The Doctor smiled and put one hand over my lips, quieting me. She reached down and pulled the dagger from its sheath in her boot, handing it to me. ‘Here,’ she said. I took its battered-looking length in my hands. ‘I’d tell you to be careful,’ she said, still smiling, ‘but there’s little point.’

‘Nor much in the way of edge,’ I said, running one sweaty thumb along it.

The Doctor laughed loudly. ‘Why, Oelph, a joke,’ she said, clapping me gently on the shoulder. ‘And one that works in many a language too. You must be getting better.’ Her eyes looked bright.

I felt suddenly shy. ‘You have looked after me so well, mistress . . .’ I was not sure what else to say, and so I studied the dagger. It was a heavy old thing, about a hand and a half long and made of old steel which had become minutely pitted with small rusty holes. The blade was slightly bent and the tip had been broken off and rounded with time. There were a few nicks on each blade-edge, which truly were so dull one would have to saw away with some force to cut anything much more robust than a jellyfish. The tusk grip was pitted too, though on a larger scale. Around the pommel and in a trio of lines down the length of the grip down to the stop there were a few semiprecious stones each no bigger than a crop grain, and many holes where it appeared similar stones had once rested. The top of the pommel was formed by a large dark smoky stone which, when I held it up to the light, I could just see through. Round the pommel’s bottom rim what I mistook at first for some wavy carving was really a line of little pits which had lost all but one of the small pale stones.

I ran a finger down them. ‘You should have this repaired, mistress,’ I told her. ‘The palace armourer would oblige, I’m sure, for the stones do not look expensive and the workmanship is not of the first order. Let me take it down to the armoury when I am well. I know the deputy armourer’s assistant. It would be no trouble. It would please me to do something for you.’

‘There is no need,’ the Doctor said. ‘I like it well enough just as it is. It has sentimental value. I carry it as a keepsake.’

‘From whom, mistress?’ (The fever! Normally I would not have been so bold!)

‘An old friend,’ she said easily, mopping off my chest and then putting the cloths aside and sitting back on the floor.

‘From Drezen?’

‘From Drezen,’ she nodded. ‘Given to me the day I set sail.’

‘It was new then?’

She shook her head. ‘It was old then.’ The thin light of a Seigen sunset shone through a cracked-open window and reflected redly on her netted, gathered hair. ‘A family heirloom.’

‘They do not take very good care of their heirlooms if they let them fall into such disrepair, mistress. There must be more holes than stones.’

She smiled. ‘The stones that are missing were used to good effect. Some bought protection in uncultured places where a person travelling alone is seen more as prey than as guest, and others paid my way on some of the sea passages that brought me here.’

‘They do not look very valuable.’

‘They are more highly prized elsewhere, perhaps. But the knife, or what it carried, kept me safe and it kept me moving. I have never had to use it well, I have had to brandish it and wave it around a bit but I have never had to use it to hurt anyone. And as you say, that is just as well for me, for it is quite the dullest knife I have seen since I arrived here.’

‘Quite so, mistress. It would not do to have the dullest dagger in the Palace. All the others are so very sharp.’

She looked at me (and I can only say, she looked at me sharply, for that was a piercing gaze). She gently took the dagger from me and rubbed a thumb down one blade. ‘I think perhaps I will have you take it to the armoury, though only to have an edge put on it.’

‘They might re-point it too, mistress. A dagger is for stabbing.’

‘Indeed.’ She put it back in its sheath.

‘Oh, mistress!’ I cried, suddenly full of fear. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘For what, Oelph?’ she said, her beautiful face, so concerned, suddenly close to mine.

‘For for talking to you like this. For asking you personal questions. I am only your servant, your apprentice. This is not seemly.’

‘Oh, Oelph,’ she said, smiling, her voice soft, her breath cool on my cheek. ‘We can ignore seemliness, at least in private, don’t you think?’

‘May we, mistress?’ (And I confess my heart, fevered though it was, leapt at these words, wildly expecting what I knew I could not expect.)

‘I think so, Oelph,’ she said, and took my hand in hers and squeezed it gently. ‘You may ask me whatever you like. I can always say no, and I am not the type to take offence easily. I would like us to be friends, not just Doctor and apprentice.’ She tilted her head, a quizzical, amused expression on her face. ‘Is that all right with you?’

‘Oh, yes, mistress!’

‘Good. We’ll’ Then the Doctor cocked her head again, listening to something. ‘There’s the door,’ she said, rising. ‘Excuse me.’

She returned holding her bag. ‘The King,’ she said. Her expression, it seemed to me, was half-regretful, half-radiant. ‘Apparently his toes are sore.’ She smiled. ‘Will you be all right by yourself, Oelph?’

‘Yes, mistress.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can. Then maybe we’ll see if you’re ready for something to eat.’

It was a five-day later, I think, that the Doctor was called to the Slave Master Tunch. His house was an imposing one in the Merchants’ Quarter, overlooking the Grand Canal. Its tall, raised front doors sat imposingly above the sweeping double staircase leading from the street, but we were not able to enter that way. Instead our hired seat was directed to a small quay a few streets away, where we transferred to a little cabin-punt which took us, shutters closed, down a side canal and round to the rear of the building and a small dock hidden from the public waters.

‘What is all this about?’ the Doctor asked me as the punt’s shutters were opened by the boatman and the vessel bumped against the dark timbers of a pier. It was well into summer yet still the place seemed chilly and smelled of dankness and decay.

‘Mistress?’ I said, fastening a spiced kerchief round my mouth and nose.

‘This secrecy.’

‘And why are you doing that?’ she asked, obviously annoyed, as a servant helped the boatman secure the punt.

‘What, this, mistress?’ I asked, pointing to the kerchief.

‘Yes,’ she said, standing up and rocking our small craft.

‘It is to combat the evil humours, mistress.’

‘Oelph, I have told you before that infectious agents are transmitted in breath or bodily fluids, even if they are insect body fluids,’ she said. ‘A bad smell by itself will not make you ill. Thank you.’ The servant accepted her bag and laid it carefully on the small dock. I did not reply. No doctor knows everything and it is better to be safe than sorry. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I am still unclear why all this secrecy is required.’

‘I think the Slave Master does not want his own doctor to know of your visit,’ I told her as I clambered on to the dock. ‘They are brothers.’

‘If this Slaver is so close to death, why isn’t his doctor at his side?’ the Doctor said. ‘Come to that, why isn’t he there as his brother?’ The servant held out a hand to help the Doctor out of the boat. ‘Thank you,’ she said again. (She is always thanking servants. I think the menials of Drezen must be a surly lot. Or just spoiled.)

‘I don’t know, mistress,’ I confessed.

‘The Master’s brother is in Trosila, ma’am,’ the servant said (which just goes to show what happens when you start speaking to servants).

‘Is he?’ the Doctor said.

The servant opened a small door leading to the rear of the house. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, looking nervously at the boatman. ‘He has gone in person to seek some rare earth which is said to help the condition the Master is suffering from.’

‘I see,’ the Doctor said. We entered the house. A female servant met us. She wore a severe black dress and had a forbidding face. Indeed her expression was so bleak my first thought was that Slave Master Tunch had died. However, she gave the tiniest of nods to the Doctor and in a precise, clipped voice said, ‘Mistress Vosill?’

‘That’s me.’

She nodded at me. ‘And this?’

‘My apprentice, Oelph.’

‘Very good. Follow me.’

The Doctor looked round as we started up some bare wooden stairs, a conspiratorial look on her face. I was caught in the act of directing a most harsh stare at the black back of the woman leading us, but the Doctor just smiled and winked.

The servant who had talked to the Doctor locked the dock door and disappeared through another which I guessed led to the servants’ floor.

The passage-way was steep and narrow and unlit save for a slit window every storey, where the wooden steps twisted to double back on themselves. There was a narrow door at each floor, too. It crossed my mind that perhaps these confined quarters were for children, for the Slaver Tunch was well known for specialising in child slaves.

We came to the second landing. ‘How long has Slaver Tunch?’ the Doctor began.

‘Please do not talk on these stairs,’ the strict-looking woman told her. ‘Others may hear.’

The Doctor said nothing, but turned back to look at me again, her eyes wide and the corners of her mouth turned down.

We were led into the rest of the house at the third storey. The corridor we found ourselves in was broad and plush. Paintings adorned the walls, and facing us were wall-high glass windows letting in the sight of the tops of the grand houses on the far side of the canal and the sky and clouds beyond. A series of tall, wide doors opened off the corridor. We were ushered towards the tallest and widest.