The City (45 page)

‘Do you know him so well?’ Fell asked.

‘No, but I do,’ Saroyan put in. ‘He will do his duty. And he will end the war.’

Indaro wondered at the woman’s motives. Gil she believed. Even if he had not revealed all his intentions, she believed he was in this to end the carnage. Mason she was not sure of. But Saroyan, with her reticence and half-explanations, reeked of deceit. Indaro looked at Fell, who clearly agreed with her; he was scowling at the lord lieutenant.

‘If he is so keen to end the war, why does he not kill the emperor himself and take command? With the Thousand behind him, he would be invulnerable.’

An unfamiliar expression crossed Saroyan’s face. Indaro realized it was disgust. Was this cold-faced woman offended at the suggestion that Vincerus kill his emperor?

Mason rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. ‘You do not understand the relationship between these people. They are not like us, Fell. They have known each other for centuries, longer. They have fought together, and against each other, betrayed each other and conspired together down the generations. Marcellus is younger than Araeon, and he sees the emperor as his father, grandfather, teacher and rival, as well as his emperor. Araeon is the last of his kind. When he is gone Marcellus and a very few others will be adrift in a world of mayflies, short-lived creatures who can achieve nothing before they die. But I believe Marcellus
will
end the war. That is what this plan rests on. He knows it is destroying the City and the lands about it. Araeon does not care any more how many die, as long as he can win. He can no longer see that it is not a winnable war. Marcellus has more clarity. I believe he will be a good emperor, as emperors go.’ He added, ‘All our futures depend on that belief.’

He called to the guards for wine and food. ‘We have much more to
discuss today. In ten days you will ride for the Paradise Gate. From there Indaro, Elija and Gil will set out to join the invasion boats at Adrastto. Fell will enter the City and join Shuskara. The City is hard to get into now, more so since the mutiny in the Little Opera House. It takes special papers, which will be supplied by Saroyan.’

The lord lieutenant stood suddenly and gazed impatiently at Mason. ‘Saroyan must return to the Red Palace,’ he told them. ‘She has a long ride and the sun is falling. We will not see her again.’

The last words seemed heavy with fate. As the woman turned to leave, wearing weariness like a cloak, Indaro asked her, ‘Why do you dislike me?’

The lord lieutenant walked round the table to her and looked into her eyes. Indaro saw real antipathy there. Saroyan said coldly, ‘Because I do not trust you, Indaro Kerr Guillaume. I know your father and he loves the City, for all its faults, and he would never betray the emperor, for all
his
. I believe that deep down you are the same, and therefore at the end you will betray us all.’

And she stalked out, leaving Indaro shocked by her words and the depth of her loathing. Fell rested his hand on her shoulder. It burned like fire. She looked at him.

‘Pay no attention,’ he said gently. ‘She does not know you. Now, come with me. I have grave news.’

IN A FAR-FLUNG
wing of the red palace, distant from the public clamour and from the insistent smell of horses and cavalrymen, was a suite of rooms clustered around a pretty flower-filled courtyard. In the warm days of autumn all the windows were flung open to take in the scent of the late-blooming roses clambering up white-painted walls and spilling fragrantly into casements.

A small slender woman, her fair ringlets tied above her head with ribbon, slipped out of a silken robe and stepped into an enamelled bath. She sat down gracefully and, with a sigh, slid luxuriously under the petal-strewn water.

‘Ow!’ she cried, sitting up again quickly and feeling around in the bathwater.

‘What’s wrong, my lady?’ asked her new maid, hovering anxiously.

The woman pouted. ‘Did you throw thorns in with the rose petals?’ she asked plaintively, showing the maid a tiny piece of twig she had found in the depths of the perfumed water.

The maid took it from her. ‘I’m sorry, my lady,’ she said, her face creased with worry.

The woman’s face cleared and she chuckled. ‘Don’t be a fool, Amita. I’m only teasing. You haven’t been here long, but you will find me a considerate employer, as long as you are sensible. Now, please soap my back. Use that bottle there, with the lavender floating in it.’

Amita poured a little of the soap on to a soft cotton cloth and gently washed the woman’s back, from her hairline where tiny fair tendrils escaped their ties down to the cleft of her buttocks. The back was perfect, pale as moonstone, unblemished as moonlight itself. Afterwards the woman leaned back in the water, eyes closed. Amita took the chance to look at her face critically. The afternoon light, shining directly in the casement, cruelly betrayed her age. There were young crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the skin under her chin was a little loose. The Lady Petalina behaved like a girl of sixteen, but she had seen more than forty summers, Amita guessed.

Petalina sighed again and brushed wet flowers from her thighs. ‘I think I’ll wear the blue and cream cotton this afternoon,’ she mused.

Amita was unsure what to do. Was she supposed to fetch the dress now? This was not a simple thing. There were hundreds of dresses and Amita had no idea which one was meant. Or should she continue to attend her mistress in the bath and get the dress later? She was wondering whether to ask when she realized Petalina had opened her big blue eyes and was regarding her.

‘When I have bathed you will dry me and powder me,’ she explained. ‘Then I will put on a clean silk robe and lie down for a nap. That will give you time to fetch the dress. Call one of the under-maids to empty the bath and put it away and to help you clean this room and take the towels to the laundry.’ Then she closed her eyes again languorously.

Amita had been told Petalina had once been a serving maid herself. The woman had been kind to her, so far, but was said to have a fiery temper. Amita had seen no sign of that. But then, she had been in her employ less than a day.

‘Remind me,’ Petalina asked, her eyes still closed, ‘where did you come to me from?’

‘From the house of General Kerr, my lady. I served his granddaughter.’

‘Ah yes, the poor child who died of a lung infection.’

‘Yes, my lady. It was very sad.’

Petalina opened her eyes again and gazed at Amita. Amita looked innocently back, then dropped her eyes, hoping her assumed grief for a child she had never known would conceal her lies. Pretending to have served a fourteen-year-old girl would cover her deficiencies as a lady’s maid, she hoped.

‘The general’s wife is a woman of great beauty,’ Petalina commented. ‘A rare beauty. And are there other grandchildren?’

‘There are five sons, I believe,’ Amita replied. ‘Most of them grown. They all have children. Her ladyship …’

‘Yes?’ The blue gaze was penetrating.

‘She … has very fine eyes, my lady.’ Truth to tell, the general’s wife was a horse-faced woman with pox-marked skin and a nose like a marble. She had loyally produced sons for a family which specialized in generals in quantity rather than quality. Or so Amita had been told.

Petalina continued to gaze at her maid, then the corner of her mouth twitched and she gave a little chuckle. Then, to Amita’s surprise, she slowly sank under the water, until only the topknot of curls could be seen. There was a gurgle and an explosion of bubbles, then her head came out of the water again and, dripping, she smiled at her maid with glee.

‘I think we are going to get on very well, Amita,’ she said.

Once Petalina was out of her bath, dried and powdered like a babe, and settled on her day couch in a white silk robe, Amita found her way to the wardrobe rooms, where Petalina’s hundreds of dresses were to be found. This meant going outside and across a private garden in the shadow of the palace wall, then through a passage which brought her out to the back of the suite of rooms. She had been shown the way by one of the under-maids, who had complained about the inconvenience. Amita had agreed with the girl, but in fact it was perfect for her, as it gave her an excuse to slip into the garden whenever she wanted.

There were three large wardrobe rooms, one for day dresses, one for evening gowns and one for cloaks and shawls. Shoes and gloves, muffs and hats were in a fourth room filled with cupboards and shelves and drawers. Only Petalina’s linen and her silk day gowns were close to hand.

At last Amita found a flimsy cotton dress striped in blue and cream and, hoping it was the right one, draped it with a linen cover and carried it round to the front of the building, holding it high above the ground. When she let herself into the vestibule she heard the deep tones of a man’s voice coming from Petalina’s parlour. She hesitated. Should she take the dress into the bedroom? If the door from bedroom to parlour was open she would see and be seen. She
had been taught that personal servants were blind and deaf to the activities of their employers, and invisible to their eyes. Biting her lip, she pushed through the door into the bedroom. She crossed the pink and cream painted room and, her back to the parlour door, hung the dress up, taking off its cover and brushing it down lightly with her palm.

‘Amita!’ Petalina’s voice was commanding, and Amita went obediently through to the parlour. A lean weather-beaten man with a bald brown head and a wide white moustache was leaning on a stick by the open window. He was watching his hostess, who was dressed only in flimsy silk, and he no more than glanced at Amita.

‘You may go now,’ Petalina told her crisply. ‘Attend me an hour before sunset. In the meantime go to Assaios and ask her to fit you for three new shifts. Do you know where to eat?’

Amita nodded, and Petalina dismissed her with a flick of her perfumed fingers. The girl left the room and quietly closed the door behind her. Then she paused and listened. The voices were soft but clear in the still afternoon.

The visitor said, ‘He returns from the east tomorrow. I needed to speak to you first.’

Petalina’s voice was more serious than Amita had heard it before. She told the man, ‘He sent me a message to tell me he would be here with the dawn. I wasn’t expecting to see him again before winter.’

‘Why is he here?’

‘Some sort of crisis.’ Petalina’s voice was careless. ‘Something lost. Or something found. There’s always something. But you should not come here in daylight, Dol Salida. You’re too easily recognized. What happened to our midnight tryst?’

The man grunted. ‘To be seen coming to your rooms at night is too perilous. Marcellus would have me killed. My presence here in daylight can have an innocent explanation.’

Petalina laughed. ‘There are no innocent explanations in this palace,’ she told him.

Then they lowered their voices, or moved further into the apartments, for Amita could hear no more.

Amita, daydreaming, gazed at herself in the sheet of polished tin decorating the main door of Petalina’s rooms. She knew she was not pretty. She had been told so often enough as a child. Her best
point was her shining fair hair and usually she hid behind its curtain. Now, though, the hair was pulled back out of sight under a modest grey scarf, and her dark brows dominated her thin bony face with its anxious eyes.

She was twelve when she and Elija fled the City. She was now twenty, and Elija eighteen. And Emly would be sixteen. She always included Emly in any thoughts about herself and Elija, because Elija always did, and because she knew that if his sister still lived Elija would discover her one day and then she, Amita, would have to leave him. In her mind pictures she imagined Emly looking like her brother, dark and sparrow-boned, with kind eyes and a sweet smile. She wondered where he was, and a trickle of fear ran through her.

After several weeks on board ship Amita and Elija had been set ashore on a distant island, a place of green hills and grey sandy beaches, where they were housed with the family of a ship owner. They were still afraid then, for everything in their lives in the City had taught them to be frightened. But the ship owner’s wife instructed them in the language of the island’s people, and she showed them how to read, and for a while they even went to a school there. They were happy days.

Then one day a ship had come for them. They feared they were to be returned to the City and they said a sad farewell to the kind wife and the island. But they were taken across the sea again, then by land for many days, to a small farming community. There they met again the man called Gil who was to be their guide and mentor. And there they were set to learning the arcane and difficult script of the old City, a language long ago abandoned except in some imperial documents.

Amita left Petalina’s rooms and turned left down a long corridor which led deeper into the palace. After a few wrong turnings she found Assaios, the grim-faced housekeeper of the south wing, and tried to be patient while the woman slowly and methodically had her measured for clothes suitable for a palace servant, then lectured her on her duties. She had already been told by Petalina that she need pay no attention to this old woman, but Amita saw no reason to make enemies and she stood with head lowered submissively as Assaios told her where she was forbidden to go, how not to address her betters, not to look at anyone even if they addressed her; about the restrictions on water, food and fuel, where and what she could
not eat, and about her clothes, her manners and her status, which was non-existent.

Amita spent the time deciding what to do with the unexpected gift of an afternoon’s liberty. With only thirty days to go before the Day of Summoning she needed to know her way round this wing of the palace and to find a route to the Library of Silence, as she had been ordered. She had studied meagre plans of the palace before she was brought here, but she could not recognize much of what she saw. Those maps dated from when this wing was the women’s quarters, more than a hundred years before. Now it housed sets of apartments for guests of the emperor and the other lords and their friends. Much of it was empty for much of the time. But, still, it was guarded: she had seen armed men in the corridors, and to wander round haphazardly during daylight hours would call attention to her.