Thraxas - The Complete Series (142 page)

“Big delivery.”

“On its way to Lisutaris’s villa, I believe,” Hansius informs me. “They’re building a theatre in the grounds for the performers to use at the ball.”

This worsens my mood. I ask Hansius if he’s going. He is, of course.

“I accompany the Deputy Consul to all such events.”

Having learned to be tactful as a young man in public service, Hansius doesn’t ask me if I’m invited. He knows very well that since being sacked from my job at the Palace I’m not on the guest list for smart parties. To hell with them. Who wants to go to a masked ball anyway? I can just imagine Deputy Consul Cicerius prancing round in a costume. It’s unbecoming. I wouldn’t offend my dignity.

At the Palace grounds I’m searched for weapons, and before entering the outlying building that houses Cicerius’s offices I’m examined by a government Sorcerer, checking to see if I might be carrying any dangerous spells or aggressive sorcerous items.

“You can’t see the Deputy Consul while carrying a sleep spell.”

I turn to Hansius to protest.

“You expect me to give up my spells? I didn’t ask to visit.”

There’s no use protesting. Palace Security is very sensitive about anyone who isn’t a member of the Sorcerers Guild bringing usable spells anywhere near the King. The official Sorcerer holds out a magically charged crystal which I unwillingly take hold of. I feel the sleep spell draining away through my fingers.

“It takes a lot of work to learn these things, you know. Is anyone going to compensate me for my wasted effort?”

Hansius leads me through the marble corridors towards Cicerius’s office. Everything here is elegant—pale yellow tiled floors. Elvish tapestries on the walls, each window, no matter how small, decorated with artfully stained glass—and I get a pang of regret for the fine office in a fine building I used to inhabit when I was an investigating Sorcerer at the Palace. The King’s residence is one of the finest buildings in the west, full of artwork to rival that of many larger states, and the buildings of his senior officials are likewise well appointed. While I’m not a man who’s too concerned with works of art, I can’t help feeling a twinge of grief as I realise that everywhere I look there’s a bust or statue that would cost more than I’ll earn in a year. Even the clerks’ desks are made of dark wood imported from the Elvish Isles.

Possibly I shouldn’t have got so drunk at my boss Rittius’s wedding that I was immediately fired for outraging public decency. But Rittius hated me anyway. He was just looking for an excuse.

My visit to the Deputy Consul’s office follows a long-established pattern. Cicerius roundly condemns me for my behaviour and I try vainly to defend myself. Any time I’ve worked for Cicerius there’s come a point when he’s felt the need to point out that I’m a disgrace to the fair city of Turai. After a little preparatory sarcasm, he starts laying in with the criticism even though, as I point out, I’m not working for his office at the moment.

“But it was this office which gave you the post of Tribune. On the strict understanding that you were not to go around abusing your powers.”

“I wouldn’t say I’d been abusing them. Anyway, Professor Toarius abused his first. I had to do something.”

Cicerius points a bony finger at me.

“Any use of your Tribunate powers is an abuse. It was merely a device to let you enter the Sorcerers Assemblage. Look what happened when you forbade Praetor Capatius to evict these tenants during the winter.”

“You don’t have to remind me. The Praetor tried to have me killed.”

Cicerius rattles on. As Turai’s foremost public orator, he has no trouble inventing new terms of abuse. The Deputy Consul is of the opinion that the prospect of a common man from Twelve Seas getting involved in the politics of our city state is just a step away from complete anarchy.

“Who can say what will happen now?”

I’m not here to argue civil politics with Cicerius, I just want him to get to the point so I can get on with my investigation.

“It was never a good idea that Tribunes could hold up public affairs. Their power of referring matters to the Senate was an anomaly. That is why the post was abolished last century. I must insist that you drop your investigation.”

As I suspected from the start, Cicerius shows no sign of providing me with beer. With the heat, my aching head and the intolerable sound of Cicerius lecturing me, I’m coming close to breaking point, a point at which I shall roundly abuse the Deputy, march out of the house and thereby do great damage to my career. I interrupt the flow to tell him that much as I didn’t want to use my Tribunate powers, I couldn’t see a ready alternative.

“And as I recall, Deputy Consul, you ran for the election largely on an honesty ticket. Cicerius never takes a bribe and he never prosecutes an innocent man, so they say. Everyone’s still impressed by the way you’ve defended people in court because you believed them to be innocent, even when it meant going against your party.”

This gets his attention. Cicerius never minds hearing good things said about himself.

“So consider things from my point of view. Or, more to the point, from Makri’s. She’s completely innocent of the theft. You shouldn’t find that too hard to believe because you’ve met her and you know what she’s like. Demented but honest. And you also know how hard she works for these examinations. All the while slaving away as a barmaid to support herself and pay for her classes, which don’t come cheap. I thought that would impress you in particular.”

Cicerius purses his thin lips. He takes my meaning. Though born into the aristocratic class, Cicerius wasn’t born rich. His father died when he was an infant, leaving a family in poverty because he’d invested all his money in a fleet of trading ships which went down in a storm. There was a dispute over the insurance and Cicerius’s mother, outsmarted by her late husband’s business partners, ended up in penury. This meant that Cicerius himself had to work extremely hard to make his way through university and up the ranks of government. Though he’s a rich man now, his younger years were one long struggle.

The reason I know all this, the reason everyone knows all this, is that Cicerius himself has not been above bringing his background up on any occasion he needs to remind the Senate that he’s a self-made man, and proud of it.

“Are you going to let a citizen of Turai—”

“Makri is not a citizen of Turai. Makri is an alien with Orcish blood.”

“Who did a good job for you when you needed someone to look after that Orcish charioteer last year. Are you going to let a hard-working young woman be denied her chance to sit her examination because Professor Toarius has taken an irrational dislike to her? And please don’t tell me that Consul Kalius has done the poor a great favour by appointing Toarius as head of the Guild College.”

“Consul Kalius has done the poor a great favour by appointing Toarius as head of the Guild College,” says Cicerius.

“I don’t care. He’s not stopping Makri from taking the examination. I’ve forbidden her expulsion. It can’t go ahead before it’s been discussed by a Senate committee, and by that time I’ll have evidence to prove her innocence. And nothing you can say can change my mind. I’m offended that a champion of justice like yourself should be ranged against me.”

Cicerius is almost at a loss for words. I’ve managed to flummox the great orator, if only because he’s honest at heart. An appeal to justice wouldn’t have gotten me very far with any other official in this city. The Deputy Consul fixes me with a piercing lawyer’s stare.

“You seem extremely concerned for the welfare of this young woman. Is there some arrangement between you?”

I’m staggered that the Deputy Consul could suggest such a thing.

“If I prove her innocence she won’t slaughter everyone at the College. I guess you could call that an arrangement.”

Cicerius isn’t happy but really he’s in an impossible situation. He can’t bring himself to connive in a blatant injustice, and even if he could, there is no legal way to rescind my Tribune’s decree. Only I can do that, and I’ve made it clear I’m not going to.

“Very well,” he says. “You may continue with your investigation. And when the matter comes to the Senate committee I will ensure that it is looked into thoroughly. But I warn you, if there are any political repercussions of your actions, if Senator Lodius and his opposition party again manage to make you their tool in an action against the government, I will personally rescind your Investigator’s licence. With your past record, it will be quite in order for me to do so.”

Having nothing more to say, I make to leave.

“One moment,” says Cicerius. “Why did Lisutaris, Mistress of the Sky, visit you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Lisutaris is head of the Sorcerers Guild and an important person in the interests of this city state. If she is in any sort of trouble I would naturally wish to know.”

“If she was in any trouble and she’d consulted me, I doubt I’d tell you. I respect my clients’ privacy. But she didn’t come to see me, she came to see Makri.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She was inviting her to her ball.”

Cicerius is surprised. Twenty years ago, a woman like Makri would never have been allowed to attend such an event.

“So be careful who you bump into on the night. If it’s a crazy-looking woman with an axe, don’t ask her about college.”

I depart, leaving Cicerius displeased with the laxity of manners in modern-day Turai. As a Sorcerer mutters a spell to let me out of the building, I’m wondering what sort of costume our Deputy Consul will be sporting at the ball. I just can’t imagine him in fancy dress.

B
ack in Twelve Seas, I take the short cut through St. Rominius’s Lane, not caring if the dark alley might be filled with dwa dealers. If they bother me they’ll regret it. I don’t see any dwa dealers but I do see a unicorn. I stand and stare in amazement. You don’t find unicorns in Turai. You find them mainly in the magic space, which can only be visited by sorcery. As for the real world, unicorns only appear in a very few places, each of these places being of some mystical significance. The Fairy Glade, for instance, deep in the forests that separate Turai from the Wastelands, has its share of the one-horned animals, and there’s reputed to be a colony way out in the furthest west. Other than that, you’d have to go to some of the remoter Elvish Isles to see one. Wherever you might expect to find a unicorn, it wouldn’t be in a noisy, busy, dirty city like Turai. Absolute anathema to the refined breed.

Yet here it is, snowy-white, golden-horned, standing in a grimy little alleyway looking at me like it hasn’t a care in the world. Faced with the fabulous creature, the thought quickly flashes across my mind that if I could capture it, I might be able to sell it for a healthy profit to the King’s zoo. He’s been short of fabulous creatures since his dragon was chopped up a year or two back.

“Nice unicorn,” I say, holding out my hand in a reassuring manner and stepping forward carefully. As soon as I move, the unicorn turns and bolts round the corner. I fly after it but it’s vanished.

“Stupid beast,” I mutter, and hurry on. Now it will have plunged into Quintessence Street, where it will be apprehended and sold for profit by some person far less needy than me. If I get there quickly I still might be up for a share.

I rush down the alley, oblivious to the heat and dust, and burst into the main street, eagerly looking in every direction at once.

“It’s mine, I saw it first, you dogs!” I cry, and brandish my sword to discourage anyone from muscling in on the deal.

Two women at a watermelon stall look at me, puzzled.

“What’s yours?” they ask.

“The unicorn. Which way did it go?”

The women burst out laughing, and keep laughing for a long time. It is apparently the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. And yet I’m right next to the mouth of the alley. It had to have emerged here. I confront the watermelon sellers.

“Didn’t a unicorn come out of that alleyway?”

They look at me with what might be pity.

“Dwa,” says one.

“A serious addiction,” agrees her friend.

I look round wildly. Apart from a few people staring at the mad person shouting about unicorns, no one in Quintessence Street is showing signs of abnormal activity. It’s quite obvious that no single-horned fabulous creature has featured here recently. So it just ran round the corner and vanished from sight.

I realise that someone has been playing a trick on me. A Sorcerer’s apprentice with nothing better to do, most probably. He’ll regret it if I catch hold of him.

“Okay, I’ll take a watermelon then,” I say to the women.

I eat it on the street, cooling down from my exertion. What was I thinking, chasing after an obvious illusion? I must be getting foolish. Flocks of stals—unfortunately real—are perched listlessly on the roofs. These small black scavenging birds spend their time picking up scraps from the market, but in the deadening heat even they’re finding it tough to make a living.

Makri is waiting for me in my office. I’m not mentioning the unicorn to her.

“You know I have to stand up and talk to the whole class?”