Wild Magic (30 page)

The fleeing figure, naked and laughing delightedly over its shoulder, luring the eager soldiers onward through a tumble of hair, was a naked man with a vast erection. And in front of him was another and another and another, all equally endowed. Saro gasped and dropped the fabric back into place. His cheeks flamed. The figures were imprinted in his vision as surely as if they had been tattooed onto the inside of his eyelids.

The congress of men with men was forbidden in Istria: had been so for a hundred years and more, though there were many hero-tales of bygone days in which men partnered closely with a comrade, to defend or avenge the other. And then the general – less threatening and unpalatable – was replaced very suddenly by the very particular, as yet again the fleeting memory of Tanto forcing himself upon the slaveboy in the orange grove assailed him. He retched at this memory, the bile rising suddenly in his throat, and turned quickly away in need of a discreet place – a plant-pot, maybe, or an open window – where he might vomit.

‘You must be the surviving Vingo boy.’

The voice was as polished as a river-washed stone. Saro spun around, to find the Lord of Forent regarding him curiously.

He swallowed. ‘My brother lives still,’ he said stiffly.

Rui Finco quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘Not many survive the attentions of Chirurgeon Brigo. He’s a lucky man.’

Saro thought of his brother’s mutilated form, his suppurating wound and increasingly poisonous temper and gave a bitter laugh. ‘Hardly.’

At that moment, another figure arrived at the Lord of Forent’s shoulder and his great height blocked the light from the sconce behind him. Saro felt the shadow he cast even before it fell across him.

The man who had appeared so silently was tall and wan, as white and stooped as a Farem ice-flower, his hair was the same yellow-white as a snowbear’s pelt, and his eyes were as pale as a squid’s. When he smiled, Saro felt as though his guts might turn to water. Under his arm, the man carried a small black cat wearing an elaborate red harness and muzzle. Unable to look the ashen man directly in those unnerving eyes, Saro found himself focusing on the cat instead. Everything about its demeanour spoke its discomfort: the bristling of the fur along its spine, the twitching of its sleek black tail; the way it pulled its head away from the long white fingers of the man’s right hand, which flickered rhythmically up and down its neck. He saw how its claws – pearly pink and needle-sharp – flexed and bit into the man’s forearm at each stroke; he saw how its vivid eyes flared and sparked at the indignity of its imprisonment; and he remembered what the horse-traders had said about a tall, pale man with a cat ‘all trussed up like a roasting bird’ who stood behind Tycho Issian while he ranted for war against the North.

When Saro looked up again, he found that the man’s eyes were fixed upon him: not upon his face, however, but upon the exact point above his heart where, beneath his tunic, the pendant nestled in its leather pouch, as if that bleached and ashen stare could divine the presence and nature of the object which was hidden there. And for its part the moodstone seemed alert to the proximity of the newcomer, for it seared a sudden chill into the skin of Saro’s chest and began to pulse there, a steady, drumming beat that made him feel dizzy and a little faint. Once more, Saro felt an urgent need to be elsewhere. He turned to leave, but his path was blocked by the arrival of Lord Tycho Issian.

The Lord of Cantara barely threw Saro a glance, but instead gripped Rui Finco excitedly by the arm and drew him a little aside. He looked as if he had drunk a gallon of araque, or inhaled an entire stack of sweetsmoke, for his eyes were bulging and bright with passion, and the usually tight, reserved planes of his face were flushed and mobile.

‘Our stratagem is working better than we could ever have hoped!’ was all Saro managed to catch of their conversation for, at almost the same moment at which Tycho Issian started to speak, the pale man leaned towards him and laid a hand on his shoulder. A terrible cold filled Saro’s bones. It felt as though ice had been poured into him, buckets of it, filling up his limbs, his belly, the cavity of his chest. He could not move, could barely breathe. He waited for a torrent of images to engulf him – the typical deluge of memories and desires, random thoughts and uncontrolled urges – but instead there was nothing but a terrible, empty, paralysing chill, and images so faint as to be phantasms in his own mind. Then, as swiftly as it had come upon him, the cold retreated, and Saro realised that the pale man had taken his hand off him as if he had been burned and was even now stumbling backwards in an uncoordinated trot, so that the cat, sensing its captor’s distraction, writhed cleverly out of his arms and ran beneath the table trailing its red leash. The pale man, however, did not even appear to notice its escape, for his eyes were fixed upon Saro and the look in them was one of sheer terror. Saro had seen such a look in the eyes of the slaves that Tanto tormented, in the eyes of a rabbit struck but not quite killed by a quarrel. But the last time he had seen it so clearly had been in the eyes of the old nomad woman whom Favio had brought aboard the barge at Pex to cure his unconscious brother. The death-stone, she had termed his pendant, and fled, leaving his dreams haunted by the men he had killed so unknowingly at the Allfair.

His hand came up now reflexively to cup the hidden stone, and the pale man began to gibber, as if he thought Saro might remove the talisman from its pouch and strike him dead with it on the very spot.

‘For the Lady’s sake, Virelai,’ the Lord of Forent said sharply, staring at the magician around Tycho Issian’s shoulder. ‘Try not to make a complete fool of yourself and the rest of us in this august company.’ Then his eyes narrowed and his gaze dropped to the floor, where a black tail could be seen protruding beneath a damask table cover, flicking angrily up and down against the fabulous mosaics. ‘And may I suggest you rescue your animal and confine it safely upstairs in your chamber?’

The pale man – Virelai – hesitated. It was imperative that he recapture the cat, but he had no wish to brush past the young southerner who bore the most terrible weapon in the world around his neck as nonchalantly as if it were a mere trinket.

Saro watched the man’s discomfort with curiosity. Then: ‘Excuse me,’ he said, and took his chance. He bobbed his head to the Lord of Forent, who was watching him suspiciously, and to the Lord of Cantara, who was not, and walked swiftly away.

‘I came through Monvia Town, and there were people on the streets howling for war like a pack of wolves.’

‘They burned an effigy of the northern king in the market square at Ina, in the Blue Woods.’

‘And at Yeta, too.’

‘I came from Gibeon, and even there where folk care little about such things, they were cursing the barbarians.’

‘The Lord of Cantara is well known in Gibeon: they will take the abduction of his daughter personally.’

‘The Duke will not sanction hostilities, surely?’

‘Cera is vulnerable to Eyran attack.’

‘Aye, but who says they’ll attack? Ravn has his hands full with his new acquisition, from all I’d heard.’

‘A fact that has incensed the people. To choose a nomad woman over the Swan of Jetra is an abomination.’

‘That face, though . . .’

‘Viro, you should watch your mouth or you’ll find yourself heading for a pyre.’

‘The treasury will not stand for the cost of another war.’

‘There may not be much choice: the people want it, and as we have always known, our people are most determined when they set their hearts on something. Woe betide the leader of a province who stands out against the wishes of his people.’

‘Hearts, though: therein lies the problem. All this talk of war is fuelled by dangerous passions, rather than sound economics. What do we gain by sacking the North? They have nothing left for us to covet. We’ve driven them onto a pile of rocks in the middle of a ferocious sea.’

‘They could navigate the Ravenway for us—’

‘Not Forent’s ludicrous scheme again! I do not even believe in the existence of this “Far West”; and everyone knows that such treasure is a myth. Besides, if we carry war to the north, they’ll hardly give up their secrets willingly, and who would trust information extracted by duress? No: this is bigotry run mad. I for one will vote against the very notion of a war – it’s taken us twenty years to recover from the last one.’

‘That poor woman: stolen away by those dogs for their perverted pleasures. I can hardly bear to think of what may have become of her. See her father over there, a man racked by the horror of it all. He has been preaching the good cause, they say, persuading the people to pray with him to Falla for the Lady Selen’s safe return.’

‘That or sending ships north to take her back by force.’

‘And saving as many of the women of the Isles, too.’

‘The brothels of Sestria would profit from some new blood.’

‘Varyx, that’s a disgraceful thing to say!’

‘Well, what else will happen to them if we “liberate” them from the barbarous yoke of their menfolk?’

‘Why, we shall offer them honourable protection, give them over to the Sisters for instruction in Falla’s ways.’

‘Ha! I doubt the Sisters will welcome the sudden intrusion of a thousand Goddessless Eyran bints to clutter up their precious Contemplation Grounds.’

‘Varyx: you are a profane scoundrel.’

‘Pragmatic, Palto; I prefer pragmatic.’

‘It would take six months – more – to build a fleet. And such an expense we cannot afford.’

‘The Lords Issian and Finco seem well in funds and much in favour of a conflict.’

‘That is, I must say, a curious reversal of fortunes. Has anyone any idea whence all this newfound wealth has sprung? Last I knew of it, Prionan and Cera were demanding the late repayment of Cantara’s debt to the Council. Balto Miron was rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of acquiring himself a new castle.’

‘You are behind the times! The Lord of Cantara has, I have heard, discovered a silver mine in his lands. Certainly, all his debts are repaid in full and he has been most generous to a number of charitable causes of late.’

‘Doesn’t their alliance strike anyone other than me as rather odd? After all, Rui Finco has had the reputation as the most licentious man in Istria for many years. He must surely have fathered an entire dynasty of bastards by now.’

‘May I suggest you keep your voice down, Gabran: they’re just behind us! Come, let us move away into the gardens. Now then, what I had heard was that the Lord of Forent has changed his ways, is making daily sacrifice and spending much time exhorting the people to holy thoughts and deeds.’

‘Preaching war, you mean?’

‘Well, certainly carrying the Word of the Lady to the pagan Isles.’

‘Carrying fire and sword, you mean.’

‘If that is what it takes to civilise our northern neighbours, then they have all my support.’

‘I took this scar from the last war with Eyra.’

‘My father lost his life.’

‘My estates have never recovered from the destruction the northerners visited upon them.’

‘Do you not wish a chance for revenge? I am vowed to seek the men who killed my father. If war is declared, I shall volunteer to crew the first ship north!’

‘What do you know of seamanship, Festran? You would perish from wave-sickness before you even passed the harbour wall at Hedera Port.’

The assembly was convened as soon as First Observance had been made. The echoes of the Crier were still reverberating from the rose-red walls of the city’s towers as the lords of Istria, and their sons and nephews and cousins, all took their seats in the Council Chamber, until the room was packed tight and humming with conversation. Over a hundred of Istria’s most powerful men were gathered there: hereditary peers and nobles whose bloodlines could be traced back to the days of the First Dynasty; clan heads representing every major town and city in every province of the Empire. At the head of the table set in the centre of the chamber – a vast affair carved, it was said, from the trunk of a single great oak from the forest around Sestria before the call for a new fleet in the Third War had decimated the area’s trees – sat Lord Prionan, the Duke of Cera and the Lords of Jetra, Greving and Hesto Dystra. The latter appeared to have aged by years in the space of mere months: already elderly men, they now appeared stooped and frail, their grey hair thin streaks across the identical shiny pink domes of their heads. They had taken the insult to their granddaughter hard, it was said by some; though others argued that she had surely had a most lucky and narrow escape, and that if she had been carried off to Eyra, they would surely have borne her loss more grievously. Prionan, on the other hand, appeared to have been living rather too well. Florid of complexion and rotund of frame, he looked as if he might burst out of his elaborate robes of state at any moment. By contrast, the Duke of Cera was elegance personified; slim and understated in his midnight blue and discreet silver, he occupied his chair with all the poised grace of one of his snow leopards, his black eyes darting glances around the chamber as if assessing every nuance of atmosphere, every detail offered in the faces present, every thought lurking in men’s minds. He did not welcome a war: like Hedera, Cera had much to lose in any war with the North, as had proved to be the case time and time again down the centuries. The walls of his city – held by his family for two hundred and fifty years, ever since they had ousted the resident barbarians from their homes – had been scaled and smashed down on four separate occasions, and rebuilt higher after each attack; the castle walls bore the scars of fire and siege; new wells had had to be dug after water supplies were poisoned. And for the first time in years, there were sufficient funds to construct the fine aviary he had been planning: he had far rather spend his waning years with his creatures than waging an unwinnable war.

Saro was assigned a seat at the end of a bench just one row back from the table, while his brother was reverently manoeuvred in the wheeled chair they had had to convey all the way from Altea to a position at his side. It was, Saro thought, an unlikely honour to be seated so close to the centre of power; and probably a mistake on the part of some bored official.